Distance learning is nothing new to the State University of New York (SUNY) system, but the increased popularity of online courses and upgrades in collaborative software have changed the landscape of online learning for its teachers and students.
Established in 1948, SUNY has 64 campuses that enroll approximately 400,000 students, which make it the nation's youngest and largest state university. Eric E. Fredericksen, assistant provost for advanced learning technology, office of the provost at system administration, reported that SUNY has been offering asynchronous (not in real time) online education courses since 1995 through its own SUNY Learning Network (SLN).
That first year, two campuses participated, eight courses were offered, and there were 119 enrollments. At the end of the 2000-2001 academic year, 53 campuses took part in SLN, with approximately 2,000 course offerings and 25,814 enrollments.
"Since SLN started back in 1995, we had to develop tools like HorizonLive or WebCT in house, mainly because none of those sorts of things existed when we started," Fredericksen explained. "We were a bit ahead of the times."
The distance learning atmosphere is decidedly more sophisticated today, and there are many companies that provide online teaching tools. "There will be a blurring in the overall education landscape over the next few years," predicted Fredericksen. "Rather than classroom instruction versus online learning, there will be more of a continuum. It will be difficult to say this is distance learning and this is not. You'll find Web-based instruction enhancing almost every class. A great deal of opportunity is created once you eliminate the constraints of time and location."
More Than Chat
Today's collaborative software solutions go beyond simple live chat and asynchronous access to class notes. HorizonLive, for example, offers live Internet audio and video, a suite of e-learning content templates, instant polling, whiteboard, application sharing, and a one-touch archive that captures all online classroom activity and allows sessions to be archived for on-demand viewing and reference. The Web browser-based system works on PC, Mac, and Unix platforms, and is accessible with connections as slow as 56K.
Because HorizonLive is entirely Web-based software, no software needs to be installed on individual computers. Matt Wasowski, director of marketing, HorizonLive, said this saves a lot of hassle for teachers and students.
"If you have an international student body and you're a college in the States, you may have students in Taiwan or Israel," he explained. "You won't need to ship them a CD or disk, and they won't have to download anything. They just go to their Web browser and open it right up."
Though HorizonLive is scalable for more than 300 participants, it is considered most pedagogically effective for 25 to 40 students. When a class is in session, teachers and students can make notes on the content window through its eBoard feature.
The instructor controls this whiteboard function and can permit or prohibit access to it at any time. Text, arrows, free form drawing, color selection, and even images can be incorporated into the whiteboard image. And when the class is archived, the entire whiteboard interaction is archived as well.
"We have partnerships with all three of the big course management system providers Blackboard, WebCT, and eCollege," Wasowski said. "They're all asynchronous delivery and we're synchronous. What happens is that someone uses HorizonLive to teach live over the Internet and the content for the classes can come from Blackboard, WebCT, or eCollege. It's a great way of combining the two technologies."
Managing New Course Work
While collaborative software encourages real-time interaction, a course management system is designed to help instructors make sure the students are getting the information they need to pass the course and move on to the next level. These systems offer a collection of technologies such as assessment tools, whiteboard, chat rooms, e-mail, and streaming media, all of which can occur in synchronous or asynchronous sessions that can be recorded and archived for review.
SUNY recently signed a three-year agreement with course management system provider WebCT, which offers an interface that's structured in a modular format. It allows students to approach the frame as though they are reading chapters of a book.
Each chapter, however, has tools not available in a traditional textbook. The chat room or e-mail connection, for example, can be used to have discussions about the chapter. Plus, a link to other resources gives students more information about the subject being taught, videos give a visual take on the subject, and quizzes assess the students' comprehension of the material.
"A course management system provides an environment that supports the student and supports the different learning styles of students," said Michele Lamberson, director of WebCT community relations and an instructor in Vancouver. "There's a content module, a series of pages that are put in a linear sequence, but associate resources and links can be imbedded inside of each page or frame. All of those parts make up the content modules, and anything that is put into a WebCT course as a link on a page can then be selectively released."
Lamberson uses WebCT in her traditional and online courses. "I use the chat tool, which is a synchronous tool, during my office hours. Some of my students are across campus and log in to ask me questions from wherever they are," she said. "I probably have more students asking questions during office hours as a result of using that chat tool. What this does is open up the instructor's ability to be more in tune with their students and for the students to get to know their instructors better."
Rethinking Course Design
When designing a Web course, Lamberson said it's important to understand the medium. "Teachers are used to a specific type of teaching strategy and they need to open themselves up to something new," he offered. "When they first go online, they want their students to do 15 different assignments and all those same things they did in the classroom.
"You have to scale yourself back and focus in on what the expected outcomes are. What is it you want your students to be able to do once they finish a course? The main thing with something like WebCT is instructors have the pedagogical freedom to explore different opportunities, which is tempered with keeping the focus on the learning."
What's unique about WebCT, according to Lamberson, is that it can release material to students based on their performance. Not only does it help students know what they know, it also helps instructors to see how the course is working and where, perhaps, it needs to be fine-tuned.
"There's no such thing as the perfect course. From year to year I'll notice what works and what doesn't," said Lamberson. "The nice thing about WebCT is I can look at and monitor what my students have done on both an individual and aggregate basis. I can look to see what content they've looked at and how long it's taken them to get through specific pieces of content.
"Then I can say, Wait a minute. Why did they spend three hours on that section and then drop the course?' I have a teaching associate who noticed that very thing and she went back and looked at the content and realized it was not as clear as she would have liked. She modified that section and no one dropped the course next semester."
Because instructors know how much time students spend on material done "outside" the classroom, Lamberson believes students come to the online or traditional classroom better prepared, able to ask more pertinent questions, and willing to engage in a deeper level of discussion.
Lawrence S. Dugan, instructor of computing sciences, Finger Lakes Community College, SUNY, said, "I've used some other online testing systems before this, and there's some online pedagogies that you can use if you change your mentality about how you give tests," he explained. "Tests can be used strictly for assessment. That's what we've been doing here and it's been pretty effective.
"Sometimes I give an in-class test as a purely test-giving device, and then sometimes I'll use testing as a learning device which forces students into the book," he continued. "It assures me that the students are going to be reading the material because when they're taking the test, it's open book it forces them into the book. Then, when I give them a cumulative test, it's based on the information they've already gleaned from the book. I love it."
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