Terry Anderson, PhDProfessor and Canada Research Chair

in Distance Education

Kaleidoscope: A Constantly changing Group or Scene

Values• We can (and must) continuously improve the

quality, effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of the learning experience.

• Student control and freedom is integral to 21st Century life-long education and learning.

• Current educational models do not scale for lifelong learning for all residents of our planet.

Dealing with Technological Determinism in Education

The Man with the Magic Lantern, a tribute to educator Ned Corbett

A scepter hanging over teachers

• Students today can’t prepare bark to calculate their problems. They depend on their slates which are more expensive. What will they do when their slate is dropped and it breaks? They will be unable to write!”Teachers Conference, 1703

From Father Stanley Bezuska Boston College

• Students today depend upon paper too much. They don’t know how to write on slate without chalk dust all over themselves. They can’t clean a slate properly. What will they do when they run out of paper?”Principal’s Association, 1815

From Father Stanley Bezuska Boston College

• Students today depend too much upon ink. They don’t know how to use a pen knife to sharpen a pencil. Pen and ink will never replace the pencil.”National Association of Teachers, 1907

From Father Stanley Bezuska Boston College

• Students today depend upon store-bought ink. They don’t know how to make their own. When they run out of ink they will be unable to write. This is a sad commentary on modern education.”The Rural American Teacher, 1929

From Father Stanley Bezuska Boston College

Students today depend upon these expensive fountain pens. They can no longer write with a straight pen and nib (not to mention sharpening their own quills). We parents must not allow them to wallow in such luxury to the detriment of learning how to cope in the real business world, which is not so extravagant.”PTA Gazette, 1941

From Father Stanley Bezuska Boston College

• Ball point pens will be the ruin of education in our country. Students use these devices and then throw them away. The American virtues of thrift and frugality are being discarded. Business and banks will never allow such expensive luxuries.”Federal Teacher, 1950

From Father Stanley Bezuska Boston College

• Online education “is not a progressive trend towards a new era at all, but a regressive trend, towards the rather old era of mass production, standardization and purely commercial interests.” David Noble, 1998

• David Cameron’s new Age of Government - Transposed to Education

Age of Local Control

• Parents as teachers• Apprenticeship• Local control of teaching and curriculum

2nd Age of School/Institutional Bureaucracy

• Centralized control• Standards• National and international standardization and

measurement

3rd Age of Networked Education

• Think and Act Globally and Locally• Education as development of lifelong learning

networks• The Network Society: ‘a society where the key

social structures and activities are organized around electronically processed information networks’

• “The advent of the Internet, calls into question the entire education system developed during the industrial era’, (Castells, 2002, p. 278).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&feature=related

Networked Learning:• Pulls families and children to learning by making it

attractive, productive, and relevant• Relies on peer-to-peer learning rather than formal

teachers• Creates spaces for learning where they are needed,

rather than just using schools• Starts learning from challenges that people face rather

than from a formal curriculum• The test of these approaches is whether they get useful knowledge into the hands of people

who need it• It is not measured by exam pass rates.

Learning from the Extremes - a CISCO report by Charles Leadbeater and Annika Wong"

• Most Net Technology is not incremental but disruptive and ecological – meaning that it demands systemic response as its effects spread throughout the institution.

Network learning as Disruptive Technology

Clayton Christiansen

Adopting Disruptive Technologies

• Constant attention to where the “puck is going to be”

• Disruptive technologies may not be valued or provide advantage to existing customers

• “Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and frequently more convenient to use” (Christensen, 1997).

• Bottom up disruptions - new providers using OER’s are most likely threat to established colleges

Disruptive Technologies

• “digital dissonance” - neither teachers nor students fully recognize and utilize the potential of emerging technologies for learning” Clark, Logan, Luckin, Mee, & Oliver, 2009).

• Yet they continue to block each others’ use – ie banning of mobile tech and many social sites at school, lack of collaborative engagement on school based wikis, failure to license for re-use.

Barriers to Adoption of Disruptive Technologies

• Lack of understanding of the technology’s viability or strategic implications.

• Lack of knowledge about how the technologies could be developed and used most effectively.

• Uncertainty about adequate levels of acceptance by stakeholders.

• Lack of skills. Particularly technical, design, development and operations skills

• Lack of finance/funding/investment – Adapted from Elliot, Williams & Bjorn-Andersen, 2005

E-Learning as Disruptive

• Makes content available –FREE• Allows time and place shifting• Allows global collaboration for teaching and

learning• Supports global competition• Higher quality learning

Why Get involved in E-Learning?

• To Maintain market share• To increase accessibility or flexibility for students

and teachers• To enhance the quality of teaching/learning• To provide basic 21 century skills and meet the

learning needs of net generation students• To save money – (from Bates, 2010)

• To gain personal satisfaction

Online Learning is Coming to a College Near You

• Over 3.9 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2007 term; a 12 percent increase over the number reported the previous year.

• The 12.9 percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 1.2 percent growth of the overall higher education student population.

• Over twenty percent of all U.S. higher education students were taking at least one online course in the fall of 2007. – Allen , E., & Seaman, J. (2008). Staying the Course: Online

Education in the United States, Sloan Consortium.

Online Learning is Coming to a College On The Internet Near You

• Over 3.9 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2007 term; a 12 percent increase over the number reported the previous year.

• The 12.9 percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 1.2 percent growth of the overall higher education student population.

• Over twenty percent of all U.S. higher education students were taking at least one online course in the fall of 2007. – Allen , E., & Seaman, J. (2008). Staying the Course: Online

Education in the United States, Sloan Consortium.

To increase accessibility or flexibility for students and teachers

• 68% undertook online learning because of flexibility in terms of pace, time and place.

• “Freedom—I can work at my own pace.”• “No time constraints, can work whenever I

have time.”– Learner expectations and experiences Australian

National Training Authority, 2003

Flexibility works for faculty too!

Shea, P. (2007) BRIDGES AND BARRIERS TO TEACHINGONLINE COLLEGE COURSES: Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks,

Faculty Workload

• Still biggest issue• Little empirical evidence of increased loads

online• Usually associated with beginning online

teachers and labour intensive designs

To enhance the quality of teaching/learning

Does E-learning Really Work?

• The return on Investment Lag – Does funding on ICT and training result in higher returns on Investment? How do we measure improved learning?

• Lack of innovation and change– The horseless Carriage syndrome

• But growing evidence that online learning is both popular and effective

Buggy whip holders lasted over 10 years in new (1895) horseless carriages.

No Significant Difference

• Thomas Russel’s NSD Site• Instructional designs- not media– the use of problem-based learning strategies ,– the opportunity for students to engage in mediated

communication with the instructor, – course and content information provided to

students prior to class starting, – the use of video provided to students by the

instructor,• Dell, Low & Wilker (2010)

No Significant Difference Ending??

K12 over 1,000 studies 1992-2008"The overall finding of the meta-analysis is that classes with online learning (whether taught completely online or blended) on average produce stronger student learning outcomes than do classes with solely face-to-face instruction." (pg.18)

Bernard et al 2004

• “A meta-analysis of the comparative distance education (DE) literature between 1985 and 2002 was conducted. In total, 232 studies containing 599 independent achievement, attitude, and retention outcomes were analyzed.

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Project 1: 2000 – 2004

• Question: How does distance education compare to classroom instruction? (inclusive dates 1985-2002)

• Total number of effect sizes: k = 232

• Measures: Achievement, Attitudes and Retention (opposite of drop-out)

• Divided into Asynchronous and Synchronous DE

Bernard, R. M., Abrami, P. C., Lou, Y. Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Wozney, L., Wallet, P.A., Fiset, M., & Huang, B. (2004). How does distance education compare to classroom instruction? A meta-analysis of the empirical literature. Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 379-439.

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Summary of results: Achievement

Type of DE k g+ Sig.

Combined 318* 0.013* > 0.05

Synchronous 92 –0.102* < 0.05

Asynchronous 174 0.053* < 0.05

Achievement Outcomes

*Significantly heterogeneous average effect

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Summary of results: Attitudes

Type of DE k g+ Sig.

Combined 154 –0.081* < 0.05

Synchronous 83 –0.185* < 0.05

Asynchronous 71 –0.034* > 0.05

Attitude Outcomes

*Significantly heterogeneous average effect

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Summary of results: RetentionRetention Outcomes

Type of DE k g+ Sig.

Combined 103 –0.057* < 0.05

Synchronous 17 0.005 > 0.05

Asynchronous 53 –0.093* < 0.05

*Significantly heterogeneous effect sizes

“On-line distance education experience had a significant effect of subsequent student

achievement and persistence behaviour ”

Dodd, C., Kirby, D., T., S., & Sharpe, D. (2010). The Impact of High School Distance e-Learning Experience on Rural Students’ University Achievement and Persistence. Online Journal of Distance Education Administration, 13(1). Retrieved From http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring121/dodd121.html.

What Makes E-Learning Effective ?

• 1. Content• 2. Interaction• 3. Agents

Anderson, T., & Whitelock, D. (2004). The Educational Semantic Web: Visioning and Practicing the Future of Education. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1. Retrieved Dec. 2007 from http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/2004/1.

Affordance 1. - Massive Amounts of Content

• Any information, any format, anytime, anywhere

• Customizable content• Interactive content• User created content• Adaptable Content• Open access content

Wiki and Open Courseware• Imagine a world in which every single person is given free

access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. – – Terry Foote, Wikipedia

Content - conclusion

• Cheap or free• Need to learn to develop business models and

culture allowing us to share and re-use content

• Don’t build your value on your content• Content is necessary, but not sufficient, to

create a quality educational experience

Affordance #2High Quality, Low Cost Communication

• Multi mode– Synchronous, asynch– Text, audio and video– A2A (avatar to avatar)

• Stored, indexed and retrievable• Reflective, emotive and cognitive• Mobile• Learner, teacher, community and

commercially created

Challenge: Creating Incentives to Sustain Meaningful Contribution

The New Yorker September 12, 2005

What’s so great about Face-to-Face communication?

“I learned more about Clive by reading his introduction tonight online than I did in our entire course together last summer” • (Kerlin, R-A, 1997)

http://kerlins.net/bobbi/research/diss/

Increased Interaction

Affordance 3Agents

• Google Alerts• MeetingWizard• RSS• Athabasca– Freudbot AIML– E-Advisor– Are you ready for

AU? Agents

FreudBot in SecondLife From Athabasca University

Networks Not Groups

• Beginning Lifelong Learning at School by creation and joining networks of practice

• Gleaming from Archives of past courses

Affordance #3 Agents

• Data Mining and Stigmergic analysis– Capacity to identify at risk learners seven days

after enrolment – Rio Salado Community College USA

• Amazon’s individual Bookshelf’s

To provide basic 21 century skills

21st Century Learner Attitudes• Wants to learn things• Continuously moves between on and offline• Is learning to recognize and demand quality

when investing in learning• Is easily bored and often cranky• Knows there are many paths to learning and is

used to staggering amounts of content• Normally uses a wide set of information

processing, creation and communications tools

“The decline of the compliant learner’. P. Goodyear 2004

enGuage Model Metiri Group http://www.metiri.com/features.htmlEn-Guage

E-learning to save money

• Very conflicted evidence on costs of e-learning• Never saves money when used on ‘bolt-on’

approach. Blended learning MUST be made to reduce some costs

• How are student savings to be costed?• Disruptive technologies always get cheaper

and more functional.

The Business of Elearning?• Is their an Institutional Strategy for e-learning

– What are the objectives of e-learning for both distance and blended learning?

– Who is the market- new students or existing? Off shore?– Teaching and learning monitoring and effectiveness plan?

• Who decides on– The type of content plus interaction model?– Types of tools supported ?– Role of F2F support?– Integration with campus courses?

• Who creates the courses”?– Lone Ranger Model– The instructional design based course team

See Taking The Lead: Strategic Management for e-Learning http://akoaotearoa.ac.nz/takingthelead

The Business of Elearning?

• Who trains and supports the teachers?– IT support and hardware– Learning design support– Software exposure, training and troubleshooting

• Who supports the students?– Registry, bookstore, library, counseling, helpdesk, training?

• Who Determines quality?– Standards and institutional review– Central versus unit based control– Peer review

Importance of this issue

• Educational challenges are not met through evangelism, threats or technologies alone.

• Change happens when teachers, administrators and learners make it happen– Perceived benefits – Personal– Readiness - Organizational– Pressure – Inter-organizational

• Chwelos; Benbasat; Dexter, 2001)

• Each of us is an agent of change

Gaining personal satisfaction

• Personal Learning Environments and Net Presence

Conclusion

• E-learning is in your future and it will be disruptive

• E-learning is effective, stimulating and fun• You owe it to yourself, your students and our

profession to get involved.

• "You have to be confused before you can reach a new level of understanding anything" - Dudley Herschbach – Nobel Prize winner (Chemistry)

“"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever."

- Chinese Proverb

Terry Anderson terrya@athabascau.ca

Blog: terrya.edubogs.org

Your comments and questions most welcomed!