35

4.7 'Agile' Design: flexible designs for learning

4.7.1 The need for more agile design models

Adamson (2012) states:

The systems under which the world operates and the ways that individual businesses operate are vast and complex – interconnected to the point of confusion and uncertainty. The linear process of cause and effect becomes increasingly irrelevant, and it is necessary for knowledge workers to begin thinking in new ways and exploring new solutions.

In particular, knowledge workers must deal with situations and contexts that are volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (what Adamson calls a VUCA environment). This certainly applies to teachers working with ever new, emerging technologies, very diverse students, and a rapidly changing external world that puts pressure on institutions to change.

If we look at course design, how does a teacher respond to rapidly developing new content, new technologies or apps being launched on a daily basis, to a constantly changing student base, to pressure to develop the knowledge and skills that are needed in a digital age? For instance, even setting prior learning outcomes is fraught in a VUCA environment, unless you set them at an abstract ‘skill’ level such as thinking flexibly, networking, and information retrieval and analysis. Students need to develop the key knowledge management skills of knowing where to find relevant information, how to assess, evaluate and appropriately apply such information. This means exposing students to less than certain knowledge and providing them with the skills, practice and feedback to assess and evaluate such knowledge, then apply that to solving real world problems.

In order to do this, learning environments need to be created that are rich and constantly changing, but which at the same time enable students to develop and practice the skills and acquire the knowledge they will need in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.

Figure 6.16 A volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world Image: © Carol Mase, Free Management Library, 2011, used with permission

Figure 4.7.1 A volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world
Image: © Carol Mase, Free Management Library, 2011, used with permission

4.7.2 Core features of agile design models

Describing the design features of this model is a challenge, for two reasons. First, there is no single approach to agile design. The whole point is to be adaptable to the circumstances in which it operates. Second, it is only with the development of light, easy to use technology and media in the last few years that instructors and course designers have started to break away from the standard design models, so agile designs are still emerging. However, this is a challenge that software designers have also been facing (see for instance, Larman and Vodde, 2009; Ries, 2011) and perhaps there are lessons that can be applied to educational design.

First, it is important to distinguish ‘agile’ design from rapid instructional design (Meier, 2000) or rapid prototyping, which are really both streamlined versions of the ADDIE model. Although rapid instructional design/rapid protyping enable courses or modules to be designed more quickly (especially important for corporate training), they still follow the same kind of sequential or iterative processes as in the ADDIE model, but in a more compressed form. Rapid instructional design and rapid prototyping might be considered particular kinds of agile design, but they lack some of the most important characteristics outlined below:

4.7.2.1 Light and nimble

If ADDIE is a 100-piece orchestra, with a complex score and long rehearsals, then agile design is a jazz trio who get together for a single performance then break up until the next time. Although there may be a short preparation time before the course starts, most of the decisions about what will go into the course, what tools will be used, what activities learners will do, and sometimes even how students will be assessed, are decided as the course progresses.

On the teaching side, there are usually only a few people involved in the actual design, one or sometimes two instructors and possibly an instructional designer, who nevertheless meet frequently during the offering of the course to make decisions based on feedback from learners and how learners are progressing through the course. However, many more content contributors may be invited – or spontaneously offer – to participate on a single occasion as the course progresses.

4.7.2.2 Content, learner activities, tools used and assessment vary, according to the changing environment

The content to be covered in a course is likely to be highly flexible, based more on emerging knowledge and the interests or prior experience of the learners, although the core skills that the course aims to develop are more likely to remain constant. For instance, for ETEC 522 in Scenario F, the overall objective is to develop the skills needed to be a pioneer or innovator in education, and this remains constant over each iteration of the course. However, because the technology is rapidly developing with new products, apps and services every year, the content of the course is quite different from year to year.

Also learner activities and methods of assessment are also likely to change, because students can use new tools or technology themselves for learning as they become available. Very often learners themselves seek out and organise much of the core content of the course and are free to choose what tools they use.

4.7.2.3 The design attempts to exploit the affordances of either existing or emerging technologies

Agile design aims to exploit fully the educational potential of new tools or software, which means sometimes changing at least sub-goals. This may mean developing different skills in learners from year to year, as the technology changes and allows new things to be done. The emphasis here is not so much on doing the same thing better with new technology, but striving for new and different outcomes that are more relevant in a digital world.

ETEC 522 for instance did not start with a learning management system. Instead, a web site, built in WordPress, was used as the starting point for student activities, because students as well as instructors were posting content, but in another year the content focus of the course was mainly on mobile learning, so apps and other mobile tools were strong components of the course.

4.7.2.4 Sound, pedagogical principles guide the overall design of a course – to a point

Just as most successful jazz trios work within a shared framework of melody, rhythm, and musical composition, so is agile design shaped by overarching principles of best practice. Most successful agile designs have been guided by core design principles associated with ‘good’ teaching, such as clear learning outcomes or goals, assessment linked to these goals, strong learner support, including timely and individualised feedback, active learning, collaborative learning, and regular course maintenance based on learner feedback, all within a rich learning environment (see Appendix 1). Sometimes though deliberate attempts are made to move away from an established best practice for experimental reasons, but usually on a small scale, to see if the experiment works without risking the whole course.

4.7.2.5 Experiential, open and applied learning

Usually agile course design is strongly embedded in the real, external world. Much or all the course may be open to other than registered students. For instance, much of ETEC 522, such as the final YouTube business pitches, is openly available to those interested in the topics. Sometimes this results in entrepreneurs contacting the course with suggestions for new tools or services, or just to share experience.

Another example is a course on Latin American studies from a Canadian university. This particular course had an open, student-managed wiki, where they could discuss contemporary events as they arose. This course was active at the same time that the Argentine government nationalised the Spanish oil company, Repsol. Several students posted comments critical of the government action, but after a week, a professor from a university in Argentina, who had come across the wiki by accident while searching the Internet, responded, laying out a detailed defence of the government’s policy. This was then made a formal topic for discussion within the course.

Such courses may though be only partially open. Discussion of sensitive subjects for instance may still take place behind a password controlled discussion forum, while other parts of the course may be open to all. As experience grows in this kind of design, other and perhaps clearer design principles are likely to emerge.

4.7.3 Strengths and weaknesses of flexible design models

The main advantage of agile design is that it focuses directly on preparing students for a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. It aims explicitly at helping students develop many of the specific skills they will need in a digital age, such as knowledge management, multimedia communication skills, critical thinking, innovation, and digital literacy embedded within a subject domain. Where agile design has been successfully used, students have found the design approach highly stimulating and great fun, and instructors have been invigorated and enthusiastic about teaching. Agile design enables courses to be developed and offered quickly and at much lower initial cost than ADDIE-based approaches.

However, agile design approaches are very new and have not really been much written about, never mind evaluated. There is no ‘school’ or set of agreed principles to follow, although there are similarities between the agile approach to design for learning with ‘agile’ design for computer software. Indeed it could be argued that most of the things in agile design are covered in other teaching models, such as online collaborative learning or experiential learning. Despite this, innovative instructors are beginning to develop courses in a similar way to ETEC 522 and there is a consistency in the basic design principles that give them a certain coherence and shape, even though each course or program appears on the surface to be very different (another example of agile design, but campus-based, with quite a different overall program from ETEC 522, is the Integrated Science program at McMaster University.)

Certainly agile design approaches require confident instructors willing to take a risk, and success is heavily dependent on instructors having a good background in best teaching practices and/or strong instructional design support from innovative and creative instructional designers. Because of the relative lack of experience in such design approaches the limitations are not well identified yet. For instance, this approach can work well with relatively small class sizes but how well will it scale? Successful use probably also depends on learners already having a good foundational knowledge base in the subject domain. Nevertheless I expect more agile designs for learning to grow over the coming years, because they are more likely to meet the needs of a VUCA world.

Activity 4.7 Taking risks with ‘agile’ design

1. Do you think a ‘agile’/flexible design approach will increase or undermine academic excellence? What are your reasons?

2. Would you like to try something like this in your own teaching (or are you already doing something like this)? What would be the risks and benefits in your subject area of doing this?

References

Adamson, C. (2012) Learning in a VUCA world, Online Educa Berlin News Portal, November 13

Bertram, J. (2013) Agile Learning Design for Beginners New Palestine IN: Bottom Line Performance

Larman, C. and Vodde, B. (2009) Scaling Lean and Agile Development New York: Addison-Wesley

Meier, D. (2000). The Accelerated Learning Handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill

Rawsthorne, P. (2012) Agile Instructional Design St. John’s NF: Memorial University of Newfoundland

Ries, E. (2011) The Lean Start-Up New York: Crown Business/Random House

36

4.8 Making decisions about teaching methods

Figure 4.8 Making decisions about which design model to choose

4.8.1 Choosing a model

Chapters 3 and 4 cover a range of different teaching methods and design models. There are many more that could have been included. One noticeable omission are MOOCs. However, the design models behind MOOCs require a full chapter of their own (Chapter 5.)

Your choice of teaching method and the design of the teaching within that method will depend very much on the context in which you are teaching. However, a key criterion should be the suitability of the method and/or design model for developing the knowledge and skills that learners will need in a digital age. Other critical factors will be the demands of the subject domain, characteristics of the learners you will likely be teaching, the resources available, especially in terms of supporting learners, and probably most important of all, your own views and beliefs about what constitutes ‘good teaching.’

Furthermore, the teaching methods covered in Chapters 3 and 4 by and large are not mutually exclusive. They can probably be mixed and matched to a certain degree, but there are limitations in doing this. Moreover, a consistent approach will be less confusing not only to learners, but also to you as a teacher or instructor.

So: how would you go about choosing an appropriate teaching method? I set out below in Figure 4.8.1 one way of doing this. I have chosen five criteria as headings along the top of the table:

4.8.1.1 Epistemological basis

What epistemology does this method suggest? Does the method suggest a view of knowledge as content that must be learned, does the method suggest a rigid (‘correct’) way of designing learning (objectivist)? Or does the method suggest that learning is a dynamic process and knowledge needs to be discovered and is constantly changing (constructivist)? Does the method suggest that knowledge lies in the connections and interpretations of different nodes or people on networks and that connections matter more in terms of creating and communicating knowledge than the individual nodes or people on the network (connectivist)? Or is the method epistemologically neutral, in that one could use the same method to teach from different epistemological positions?

4.8.1.2 Industrial versus digital (i.e. desired learning outcomes)

Does this method lead to the kind of learning that would prepare people for an industrial society, with standardised learning outcomes, will it help identify and select a relatively small elite for higher education or senior positions in society, does it enable learning to be easily organised into similarly performing groups of learners?

Alternatively, does the method encourage the development of the soft skills and the effective management of knowledge needed in a digital world? Does the method enable and support the appropriate educational use of the affordances of new technologies? Does it provide the kind of educational support that learners need to succeed in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world? Does it enable and encourage learners to become global citizens?

4.8.1.3 Academic quality

Does the method lead to deep understanding and transformative learning? Does it enable students to become experts in their chosen subject domain?

4.8.1.4 Flexibility

Does the method meet the needs of the diversity of learners today? Does it encourage open and flexible access to learning? Does it help teachers and instructors to adapt their teaching to ever changing circumstances?

Now these are my criteria, and you may well want to use different criteria (cost or your time is another important factor), but I have drawn up the table this way because it has helped me consider better where I stand on the different methods or design models. Where I think a method or design model is strong on a particular criterion, I have given it three stars, where weak, one star, and n/a for not applicable. Again, you may – no, should – rank the models differently. (See, that’s why I’m a constructivist – if I was an objectivist, I’d tell you what damned criteria to use!)

Figure 4.8.1 Choosing design models

It can be seen that the only method that ranks highly on all three criteria of 21st century learning, academic quality and flexibility is online collaborative learning. Experiential learning and agile design also score highly. Transmissive lectures come out worst. This is a pretty fair reflection of my preferences. However, if you are teaching first year civil engineering to over 500 students, your criteria and rankings will almost certainly be different from mine. So please see Figure 4.8.1 as a heuristic device and not as a general recommendation.

4.8.2 Design models and the quality of teaching and learning

Lastly, the review of different methods indicate some of the key issues around quality:

first, what students learn is more likely to be influenced by choosing an appropriate teaching method for the context in which you are teaching, than by focusing on a particular technology or delivery method (face-to-face or online). Technology and delivery method are more about access and flexibility and hence learner characteristics than they are about learning. Learning is affected more by pedagogy and the design of instruction;
second, different teaching methods are likely to lead to different kinds of learning outcomes. This is why there is so much emphasis in this book on being clear about what knowledge and skills are needed in a digital age. These are bound to vary somewhat across different subject domains, but only to a limited degree. Understanding of content is always going to be important, but the skills of independent learning, critical thinking, innovation and creativity are even more important. Which teaching method is most likely to help develop these skills in your students?
third, quality depends not only on the choice of an appropriate teaching method, but also on how that approach to teaching is implemented. Online collaborative learning can be done well, or it can be done badly. The same applies to other methods. Following core design principles is critical for the successful use of any particular teaching method. Also there is considerable research on what the conditions are for success in using some of the newer methods or design models. The findings from such research need to be applied when implementing a particular method (this is discussed further throughout the book, but specifically in Chapter 11);
lastly students and teachers get better with practice. If you are moving to a new method of teaching or design model, give yourself (and your students) time to get comfortable with it. It will probably take two or three courses where the new method or design is applied before you begin to feel comfortable that it is producing the results you were hoping for. However, it is better to make some mistakes along the way than to continue to teach comfortably, but not produce the graduates that are needed in the future.

There is still one major teaching method to be discussed, MOOCs, which needs their own chapter (next).

For my personal comments on some of the issues raised in this chapter, please click on the podcast below.

http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2015/08/Summing-up-methods-of-teaching-2015-08-23-5.28-PM.mp3

Activity 4.8 Making choices

Describe your main subject area and level. Then try to answer each of the following questions:

1. What are the main learning outcomes (at a high level) that I need to achieve in this course or program, if the students are to be properly prepared for the future?

2. What teaching method is most likely to enable me to help learners achieve these outcomes?

3. How much would I have to change what I’m doing now, and what would the course or program look like in the future? Could I write a scenario to describe how I would be teaching in the future? Or how students will be learning in my course or program?

4. What support am I likely to get from my institution, in terms of supporting my ideas, supporting change, providing resources such as training in new methods, or professional help such as instructional designers?

5. How will my students react to the changes I’m contemplating? How could I ‘sell’ it to them?

If you want to share your response(s), please use the comment box below.

Key Takeaways (Chapters 3 and 4)

1. Traditional classroom teaching, and especially transmissive lectures, were designed for another age. Although lectures have served us well, we are now in a different age that requires different methods.

2. The key shift is towards greater emphasis on skills, particularly knowledge management, and less on memorising content. We need teaching methods for teaching and learning that lead to the development of the skills needed in a digital age.

3. There is no one teaching method or ‘best’ design model for all circumstances. The choice of teaching method needs to take account of the context in which it will be applied, but nevertheless, some methods are better than others for developing the knowledge and skills needed in a digital age. For the contexts with which I’m most associated, online collaborative learning, experiential learning and agile design best meet my criteria.

4. Teaching methods in general are not dependent on a particular mode of delivery; they can operate in most cases as well online as in class.

5. In an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, we need methods of teaching that are light and nimble.

5

Chapter 5: MOOCs

Purpose of the chapter

MOOCs (Massive, Open, Online Courses) are the most disruptive of all technologically-based innovations in higher education, and as a result are the most controversial.

When you have finished this chapter your should be able to:

understand the differences between various kinds of MOOCs, and between MOOCs and other forms of online and open learning;
decide on whether or not to develop your own MOOC and what kind of MOOC;
advise your administration on whether or not to invest in MOOCs.

What is covered in this chapter

This chapter covers the following topics:

Also in this chapter you will find the following activities:

Key Takeaways

1. MOOCs are forcing every higher education institution to think carefully both about its strategy for online teaching and its approach to open education.

2. MOOCs are not the only form of online learning nor of open educational resources. It is important to look at the strengths and weaknesses of MOOCs within the overall context of online learning and open-ness.

3. There are considerable differences in the design of MOOCs, reflecting different purposes and philosophies.

4. There are currently major structural limitations in MOOCs for developing deep or transformative learning, or for developing the high level knowledge and skills needed in a digital age.

5. MOOCs are at still a relatively early stage of maturity. As their strengths and weaknesses become clearer, and as experience in improving their design grows, they are likely to occupy a significant niche within the higher education learning environment

6. MOOCs could well replace some forms of traditional teaching (such as large lecture classes). However, MOOCs are more likely to remain an important supplement or alternative to other conventional education methods. They are not on their own a solution to the high cost of higher education, although MOOCs are and will continue to be an important factor in forcing change.

7. Perhaps the greatest value of MOOCs in the future will be for providing a means for tackling large global problems through community action.

37

5.1 Brief history

Figure 5.2 Daphne Koller's TED talk, 2012

Figure 5.1.1 Daphne Koller’s TED talk, 2012

To see this YouTube video, click on the graphic. For a response to this video, see: ‘What’s right and what’s wrong with Coursera-style MOOCs’.

The term MOOC was used for the first time in 2008 for a course offered by the Extension Division of the University of Manitoba in Canada. This non-credit course, Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CK08) was designed by George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier. It enrolled 27 on-campus students who paid a tuition fee but was also offered online for free. Much to the surprise of the instructors, 2,200 students enrolled in the free online version. Downes classified this course and others like it that followed as connectivist or cMOOCs, because of their design (Downes, 2012).

In the fall of 2011, two computer science professors from Stanford University, Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig, launched a MOOC on The Introduction to AI (artificial intelligence) that attracted over 160,000 enrollments, followed quickly by two other MOOCs, also in computer sciences, from Stanford instructors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Thrun went on to found Udacity, and Ng and Koller established Coursera. These are for-profit companies using their own specially developed software that enable massive numbers of registrations and a platform for the teaching. Udacity and Coursera formed partnerships with other leading universities where the universities pay a fee to offer their own MOOCs through these platforms. Udacity more recently has changed direction and is now focusing more on the vocational and corporate training market.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University in March 2012 developed an open source platform for MOOCs called edX, which also acts as a platform for online registration and teaching. edX has also developed partnerships with leading universities to offer MOOCs without direct charge for hosting their courses, although some may pay to become partners in edX. Other platforms for MOOCs, such as the U.K. Open University’s FutureLearn, have also been developed. Because the majority of MOOCs offered through these various platforms are based mainly on video lectures and computer-marked tests, Downes has classified these as xMOOCs, to distinguish them from the more connectivist cMOOCs.

In March, 2015 there were just over 4,000 MOOCs globally, of which just over 1,000 were from European institutions.

References

Downes, S. (2012) Massively Open Online Courses are here to stay, Stephen’s Web, July 20

38

5.2 What is a MOOC?

Figure 5.2 Making sense of MOOCs © Giulia Forsythe, 2012 and JISC, 2012

5.2.1 MOOCS: a massive disruption?

Probably no development in teaching in recent years has been as controversial as the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). In 2013, the writer Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times:

...nothing has more potential to enable us to reimagine higher education than the massive open online course ….For relatively little money, the U.S. could rent space in an Egyptian village, install two dozen computers and high-speed satellite Internet access, hire a local teacher as a facilitator, and invite in any Egyptian who wanted to take online courses with the best professors in the world, subtitled in Arabic…I can see a day soon where you’ll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world ….paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion. It will change teaching, learning and the pathway to employment.

Many others have referred to MOOCs as a prime example of the kind of disruptive technology that Clayton Christensen (2010) has argued will change the world of education. Others have argued that MOOCs are not a big deal, just a more modern version of educational broadcasting, and do not really affect the basic fundamentals of education, and in particular do not address the type of learning needed in a digital age.

MOOCs can be seen then as either a major revolution in education or just another example of the overblown hyperbole often surrounding technology, particularly in the USA. I shall be arguing that MOOCs are a significant development, but they have severe limitations for developing the knowledge and skills needed in a digital age.

5.2.2 Key characteristics

All MOOCs have some common features, although we shall see that the term MOOC covers an increasingly wide range of designs.

5.2.2.1 Massive

In the four years following its launch in 2011, Coursera claims over 12 million sign-ups with its largest course claiming 240,000 participants. The huge numbers (in the hundred of thousands) enrolling in the earliest MOOCs are not always replicated in later MOOCs, but the numbers are still substantial. For instance, in 2013, the University of British Columbia offered several MOOCs through Coursera, with the numbers initially signing up ranging from 25,000 to 190,000 per course (Engle, 2014).

However, even more important than the actual numbers is that in principle MOOCs have infinite scalability. There is technically no limit to their final size, because the marginal cost of adding each extra participant is nil for the institutions offering MOOCs. (In practice this is not quite true, as central technology, backup and bandwidth costs increase, and as we shall see, there can be some knock-on costs for an institution offering MOOCs as numbers increase. However, the cost of each additional participant is so small, given the very large numbers, that it can be more or less ignored). The scalability of MOOCs is probably the characteristic that has attracted the most attention, especially from governments, but it should be noted that this is also a characteristic of broadcast television and radio, so it is not unique to MOOCs.

5.2.2.2 Open

There are no pre-requisites for participants other than access to a computer/mobile device and the Internet. However, broadband access is essential for xMOOCs that use video streaming, and probably desirable even for cMOOCs. Furthermore, at least for the initial MOOCs, access is free for participants, although an increasing number of MOOCs are charging a fee for assessment leading to a badge or certificate.

However, there is one significant way in which MOOCs through Coursera are not fully open (see Chapter 10 for more on what constitutes ‘open’ in education). Coursera owns the rights to the materials, so they cannot be repurposed or reused without permission, and the material may be removed from the Coursera site when the course ends. Also, Coursera decides which institutions can host MOOCs on its platform – this is not an open access for institutions. On the other hand, edX is an open source platform, so any institution that joins edX can develop their own MOOCs with their own rules regarding rights to the material. cMOOCs are generally completely open, but since individual participants of cMOOCs create a lot if not all of the material it is not always clear whether they own the rights and how long the MOOC materials will remain available.

It should also be noted that many other kinds of online material are also open and free over the Internet, often in ways that are more accessible for reuse than MOOC material (see Chapter 10).

5.2.2.3 Online

MOOCs are offered at least initially wholly online, but increasingly institutions are negotiating with the rights holders to use MOOC materials in a blended format for use on campus. In other words, the institution provides learner support for the MOOC materials through the use of campus-based instructors. For instance at San Jose State University, on-campus students used MOOC materials from Udacity courses, including lectures, readings and quizzes, and then instructors spent classroom time on small-group activities, projects and quizzes to check progress (Collins, 2013). More variations in the design of MOOCs will be discussed in more detail in Section 5.3.

Again though it should be noted that MOOCs are not unique in offering courses online. There are over 7 million students in the USA alone taking online courses for credit, as part of regular degree programs.

5.2.2.4 Courses

One characteristic that distinguishes MOOCs from most other open educational resources is that they are organized into a whole course.

However, what this actually means for participants is not exactly clear. Although many MOOCs offer certificates or badges for successful completion of a course, to date these have not been accepted for admission or for credit, even (or especially) by the institutions offering the MOOCs.

5.2.3 Summary

It can be seen that all the key characteristics of MOOCs exist in some form or other outside MOOCs. What makes MOOCs unique though is the combination of the four key characteristics, and in particular the fact that they scale massively and are open and free for participants.

References

Christensen, C. (2010) Disrupting Class, Expanded Edition: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns New York: McGraw-Hill

Collins, E. (2013) SJSU Plus Augmented Online Learning Environment Pilot Project Report San Jose CA: San Jose State University

Engle, W. (2104) UBC MOOC Pilot: Design and Delivery Vancouver BC: University of British Columbia

Friedman, T. (2013) Revolution Hits the Universities New York Times, January 26

39

5.3 Variations in MOOC designs

Figure 5.3 There are many variations of the basic MOOC designs Image: © Dairy Cattle, India, 2014© Dairy Cattle, India, 2014

Figure 5.3 There are many variations of the basic MOOC design
Image: © Dairy Cattle, India, 2014© Dairy Cattle, India, 2014

In this section the main MOOC designs will be analysed. However, MOOCs are a relatively new phenomenon, and design models are still evolving.

5.3.1 xMOOCs

MOOCs developed initially by Stanford University professors and a little later by MIT and Harvard instructors are based primarily on a strongly behaviourist, information transmission model, the core teaching being through online recorded videos of short lectures, combined with computer automated testing, and sometimes also through the use of peer assessment. These MOOCs are offered through special cloud-based software platforms such as Coursera, Udacity and edX.

xMOOCs is a term coined by Stephen Downes (2012) for courses developed by Coursera, Udacity and edX. At the time of writing (2015) xMOOCs are by far the most common MOOC. Instructors have considerable flexibility in the design of the course, so there is considerable variation in the details, but in general xMOOCs have the following common design features:

5.3.1.1 Specially designed platform software

xMOOCs use specially designed platform software that allows for the registration of very large numbers of participants, provides facilities for the storing and streaming on demand of digital materials, and automates assessment procedures and student performance tracking. It also allows the companies that provide the software to collect and analyse student data.

5.3.1.2 Video lectures

xMOOCs use the standard lecture mode, but delivered online by participants downloading on demand recorded video lectures. These video lectures are normally available on a weekly basis over a period of 10-13 weeks. Initially these were often 50 minute lectures, but as a result of experience some xMOOCs now are using shorter recordings (sometimes down to 15 minutes in length) and thus there may be more video segments. As well, xMOOC courses are becoming shorter in length, some now lasting only five weeks. Various video production methods have been used, including lecture capture (recording face-to-face on-campus lectures, then storing them and streaming them on demand), full studio production, or desk-top recording by the instructor.

5.3.1.3 Computer-marked assignments

Students complete an online test and receive immediate computerised feedback. These tests are usually offered throughout the course, and may be used just for participant feedback. Alternatively the tests may be used for determining the award of a certificate. Another option is for an end of course grade or certificate based solely on an end-of-course online test. Most xMOOC assignments are based on multiple-choice, computer-marked questions, but some MOOCs have also used text or formula boxes for participants to enter answers, such as coding in a computer science course, or mathematical formulae, and in one or two cases, short text answers, but in all cases these are computer-marked.

5.3.1.4 Peer assessment

Some xMOOCs have experimented with assigning students randomly to small groups for peer assessment, especially for more open-ended or more evaluative assignment questions. This has often proved problematic though because of wide variations in expertise between the different members of a group, and because of the different levels of involvement in the course of different participants.

5.3.1.5 Supporting materials

Sometimes copies of slides, supplementary audio files, urls to other resources, and online articles may be included for downloading by participants.

5.3.1.6 A shared comment/discussion space

These are places where participants can post questions, ask for help, or comment on the content of the course.

5.3.1.7 No, or very light, discussion moderation

The extent to which the discussion or comments are moderated varies probably more than any other feature in xMOOCs, but at its most, moderation is directed at all participants rather than to individuals. Because of the very large numbers participating and commenting, moderation of individual comments by the instructor(s) offering the MOOC is rarely possible, although there are some examples. Some instructors offer no moderation whatsoever, so participants rely on other participants to respond to questions or comments. Some instructors ‘sample’ comments and questions, and post comments in response to these. Some instructors use volunteers or paid teaching assistants to comb for or identify common areas of concern shared by a number of participants then the instructor or teaching assistants will respond. However, in most cases, participants moderate each other’s comments or questions.

5.3.1.8 Badges or certificates

Most xMOOCs award some kind of recognition for successful completion of a course, based on a final computer-marked assessment. However, at the time of writing, MOOC badges or certificates have not been recognised for credit or admission purposes even by the institutions offering a MOOC, or even when the lectures are the same as for on-campus students. No evidence exists to date about employer acceptance of MOOC qualifications.

5.3.1.9 Learning analytics

Although to date there has not been a great deal of published information about the use of learning analytics in xMOOCs, the xMOOC platforms have the capacity to collect and analyse ‘big data’ about participants and their performance, enabling, at least in theory, for immediate feedback to instructors about areas where the content or design needs improving and possibly directing automated cues or hints for individuals.

xMOOCs therefore primarily use a teaching model focused on the transmission of information, with high quality content delivery, computer-marked assessment (mainly for student feedback purposes), and automation of all key transactions between participants and the learning platform. There is rarely any direct interaction between an individual participant and the instructor responsible for the course, although instructors may post general comments in response to a range of participants’ comments.

5.3.2 cMOOCs

cMOOCs, the first of which was developed by three instructors for a course at the University of Manitoba in 2008, are based on network learning, where learning develops through the connections and discussions between participants over social media. There is no standard technology platform for cMOOCs, which use a combination of webcasts, participant blogs, tweets, software that connects blogs and tweets on the same topic via hashtags, and online discussion forums. Although usually there are some experts who initiate and participate in cMOOCs, they are by and large driven by the interests and contributions of the participants. Usually there is no attempt at formal assessment.

cMOOCs have a very different educational philosophy from xMOOCs, in that cMOOCs place heavy emphasis on networking and in particular on strong content contributions from the participants themselves. Indeed, there may be no formally identified instructor, although ‘guest’ instructors may be invited to offer a web cast or a blog for the course.

5.3.2.1 Key design principles

Downes (2014) has identified four key design principles for cMOOCs:

autonomy of the learner: in terms of learners choosing what content or skills they wish to learn, learning is personal, and thus there is no formal curriculum (although whoever organises the MOOC will usually choose a main theme and invite participants);
diversity: in terms of the tools used, the range of participants and their knowledge levels, and varied content;
interactivity: in terms of co-operative learning, communication between participants, resulting in emergent knowledge
open-ness: in terms of access, content, activities and assessment.

Thus for the proponents of cMOOCs, learning results not from the transmission of information from an expert to novices, as in xMOOCs, but from the sharing and flow of knowledge between participants.

5.3.2.2 From principles to practice

Identifying how these key design features for cMOOCs are turned into practice is somewhat more difficult to pinpoint, because cMOOCs depend on an evolving set of practices. Most cMOOCs to date have in fact made some use of ‘experts’, both in the organization and promotion of the MOOC, and in providing ‘nodes’ of content around which discussion tends to revolve. In other words, the design practices of cMOOCs are still more a work in progress than those of xMOOCs.

Nevertheless, at the moment the following are key design practices in cMOOCs:

use of social media Partly because most cMOOCs are not institutionally based or supported, they do not at present use a shared platform or platforms but are more loosely supported by a range of ‘connected’ tools and media. These may include a simple online registration system, and the use of web conferencing tools such as Blackboard Collaborate or Adobe Connect, streamed video or audio files, blogs, wikis, ‘open’ learning management systems such as Moodle or Canvas, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, all enabling participants to share their contributions. Indeed, as new apps and social media tools develop, they too are likely to be incorporated into cMOOCs. All these tools are connected through web-based hashtags or other web-based linking mechanisms, enabling participants to identify social media contributions from other participants. Downes (2014) is working on a Learning and Performance Support System that could be used to help both participants and cMOOC organisers to communicate more easily across the whole MOOC and to organise their personal learning. Thus the use of loosely linked/connected social media is a key design practice in cMOOCs;

participant-driven content In principle, other than a common topic that may be decided by someone wanting to organise a cMOOC, content is decided upon and contributed by the participants themselves, in this sense very much like any other community of practice. In practice though cMOOC organisers (who themselves tend to have some expertise in the topic of the cMOOC) are likely to invite potential participants who have expertise or are known already to have a well articulated approach to a topic to make contributions around which participants can discuss and debate. Other participants choose their own ways to contribute or communicate, the most common being through blog posts, tweets, or comments on other participants’ blog posts, although some cMOOCs use wikis or open source online discussion forums. The key design practice with regard to content is that all participants contribute to and share content;

distributed communication This is probably the most difficult design practice to understand for those not familiar with cMOOCs – and even for those who have participated. With participants numbering in the hundreds or even thousands, each contributing individually through a variety of social media, there are a myriad different inter-connections between participants that are impossible to track (in total) by any single participant. This results in many sub-conversations, more commonly at a binary level of two people communicating with each other than an integrated group discussion, although all conversations are ‘open’ and all other participants are able to contribute to a conversation if they know it exists. The key design practice then with regard to communication is a self-organising network with many sub-components;

assessment There is no formal assessment, although participants may seek feedback from other, more knowledgeable participants, on an informal basis. Basically participants decide for themselves whether what they have learned is appropriate to them.

cMOOCs therefore primarily use a networked approach to learning based on autonomous learners connecting with each other across open and connected social media and sharing knowledge through their own personal contributions. There is no pre-set curriculum and no formal teacher-student relationship, either for delivery of content or for learner support. Participants learn from the contributions of others, from the meta-level knowledge generated through the community, and from self-reflection on their own contributions, thus reflecting many of the features of communities of interest or practice.

5.3.3 Other variations

I have deliberately focused on the differences in design between xMOOCs and cMOOCs, and Mackness (2103) and Yousef et al. (2014) also emphasise similar differences in philosophy/theory between cMOOCs and xMOOCs, as well as Downes himself (2012), one of the original designers of cMOOCs.

However, it should be noted that the design of MOOCs continues to evolve, with all kinds of variations. Yousef et al. (2014) represent this graphically as follows:

Figure 5.3.3 The range of MOOC designs, from Yousef et al., 2014, Figure 5, p.12

In Yousef et al.’s terminology smOOcs represent small open online courses and bMOOCs represent MOOCs that are blended with on-campus teaching.

However, Chauhan (2014) offers an even wider range of MOOC instructional models, as follows:

cMOOCs;
xMOOCs;
BOOCs (a big open online course) – a cross between an xMOOC and a cMOOC;
DOCCs (distributed open collaborative course): this involves 17 universities sharing and adapting the same basic MOOC;
LOOC (little open online course): as well as 15-20 tuition-paying campus-based students, such courses also allow a limited number of non-registered students to also take the course, but also paying a fee;
MOORs (massive open online research): a mix of video-based lecturers and student research projects guided by the instructors;
SPOCs (small, private, online courses): the example given is from Harvard Law School, which pre-selected 500 students from over 4,000 applicants, who take the same video-delivered lectures as on-campus students enrolled at Harvard;
SMOCs: (synchronous massive open online courses): live lectures offered to campus-based students that are also available synchronously to non-enrolled students for a fee.

Hernandez et al. (2014) describe what they term an iMOOC developed by the Open University of Portugal which combines features of both xMOOCs and cMOOCs, and other features, such as collaborative group work and paced instruction, that can be found in their credit-based online courses. The MOOCs developed by the University of British Columbia and a number of other institutions use volunteers, paid academic assistants or even the instructor to moderate the online discussions and participant comments, making such MOOCs closer in design to regular for-credit online courses – except that they are open to anyone.

5.3.4 What’s going on here?

It is not surprising that over time, the design of MOOCs is evolving. There seem to be three distinct kinds of development:

some of the newer MOOCs, especially those from institutions with a history of credit-based online learning prior to the introduction of MOOCs, are beginning to apply some of the best practices, such as organised and moderated discussion groups, from online credit courses to MOOCs (see Chapter 4, Section 4);
others are trying to open up their regular campus classes also, simultaneously, to non-registered students (which in fact is how the first MOOC, from Cormier, Downes and Siemens, originated);
yet others are trying to blend online MOOC materials or content with their on-campus teaching.

It is likely that innovation in MOOC design and the way MOOCs are used will continue.

However, some of these developments also indicate a good deal of confusion around the definition and goals of MOOCs, especially regarding massiveness and open-ness. If participants from outside a university have to pay a hefty fee to participate in an otherwise ‘closed’, on-campus course, or if off-campus participants have to be selected on certain criteria before they can participate, is it really open? Is the term MOOC now being used to describe any unconventional online offering or any online continuing education course? It’s difficult to see how a SPOC for instance differs from a typical online continuing education course, except perhaps in that it uses a recorded lecture rather than a learning management system. There is a danger of having any online course ending up being described as a MOOC, when in fact there are major differences in design and philosophy.

Although each of these individual innovations, often the result of the initiative of an individual instructor, are to be welcomed in principle, the consequences need to be carefully considered in fairness to potential participants. Individual instructors designing MOOCs really need to make sure that the design is consistent in terms of educational philosophy, and be clear as to why they are opting for a MOOC rather than a conventional online course. This is particularly important if there is to be any form of formal assessment. The status of such an assessment for participants who are not formally admitted to or registered as a student in an institution needs to be clear and consistent.

There is even more confusion about mixing MOOCs with on-campus teaching. At the moment the strategy appears to be to first develop a MOOC then see how it can be adapted for on-campus teaching. However, a better strategy might be to develop a conventional, for-credit online course, in terms of design, then see how it could be scaled for open access to other participants. Another strategy might be to use open social media, such as a course wiki and student blogs, to widen access to the teaching of a formal course, rather than develop a full-blown MOOC.

Thinking through the policy implications of incorporating MOOCs or MOOC materials with on-campus teaching does not appear to be happening at the moment in most institutions experimenting with ‘blended’ MOOCs. If MOOC participants are taking exactly the same course and assessment as registered on-campus for-credit students, will the institution award the external MOOC participants who successfully complete the assessment credit for it and/or admit them to the institution? If not, why not? For an excellent discussion of these issues framed for an institution’s Board of Governors, see Green, 2013.

Thus some of these MOOC developments seem to be operating in a policy vacuum regarding open learning in general. At some point, institutions will need to develop a clearer, more consistent strategy for open learning, in terms of how it can best be provided, how it calibrates with formal learning, and how open learning can be accommodated within the fiscal constraints of the institution, and then where MOOCs, other OERs and conventional for-credit online courses might fit with the strategy. For more on this topic, see Chapter 10.

Activity 5.3: Thinking about MOOC design

1. When is a MOOC a MOOC and when is it not a MOOC? Can you identify the common features? Is MOOC still a useful term?

2. If you were to design a MOOC, who would be the target audience? What kind of MOOC would it be? What form of assessment could you use? What would make you think your MOOC was a success, after it was delivered? What criteria would you use?

3. Could you think of other ways to make one or more of your courses more open, other than creating a MOOC from scratch? What would be the advantages and disadvantages of these other methods, compared to a MOOC?

References

Chauhan, A. (2014) Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS): Emerging Trends in Assessment and Accreditation Digital Education Review, No. 25

Downes, S. (2012) Massively Open Online Courses are here to stay, Stephen’s Web, July 20

Downes, S. (2014) The MOOC of One, Valencia, Spain, March 10

Green, K. (2013) Mission, money and MOOCs Association of Governing Boards Trusteeship, No. 1, Volume 21

Hernandez, R. et al. (2014) Promoting engagement in MOOCs through social collaboration Oxford UK: Proceedings of the 8th EDEN Research Workshop

Mackness, J. (2013) cMOOCs and xMOOCs – key differences, Jenny Mackness, October 22

Yousef, A. et al. (2014) MOOCs: A Review of the State-of-the-Art Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education – CSEDU 2014, Barcelona, Spain

40

5.4 Strengths and weaknesses of MOOCs

In-depth analysis by standard academic criteria shows that MOOCs have more academic rigor and are a far more effective teaching methodology than in-house teaching

Benton R. Groves, Ph.D. student

My big concern with xMOOCs is their limitation, as currently designed, for developing the higher order intellectual skills needed in a digital world.

Tony Bates

5.4.1 The research on MOOCs

Because at the time of writing most MOOCs are less than four years old, there are relatively few research publications on MOOCs, although research activities are now beginning to pick up. Much of the research to date on MOOCs comes from the institutions offering MOOCs, mainly in the form of reports on enrolments, or self-evaluation by instructors. The commercial platform providers such as Coursera and Udacity have provided limited research information overall, which is a pity, because they have access to really big data sets. However, MIT and Harvard, the founding partners in edX, are conducting some research, mainly on their own courses. There is very little independent research to date on either xMOOCs or cMOOCs.

However, wherever possible, I have tried to use any research that has been done that provides insight into the strengths and weaknesses of MOOCs. At the same time, we should be clear that we are discussing a phenomenon that to date has been marked largely by political, emotional and often irrational discourse, and in terms of cumulative hard evidence, we will have to wait for some time.

Lastly, it should be remembered when I am evaluating MOOCs I am applying the criteria of whether MOOCs are likely to lead to the kinds of learning needed in a digital age: in other words, do they help develop the knowledge and skills defined in Chapter 1?

5.4.2 Open and free education

MOOCs, particularly xMOOCs, deliver high quality content from some of the world’s best universities for free to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. This in itself is an amazing value proposition. In this sense, MOOCs are an incredibly valuable addition to educational provision. Who could argue against this? Certainly not me, so long as the argument for MOOCs goes no further.

However, this is not the only form of open and free education. Libraries, open textbooks and educational broadcasting are also open and free and have been for some time, even if they do not have the same power and reach as Internet-based delivery. There are also lessons we can learn from these earlier forms of open and free education that still apply to MOOCs.

The first is that these earlier forms of open and free did not replace the need for formal, credit-based education, but were used to supplement or strengthen it. In other words, MOOCs are a tool for continuing and informal education, which has high value in its own right. As we shall see though they work best when people are already reasonably well educated.

The problem comes when it is argued that because MOOCs are open and free to end-users, they will inevitably force down the cost of conventional higher education, or eliminate the need for it altogether, especially in developing countries (see the Friedman comment at the beginning of this chapter.)

There have been many attempts in the past to use educational broadcasting and satellite broadcasting in developing countries (see Bates, 1985), and they all failed substantially to increase access or reduce cost for a variety of reasons, the most important being:

the high cost of ground equipment (including security from theft or damage);
the need for local support for learners without high levels of education, and the high cost of local, ‘ground’ support;
the need to adapt to the culture of the receiving countries;
the difficulty of covering the operational costs of management and administration, especially for assessment, qualifications and local accreditation.

Also the priority in most developing countries is not for courses from high-level Stanford University professors, but for programs for high schools. Finally, although mobile phones are widespread in Africa, they operate on very narrow bandwidths. For instance, it costs US$2 to download a typical YouTube video – equivalent to a day’s salary for many Africans. Streamed video lectures then have limited applicability.

This is not to say that MOOCs could not be valuable in developing countries, but this will mean:

being realistic as to what they can actually deliver;
working in partnership with educational institutions and systems and other partners in developing countries;
ensuring that the necessary local support – which costs real money – is put in place;
adapting the design, content and delivery of MOOCs to the cultural and economic requirements of those countries.

Furthermore, MOOCs are not always open as in the sense of open educational resources. Coursera and Udacity for instance offer limited access to their material for re-use without permission. On other more open platforms, such as edX, individual faculty or institutions may restrict re-use of material. Lastly, many MOOCs exist for only one or two years then disappear, which limits their use as open educational resources for re-use in other courses or programs.

Finally, although MOOCs are in the main free for participants, they are not without substantial cost to MOOC providers, an issue that will be discussed in more detail in Section 5.4.8.

5.4.3 The audience that MOOCs mainly serve

In a research report from Ho et al. (2014), researchers at Harvard University and MIT found that on the first 17 MOOCs offered through edX, 66 per cent of all participants, and 74 per cent of all who obtained a certificate, have a bachelor’s degree or above, 71 per cent were male, and the average age was 26. This and other studies also found that a high proportion of participants came from outside the USA, ranging from 40-60 per cent of all participants, indicating strong interest internationally in open access to high quality university teaching.

In a study based on over 80 interviews in 62 institutions ‘active in the MOOC space’, Hollands and Tirthali (2014), researchers at Columbia University Teachers’ College, found that:

Data from MOOC platforms indicate that MOOCs are providing educational opportunities to millions of individuals across the world. However, most MOOC participants are already well-educated and employed, and only a small fraction of them fully engages with the courses. Overall, the evidence suggests that MOOCs are currently falling far short of “democratizing” education and may, for now, be doing more to increase gaps in access to education than to diminish them.

Thus MOOCs, as is common with most forms of university continuing education, cater to the better educated, older and employed sectors of society.

5.4.4 Persistence and commitment

The edX researchers (Ho et al., 2014) identified different levels of commitment as follows across 17 edX MOOCs:

only registered: registrants who never access the courseware (35 per cent);
only viewed: non-certified registrants who access the courseware, accessing less than half of the available chapters (56 per cent);
only explored: non-certified registrants who access more than half of the available chapters in the courseware, but did not get a certificate (4 per cent);
certified: registrants who earn a certificate in the course (5 per cent).

Hill (2013) has identified five types of participants in Coursera courses:

Figure 5.4.4.1 © Phil Hill, 2013

Engle (2014) found similar patterns for the University of British Columbia MOOCs on Coursera (also replicated in other studies):

of those that initially sign up, between one third and a half do not participate in any other active way;
of those that participate in at least one activity, between 5-10 per cent go on to successfully complete a certificate.

Those going on to achieve certificates usually are within the 5-10 per cent range of those that sign up and in the 10-20 per cent range for those who actively engaged with the MOOC at least once. Nevertheless, the numbers obtaining certificates are still large in absolute terms: over 43,000 across 17 courses on edX and 8,000 across four courses at UBC (between 2,000-2,500 certificates per course).

Milligan et al. (2013) found a similar pattern of commitment in cMOOCs, from interviewing a small sample of participants (29 out of 2,300 registrants) about halfway through a cMOOC:

passive participants: in Milligan’s study these were those that felt lost in the MOOC and rarely but occasionally logged in;
lurkers: they were actively following the course but did not engage in any of the activities (just under half those interviewed);
active participants (again, just under half those interviewed) who were fully engaged in the course activities.

MOOCs need to be judged for what they are, a somewhat unique – and valuable – form of non-formal education. These results are very similar to research into non-formal educational broadcasts (e.g. the History Channel). One would not expect a viewer to watch every episode of a History Channel series then take an exam at the end. Ho et al. (p.13) produced the following diagram to show the different levels of commitment to xMOOCs:

Figure 5.4.4.2 Level of participation in MOOCs © Ho et al., 2014

Now compare that to what I wrote in 1985 about educational broadcasting in Britain (Bates, 1985):

(p.99): At the centre of the onion is a small core of fully committed students who work through the whole course, and, where available, take an end-of-course assessment or examination. Around the small core will be a rather larger layer of students who do not take any examination but do enrol with a local class or correspondence school. There may be an even larger layer of students who, as well as watching and listening, also buy the accompanying textbook, but who do not enrol in any courses. Then, by far the largest group, are those that just watch or listen to the programmes. Even within this last group, there will be considerable variations, from those who watch or listen fairly regularly, to those, again a much larger number, who watch or listen to just one programme.

I also wrote (p.100):

A sceptic may say that the only ones who can be said to have learned effectively are the tiny minority that worked right through the course and successfully took the final assessment…A counter argument would be that broadcasting can be considered successful if it merely attracts viewers or listeners who might otherwise have shown no interest in the topic; it is the numbers exposed to the material that matter…the key issue then is whether broadcasting does attract to education those who would not otherwise have been interested, or merely provides yet another opportunity for those who are already well educated…There is a good deal of evidence that it is still the better educated in Britain and Europe that make the most use of non-formal educational broadcasting.

Exactly the same could be said about MOOCs. In a digital age where easy and open access to new knowledge is critical for those working in knowledge-based industries, MOOCs will be one valuable source or means of accessing that knowledge. The issue is though whether there are more effective ways to do this. Thus MOOCs can be considered a useful – but not really revolutionary – contribution to non-formal continuing education.

5.4.5 What do students learn in MOOCs?

This is a much more difficult question to answer, because so little of the research to date (2014) has tried to answer this question. (One reason, as we shall see in the next section, is that assessment of learning in MOOCs remains a major challenge). There are at least two kinds of study: quantitative studies that seek to quantify learning gains; and qualitative studies that describe the experience of learners within MOOCs, which indirectly provide some insight into what they have learned.

At the time of writing, the most quantitative study of learning in MOOCs has been by Colvin et al. (2014), who investigated ‘conceptual learning’ in an MIT Introductory Physics MOOC. They compared learner performance not only between different sub-categories of learners within the MOOC, such as those with no physics or math background with those such as physic teachers who had considerable prior knowledge, but also with on-campus students taking the same curriculum in a traditional campus teaching format. In essence, the study found no significant differences in learning gains between or within the two types of teaching, but it should be noted that the on-campus students were students who had failed an earlier version of the course and were retaking it.

This research is a classic example of the no significant difference in comparative studies in educational technology; other variables, such as differences in the types of students, were as important as the mode of delivery. Also, this MOOC design represents a behaviourist-cognitivist approach to learning that places heavy emphasis on correct answers to conceptual questions. It doesn’t attempt to develop the skills needed in a digital age as identified in Chapter 1.

There have been far more studies of the experience of learners within MOOCs, particularly focusing on the discussions within MOOCs (see for instance, Kop, 2011). In general (although there are exceptions), discussions are unmonitored, and it is left to participants to make connections and respond to other students comments. However, there are some strong criticisms of the effectiveness of the discussion element of MOOCs for developing the high-level conceptual analysis required for academic learning. To develop deep, conceptual learning, there is a need in most cases for intervention by a subject expert to clarify misunderstandings or misconceptions, to provide accurate feedback, to ensure that the criteria for academic learning, such as use of evidence, clarity of argument, and so on, are being met, and to ensure the necessary input and guidance to seek deeper understanding (see Harasim, 2013).

Furthermore, the more massive the course, the more likely participants are to feel ‘overload, anxiety and a sense of loss’, if there is not some instructor intervention or structure imposed (Knox, 2014). Firmin et al. (2014) have shown that when there is some form of instructor ‘encouragement and support of student effort and engagement’, results improve for all participants in MOOCs. Without a structured role for subject experts, participants are faced with a wide variety of quality in terms of comments and feedback from other participants. There is again a great deal of research on the conditions necessary for the successful conduct of collaborative and co-operative group learning (see for instance, Dillenbourg, 1999, Lave and Wenger, 1991), and these findings certainly have not been generally applied to the management of MOOC discussions to date.

One counter argument is that at least cMOOCs develop a new form of learning based on networking and collaboration that is essentially different from academic learning, and MOOCs are thus more appropriate to the needs of learners in a digital age. Adult participants in particular, it is claimed by Downes and Siemens, have the ability to self-manage the development of high level conceptual learning. MOOCs are ‘demand’ driven, meeting the interests of individual students who seek out others with similar interests and the necessary expertise to support them in their learning, and for many this interest may well not include the need for deep, conceptual learning but more likely the appropriate applications of prior knowledge in new or specific contexts. MOOCs do appear to work best for those who already have a high level of education and therefore bring many of the conceptual skills developed in formal education with them when they join a MOOC, and therefore contribute to helping those who come without such prior knowledge or skills.

Over time, as more experience is gained, MOOCs are likely to incorporate and adapt some of the findings from research on smaller group work to the much larger numbers in MOOCs. For instance, some MOOCs are using ‘volunteer’ or community tutors (Dillenbourg, 2014). The US State Department has organized MOOC camps through US missions and consulates abroad to mentor MOOC participants. The camps include Fulbright scholars and embassy staff who lead discussions on content and topics for MOOC participants in countries abroad (Haynie, 2014). Some MOOC providers, such as the University of British Columbia, pay a small cohort of academic assistants to monitor and contribute to the MOOC discussion forums (Engle, 2014). Engle reported that the use of academic assistants, as well as limited but effective interventions from the instructors themselves, made the UBC MOOCs more interactive and engaging. However, paying for people to monitor and support MOOCs will of course increase the cost to providers. Consequently, MOOCs are likely to develop new automated ways to manage discussion effectively in very large groups. The University of Edinburgh is experimenting with automated ‘teacherbots’ that crawl through online discussion forums and direct predetermined comments to students identified as needing help or encouragement (Bayne, 2014).

These results and approaches are consistent with prior research on the importance of instructor presence for successful for-credit online learning. In the meantime, though, there is much work still to be done if MOOCs are to provide the support and structure needed to ensure deep, conceptual learning where this does not already exist in students. The development of the skills needed in a digital age is likely to be an even greater challenge when dealing with massive numbers. However, we need much more research into what participants actually learn in MOOCs and under what conditions before any firm conclusions can be drawn.

5.4.6 Assessment

Assessment of the massive numbers of participants in MOOCs has proved to be a major challenge. It is a complex topic that can be dealt with only briefly here. However, Appendix 1, Section 8 provides a general analysis of different types of assessment, and Suen (2014) provides a comprehensive and balanced overview of the way assessment has been used in MOOCs to date. This section draws heavily on Suen’s paper.

5.4.6.1 Computer marked assignments

Assessment to date in MOOCs has been primarily of two kinds. The first is based on quantitative multiple-choice tests, or response boxes where formulae or ‘correct code’ can be entered and automatically checked. Usually participants are given immediate automated feedback on their answers, ranging from simple right or wrong answers to more complex responses depending on the type of response checked, but in all cases, the process is usually fully automated.

For straight testing of facts, principles, formulae, equations and other forms of conceptual learning where there are clear, correct answers, this works well. In fact, multiple choice computer marked assignments were used by the UK Open University as long ago as the 1970s, although the means to give immediate online feedback were not available then. However, this method of assessment is limited for testing deep or ‘transformative’ learning, and particularly weak for assessing the intellectual skills needed in a digital age, such as creative or original thinking.

5.4.6.2 Peer assessment

The second type of assessment that has been tried in MOOCs has been peer assessment, where participants assess each other’s work. Peer assessment is not new. It has been successfully used for formative assessment in traditional classrooms and in some online teaching for credit (Falchikov and Goldfinch, 2000; van Zundert et al., 2010). More importantly, peer assessment is seen as a powerful way to improve deep understanding and knowledge through the process of students evaluating the work of others, and at the same time, it can be useful for developing some of the skills needed in a digital age, such as critical thinking, for those participants assessing other participants.

However, a key feature of the successful use of peer assessment has been the close involvement of an instructor or teacher, in providing benchmarks, rubrics or criteria for assessment, and for monitoring and adjusting peer assessments to ensure consistency and a match with the benchmarks set by the instructor. Although an instructor can provide the benchmarks and rubrics in MOOCs, close monitoring of the multiple peer assessments is difficult if not impossible with the very large numbers of participants. As a result, MOOC participants often become incensed at being randomly assessed by other participants who may not and often do not have the knowledge or ability to give a ‘fair’ or accurate assessment of a participant’s work.

Various attempts to get round the limitations of peer assessment in MOOCs have been tried such as calibrated peer reviews, based on averaging all the peer ratings, and Bayesian post hoc stabilization (Piech at al. 2013), but although these statistical techniques reduce the error (or spread) of peer review somewhat they still do not remove the problems of systematic errors of judgement in raters due to misconceptions. This is particularly a problem where a majority of participants fail to understand key concepts in a MOOC, in which case peer assessment becomes the blind leading the blind.

5.4.6.3 Automated essay scoring

This is another area where there have been attempts to automate scoring (Balfour, 2013). Although such methods are increasingly sophisticated they are currently limited in terms of accurate assessment to measuring primarily technical writing skills, such as grammar, spelling and sentence construction. Once again they do not measure accurately essays where higher level intellectual skills are demonstrated.

5.4.6.4 Badges and certificates

Particularly in xMOOCs, participants may be awarded a certificate or a ‘badge’ for successful completion of the MOOC, based on a final test (usually computer-marked) which measures the level of learning in a course.

The American Council on Education (ACE), which represents the presidents of U.S. accredited, degree-granting institutions, recommended offering credit for five courses on the Coursera MOOC platform. However, according to the person responsible for the review process (Book, 2013):

what the ACE accreditation does is merely accredit courses from institutions that are already accredited. The review process doesn’t evaluate learning outcomes, but is a course content focused review thus obviating all the questions about effectiveness of the pedagogy in terms of learning outcomes.

Indeed, most of the institutions offering MOOCs will not accept their own certificates for admission or credit within their own, campus-based programs. Probably nothing says more about the confidence in the quality of the assessment than this failure of MOOC providers to recognize their own teaching.

5.4.6.5 The intent behind assessment

To evaluate assessment in MOOCs requires an examination of the intent behind assessment. There are many different purposes behind assessment (see Appendix 1, Section 8). Peer assessment and immediate feedback on computer-marked tests can be extremely valuable for formative assessment, enabling participants to see what they have understood and to help develop further their understanding of key concepts. In cMOOCs, as Suen points out, learning is measured as the communication that takes place between MOOC participants, resulting in crowdsourced validation of knowledge – it’s what the sum of all the participants come to believe to be true as a result of participating in the MOOC, so formal assessment is unnecessary. However, what is learned in this way is not necessarily academically validated knowledge, which to be fair, is not the concern of cMOOC proponents.

Academic assessment is a form of currency, related not only to measuring student achievement but also affecting student mobility (for example, entrance to graduate school) and perhaps more importantly employment opportunities and promotion. From a learner’s perspective, the validity of the currency – the recognition and transferability of the qualification – is essential. To date, MOOCs have been unable to demonstrate that they are able to assess accurately the learning achievements of participants beyond comprehension and knowledge of ideas, principles and processes (recognizing that there is some value in this alone). What MOOCs have not been able to demonstrate is that they can either develop or assess deep understanding or the intellectual skills required in a digital age. Indeed, this may not be possible within the constraints of massiveness, which is their major distinguishing feature from other forms of online learning.

5.4.7 Branding

Hollands and Tirthali (2014) in their survey on institutional expectations for MOOCs, found that building and maintaining brand was the second most important reason for institutions launching MOOCs (the most important was extending reach, which can also be seen as partly a branding exercise). Institutional branding through the use of MOOCs has been helped by elite Ivy League universities such as Stanford, MIT and Harvard leading the charge, and by Coursera limiting access to its platform to only ‘top tier’ universities. This of course has led to a bandwagon effect, especially since many of the universities launching MOOCs had previously disdained to move into credit-based online learning. MOOCs provided a way for these elite institutions to jump to the head of the queue in terms of status as ‘innovators’ of online learning, even though they arrived late to the party.

It obviously makes sense for institutions to use MOOCs to bring their areas of specialist expertise to a much wider public, such as the University of Alberta offering a MOOC on dinosaurs, MIT on electronics, and Harvard on Ancient Greek Heroes. MOOCs certainly help to widen knowledge of the quality of an individual professor (who is usually delighted to reach more students in one MOOC than in a lifetime of on-campus teaching). MOOCs are also a good way to give a glimpse of the quality of courses and programs offered by an institution.

However, it is difficult to measure the real impact of MOOCs on branding. As Hollands and Tirthali put it:

While many institutions have received significant media attention as a result of their MOOC activities, isolating and measuring impact of any new initiative on brand is a difficult exercise. Most institutions are only just beginning to think about how to capture and quantify branding-related benefits.

In particular, these elite institutions do not need MOOCs to boost the number of applicants for their campus-based programs (none to date is willing to accept successful completion of a MOOC for admission to credit programs), since elite institutions have no difficulty in attracting already highly qualified students.

Furthermore, once every other institution starts offering MOOCs, the branding effect gets lost to some extent. Indeed, exposing poor quality teaching or course planning to many thousands can have a negative impact on an institution’s brand, as Georgia Institute of Technology found when one of its MOOCs crashed and burned (Jaschik, 2013). However, by and large, most MOOCs succeed in the sense of bringing an institution’s reputation in terms of knowledge and expertise to many more people than it would through any other form of teaching or publicity.

5.4.8 Costs and economies of scale

Figure 5.4.8 The MOOC value proposition is that MOOCs can eliminate the variable costs of course delivery. Image: © OpenTuition.com, 2014

One main strength claimed for MOOCs is that they are free to participants. Once again we shall see this is more true in principle than in practice, because MOOC providers may charge a range of fees, especially for assessment. Furthermore, although MOOCs may be free for participants, they are not without substantial cost to the provider institutions. Also, there are large differences in the costs of xMOOCs and cMOOCs, the latter being generally much cheaper to develop, although there are still some opportunity or actual costs even for cMOOCs.

Once again, there is very little information to date on the actual costs of designing and delivering a MOOC as there are not enough cases at the moment to draw firm conclusions about the costs of MOOCs. However we do have some data. The University of Ottawa (2013) estimated the cost of developing an xMOOC, based on figures provided to the university by Coursera, and on their own knowledge of the cost of developing online courses for credit, at around $100,000.

Engle (2014) has reported on the actual cost of five MOOCs from the University of British Columbia. (In essence, there were really four UBC MOOCs, as one was in two shorter parts.) There are two important features concerning the UBC MOOCs that do not necessarily apply to other MOOCs. First, the UBC MOOCs used a wide variety of video production methods, from full studio production to desktop recording, so development costs varied considerably, depending on the sophistication of the video production technique. Second, the UBC MOOCs made extensive use of paid academic assistants, who monitored discussions and adapted or changed course materials as a result of student feedback, so there were substantial delivery costs as well.

Appendix B of the UBC report gives a pilot total of $217,657, but this excludes academic assistance or, perhaps the most significant cost, instructor time. Academic assistance came to 25 per cent of the overall cost in the first year (excluding the cost of faculty). Working from the video production costs ($95,350) and the proportion of costs (44 per cent) devoted to video production in Figure 1 in the report, I estimate the direct cost at $216,700, or approximately $54,000 per MOOC, excluding faculty time and co-ordination support (that is, excluding program administration and overheads), but including academic assistance. However, the range of cost is almost as important. The video production costs for the MOOC which used intensive studio production were more than six times the video production costs of one of the other MOOCs.

The main cost factors or variables in credit-based online and distance learning are relatively well understood, from previous research by Rumble (2001) and Hülsmann (2003). Using similar costing methodology, I tracked and analysed the cost of an online master’s program at the University of British Columbia over a seven year period (Bates and Sangrà, 2011). This program used mainly a learning management system as the core technology, with instructors both developing the course and providing online learner support and assessment, assisted where necessary by extra adjunct faculty for handling larger class enrolments.

I found in my analysis of the costs of the UBC program that in 2003, development costs were approximately $20,000 to $25,000 per course. However, over a seven year period, course development constituted less than 15 per cent of the total cost, and occurred mainly in the first year or so of the program. Delivery costs, which included providing online learner support and student assessment, constituted more than a third of the total cost, and of course continued each year the course was offered. Thus in credit-based online learning, delivery costs tend to be more than double the development costs over the life of a program.

The main difference then between MOOCs, credit-based online teaching, and campus-based teaching is that in principle MOOCs eliminate all delivery costs, because MOOCs do not provide learner support or instructor-delivered assessment, although again in practice this is not always true.

There is also clearly a large opportunity cost involved in offering xMOOCs. By definition, the most highly valued faculty are involved in offering MOOCs. In a large research university, such faculty are likely to have, at a maximum, a teaching load of four to six courses a year. Although most instructors volunteer to do MOOCs, their time is limited. Either it means dropping one credit course for at least one semester, equivalent to 25 per cent or more of their teaching load, or xMOOC development and delivery replaces time spent doing research. Furthermore, unlike credit-based courses, which run from anywhere between five to seven years, MOOCs are often offered only once or twice.

However one looks at it, the cost of xMOOC development, without including the time of the MOOC instructor, tends to be almost double the cost of developing an online credit course using a learning management system, because of the use of video in MOOCs. If the cost of the instructor is included, xMOOC production costs come closer to three times that of a similar length online credit course, especially given the extra time faculty tend put in for such a public demonstration of their teaching in a MOOC. xMOOCs could (and some do) use cheaper production methods, such as an LMS instead of video, for content delivery, or using and re-editing video recordings of classroom lectures via lecture capture.

Without learner support or academic assistance, though, delivery costs for MOOCs are zero, and this is where the huge potential for savings exist. If the cost per participant is calculated the unit costs are very low. Even if the cost per student successfully obtaining an end of course certificate is calculated it will be many times lower than the cost of an online or campus-based successful student. If we take a MOOC costing roughly $100,000 to develop, and 5,000 participants complete the end of course certificate, the average cost per successful participant is $20. However, this assumes that the same type of knowledge and skills is being assessed for both a MOOC and for a graduate masters program; usually this not the case.

The issue then is whether MOOCs can succeed without the cost of learner support and human assessment, or more likely, whether MOOCs can substantially reduce delivery costs through automation without loss of quality in learner performance. There is no evidence to date though that they can do this in terms of higher order learning skills and ‘deep’ knowledge. To assess this kind of learning requires setting assignments that test such knowledge, and such assessments usually need human marking, which then adds to cost. We also know from prior research from successful online credit programs that active instructor online presence is a critical factor for successful online learning. Thus adequate learner support and assessment remains a major challenge for MOOCs. MOOCs then are a good way to teach certain levels of knowledge but will have major structural problems in teaching other types of knowledge. Unfortunately, it is the type of knowledge most needed in a digital world that MOOCs struggle to teach.

In terms of sustainable business models, the elite universities have been able to move into xMOOCs because of generous donations from private foundations and use of endowment funds, but these forms of funding are limited for most institutions. Coursera and Udacity have the opportunity to develop successful business models through various means, such as charging MOOC provider institutions for use of their platform, by collecting fees for badges or certificates, through the sale of participant data, through corporate sponsorship, or through direct advertising.

However, particularly for publicly funded universities or colleges, most of these sources of income are not available or permitted, so it is hard to see how they can begin to recover the cost of a substantial investment in MOOCs, even with ‘cannibalising’ MOOC material for on-campus use. Every time a MOOC is offered, this takes away resources that could be used for online credit programs. Thus institutions are faced with some hard decisions about where to invest their resources for online learning. The case for putting scarce resources into MOOCs is far from clear, unless some way can be found to give credit for successful MOOC completion.

5.4.9 Summary of strengths and weaknesses

The main points of this analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of MOOCs can be summarised as follows:

5.4.9.1 Strengths

MOOCs, particularly xMOOCs, deliver high quality content from some of the world’s best universities for free to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection;
MOOCs can be useful for opening access to high quality content, particularly in developing countries, but to do so successfully will require a good deal of adaptation, and substantial investment in local support and partnerships;
MOOCs are valuable for developing basic conceptual learning, and for creating large online communities of interest or practice;
MOOCs are an extremely valuable form of lifelong learning and continuing education;
MOOCs have forced conventional and especially elite institutions to reappraise their strategies towards online and open learning;
institutions have been able to extend their brand and status by making public their expertise and excellence in certain academic areas;
MOOCs main value proposition is to eliminate through computer automation and/or peer-to-peer communication the very large variable costs in higher education associated with providing learner support and quality assessment.

5.4.9.2 Weaknesses

the high registration numbers for MOOCs are misleading; less than half of registrants actively participate, and of these, only a small proportion successfully complete the course; nevertheless, absolute numbers are still higher than for conventional courses;
MOOCs are expensive to develop, and although commercial organisations offering MOOC platforms have opportunities for sustainable business models, it is difficult to see how publicly funded higher education institutions can develop sustainable business models for MOOCs;
MOOCs tend to attract those with already a high level of education, rather than widen access;
MOOCs so far have been limited in the ability to develop high level academic learning, or the high level intellectual skills needed in a knowledge based society;
assessment of the higher levels of learning remains a challenge for MOOCs, to the extent that most MOOC providers will not recognise their own MOOCs for credit;
MOOC materials may be limited by copyright or time restrictions for re-use as open educational resources.

Activity 5.4 Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of MOOCs

1. Do you agree that MOOCs are just another form of educational broadcasting? What are your reasons?

2. Is it reasonable to compare the costs of xMOOCs to the costs of online credit courses? Are they competing for the same funds, or are they categorically different in their funding source and goals? If so, how?

3. Could you make the case that cMOOCs are a better value proposition than xMOOCs – or are they again too different to compare?

4. MOOCs are clearly cheaper than either face-to-face or online credit courses if judged on the cost per participant successfully completing a course. Is this a fair comparison, and if not, why not?

5. Do you think institutions should give credit for students successfully completing MOOCs? If so, why, and what are the implications?

If you want to share your answers, please use the comment box below.

References

Balfour, S. P. (2013) Assessing writing in MOOCs: Automated essay scoring and calibrated peer review Research & Practice in Assessment, Vol. 8.

Bates, A. (1985) Broadcasting in Education: An Evaluation London: Constables

Bates, A. and Sangrà, A. (2011) Managing Technology in Higher Education San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/John Wiley and Co

Bayne, S. (2014) Teaching, Research and the More-than-Human in Digital Education Oxford UK: EDEN Research Workshop (keynote: no printed record available)

Book, P. (2103) ACE as Academic Credit Reviewer–Adjustment, Accommodation, and Acceptance WCET Learn, July 25

Colvin, K. et al. (2014) Learning an Introductory Physics MOOC: All Cohorts Learn Equally, Including On-Campus Class, IRRODL, Vol. 15, No. 4

Dillenbourg, P. (ed.) (1999) Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches. Oxford: Elsevier

Dillenbourg, P. (2014) MOOCs: Two Years Later, Oxford UK: EDEN Research Workshop (keynote: no printed record available)

Engle, W. (2104) UBC MOOC Pilot: Design and Delivery Vancouver BC: University of British Columbia

Falchikov, N. and Goldfinch, J. (2000) Student Peer Assessment in Higher Education: A Meta-Analysis Comparing Peer and Teacher Marks Review of Educational Research, Vol. 70, No. 3

Firmin, R. et al. (2014) Case study: using MOOCs for conventional college coursework Distance Education, Vol. 35, No. 2

Harasim, L. (2012) Learning Theory and Online Technologies New York/London: Routledge

Haynie, D. (2014). State Department hosts ‘MOOC Camp’ for online learners. US News,January 20

Hill, P. (2013) Some validation of MOOC student patterns graphic, e-Literate, August 30

Ho, A. et al. (2014) HarvardX and MITx: The First Year of Open Online Courses Fall 2012-Summer 2013 (HarvardX and MITx Working Paper No. 1), January 21

Hollands, F. and Tirthali, D. (2014) MOOCs: Expectations and Reality New York: Columbia University Teachers’ College, Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education

Hülsmann, T. (2003) Costs without camouflage: a cost analysis of Oldenburg University’s two graduate certificate programs offered as part of the online Master of Distance Education (MDE): a case study, in Bernath, U. and Rubin, E., (eds.) Reflections on Teaching in an Online Program: A Case Study Oldenburg, Germany: Bibliothecks-und Informationssystem der Carl von Ossietsky Universität Oldenburg

Jaschik, S. (2013) MOOC Mess, Inside Higher Education, February 4

Knox, J. (2014) Digital culture clash: ‘massive’ education in the e-Learning and Digital Cultures Distance Education, Vol. 35, No. 2

Kop, R. (2011) The Challenges to Connectivist Learning on Open Online Networks: Learning Experiences during a Massive Open Online Course International Review of Research into Open and Distance Learning, Vol. 12, No. 3

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Milligan, C., Littlejohn, A. and Margaryan, A. (2013) Patterns of engagement in connectivist MOOCs, Merlot Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, Vol. 9, No. 2

Piech, C., Huang, J., Chen, Z., Do, C., Ng, A., & Koller, D. (2013) Tuned models of peer assessment in MOOCs. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University

Rumble, G. (2001) The costs and costing of networked learning, Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Vol. 5, No. 2

Suen, H. (2104) Peer assessment for massive open online courses (MOOCs) International Review of Research into Open and Distance Learning, Vol. 15, No. 3

University of Ottawa (2013) Report of the e-Learning Working Group Ottawa ON: The University of Ottawa

van Zundert, M., Sluijsmans, D., van Merriënboer, J. (2010). Effective peer assessment processes: Research findings and future directions. Learning and Instruction, 20, 270-279

41

5.5 Political, social and economic drivers of MOOCs

Figure 5.7 MOOC mania Image: © Park Ridge Underground, 2010

Figure 5.5 MOOC mania
Image: © Park Ridge Underground, 2010

5.5.1 Why the fuss about MOOCs?

It can be seen from the previous section that the pros and cons of MOOCs are finely balanced. Given though the obvious questions about the value of MOOCs, and the fact that before MOOCs arrived, there had been substantial but quiet progress for over ten years in the use of online learning for undergraduate and graduate programs, you might be wondering why MOOCs have commanded so much media interest, and especially why a large number of government policy makers, economists, and computer scientists have become so ardently supportive of MOOCs, and why there has been such a strong, negative reaction, not only from many university and college instructors, who are right to be threatened by the implications of MOOCs, but also from many professionals in online learning (see for instance, Hill, 2012; Bates, 2012; Daniel, 2012; Watters, 2012), who might be expected to be more supportive of MOOCs.

It needs to be recognised that the discourse around MOOCs is not usually based on a cool, rational, evidence-based analysis of the pros and cons of MOOCs, but is more likely to be driven by emotion, self-interest, fear, or ignorance of what education is actually about. Thus it is important to explore the political, social and economic factors that have driven MOOC mania.

5.5.2 Massive, free and Made in America!

This is what I will call the intrinsic reason for MOOC mania. It is not surprising that, since the first MOOC from Stanford professors Sebastian Thrun, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller each attracted over 200,000 sign-ups from around the world, since the courses were free, and since it came from professors at one of the most prestigious private universities in the USA, the American media were all over it. It was big news in its own right, however you look at it.

5.5.3 It’s the Ivy Leagues!

Until MOOCs came along, the major Ivy League universities in the USA, such as Stanford, MIT, Harvard and UC Berkeley, as well as many of the most prestigious universities in Canada, such as the University of Toronto and McGill, and elsewhere, had largely ignored online learning in any form (the exception was MIT, which made much of its teaching material available for free via the OpenCourseWare project.).

However, by 2011, online learning, in the form of for credit undergraduate and graduate courses, was making big inroads at many other, very respectable universities, such as Carnegie Mellon, Penn State, and the University of Maryland in the USA, and also in many of the top tier public universities in Canada and elsewhere, to the extent that almost one in three course enrolments in the USA were now in online courses. Furthermore, at least in Canada, the online courses were often getting good completion rates and matching on-campus courses for quality.

The Ivy League and other highly prestigious universities that had ignored online learning were beginning to look increasingly out of touch by 2011. By launching into MOOCs, these prestigious universities could jump to the head of the queue in terms of technology innovation, while at the same time protecting their selective and highly personal and high cost campus programs from direct contact with online learning. In other words, MOOCs gave these prestigious universities a safe sandbox in which to explore online learning, and the Ivy League universities gave credibility to MOOCs, and, indirectly, online learning as a whole.

5.5.4 It’s disruptive!

For years before 2011, various economists, philosophers and industrial gurus had been predicting that education was the next big area for disruptive change due to the march of new technologies (see for instance Lyotard, 1979; Tapscott (undated); Christensen, 2010).

Online learning in credit courses though was being quietly absorbed into the mainstream of university teaching, through blended learning, without any signs of major disruption, but here with MOOCs was a massive change, providing evidence to support at long last the theories of disruptive innovation in the education sector.

5.5.5 It’s Silicon Valley!

It is no coincidence that the first MOOCs were all developed by entrepreneurial computer scientists. Ng and Koller very quickly went on to create Coursera as a private, commercial company, followed shortly by Thrun, who created Udacity. Anant Agarwal, a computer scientist at MIT, went on to head up edX.

The first MOOCs were very typical of Silicon Valley start-ups: a bright idea (massive, open online courses with cloud-based, relatively simple software to handle the numbers), thrown out into the market to see how it might work, supported by more technology and ideas (in this case, learning analytics, automated marking, peer assessment) to deal with any snags or problems. Building a sustainable business model would come later, when some of the dust had settled.

As a result it is not surprising that almost all the early MOOCs completely ignored any pedagogical theory about best practices in teaching online, or any prior research on factors associated with success or failure in online learning. It is also not surprising as a result that a very low percentage of participants actually successfully complete MOOCs – there’s a lot of catching up still to do, but so far Coursera and to a lesser extent edX have continued to ignore educators and prior research in online learning. They would rather do their own research, even if it means re-inventing the wheel.

5.5.6 It’s the economy, stupid!

Of all the reasons for MOOC mania, Bill Clinton’s famous election slogan resonates the most. It should be remembered that by 2011, the consequences of the disastrous financial collapse of 2008 were working their way through the economy, and particularly were impacting on the finances of state governments in the USA.

The recession meant that states were suddenly desperately short of tax revenues, and were unable to meet the financial demands of state higher education systems. For instance, California’s community college system, the nation’s largest, suffered about $809 million in state funding cuts between 2008-2012, resulting in a shortfall of 500,000 places in its campus-based colleges (Rivera, 2012). Free MOOCs were seen as manna from heaven by the state governor, Jerry Brown (see for instance To, 2014).

One consequence of rapid cuts to government funding was a sharp spike in tuition fees, bringing the real cost of higher education sharply into focus. Tuition fees in the USA have increased by 7 per cent per annum over the last 10 years, compared with an inflation rate of 4 per cent per annum. Here at last was a possible way to rein in the high cost of higher education.

By 2015 though the economy in the USA is picking up and revenues are flowing back into state coffers, and so the pressure for more radical solutions to the cost of higher education is beginning to ease. It will be interesting to see if MOOC mania continues as the economy grows, although the search for more cost-effective approaches to higher education is not going to disappear.

5.5.7 Don’t panic!

These are all very powerful drivers of MOOC mania, which makes it all the more important to try to be clear and cool headed about the strengths and weaknesses of MOOCs. The real test is whether MOOCs can help develop the knowledge and skills that learners need in a knowledge-based society. The answer of course is yes and no.

As a low-cost supplement to formal education, they can be quite valuable, but not as a complete replacement. They can at present teach basic conceptual learning, comprehension and in a narrow range of activities, application of knowledge. They can be useful for building communities of practice, where already well educated people or people with a deep, shared passion for a topic can learn from one another, another form of continuing education.

However, certainly to date, MOOCs have not been able to demonstrate that they can lead to transformative learning, deep intellectual understanding, evaluation of complex alternatives, and evidence-based decision-making, and without greater emphasis on expert-based learner support and more qualitative forms of assessment, they probably never will, at least without substantial increases in their costs.

At the end of the day, there is a choice between throwing more resources into MOOCs and hoping that some of their fundamental flaws can be overcome without too dramatic an increase in costs, or investing in other forms of online learning and educational technology that could lead to more cost-effective learning outcomes in terms of the needs of learners in a digital age.

References

Bates, T. (2012) What’s right and what’s wrong with Coursera-style MOOCs Online Learning and Distance Education Resources, August 5

Christensen, C. (2010) Disrupting Class, Expanded Edition: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns New York: McGraw-Hill

Daniel, J. (2012) Making sense of MOOCs: Musings in a maze of myth, paradox and possibility Seoul: Korean National Open University

Hill, P. (2012) Four Barriers that MOOCs Must Overcome to Build a Sustainable Model e-Literate, July 24

Lyotard, J-J. (1979) La Condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir: Paris: Minuit

Rivera, C. (2012) Survey offers dire picture of California’s two-year colleges Los Angeles Times, August 28

Tapscott, D. (undated) The transformation of education dontapscott.com

To, K. (2014) UC Regents announce online course expansion, The Guardian, UC San Diego, undated, but probably February 5

Watters, A. (2012) Top 10 Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: MOOCs Hack Education, December 3

For a more light-hearted look at MOOC mania see:

North Korea Launches Two MOOCs

“What should we do about MOOCs?” – the Board of Governors discusses

NOTE: Both the two blog posts above are satirical: they are fictional!

42

5.6 Why MOOCs are only part of the answer

5.6.1 The importance of context and design

I am frequently labelled as a major critic of MOOCs, which is somewhat surprising since I have been a longtime advocate of online learning. In fact I do believe MOOCs are an important development, and under certain circumstances they can be of tremendous value in education.

But as always, context is important. There is not one but many different markets and needs for education. A student leaving high school at eighteen has very different needs and will want to learn in a very different context from a 35 year old employed engineer with a family who needs some management education. Similarly a 65 year old man struggling to cope with his wife’s early onset of Alzheimer’s and desperate for help is in a totally different situation to either the high school student or the engineer. When designing educational programs, it has to be horses for courses. There is no single silver bullet or solution for every one of these various contexts.

Secondly, as with all forms of education, how MOOCs are designed matters a great deal. If they are designed inappropriately, in the sense of not developing the knowledge and skills needed by a particular learner in a particular context, then they have little or no value for that learner. However, designed differently and a MOOC may well meet that learner’s needs.

5.6.2 The potential of cMOOCs

So let me be more specific. cMOOCs have the most potential, because lifelong learning will become increasingly important, and the power of bringing a mix of already well educated and knowledgeable people from around the world to work with other committed and enthusiastic learners on common problems or areas of interest could truly revolutionise not just education, but the world in general.

However, cMOOCs at present are unable to do this, because they lack organisation and do not apply what is already known about how online groups work best. Once we learn these lessons and apply them, though, cMOOCs can be a tremendous tool for tackling some of the great challenges we face in the areas of global health, climate change, civil rights, and other ‘good civil ventures’. The beauty of cMOOCs is that they involve not just the people who have the will and the power to make changes, but every participant has the power to define and solve the problems being tackled. Scenario G that ends this chapter is an example of how cMOOCs could be used for such ‘good civil ventures.’

In Scenario G, the MOOC is not a replacement for formal education, but a rocket that needs formal education as its launch pad. Behind this MOOC are the resources of a very powerful institution, that provides the initial impetus, simple to use software, overall structure, organization and co-ordination within the MOOC, and some essential human resources for supporting the MOOC when running. At the same time, it does not have to be an educational institution. It could be a public health authority, or a broadcasting organization, or an international charity, or a consortium of organisations with a common interest. Also, of course, there is the danger that even cMOOCs could be manipulated by corporate or government interests.

5.6.3 The limitations of xMOOCs

The real threat of xMOOCs is to the very large face-to-face lecture classes found in many universities at the undergraduate level. MOOCs are a more effective way of replacing such lectures. They are more interactive and permanent so students can go over the materials many times. I have heard MOOC instructors argue that their MOOCs are better than their classroom lectures. They put more care and effort into them.

However, we should question why we are teaching in this way on campus. Content is now freely available anywhere on the Internet – including MOOCs. What is needed is information management: how to identify the knowledge you need, how to evaluate it, how to apply it. xMOOCs do not do that. They pre-select and package the information. My big concern with xMOOCs is their limitation, as currently designed, for developing the higher order intellectual skills needed in a digital world. Unfortunately, xMOOCs are taking the least appropriate design model for developing 21st century skills from on-campus teaching, and moving this inappropriate design model online. Just because the lectures come from elite universities does not necessarily mean that learners will develop high level intellectual skills, even though the content is of the highest quality. More importantly, with MOOCs, relatively few students succeed, in terms of assessment, and those that do are tested mainly on comprehension and limited application of knowledge.

We can and have done much better in terms of skills for a digital age with other pedagogical approaches on campus, such as problem- or inquiry-based learning, and with online learning using more constructivist approaches in online credit courses, such as online collaborative learning, but these alternative methods to lectures do not scale so easily. The interaction between an expert and a novice still remains critical for developing deep understanding, transformative learning resulting in the learner seeing the world differently, and for developing high levels of evidence-based critical thinking, evaluation of complex alternatives, and high level decision-making. Computer technology to date is extremely poor at enabling this kind of learning to develop. This is why credit-based classroom and online learning still aim to have a relatively low instructor:student ratio and still need to focus a great deal on interaction between instructor and students.

However xMOOCs are valuable as a form of continuing education, or as a source of open educational materials that can be part of a broader educational offering. They can be a valuable supplement to campus-based education. They are not a replacement though for either conventional education or the current design of online credit programs. As a form of continuing education, low completion rates and the lack of formal credit is not of great significance. However, completion rates and quality assessment DO matter if MOOCs are being seen as a substitute or a replacement for formal education, even classroom lectures.

5.6.4 Undermining the public higher education system?

The real danger is that MOOCs may undermine what is admittedly an expensive public higher education system. If elite universities can deliver MOOCs for free, why do we need low quality and high cost state universities? The risk is a sharply divided two tier system, with a relatively small number of elite universities catering to the rich and privileged, and developing the knowledge and skills that will provide rich rewards, and the masses being fed MOOC-delivered courses, with state universities providing minimal and low cost learner support for such courses. This would be both a social and economic disaster, because it would fail to produce enough learners with the high-level skills that are going to be needed for good jobs in the the coming years – unless you believe that automation will remove all decently paid jobs except for a tiny elite (bring on the Hunger Games).

Content accounts for less than 15 per cent of the total cost over five years for credit-based online programs; the main costs required to ensure high quality outcomes and high rates of completion are spent on learner support, providing the learning that matters most. The kind of MOOCs being promoted by politicians and the media fail spectacularly to do this. We do need to be careful that the open education movement in general, and MOOCs in particular, are not used as a stick by those in the United States and elsewhere who are deliberately trying to undermine public education for ideological and commercial reasons. Open content, OERs and MOOCs do not automatically lead to open access to high quality credentials for everyone. In the end, a well-funded public higher education system remains the best way to assure access to higher education for the majority of the population.

Having said that, there is enormous scope for improvements within that system. MOOCs, open education and new media offer promising ways to bring about some much needed improvements. Scenario G is one possible way in which MOOCs could bring about much needed social change. However, MOOCs must build on what we already know from the use of credit based online learning, from prior experience in open and distance learning, and designing courses and programs in a variety of ways appropriate to the wide range of learning needs. MOOCs can be one important part of that environment, but not a replacement for other forms of educational provision that meet different needs.

This completes the discussion about different design models for teaching and learning. The next four chapters discuss more detailed decisions around media selection and modes of delivery. But first, Scenario G.

Activity 5.6 Strategising about MOOCs

You are the Vice President Academic of a middle sized research university, which is under financial pressure. The President has been asked by the Board to come forward with a strategy for innovation in teaching and learning, with the university facing a cut of approximately 5 per cent in next year’s operating budget.

One powerful Board member is pushing really hard for the university to develop MOOCs as a solution to the economic pressure..

The President has asked for a briefing paper from you for the Board on what the university’s strategy should be regarding MOOCs, and how they would fit into the overall strategy for teaching and learning. How would you respond?

If you want to share your response, please use the comment box below.

Key Takeaways

1. MOOCs are forcing every higher education institution to think carefully both about its strategy for online teaching and its approach to open education.

3. There are considerable differences in the design of MOOCs, reflecting different purposes and philosophies.

4. There are currently major structural limitations in MOOCs for developing deep or transformative learning, or for developing the high level knowledge and skills needed in a digital age.

7. Perhaps the greatest value of MOOCs in the future will be for providing a means for tackling large global problems through community action.

43

Scenario G: How to cope with being old

Beth Carter Good evening, everyone. This is Beth Carter, for BBC Radio. The Open University yesterday announced that it had signed up half a million participants in what they claim is now the world’s largest online course. The OU’s MOOC is about something many of you will be familiar with – getting old, and the many challenges and opportunities that come with that.

In the studio with me is Jane Dyson, who is the course co-ordinator. Jane: at 55, and coming from a social services background, you seem to be the least likely person to be running such a massive, technology-based program. How did that happen?

Jane Dyson: (laughing). Well, it’s all my own fault! I’ve been an OU graduate for many years, and they have an online alumni forum, where they ask former students for ideas about what are the most pressing issues we see in the world, and what the OU could do to address some of these issues. I do a lot of work advising elderly people, their families and even employers these days about the many different kinds of issues that arise with aging.

The OU has many courses and online materials that deal with lots of these issues, but you have to sign up for a degree or diploma or you can just get the materials online but without any support. Also, there are just too many different issues for even the OU to cover in its formal courses. So I suggested that they should do a MOOC where all the different people involved – health care workers, social workers, care givers, family, and most important of all, old people themselves – could talk about their problems and challenges, and what services are available, what people can do for themselves and so on.

Beth Carter. So what happened then?

Jane Dyson. The OU asked me to come in to my local OU regional office, and I met with several people from the OU, and after that meeting, they asked me if I would be willing to co-ordinate such a course.

Beth Carter. Now tell me more about MOOCs. I remember they were big about 10 years ago, then they went all quiet, and we haven’t heard much about them since. So what’s made this MOOC so popular?

Jane Dyson. The problem with the earlier MOOCs was that participants just got lost in them. Many of the MOOCs were just lectures and then it was up to the participants to help each other out. There was no organization.

What the OU did was to ask those who signed up for the ‘Aging’ MOOC to fill in a very simple online questionnaire that asked for just a few details such as where they lived, whether they were professionals in aging, or family, or elderly people themselves, and then used that data to automatically allocate participants into groups, so that there was a mix of participants in each group.

Beth Carter. Why was that important?

Jane Dyson. Well, at the OU, the Institute of Educational Technology had done some research on the early MOOCs, and had identified this problem of how to get groups to work in large online classes. They worked with another research group in the OU called the KMI, who developed the software we are using that allocates participants into groups so that there is enough expertise and support in each group to help with the issues raised in the group discussions.

Beth Carter. And how does that work?

Jane Dyson. You wouldn’t believe the range of issues or problems that come up. For instance, we have family members desperate because their father or mother is suffering from dementia, but don’t know what to do to help them. We have some seniors who feel that their family are trying to force them out of their homes, while they feel they are quite capable of looking after themselves. We have social workers who feel that they are liable to get fired or even prosecuted because they can’t handle their case load. And we have some participants who are just old and lonely, and want someone to talk to.

When we put all these participants into an online discussion forum, the results are amazing. What’s really critical is getting the right mix of people in the same group, with enough expertise to provide help, and having someone in that group who knows how to moderate the discussions. We have a huge list of services available not just in Britain but in many of the other countries from which we have students. So the course is a kind of self-help, support service within a broader community of practice.

Beth Carter. Let’s talk about the international students. As I understand it, almost half the participants are from outside the U.K..

Jane Dyson. That’s right. The problems of an aging population aren’t just British. The OU is part of a very powerful network of open universities around the world. When we were talking about starting this course, the OU went to several other open universities and asked them if they were interested in participating. So we have participants from the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Canada, the USA, and many other countries, who participate in the English language version.

In Spain, though, we have a ‘mirror’ site, with materials in Spanish, Basque and Catalan, and the discussion forums are managed by the Open University of Catalonia. That brings in not only participants from Spain, but also from Latin America. We are about to develop a similar agreement with the Open University of China, which we expect will bring in another half million participants. What’s really neat is that because we have so many participants, there are always enough dual language participants to move stuff from one language discussion forum to another.

Beth Carter. So what’s next?

Jane Dyson. One of the big issues that keeps coming up in the Aging course is the issue of mental health. This of course is not just about elderly people. The Aging course has already resulted in petitions to parliament about better services for isolated elderly people, and I think we will see some positive developments on this front over the next couple of years. So I think the OU is thinking about a similar MOOC on mental health, and I’d really like to be part of that initiative.

Beth Carter. Well, thank you, Jane. Next week we will be discussing online gambling, with an addiction counsellor.

This was developed as a ‘what if?’ scenario for the U.K. Open University as part of its planning for teaching and learning in 2014.

6

Chapter 6: Understanding technology in education

Purpose of this chapter

When you have completed this chapter you should:

be able to understand the difference between media and technologies in educational contexts;
be able to place different media and technologies, including new and emerging technologies, within an analytical framework.

What is covered in this chapter

Understanding the nature and role of media and technologies in education, and being able to use media and technologies appropriately, are critical to teaching well in a digital age. This is the first of three chapters that discuss media choice and use.

In this chapter, which focuses on the foundations of educational technology, you will cover the following topics

Also in this chapter you will find the following activities:

Activity 6.1 How do you currently make decisions about what technology to use for teaching?
Activity 6.2 What does history tell us?
Activity 6.3 Media or technology?
Activity 6.4 Broadcast or communicative?
Activity 6.5 Time and space dimensions of technology
Activity 6.6 How rich is your medium?
Activity 6.7 Analysing your current use of technology

Key Takeaways

Technologies are merely tools that can be used in a variety of ways. What matters more is how technologies are applied. The same technology can be applied in different ways, even or especially in education. So in judging the value of a technology, we need to look more closely at the ways in which it is being or could be used. In essence this means focusing more on media – which represent the more holistic use of technologies – than on individual tools or technologies themselves, while still recognising that technology is an essential component of almost all media.
By focusing on media rather than technologies, we can then include face-to-face teaching as a medium, enabling comparisons with more technology-based media to be made along a number of dimensions or characteristics.
Recognising that in education media are usually used in combination, the six key building blocks of media are:
1. face-to-face teaching
2. text
3. (still) graphics
4. audio (including speech)
5. video
6. computing (including animation, simulations and virtual reality).
Media differ in terms of their formats, symbols systems, and cultural values. These unique features are increasingly referred to as the affordances of media or technology. Thus different media can be used to assist learners to learn in different ways and achieve different outcomes, thus also individualising learning more.
There are many dimensions along which some technologies are similar and others are different. By focusing on these dimensions, we have a basis for analysing new media and technologies, to see where they ‘fit’ within the existing landscape, and to evaluate their potential benefits or limitations for teaching and learning.
There are probably other characteristics or dimensions of educational media that might also be identified, but three key characteristics or dimensions are particularly important:
1. broadcast vs communicative
2. synchronous (live) vs asynchronous (recorded)
3. single vs rich media
However, the identification of where a particular medium fits along any specific characteristic or dimension will depend in most cases on how that medium is designed. At the same time, there is usually a limit to how far a technology can be forced along one of these dimensions; there is likely to be a single, ‘natural’ position on each dimension, subject to good design, in terms of exploiting the educational affordances of the medium.
These characteristics or dimensions of media then need to be evaluated against the learning goals and outcomes desired, while recognising that a new educational medium or application might enable goals to be achieved that had not been previously considered possible.
Over time, media have tended to become more communicative, asynchronous, and ‘rich’, thus offering teachers and learners more powerful tools for teaching and learning.
The Internet is an extremely powerful medium because through a combination of tools and media it can encompass all the characteristics and dimensions of educational media.

44

6.1 Choosing technologies for teaching and learning: the challenge

Figure 6.1 How many technologies in this photo?

Even an electronics engineer will be hard pressed to identify all the technologies in the photo of a not untypical home entertainment system in a North American home in 2014. The answer will depend on what you mean by technology:

hardware? (e.g. TV monitor)
software? (e.g. audio-visual/digital convertor)
networks? (e.g. Internet, satellite)
services? (e.g. television, Twitter)

The answer of course is all these, plus the systems that enable everything to be integrated. Indeed, the technologies represented in just this one photograph are too many to list. In a digital age we are immersed in technology. Education, although often a laggard in technology adoption, is nevertheless no exception today. Yet learning is also a fundamental human activity that can function quite well (some would say better) without any technological intervention. So in an age immersed in technology, what is its role in education? What are the strengths (or affordances) and what are the limitations of technology in education? When should we use technology, and which technologies should we use for what purposes?

The aim of the next chapters is to provide some frameworks or models for decision-making that are both soundly based on theory and research and are also pragmatic within the context of education.

This will not be an easy exercise. There are deep philosophical, technical and pragmatic challenges in trying to provide a model or set of models flexible but practical enough to handle the huge range of factors involved. For instance, theories and beliefs about education will influence strongly the choice and use of different technologies. On the technical side, it is becoming increasingly difficult to classify or categorize technologies, not just because they are changing so fast, but also because technologies have many different qualities and affordances that change according to the contexts in which they are used. On the pragmatic side, it would be a mistake to focus solely on the educational characteristics of technologies. There are social, organizational, cost and accessibility issues also to be considered. The selection and use of technologies for teaching and learning is driven, once again, as much by context and values and beliefs as by hard scientific evidence or rigorous theory. So there will not be one ‘best’ framework or model. On the other hand, given the rapidly escalating range of technologies, educators are open to technological determinism (MOOCs, anyone?) or the total rejection of technology for teaching, unless there are some models to guide their selection and use.

In fact, there are still some fundamental questions to be answered regarding technology for teaching, including:

what is best done face-to-face and what online, and in what contexts?
what is the role of the human teacher, and can/should/will the human teacher be replaced by technology?

These are questions that will be tackled later in the book, but if we consider a teacher facing a group of students and a curriculum to teach, or a learner seeking to develop their own learning, they need practical guidance now when they consider whether or not to use one technology or another. In this and the next chapter I will provide some models or frameworks that will enable such questions to be answered effectively and pragmatically so that the learning experience is optimized.

In the meantime let’s start with what your views are at the moment about choosing technology for teaching and learning.

Activity 6.1 How do you currently make decisions about what technology to use for teaching?

1. How do you decide at the moment about what technologies to use for teaching? Use what’s in the room? Ask the IT support people? Do you have a theory or set of principles for making such a decision?

2. Is this an easy question to answer? Why (not)?

3. How many technologies can you see in Figure 6.1? List them

Please share your answers in the comment box below. For my answer to question 3, see Feedback on Activity 6.1

45

6.2 A short history of educational technology

Figure 6.2. Charlton Heston as Moses. Are the tablets of stone an educational technology? (See Selwood, 2014, for a discussion of the possible language of the Ten Commandments) Image: Allstar/Cinetext/Paramount

Figure 6.2.1 Charlton Heston as Moses. Are the tablets of stone an educational technology? (See Selwood, 2014, for a discussion of the possible language of the Ten Commandments)
Image: Allstar/Cinetext/Paramount

Arguments about the role of technology in education go back at least 2,500 years. To understand better the role and influence of technology on teaching, we need a little history, because as always there are lessons to be learned from history. Paul Saettler’s ‘The Evolution of American Educational Technology‘ (1990) is one of the most extensive historical accounts, but only goes up to 1989. A lot has happened since then. Teemu Leinonen also has a good blog post on the more recent history (for a more detailed account see Leitonen, 2010). See also this infographic: The Evolution of Learning Technologies.

What I’m giving you here is the postage stamp version of ed tech history, and a personal one at that.

6.2.1 Oral communication

One of the earliest means of formal teaching was oral – though human speech – although over time, technology has been increasingly used to facilitate or ‘back-up’ oral communication. In ancient times, stories, folklore, histories and news were transmitted and maintained through oral communication, making accurate memorization a critical skill, and the oral tradition is still the case in many aboriginal cultures. For the ancient Greeks, oratory and speech were the means by which people learned and passed on learning. Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey were recitative poems, intended for public performance. To be learned, they had to be memorized by listening, not by reading, and transmitted by recitation, not by writing.

Nevertheless, by the fifth century B.C, written documents existed in considerable numbers in ancient Greece. If we believe Socrates, education has been on a downward spiral ever since. According to Plato, Socrates caught one of his students (Phaedrus) pretending to recite a speech from memory that in fact he had learned from a written version. Socrates then told Phaedrus the story of how the god Theuth offered the King of Egypt the gift of writing, which would be a ‘recipe for both memory and wisdom’. The king was not impressed. According to the king,

it [writing] will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they will rely on what is written, creating memory not from within themselves, but by means of external symbols. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminding. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them many things without teaching them anything, you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellow men.

Phaedrus, 274c-275, translation adapted from Manguel, 1996

I can just hear some of my former colleagues saying the same thing about social media.

Slate boards were in use in India in the 12th century AD, and blackboards/chalkboards became used in schools around the turn of the 18th century. At the end of World War Two the U.S. Army started using overhead projectors for training, and their use became common for lecturing, until being largely replaced by electronic projectors and presentational software such as Powerpoint around 1990. This may be the place to point out that most technologies used in education were not developed specifically for education but for other purposes (mainly for the military or business.)

Although the telephone dates from the late 1870s, the standard telephone system never became a major educational tool, not even in distance education, because of the high cost of analogue telephone calls for multiple users, although audio-conferencing has been used to supplement other media since the 1970s. Video-conferencing using dedicated cable systems and dedicated conferencing rooms have been in use since the 1980s. The development of video compression technology and relatively low cost video servers in the early 2000s led to the introduction of lecture capture systems for recording and streaming classroom lectures in 2008. Webinars now are used largely for delivering lectures over the Internet.

None of these technologies though changes the oral basis of communication for teaching.

6.2.2 Written communication

The role of text or writing in education also has a long history. According to the Bible, Moses used chiseled stone to convey the ten commandments in a form of writing, probably around the 7th century BC. Even though Socrates is reported to have railed against the use of writing, written forms of communication make analytic, lengthy chains of reasoning and argument much more accessible, reproducible without distortion, and thus more open to analysis and critique than the transient nature of speech. The invention of the printing press in Europe in the 15th century was a truly disruptive technology, making written knowledge much more freely available, very much in the same way as the Internet has done today. As a result of the explosion of written documents resulting from the mechanization of printing, many more people in government and business were required to become literate and analytical, which led to a rapid expansion of formal education in Europe. There were many reasons for the development of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and the triumph of reason and science over superstition and beliefs in Europe, but the technology of printing was a key agent of change.

Improvements in transport infrastructure in the 19th century, and in particular the creation of a cheap and reliable postal system in the 1840s, led to the development of the first formal correspondence education, with the University of London offering an external degree program by correspondence from 1858. This first formal distance degree program still exists today in the form of the University of London International Program. In the 1970s, the Open University transformed the use of print for teaching through specially designed, highly illustrated printed course units that integrated learning activities with the print medium, based on advanced instructional design.

With the development of web-based learning management systems in the mid-1990s, textual communication, although digitized, became, at least for a brief time, the main communication medium for Internet-based learning, although lecture capture is now changing that.

6.2.3 Broadcasting and video

BBC television studio and radio transmitter, Alexandra Palace, London Image: © Copyright Oxyman and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Figure 6.2.3 BBC television studio and radio transmitter, Alexandra Palace, London
Image: © Copyright Oxyman and licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began broadcasting educational radio programs for schools in the 1920s. The first adult education radio broadcast from the BBC in 1924 was a talk on Insects in Relation to Man, and in the same year, J.C. Stobart, the new Director of Education at the BBC, mused about ‘a broadcasting university’ in the journal Radio Times (Robinson, 1982). Television was first used in education in the 1960s, for schools and for general adult education (one of the six purposes in the current BBC’s Royal Charter is still ‘promoting education and learning’).

In 1969, the British government established the Open University (OU), which worked in partnership with the BBC to develop university programs open to all, using a combination originally of printed materials specially designed by OU staff, and television and radio programs made by the BBC but integrated with the courses. Although the radio programs involved mainly oral communication, the television programs did not use lectures as such, but focused more on the common formats of general television, such as documentaries, demonstration of processes, and cases/case studies (see Bates, 1985). In other words, the BBC focused on the unique ‘affordances’ of television, a topic that will be discussed in much more detail later. Over time, as new technologies such as audio- and video-cassettes were introduced, live broadcasting, especially radio, was cut back for OU programs, although there are still some general educational channels broadcasting around the world (e.g. TVOntario in Canada; PBS, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel in the USA).

The use of television for education quickly spread around the world, being seen in the 1970s by some, particularly in international agencies such as the World Bank and UNESCO, as a panacea for education in developing countries, the hopes for which quickly faded when the realities of lack of electricity, cost, security of publicly available equipment, climate, resistance from local teachers, and local language and cultural issues became apparent (see, for instance, Jamison and Klees, 1973). Satellite broadcasting started to become available in the 1980s, and similar hopes were expressed of delivering ‘university lectures from the world’s leading universities to the world’s starving masses’, but these hopes too quickly faded for similar reasons. However, India, which had launched its own satellite, INSAT, in 1983, used it initially for delivering locally produced educational television programs throughout the country, in several indigenous languages, using Indian-designed receivers and television sets in local community centres as well as schools (Bates, 1985). India is still using satellites for tele-education into the poorest parts of the country at the time of writing (2015).

In the 1990s the cost of creating and distributing video dropped dramatically due to digital compression and high-speed Internet access. This reduction in the costs of recording and distributing video also led to the development of lecture capture systems. The technology allows students to view or review lectures at any time and place with an Internet connection. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) started making its recorded lectures available to the public, free of charge, via its OpenCourseWare project, in 2002. YouTube started in 2005 and was bought by Google in 2006. YouTube is increasingly being used for short educational clips that can be downloaded and integrated into online courses. The Khan Academy started using YouTube in 2006 for recorded voice-over lectures using a digital blackboard for equations and illustrations. Apple Inc. in 2007 created iTunesU to became a portal or a site where videos and other digital materials on university teaching could be collected and downloaded free of charge by end users.

Until lecture capture arrived, learning management systems had integrated basic educational design features, but this required instructors to redesign their classroom-based teaching to fit the LMS environment. Lecture capture on the other hand required no changes to the standard lecture model, and in a sense reverted back to primarily oral communication supported by Powerpoint or even writing on a chalkboard. Thus oral communication remains as strong today in education as ever, but has been incorporated into or accommodated by new technologies.

6.2.4 Computer technologies

6.2.4.1 Computer-based learning

In essence the development of programmed learning aims to computerize teaching, by structuring information, testing learners’ knowledge, and providing immediate feedback to learners, without human intervention other than in the design of the hardware and software and the selection and loading of content and assessment questions. B.F. Skinner started experimenting with teaching machines that made use of programmed learning in 1954, based on the theory of behaviourism (see Chapter 2, Section 3). Skinner’s teaching machines were one of the first forms of computer-based learning. There has been a recent revival of programmed learning approaches as a result of MOOCs, since machine based testing scales much more easily than human-based assessment.

PLATO was a generalized computer assisted instruction system originally developed at the University of Illinois, and, by the late 1970s, comprised several thousand terminals worldwide on nearly a dozen different networked mainframe computers. PLATO was a highly successful system, lasting almost 40 years, and incorporated key on-line concepts: forums, message boards, online testing, e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multi-player games.

Attempts to replicate the teaching process through artificial intelligence (AI) began in the mid-1980s, with a focus initially on teaching arithmetic. Despite large investments of research in AI for teaching over the last 30 years, the results generally have been disappointing. It has proved difficult for machines to cope with the extraordinary variety of ways in which students learn (or fail to learn.) Recent developments in cognitive science and neuroscience are being watched closely but at the time of writing the gap is still great between the basic science, and analysing or predicting specific learning behaviours from the science.

More recently we have seen the development of adaptive learning, which analyses learners’ responses then re-directs them to the most appropriate content area, based on their performance. Learning analytics, which also collects data about learner activities and relates them to other data, such as student performance, is a related development. These developments will be discussed in further detail in Section 6.7.

6.2.4.2 Computer networking

Arpanet in the U.S.A was the first network to use the Internet protocol in 1982. In the late 1970s, Murray Turoff and Roxanne Hiltz at the New Jersey Institute of Technology were experimenting with blended learning, using NJIT’s internal computer network. They combined classroom teaching with online discussion forums, and termed this ‘computer-mediated communication’ or CMC (Hiltz and Turoff, 1978). At the University of Guelph in Canada, an off-the-shelf software system called CoSy was developed in the 1980s that allowed for online threaded group discussion forums, a predecessor to today’s forums contained in learning management systems. In 1988, the Open University in the United Kingdom offered a course, DT200, that as well as the OU’s traditional media of printed texts, television programs and audio-cassettes, also included an online discussion component using CoSy. Since this course had 1,200 registered students, it was one of the earliest ‘mass’ open online courses. We see then the emerging division between the use of computers for automated or programmed learning, and the use of computer networks to enable students and instructors to communicate with each other.

The Word Wide Web was formally launched in 1991. The World Wide Web is basically an application running on the Internet that enables ‘end-users’ to create and link documents, videos or other digital media, without the need for the end-user to transcribe everything into some form of computer code. The first web browser, Mosaic, was made available in 1993. Before the Web, it required lengthy and time-consuming methods to load text, and to find material on the Internet. Several Internet search engines have been developed since 1993, with Google, created in 1999, emerging as one of the primary search engines.

6.2.4.3 Online learning environments

In 1995, the Web enabled the development of the first learning management systems (LMSs), such as WebCT (which later became Blackboard). LMSs provide an online teaching environment, where content can be loaded and organized, as well as providing ‘spaces’ for learning objectives, student activities, assignment questions, and discussion forums. The first fully online courses (for credit) started to appear in 1995, some using LMSs, others just loading text as PDFs or slides. The materials were mainly text and graphics. LMSs became the main means by which online learning was offered until lecture capture systems arrived around 2008.

By 2008, George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier in Canada were using web technology to create the first ‘connectivist’ Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), a community of practice that linked webinar presentations and/or blog posts by experts to participants’ blogs and tweets, with just over 2,000 enrollments. The courses were open to anyone and had no formal assessment. In 2012, two Stanford University professors launched a lecture-capture based MOOC on artificial intelligence, attracting more than 100,000 students, and since then MOOCs have expanded rapidly around the world.

6.2.5 Social media

Social media are really a sub-category of computer technology, but their development deserves a section of its own in the history of educational technology. Social media cover a wide range of different technologies, including blogs, wikis, You Tube videos, mobile devices such as phones and tablets, Twitter, Skype and Facebook. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein (2010) define social media as

a group of Internet-based applications that …allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content, based on interactions among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.

Social media are strongly associated with young people and ‘millenials’ – in other words, many of the students in post-secondary education. At the time of writing social media are only just being integrated into formal education, and to date their main educational value has been in non-formal education, such as fostering online communities of practice, or around the edges of classroom teaching, such as ‘tweets’ during lectures or rating of instructors. It will be argued though in Chapters 8, 9 and 10 that they have much greater potential for learning.

6.2.6 A paradigm shift

It can be seen that education has adopted and adapted technology over a long period of time. There are some useful lessons to be learned from past developments in the use of technology for education, in particular that many claims made for a newly emerging technology are likely to be neither true nor new. Also new technology rarely completely replaces an older technology. Usually the old technology remains, operating within a more specialised ‘niche’, such as radio, or integrated as part of a richer technology environment, such as video in the Internet.

However, what distinguishes the digital age from all previous ages is the rapid pace of technology development and our immersion in technology-based activities in our daily lives. Thus it is fair to describe the impact of the Internet on education as a paradigm shift, at least in terms of educational technology. We are still in the process of absorbing and applying the implications. The next section attempts to pin down more closely the educational significance of different media and technologies.

Activity 6.2 What does history tell us?

1. What constitutes an educational technology? How would you classify a recorded lecture from MIT that is accessed as an open educational resource? When is a technology educational and not just a technology?

2. An early version of the Internet (Arpanet) existed long before 1990, but the combination of Internet protocols and the development of html and the World Wide Web were clearly a turning point in both telecommunications and education (at least for me). What then makes the Internet/the Web a paradigm shift? Or are they just an evolution, an orderly next step in the development of technology?

3. Is writing a technology? Is a lecture a technology? Does it matter to decide this?

4. The more sharp eyed or analytical of you may be asking questions about the categorization or definition of some of the technologies listed above (quite apart from the issue of how to deal with people as a means of communication). For instance computer-mediated communication (CMC) existed before the Internet (from 1978 in fact), but isn’t it an Internet technology? (It is now, but wasn’t then.) How do social media differ from CMC? Does it make sense to distinguish television technologies such as broadcast, cable, satellite, DVDs or video-conferencing, and is this relevant any more? If so, what distinguishes them and what do they have in common from an educational perspective?

These are some of the issues that will become clearer in the following sections.

References

Bates, A. (1985) Broadcasting in Education: An Evaluation London: Constables

Hiltz, R. and Turoff, M. (1978) The Network Nation: Human Communication via Computer Reading MA: Addison-Wesley

Jamison, D. and Klees, S. (1973) The Cost of Instructional Radio and Television for Developing Countries Stanford CA: Stanford University Institute for Communication Research

Kaplan, A. and Haenlein, M. (2010), Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media, Business Horizons, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 59-68

Leitonen, T. (2010) Designing Learning Tools: Methodological Insights Aalto, Finland: Aalto University School of Art and Design

Manguel, A. (1996) A History of Reading London: Harper Collins

Robinson, J. (1982) Broadcasting Over the Air London: BBC

Saettler, P. (1990) The Evolution of American Educational Technology Englewood CO: Libraries Unlimited

Selwood, D. (2014) What does the Rosetta Stone tell us about the Bible? Did Moses read hieroglyphs? The Telegraph, July 15

46

6.3 Media or technology?

6.3.1. Defining media and technology

Philosophers and scientists have argued about the nature of media and technologies over a very long period. The distinction is challenging because in everyday language use, we tend to use these two terms interchangeably. For instance, television is often referred to as both a medium and a technology. Is the Internet a medium or a technology? And does it matter?

I will argue that there are differences, and it does matter to distinguish between media and technology, especially if we are looking for guidelines on when and how to use them. There is a danger in looking too much at the raw technology, and not enough at the personal, social and cultural contexts in which we use technology, particularly in education. The terms ‘media’ and ‘technology’ represent different ways altogether of thinking about the choice and use of technology in teaching and learning.

6.3.1.1 Technology

There are many definitions of technology (see Wikipedia for a good discussion of this). Essentially definitions of technology range from the basic notion of tools, to systems which employ or exploit technologies. Thus

‘technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems‘ is a simple definition;
‘the current state of humanity’s knowledge of how to combine resources to produce desired products, to solve problems, fulfill needs, or satisfy wants‘ is a more complex and grandiose definition (and has a smugness about it that I think is undeserved – technology often does the opposite of satisfy wants, for instance.).

In terms of educational technology we have to consider a broad definition of technology. The technology of the Internet involves more than just a collection of tools, but a system that combines computers, telecommunications, software and rules and procedures or protocols. However, I baulk at the very broad definition of the ‘current state of humanity’s knowledge‘. Once a definition begins to encompass many different aspects of life it becomes unwieldy and ambiguous.

I tend to think of technology in education as things or tools used to support teaching and learning. Thus computers, software programs such as a learning management system, or a transmission or communications network, are all technologies. A printed book is a technology. Technology often includes a combination of tools with particular technical links that enable them to work as a technology system, such as the telephone network or the Internet.

However, for me, technologies or even technological systems do not of themselves communicate or create meaning. They just sit there until commanded to do something or until they are activated or until a person starts to interact with the technology. At this point, we start to move into media.

Figure 6.3.1.1 Don’t just sit there – DO something!
Image: © Alex Dawson, Flickr, 2006

6.3.1.2 Media

Media (plural of medium) is another word that has many definitions and I will argue that it has two distinct meanings relevant for teaching and learning, both of which are different from definitions of technology.

The word ‘medium’ comes from the Latin, meaning in the middle (a median) and also that which intermediates or interprets. Media require an active act of creation of content and/or communication, and someone who receives and understands the communication, as well as the technologies that carry the medium.

Media linked to senses and ‘meaning’.

We use our senses, such as sound and sight, to interpret media. In this sense, we can consider text, graphics, audio and video as media ‘channels’, in that they intermediate ideas and images that convey meaning. Every interaction we have with media, in this sense, is an interpretation of reality, and again usually involves some form of human intervention, such as writing (for text), drawing or design for graphics, talking, scripting or recording for audio and video. Note that there are two types of intervention in media: by the ‘creator’ who constructs information, and by the ‘receiver’, who must also interpret it.

Media of course depend on technology, but technology is only one element of media. Thus we can think of the Internet as merely a technological system, or as a medium that contains unique formats and symbol systems that help convey meaning and knowledge. These formats, symbol systems and unique characteristics (e.g. the 140 character limit in Twitter) are deliberately created and need to be interpreted by both creators and end users. Furthermore, at least with the Internet, people can be at the same time both creators and interpreters of knowledge.

Computing can also be considered a medium in this context. I use the term computing, not computers, since although computing uses computers, computing involves some kind of intervention, construction and interpretation. Computing as a medium would include animations, online social networking, using a search engine, or designing and using simulations. Thus Google uses a search engine as its primary technology, but I classify Google as a medium, since it needs content and content providers, and an end user who defines the parameters of the search, in addition to the technology of computer algorithms to assist the search. Thus the creation, communication and interpretation of meaning are added features that turn a technology into a medium.

Thus in terms of representing knowledge we can think of the following media for educational purposes:

Text
Graphics
Audio
Video
Computing

Within each of these media, there are sub-systems, such as

text: textbooks, novels, poems
graphics: diagrams, photographs, drawings, posters, graffiti
audio: sounds, speech
video: television programs, YouTube clips, ‘talking heads’
computing: animation, simulations, online discussion forums, virtual worlds.

Furthermore, within these sub-systems there are ways of influencing communication through the use of unique symbol systems, such as story lines and use of characters in novels, composition in photography, voice modulation to create effects in audio, cutting and editing in film and television, and the design of user interfaces or web pages in computing. The study of the relationship between these different symbol systems and the interpretation of meaning is a whole field of study in itself, called semiotics.

In education we could think of classroom teaching as a medium. Technology or tools are used (e.g. chalk and blackboards, or Powerpoint and a projector) but the key component is the intervention of the teacher and the interaction with the learners in real time and in a fixed time and place. We can also then think of online teaching as a different medium, with computers, the Internet (in the sense of the communication network) and a learning management system as core technologies, but it is the interaction between teachers, learners and online resources within the unique context of the Internet that are the essential component of online learning.

From an educational perspective, it is important to understand that media are not neutral or ‘objective’ in how they convey knowledge. They can be designed or used in such a way as to influence (for good or bad) the interpretation of meaning and hence our understanding. Some knowledge therefore of how media work is essential for teaching in a digital age. In particular we need to know how best to design and apply media (rather than technology) to facilitate learning.

Over time, media have become more complex, with newer media (e.g. television) incorporating some of the components of earlier media (e.g. audio) as well as adding another medium (video). Digital media and the Internet increasingly are incorporating and integrating all previous media, such as text, audio, and video, and adding new media components, such as animation, simulation, and interactivity. When digital media incorporate many of these components they become ‘rich media’. Thus one major advantage of the Internet is that it encompasses all the representational media of text, graphics, audio, video and computing.

Media as organisations

The second meaning of media is broader and refers to the industries or significant areas of human activity that are organized around particular technologies, for instance film and movies, television, publishing, and the Internet. Within these different media are particular ways of representing, organizing and communicating knowledge.

Thus for instance within television there are different formats, such as news, documentaries, game shows, action programs, while in publishing there are novels, newspapers, comics, biographies, and so on. Sometimes the formats overlap but even then there are symbol systems within a medium that distinguish it from other media. For instance in movies there are cuts, fades, close-ups, and other techniques that are markedly different from those in other media. All these features of media bring with them their own conventions and assist or change the way meaning is extracted or interpreted.

Lastly, there is a strong cultural context to media organisations. For instance, Schramm (1972) found that broadcasters often have a different set of professional criteria and ways of assessing ‘quality’ in an educational broadcast from those of educators (which made my job of evaluating the programs the BBC made for the Open University very interesting). Today, this professional ‘divide’ can be seen between the differences between computer scientists and educators in terms of values and beliefs with regard to the use of technology for teaching. At its crudest, it comes down to issues of control: who is in charge of using technology for teaching? Who makes the decisions about the design of a MOOC or the use of an animation?

6.3.2 The affordances of media

$Figure 6.3.2 Graphs can represent, in a different way, the same concepts as written descriptions or formulae. Understanding the same thing in different ways generally leads to deeper understanding. Image: © Open University 2013$

Figure 6.3.2 Graphs can represent, in a different way, the same concepts as written descriptions or formulae. Understanding the same thing in different ways generally leads to deeper understanding.
Image: © Open University 2013

Different media have different educational effects or affordances. If you just transfer the same teaching to a different medium, you fail to exploit the unique characteristics of that medium. Put more positively, you can do different and often better teaching by adapting it to the medium. That way students will learn more deeply and effectively. To illustrate this, let’s look at an example from early on in my career as a researcher in educational media.

In 1969, I was appointed as a research officer at the Open University in the United Kingdom. At this point the university had just received its royal charter. I was the 20th member of staff appointed. My job was simple: to research into the pilot programs being offered by the National Extension College, which was delivering low cost non-credit distance education programs in partnership with the BBC. The NEC was ‘modelling’ the kind of integrated multimedia courses, consisting of a mix of print and broadcast radio and TV, that were to be offered by the Open University when it started.

My colleague and I sent out questionnaires by mail on a weekly basis to students taking the NEC courses. The questionnaire contained both pre-coded responses, and the opportunity for open-ended comments, and asked students for their responses to the print and broadcast components of the courses. We were looking for what worked and what didn’t work in designing multimedia distance education courses.

When I started analyzing the questionnaires, I was struck particularly by the ‘open-ended’ comments in response to the television and radio broadcasts. Responses to the printed components tended to be ‘cool’: rational, calm, critical, constructive. The responses to the broadcasts were the opposite: ‘hot’, emotional, strongly supportive or strongly critical or even hostile, and rarely critically constructive. Something was going on here.

The initial discovery that different media affected students differently came very quickly, but it took longer to discover in what ways media are different, and even longer why, but here are some of the discoveries made by my colleagues and me in the Audio-Visual Media Research Group at the OU (Bates, 1985):

the BBC producers (all of whom had a degree in the subject area in which they were making programs) thought about knowledge differently from the academics with whom they were working. In particular, they tended to think more visually and more concretely about the subject matter. Thus they tended to make programs that showed concrete examples of concepts or principles in the texts, applications of principles, or how academic concepts worked in real life. Academic learning is about abstraction and higher order levels of thinking. However, abstract concepts are better understood if they can be related to concrete or empirical experiences, from which, indeed, abstract concepts are often drawn. The television programs enabled learners to move backwards and forwards between the abstract and the concrete. Where this was well designed, it really helped a large number of students – but not all;

students responded very differently to the TV programs in particular. Some loved them, some hated them, and few were indifferent. The ones that hated them wanted the programs to be didactic and repeat or reinforce what was in the printed texts. Interestingly though the TV-haters tended to get lower grades or even fail in the final course exam. The ones that loved the TV programs tended to get higher grades. They were able to see how the programs illustrated the principles in the texts, and the programs ‘stretched’ these students to think more widely or critically about the topics in the course. The exception was math, where borderline students found the TV programs most helpful;

the BBC producers rarely used talking heads or TV lectures. With radio and later audio-cassettes, some producers and academics integrated the audio with texts, for instance in mathematics, using a radio program and later audio-cassettes to talk the students through equations or formulae in the printed text (similar to Khan Academy lectures on TV);

using television and radio to develop higher level learning is a skill that can be taught. In the initial foundation (first year) social science course (D100), many of the programs were made in a typical BBC documentary style. Although the programs were accompanied by extensive broadcast notes that attempted to link the broadcasts to the academic texts, many students struggled with these programs. When the course was remade five years later a distinguished academic (Stuart Hall) was used as an ‘anchor’ for all the programs. The first few programs were somewhat like lectures, but in each program Stuart Hall introduced more and more visual clips and helped students analyze each clip. By the end of the course the programs were almost entirely in the documentary format. Students rated the remade programs much higher and used examples from the TV programs much more in their assignments and exams for the remade course.

6.3.3 Why are these findings significant?

At the time (and for many years afterwards) researchers such as Richard Clark (1983) argued that ‘proper’, scientific research showed no significant difference between the use of different media. In particular, there were no differences between classroom teaching and other media such as television or radio or satellite. Even today, we are getting similar findings regarding online learning (e.g. Means et al., 2010).

However, this is because the research methodology that is used by researchers for such comparative studies requires the two conditions being compared to be the same, except for the medium being used (called matched comparisons, or sometimes quasi-experimental studies). Typically, for the comparison to be scientifically rigorous, if you gave lectures in class, then you had to compare lectures on television. If you used another television format, such as a documentary, you were not comparing like with like. Since the classroom was used as the base, for comparison, you had to strip out all the affordances of television – what it could do better than a lecture – in order to compare it. Indeed Clark argued that when differences in learning were found between the two conditions, the differences were a result of using a different pedagogy in the non-classroom medium.

The critical point is that different media can be used to assist learners to learn in different ways and achieve different outcomes. In a sense, researchers such as Clark were right: the teaching methods matter, but different media can more easily support different ways of learning than others. In our example, a documentary TV program aims at developing the skills of analysis and the application or recognition of theoretical constructs, whereas a classroom lecture is more focused on getting students to understand and correctly recall the theoretical constructs. Thus requiring the television program to be judged by the same assessment methods as for the classroom lecture unfairly measures the potential value of the TV program. In this example, it may be better to use both methods: didactic teaching to teach understanding, then a documentary approach to apply that understanding. (Note that a television program could do both, but the classroom lecture could not.)

Perhaps even more important is the idea that many media are better than one. This allows learners with different preferences for learning to be accommodated, and to allow subject matter to be taught in different ways through different media, thus leading to deeper understanding or a wider range of skills in using content. On the other hand, this increases costs.

6.3.3.1 How do these findings apply to online learning?

Online learning can incorporate a range of different media: text, graphics, audio, video, animation, simulations. We need to understand better the affordances of each medium within the Internet, and use them differently but in an integrated way so as to develop deeper knowledge, and a wider range of learning outcomes and skills. The use of different media also allows for more individualization and personalization of the learning, better suiting learners with different learning styles and needs. Most of all, we should stop trying merely to move classroom teaching to other media such as MOOCs, and start designing online learning so its full potential can be exploited.

6.3.3.2 Implications for education

If we are interested in selecting appropriate technologies for teaching and learning, we should not just look at the technical features of a technology, nor even the wider technology system in which it is located, nor even the educational beliefs we bring as a classroom teacher. We also need to examine the unique features of different media, in terms of their formats, symbols systems, and cultural values. These unique features are increasingly referred to as the affordances of media or technology.

The concept of media is much ‘softer’ and ‘richer’ than that of ‘technology’, more open to interpretation and harder to define, but ‘media’ is a useful concept, in that it can also incorporate the inclusion of face-to-face communication as a medium, and in that it recognises the fact that technology on its own does not lead to the transfer of meaning .

As new technologies are developed, and are incorporated into media systems, old formats and approaches are carried over from older to newer media. Education is no exception. New technology is ‘accommodated’ to old formats, as with clickers and lecture capture, or we try to create the classroom in virtual space, as with learning management systems. However, new formats, symbols systems and organizational structures that exploit the unique characteristics of the Internet as a medium are gradually being discovered. It is sometimes difficult to see these unique characteristics clearly at this point in time. However, e-portfolios, mobile learning, open educational resources such as animations or simulations, and self-managed learning in large, online social groups are all examples of ways in which we are gradually developing the unique ‘affordances’ of the Internet.

More significantly, it is likely to be a major mistake to use computers to replace or substitute for humans in the educational process, given the need to create and interpret meaning when using media, at least until computers have much greater facility to recognize, understand and apply semantics, value systems, and organizational features, which are all important components of ‘reading’ different media. But at the same time it is equally a mistake to rely only on the symbol systems, cultural values and organizational structures of classroom teaching as the means of judging the effectiveness or appropriateness of the Internet as an educational medium.

Thus we need a much better understanding of the strengths and limitations of different media for teaching purposes if we are successfully to select the right medium for the job. However, given the widely different contextual factors influencing learning, the task of media and technology selection becomes infinitely complex. This is why it has proved impossible to develop simple algorithms or decision trees for effective decision making in this area. Nevertheless, there are some guidelines that can be used for identifying the best use of different media within an Internet-dependent society. To develop such guidelines we need to explore in particular the unique educational affordances of text, audio, video and computing, which is the next task of this chapter.

Activity 6.3 Media or technology?

1. Do you find the distinction between media and technology helpful? If so, how would you classify the following (medium or technology):

newspaper
printing press
television program
Netflix
classroom
MOOC
discussion forum

2. Do you think that knowledge becomes something different when represented by different media? For instance, does an animation of a mathematical function represent something different from a written or printed equation of the same function? Which is the most ‘mathematical’: the formula or the animation?

3. What in your view makes the Internet unique from a teaching perspective, or is it just old wine in new bottles?

4. Text has publishers and newspaper corporations, audio has radio stations, and video has both television companies and YouTube. Is there a comparable organization for the Internet or is it not really a medium in the sense of publishing, radio or television?

References

Bates, A. (1981) ‘Some unique educational characteristics of television and some implications for teaching or learning’ Journal of Educational Television Vol. 7, No.3

Durbridge, N. (1983) Design implications of audio and video cassettes Milton Keynes: Open University Institute of Educational Technology

Grundin, H. (1981) Open University Broadcasting Times and their Impact on Students’ Viewing/Listening Milton Keynes: The Open University Institute of Educational Technology

Means, B. et al. (2009) Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies Washington, DC: US Department of Education

49

6.6 Media richness

Figure 6.6.1 Armando Hasudungan’s Bacteria (Structure) YouTube video (Click on image to see video)

6.6.1 The historical development of media richness

In Section 6.2, ‘A short history of educational technology‘, the development of different media in education was outlined, beginning with oral teaching and learning, moving on to written or textual communication, then to video, and finally computing. Each of these means of communication has usually been accompanied by an increase in the richness of the medium, in terms of how many senses and interpretative abilities are needed to process information. Another way of defining the richness of media is by the symbol systems employed to communicate through the medium. Thus textual material from an early stage incorporated graphics and drawings as well as words. Television or video incorporates audio as well as still and moving images. Computing now can incorporate text, audio, video, animations, simulations, computing, and networking, all through the Internet.

6.6.2 The continuum of media richness

Figure 6.6.2 The continuum of media richness

Once again then there is a continuum in terms of media richness, as illustrated in Figure 6.6.2 above. Also once again, design of a particular medium can influence where on the continuum it would be placed. For instance in Figure 6.6.2, different forms of teaching using video are represented in blue. Ted Talks are usually mainly talking heads, a televised lecture, as are often xMOOCs (but not all). The Khan Academy uses dynamic graphics as well as voice over commentary, and Armando Hasudungan’s You Tube video on the structure of bacteria uses hand drawings as well as voice over commentary. Educational TV broadcasts are likely to use an even wider range of video techniques.

However, although the richness of video can be increased or decreased by the way it is used, video is always going to be richer in media terms than radio or textbooks. Radio is never going to be a rich medium in terms of its symbols systems, and even talking head video is richer symbolically than radio. Again, there is no normative or evaluative judgment here. Radio can be ‘rich’ in the sense of fully exploiting the characteristics or symbol systems of the medium. A well produced radio program is more likely to be educationally effective than a badly produced video. But in terms of representation of knowledge, the possibilities of radio in terms of media richness will always be less than the possibilities of video.

6.6.3 The educational value of media richness

But how rich should media be for teaching and learning? From a teaching perspective, rich media have advantages over a single medium of communication, because rich media enable the teacher to do more. For example, many activities that previously required learners to be present at a particular time and place to observe processes or procedures such as demonstrating mathematical reasoning, experiments, medical procedures, or stripping a carburetor, can now be recorded and made available to learners to view at any time. Sometimes, phenomena that are too expensive or too difficult to show in a classroom can be shown through animation, simulations, video recordings or virtual reality.

Furthermore, each learner can get the same view as all the other learners, and can view the process many times until they have mastery. Good preparation before recording can ensure that the processes are demonstrated correctly and clearly. The combination of voice over video enables learning through multiple senses. Even simple combinations, such as the use of audio over a sequence of still frames in a text, have been found more effective than learning through a single medium of communication (see for instance, Durbridge, 1984). The Khan Academy videos have exploited very effectively the power of audio combined with dynamic graphics. Computing adds another element of richness, in the ability to network learners or to respond to learner input.

From a learner’s perspective, though, some caution is needed with rich media. Two particularly important concepts are cognitive overload and Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. Cognitive overload results when students are presented with too much information at too complex a level or too quickly for them to properly absorb it (Sweller, 1988). Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development or ZPD is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what can be done with help. Rich media may contain a great deal of information compressed into a very short time period and its value will depend to a large extent on the learner’s level of preparation for interpreting it.

For instance, a documentary video may be valuable for demonstrating the complexity of human behaviour or complex industrial systems, but learners may need either preparation in terms of what to look for, or to identify concepts or principles that may be illustrated within the documentary. On the other hand, interpretation of rich media is a skill that can be explicitly taught through demonstration and examples (Bates and Gallagher, 1977). Although YouTube videos are limited in length to around eight minutes mainly for technical reasons, they are also more easily absorbed than a continuous video of 50 minutes. Thus again design is important for helping learners to make full educational use of rich media.

6.6.4 Simple or rich media?

It is a natural tendency when choosing media for teaching to opt for the ‘richest’ or most powerful medium. Why would I use a podcast rather than a video? There are in fact several reasons:

cost and ease of use: it may just be quicker and simpler to use a podcast, especially if it can achieve the same learning objective;
there may be too many distractions in a rich medium for students to grasp the essential point of the teaching. For instance, video recording a busy intersection to look at traffic flow may include all kinds of distractions for the viewer from the actual observation of traffic patterns. A simple diagram or an animation that focuses only on the phenomenon to be observed might be better;
the rich medium may be inappropriate for the learning task. For instance, if students are to follow and critique a particular argument or chain of reasoning, text may work better than a video of a lecturer with annoying mannerisms talking about the chain of reasoning.

In general, it is tempting always to look for the simplest medium first then only opt for a more complex or richer medium if the simple medium can’t deliver the learning goals as adequately. However, consideration needs to be given to media richness as a criterion when making choices about media or technology, because rich media may enable learning goals to be achieved that would be difficult with a simple medium.

This is the last of the characteristics of media and technology that can influence decisions about teaching and learning. The next section will provide an overview and summary.

Activity 6.6 How rich is your medium?

1. Do you agree that: ‘it is a useful guideline always to look for the simplest medium first‘.

2. How important do you think the richness of medium is when making decisions about the use of media and technology?

3. Do you agree with the placement of different media on this continuum in Figure 6.6.2. If not, why not?

If you want to share your response, please use the comment box below.

References

Bates, A. and Gallagher, M. (1977) Improving the Effectiveness of Open University Television Case-Studies and Documentaries Milton Keynes: The Open University (I.E.T. Papers on Broadcasting, No. 77)

Durbridge, N. (1984) Audio cassettes, in Bates, A. (ed.) The Role of Technology in Distance Education London: Routledge (re-published in 2014)

Sweller, J. (1988) Cognitive load during problem solving: effects on learning, Cognitive Science, Vol. 12

Vygotsky, L.S. (1987). Thinking and speech, in R.W. Rieber & A.S. Carton (eds.), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky, Volume 1: Problems of general psychology (pp. 39–285). New York: Plenum Press. (Original work published 1934.)

50

6.7 Understanding the foundations of educational media

I am aware that this chapter may appear somewhat abstract and theoretical, but in any subject domain, it is important to understand the foundations that underpin practice. This applies with even more force to understanding media and technology in education, because it is such a dynamic field that changes all the time. What seem to be the major media developments this year are likely to be eclipsed by new developments in technology next year. In such a shifting sea, it is therefore necessary to look at some guiding concepts or principles that are likely to remain constant, whatever changes take place over the years.

So in summary here are my main navigation stars, the main points that I have been emphasising, throughout this chapter.

Key Takeaways

Technologies are merely tools that can be used in a variety of ways. What matters more is how technologies are applied. The same technology can be applied in different ways, even or especially in education. So in judging the value of a technology, we need to look more closely at the ways in which it is being or could be used. In essence this means focusing more on media – which represent the more holistic use of technologies – than on individual tools or technologies themselves, while still recognising that technology is an essential component of almost all media.
By focusing on media rather than technologies, we can then include face-to-face teaching as a medium, enabling comparisons with more technology-based media to be made along a number of dimensions or characteristics.
Recognising that in education media are usually used in combination, the six key building blocks of media are:
1. face-to-face teaching
2. text
3. (still) graphics
4. audio (including speech)
5. video
6. computing (including animation, simulations and virtual reality)
Media differ in terms of their formats, symbols systems, and cultural values. These unique features are increasingly referred to as the affordances of media or technology. Thus different media can be used to assist learners to learn in different ways and achieve different outcomes, thus also individualising learning more.
There are many dimensions along which some technologies are similar and others are different. By focusing on these dimensions, we have a basis for analysing new media and technologies, to see where they ‘fit’ within the existing landscape, and to evaluate their potential benefits or limitations for teaching and learning.
There are probably other characteristics or dimensions of educational media that might also be identified, but I believe these three key characteristics or dimensions to be the most important:
1. broadcast vs communicative
2. synchronous (live) vs asynchronous (recorded)
3. single vs rich media
However, the identification of where a particular medium fits along any specific characteristic or dimension will depend in most cases on how that medium is designed. At the same time, there is usually a limit to how far a technology can be forced along one of these dimensions; there is likely to be a single, ‘natural’ position on each dimension, subject to good design, in terms of exploiting the educational affordances of the medium.
These characteristics or dimensions of media then need to be evaluated against the learning goals and outcomes desired, while recognising that a new educational medium or application might enable goals to be achieved that had not been previously considered possible.
Over time, media have tended to become more communicative, asynchronous, and ‘rich’, thus offering teachers and learners more powerful tools for teaching and learning.
The Internet is an extremely powerful medium because through a combination of tools and media it can encompass all the characteristics and dimensions of educational media.

Activity 6.7 Analysing your current use of technology

1. Take one of the courses you are teaching at the moment. How could you make your teaching more communicative, asynchronous, and rich in media. What media or technologies would help you do this?

2. Write down what you would see as (a) the advantages (b) the disadvantages of changing your teaching in this way.

3. Do you think applying the four dimensions described here will be useful when deciding whether or not to use a new technology? If not, why not?

The next chapter should provide more feedback on your answers.

7

Chapter 7: Pedagogical differences between media

Purpose of the chapter

1. To identify the main pedagogical characteristics of the following media:

text;
audio;
video;
computing;
social media.

2. To provide a framework of analysis for determining appropriate pedagogical roles for different media.

3. To enable you to apply that analysis to any particular module of teaching

What is covered in this chapter

Also in this chapter you will find the following activities:

Activity 7.2 Identifying the unique pedagogical characteristics of text
Activity 7.3 Identifying the unique pedagogical characteristics of audio
Activity 7.4 Identifying the unique pedagogical characteristics of video
Activity 7.5 Identifying the unique pedagogical characteristics of computing
Activity 7.6 Identifying the unique pedagogical characteristics of social media
Activity 7.7 Choosing media for a teaching module

Key Takeaways

There is a very wide range of media available for teaching and learning. In particular:

text, audio, video, computing and social media all have unique characteristics that make them useful for teaching and learning;
the choice or combination of media will need to be determined by:
- the overall teaching philosophy behind the teaching;
- the presentational and structural requirements of the subject matter or content;
- the skills that need to be developed in learners;
- and not least by the imagination of the teacher or instructor (and increasingly learners themselves) in identifying possible roles for different media;
learners now have powerful tools through social media for creating their own learning materials or for demonstrating their knowledge;
courses can be structured around individual students’ interests, allowing them to seek appropriate content and resources to support the development of negotiated competencies or learning outcomes;.
content is now increasingly open and freely available over the Internet; as a result learners can seek, use and apply information beyond the bounds of what a professor or teacher may dictate;
students can create their own online personal learning environments;
many students will still need a structured approach that guides their learning;
teacher presence and guidance is likely to be necessary to ensure high quality learning via social media;
teachers need to find the middle ground between complete learner freedom and over-direction to enable learners to develop the key skills needed in a digital age.

51

7.1 Thinking about the pedagogical differences of media

Figure 9. Is slow motion a unique characteristic of video? Image: Poring mercury into liquid nitrogen: University of Nottingham Image:

Figure 7.1.1 Is slow motion a unique characteristic of video?
Image: Pouring mercury into liquid nitrogen: University of Nottingham
Click on image to see video

In the last chapter, I identified three core dimensions of media and technology along which any technology can be placed. In the next two chapters, I will discuss a method for deciding which media to use when teaching. In this chapter I will focus primarily on the pedagogical differences between media. In the following chapter I will provide a model or set of criteria to use when making decisions about media and technology for teaching.

7.1.1 First steps

Embedded within any decision about the use of technology in education and training will be assumptions about the learning process. We have already seen earlier in this book how different epistemological positions and theories of learning affect the design of teaching, and these influences will also determine a teacher’s or an instructor’s choice of appropriate media. Thus, the first step is to decide what and how you want to teach.

This has been covered in depth through Chapters 2-5, but in summary, there are five critical questions that need to be asked about teaching and learning in order to select and use appropriate media/technologies:

what is my underlying epistemological position about knowledge and teaching?
what are the desired learning outcomes from the teaching?
what teaching methods will be employed to facilitate the learning outcomes?
what are the unique educational characteristics of each medium/technology, and how well do these match the learning and teaching requirements?
what resources are available?

These are not questions best asked sequentially, but in a cyclical or iterative manner, as media affordances may suggest alternative teaching methods or even the possibility of learning outcomes that had not been initially considered. When the unique pedagogical characteristics of different media are considered, this may lead to some changes in what content will be covered and what skills will be developed. Therefore, at this stage, decisions on content and learning outcomes should still be tentative.

7.1.2 Identifying the unique educational characteristics of a medium

Different media have different potential or ‘affordances’ for different types of learning. One of the arts of teaching is often finding the best match between media and desired learning outcomes. We explore this relationship throughout this chapter, but first, a summary of the substantial amount of excellent past research on this topic (see, for instance, Trenaman, 1967; Olson and Bruner, 1974; Schramm, 1977; Salomon, 1979, 1981; Clark, 1983; Bates, 1985; Koumi, 2006; Berk, 2009; Mayer, 2009).

This research has indicated that there are three core elements that need to be considered when deciding what media to use:

content;
content structure;
skills.

Olson and Bruner (1974) claim that learning involves two distinct aspects: acquiring knowledge of facts, principles, ideas, concepts, events, relationships, rules and laws; and using or working on that knowledge to develop skills. Again, this is not necessarily a sequential process. Identifying skills then working back to identify the concepts and principles needed to underpin the skills may be another valid way of working. In reality, learning content and skills development will often be integrated in any learning process. Nevertheless, when deciding on technology use, it is useful to make a distinction between content and skills.

7.1.2.1. The representation of content

Media differ in the extent to which they can represent different kinds of content, because they vary in the symbol systems (text, sound, still pictures, moving images, etc.) that they use to encode information (Salomon, 1979). We saw in the previous chapter that different media are capable of combining different symbol systems. Differences between media in the way they combine symbol systems influence the way in which different media represent content. Thus there is a difference between a direct experience, a written description, a televised recording, and a computer simulation of the same scientific experiment. Different symbol systems are being used, conveying different kinds of information about the same experiment. For instance, our concept of heat can be derived from touch, mathematical symbols (800 celsius), words (random movement of particles), animation, or observance of experiments. Our ‘knowledge’ of heat is as a result not static, but developmental. A large part of learning requires the mental integration of content acquired through different media and symbol systems. For this reason, deeper understanding of a concept or an idea is often the result of the integration of content derived from a variety of media sources (Mayer, 2009).

Media also differ in their ability to handle concrete or abstract knowledge. Abstract knowledge is handled primarily through language. While all media can handle language, either in written or spoken form, media vary in their ability to represent concrete knowledge. For instance, television can show concrete examples of abstract concepts, the video showing the concrete ‘event’, and the sound track analyzing the event in abstract terms. Well-designed media can help learners move from the concrete to the abstract and back again, once more leading to deeper understanding.

7.1.2.2 Content structure

Media also differ in the way they structure content. Books, the telephone, radio, podcasts and face-to-face teaching all tend to present content linearly or sequentially. While parallel activities can be represented through these media (for example, different chapters dealing with events that occur simultaneously) these activities still have to be presented sequentially through these media. Computers and television are more able to present or simulate the inter-relationship of multiple variables simultaneously occurring. Computers can also handle branching or alternative routes through information, but usually within closely defined limits.

Subject matter varies a great deal in the way in which information needs to be structured. Subject areas (for example, natural sciences, history) structure content in particular ways determined by the internal logic of the subject discipline. This structure may be very tight or logical, requiring particular sequences or relationships between different concepts, or very open or loose, requiring learners to deal with highly complex material in an open-ended or intuitive way.

If media then vary both in the way they present information symbolically and in the way they handle the structures required within different subject areas, media which best match the required mode of presentation and the dominant structure of the subject matter need to be selected. Consequently, different subject areas will require a different balance of media. This means that subject experts should be deeply involved in decisions about the choice and use of media, to ensure that the chosen media appropriately match the presentational and structural requirements of the subject matter.

7.1.2.3 The development of skills

Media also differ in the extent to which they can help develop different skills. Skills can range from intellectual to psychomotor to affective (emotions, feelings). Koumi (2015) has used Krathwohl’s (2002) revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Objectives (1956) to assign affordances of text and video to learning objectives using Krathwold’s classification of learning objectives.

Comprehension is likely to be the minimal level of intellectual learning outcome for most education courses. Some researchers (for example, Marton and Säljö, 1976) make a distinction between surface and deep comprehension. At the highest level of skills comes the application of what one has comprehended to new situations. Here it becomes necessary to develop skills of analysis, evaluation, and problem solving.

Thus a first step is to identify learning objectives or outcomes, in terms of both content and skills, while being aware that the use of some media may result in new possibilities in terms of learning outcomes.

7.1.3 Pedagogical affordances – or unique media characteristics?

‘Affordances’ is a term originally developed by the psychologist James Gibson (1977) to describe the perceived possibilities of an object in relation to its environment (for example, a door knob suggests to a user that it should be turned or pulled, while a flat plate on a door suggests that it should be pushed.). The term has been appropriated by a number of fields, including instructional design and human-machine interaction.

Thus the pedagogical affordances of a medium relate to the possibilities of using that medium for specific teaching purposes. It should be noted that an affordance depends on the subjective interpretation of the user (in this case a teacher or instructor), and it is often possible to use a medium in ways that are not unique to that medium. For instance video can be used for recording and delivering a lecture. In that sense there is a similarity in at least one affordance for a lecture and a video. Also students may choose not to use a medium in the way intended by the instructor. For instance, Bates and Gallagher (1977) found that some social science students objected to documentary-style television programs requiring application of knowledge or analysis rather than presentation of concepts.

Others (such as myself) have used the term ‘unique characteristics’ of a medium rather than affordances, since ‘unique characteristics’ suggest that there are particular uses of a medium that are less easily replicated by other media, and hence act as a better discriminator in selecting and using media. For instance, using video to demonstrate in slow motion a mechanical process is much more difficult (but not impossible) to replicate in other media. In what follows, my focus is more on unique or particular rather than general affordances of each medium, although the subjective and flexible nature of media interpretation makes it difficult to come to any hard and fast conclusions.

I will now attempt in the next sections to identify some of the unique pedagogical characteristics of the following media:

text;
audio;
video;
computing;
social media.

Technically, face-to-face teaching should also be considered a medium, but I will look specifically at the unique characteristics of face-to-face teaching in Chapter 9, where I discuss modes of delivery.

7.1.4 Purpose of the exercise

Before starting on the analysis of different media, it is important to understand my goals in this chapter. I am NOT trying to provide a definitive list of the unique pedagogical characteristics of each medium. Because context is so important and because the science is not strong enough to identify unequivocally such characteristics, I am suggesting in the following sections a way of thinking about the pedagogical affordances of different media. To do this, I will identify what I think are the most important pedagogical characteristics of each medium.

However, individual readers may well come to different conclusions, depending particularly on the subject area in which they are working. The important point is for teachers and instructors to think about what each medium could contribute educationally within their subject area, and that requires a strong understanding of both the needs of their students and the nature of their subject area, as well as the key pedagogical features of each medium.

Listen to the podcast below for an illustration of the differences between media.

Podcast 7.4.1 Tony’s shaggy dog story: click play on the above podcast (41 seconds).

http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2015/04/Tony-Shaggy-dog-1.mp3

References

Bates, A. (1985) Broadcasting in Education: An Evaluation London: Constables

Berk, R.A. (2009) Multimedia teaching with video clips: TV, movies, YouTube and mtvU in the college classroom, International Journal of Technology in Teaching and Learning, Vol. 91, No. 5

Bloom, B. S.; Engelhart, M. D.; Furst, E. J.; Hill, W. H.; Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay Company.

Clark, R. (1983) Reconsidering research on learning from media Review of Educational Research, Vol. 53. No. 4

Gibson, J.J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception Boston: Houghton Mifflin

Koumi, J. (2006) Designing video and multimedia for open and flexible learning. London: Routledge.

Koumi, J. (2015) Learning outcomes afforded by self-assessed, segmented video-print combinations Academia.edu (unpublished to date)

Krathwohl, D.R. (2002) A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview. In Theory into Practice, Vol. 41, No. 4 College of Education, The Ohio State University. Retrieved from http://www.unco.edu/cetl/sir/stating_outcome/documents/Krathwohl.pdf

Marton, F. and Säljö, R. (1997) Approaches to learning, in Marton, F., Hounsell, D. and Entwistle, N. (eds.) The experience of learning: Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press (out of press, but available online)

Mayer, R. E. (2009) Multimedia learning (2nd ed). New York: Cambridge University Press

Olson, D. and Bruner, J. (1974) ‘Learning through experience and learning through media’, in Olson, D. (ed.) Media and Symbols: the Forms of Expression Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Salomon, G. (1979) Interaction of Media, Cognition and Learning San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Salomon, G. (1981) Communication and Education Beverley Hills CA/London: Sage

Schramm, W. (1977) Big Media, Little Media Beverley Hills CA/London: Sage

Trenaman, J. (1967) Communication and Comprehension London: Longmans

52

7.2 Text

Figure 9. There's nothing like a good book - or is there?

Figure 7.2.1 There’s nothing like a good book – or is there?.

7.2.1 The unique pedagogical features of text

Ever since the invention of the Gutenberg press, print has been a dominant teaching technology, arguably at least as influential as the spoken word of the teacher. Even today, textbooks, mainly in printed format, but increasingly also in digital format, still play a major role in formal education, training and distance education. Many fully online courses still make extensive use of text-based learning management systems and online asynchronous discussion forums.

Why is this? What makes text such a powerful teaching medium, and will it remain so, given the latest developments in information technology?

7.2.1.2 Presentational features

Text can come in many formats, including printed textbooks, text messages, novels, magazines, newspapers, scribbled notes, journal articles, essays, novels, online asynchronous discussions and so on.

The key symbol systems in text are written language (including mathematical symbols) and still graphics, which would include diagrams, tables, and copies of images such as photographs or paintings. Colour is an important attribute for some subject areas, such as chemistry, geography and geology, and art history.

Some of the unique presentational characteristics of text are as follows:

text is particularly good at handling abstraction and generalisation, mainly through written language;
text enables the linear sequencing of information in a structured format;
text can present and separate empirical evidence or data from the abstractions, conclusions or generalisations derived from the empirical evidence;
text’s linear structure enables the development of coherent, sequential argument or discussion;
at the same time text can relate evidence to argument and vice versa;
text’s recorded and permanent nature enables independent analysis and critique of its content;
still graphics such as graphs or diagrams enable knowledge to be presented differently from written language, either providing concrete examples of abstractions or offering a different way of representing the same knowledge.

There is some overlap of each of these features with other media, but no other medium combines all these characteristics, or is as powerful as text with respect to these characteristics.

Earlier (Chapter 2, Section 2.7.3) I argued that academic knowledge is a specific form of knowledge that has characteristics that differentiate it from other kinds of knowledge, and particularly from knowledge or beliefs based solely on direct personal experience. Academic knowledge is a second-order form of knowledge that seeks abstractions and generalizations based on reasoning and evidence.

Fundamental components of or criteria for academic knowledge are:

codification: knowledge can be consistently represented in some form (words, symbols, video);
transparency: the source of the knowledge can be traced and verified;
reproduction: knowledge can be reproduced or have multiple copies;
communicability: knowledge must be in a form such that it can be communicated and challenged by others.

Text meets all four criteria above, so it is an essential medium for academic learning.

7.2.1.2 Skills development

Because of text’s ability to handle abstractions, and evidence-based argument, and its suitability for independent analysis and critique, text is particularly useful for developing the higher learning outcomes required at an academic level, such as analysis, critical thinking, and evaluation.

It is less useful for showing processes or developing manual skills, for instance.

7.2.2 The book and knowledge

Figure 9.1 What is a book? From scrolls and paperbacks to e-books, this one minute video portrays the history and future of books.

Figure 7.2.2 What is a book? From scrolls to paperbacks to e-books, this one minute video portrays the history and future of books. Click to see the video from the UK Open University (© Open University, 2014)

Although text can come in many formats, I want to focus particularly on the role of the book, because of its centrality in academic learning. The book has proved to be a remarkably powerful medium for the development and transmission of academic knowledge, since it meets all four of the components required for presenting academic knowledge, but to what extent can new media such as blogs, wikis, multimedia, and social media replace the book in academic knowledge?

New media can in fact handle just as well some of these criteria, and provide indeed added value, such as speed of reproduction and ubiquity, but the book still has some unique qualities. A key advantage of a book is that it allows for the development of a sustained, coherent, and comprehensive argument with evidence to support the argument. Blogs can do this only to a limited extent (otherwise they cease to be blogs and become articles or a digital book).

Quantity is important sometimes and books allow for the collection of a great deal of evidence and supporting argument, and allow for a wider exploration of an issue or theme, within a relatively condensed and portable format. A consistent and well supported argument, with evidence, alternative explanations or even counter positions, requires the extra ‘space’ of a book. Above all, books can provide coherence or a sustained, particular position or approach to a problem or issue, a necessary balance to the chaos and confusion of the many new forms of digital media that constantly compete for our attention, but in much smaller ‘chunks’ that are overall more difficult to integrate and digest.

Another important academic feature of text is that it can be carefully scrutinised, analysed and constantly checked, partly because it is largely linear, and also permanent once published, enabling more rigorous challenge or testing in terms of evidence, rationality, and consistency. Multimedia in recorded format can come close to meeting these criteria, but text can also provide more convenience and in media terms, more simplicity. For instance I repeatedly find analysing video, which incorporates many variables and symbol systems, more complex than analysing a linear text, even if both contain equally rigorous (or equally sloppy) arguments.

7.2.2.1 Form and function

Does the form or technological representation of a book matter any more? Is a book still a book if downloaded and read on an iPad or Kindle, rather than as printed text?

For the purposes of knowledge acquisition, it probably isn’t any different. Indeed, for study purposes, a digital version is probably more convenient because carrying an iPad around with maybe hundreds of books downloaded on it is certainly preferable to carrying around the printed versions of the same books. There are still complaints by students about the difficulties of annotating e-books, but this will almost certainly become a standard feature available in the future.

If the whole book is downloaded, then the function of a book doesn’t change much just because it is available digitally. However, there are some subtle changes. Some would argue that scanning is still easier with a printed version. Have you ever had the difficulty of finding a particular quotation in a digital book compared with the printed version? Sure, you can use the search facility, but that means knowing exactly the correct words or the name of the person being quoted. With a printed book, I can often find a quotation just by flicking the pages, because I am using context and rapid eye scanning to locate the source, even when I don’t know exactly what I am looking for. On the other hand, searching when you do know what you are looking for (e.g. a reference by a particular author) is much easier digitally.

When books are digitally available, users can download only the selected chapters that are of interest to them. This is valuable if you know just what you want, but there are also dangers. For instance in my book on the strategic management of technology (Bates and Sangrà, 2011), the last chapter summarizes the rest of the book. If the book had been digital, the temptation then would be to just download the final chapter. You’d have all the important messages in the book, right? Well, no. What you would be missing is the evidence for the conclusions. Now the book on strategic management is based on case studies, so it would be really important to check back with how the case studies were interpreted to get to the conclusions, as this will affect the confidence you would have as a reader in the conclusions that were drawn. If just the digital version of only the last chapter is downloaded, you also lose the context of the whole book. Having the whole book gives readers more freedom to interpret and add their own conclusions than just having a summary chapter.

In conclusion, then, there are advantages and disadvantages of digitizing a book, but the essence of a book is not greatly changed when it becomes digital rather than printed.

7.2.2.2 A new niche for books in academia

We have seen historically that new media often do not entirely replace an older medium, but the old medium finds a new ‘niche’. Thus television did not lead to the complete demise of radio. Similarly, I suspect that there will be a continued role for the book in academic knowledge, enabling the book (whether digital or printed) to thrive alongside new media and formats in academia.

However, books that retain their value academically will likely need to be much more specific in their format and their purpose than has been the case to date. For instance, I see no future for books consisting mainly of a collection of loosely connected but semi-independent chapters from different authors, unless there is a strong cohesion and edited presence that provides an integrated argument or consistent set of data across all the chapters. Most of all, books may need to change some of their features, to allow for more interaction and input from readers, and more links to the outside world. It is much more unlikely though that books will survive in a printed format, because digital publication allows for many more features to be added, reduces the environmental footprint, and makes text much more portable and transferable.

Lastly, this is not an argument for ignoring the academic benefits of new media. The value of graphics, video and animation for representing knowledge, the ability to interact asynchronously with other learners, and the value of social networks, are all under-exploited in academia. But text and books are still important.

For another perspective on this, see Clive Shepherd’s blog: Weighing up the benefits of traditional book publishing.

7.2.3 Text and other forms of knowledge

I have focused particularly on text and academic knowledge, because of the traditional importance of text and printed knowledge in academia. The unique pedagogical characteristics of text though may be less for other forms of knowledge. Indeed, multimedia may have many more advantages in vocational and technical education.

In the k-12 or school sector, text and print are likely to remain important, because reading and writing are likely to remain essential in a digital age, so the study of text (digital and printed) will remain important if only for developing literacy skills.

Indeed, one of the limitations of text is that it requires a high level of prior literacy skills for it to be used effectively for teaching and learning, and indeed much of teaching and learning is focused on the development of skills that enable rigorous analysis of textual materials. We should be giving as much attention to developing multimedia literacy skills though in a digital age.

7.2.4 Assessment

If text is critical for the presentation of knowledge and development of skills in your subject area, what are the implications for assessment? If students are expected to develop the skills that text appears to develop, then presumably text will be an important medium for assessment. Students will need to demonstrate their own ability to use text to present abstractions, argument and evidence-based reasoning.

In such contexts, composed textual responses, such as essays or written reports, are likely to be necessary, rather than multiple-choice questions or multimedia reports.

7.2.5 More evidence, please

Although there has been extensive research on the pedagogical features of other media such as audio, video and computing, text has generally been treated as the default mode, the base against which other media are compared. As a result print in particular is largely taken for granted in academia. We are now though at the stage where we need to pay much more attention to the unique characteristics of text in its various formats, in relation to other media. Until though we have more empirical studies on the unique characteristics of text and print, text will remain central to at least academic teaching and learning.

Activity 7.2 Identifying the unique pedagogical characteristics of text

1. Take one of the courses you are teaching. What key presentational aspects of text are important for this course? Is text the best medium for representing knowledge in your subject area; if not, what concepts or topics would be best represented through other media?

2. Look at the skills listed in Section 1.2 of this book. Which of these skills would best be developed through the use of text rather than other media? How would you do this using text-based teaching?

3. What do you think about books for learning? Do you think the book is dead or about to become obsolete? If you think books are still valuable for learning, what changes, if any, do you think should be made to academic books? What would be lost if books were entirely replaced by new media? What would be gained?

4. Under what conditions would it be more appropriate for students to be assessed through written essays and under what conditions would multimedia portfolios be more appropriate for assessment?

5. Can you think of any other unique pedagogical characteristics of text?

References

Although there are many publications on text, in terms of typography, structure, and its historical influence on education and culture, I could find no publications where text is compared with other modern media such as audio or video in terms of its pedagogical characteristics, although Koumi (2015) has written about text in combination with audio, and Albert Manguel’s book is also fascinating reading from an historical perspective.

However, I am sure that my lack of references is due to my lack of scholarship in the area. If you have suggestions for readings, please use the comment box. Also, a study of the unique pedagogical characteristics of text in a digital age might make for a very interesting and valuable Ph.D. thesis.

Koumi, J. (1994) Media comparisons and deployment: a practitioner’s view British Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 25, No. 1.

Koumi, J. (2006). Designing video and multimedia for open and flexible learning. London: Routledge

Koumi, J. (2015) Learning outcomes afforded by self-assessed, segmented video-print combinations Academia.edu (unpublished)

Manguel, A. (1996) A History of Reading London: Harper Collins

53

7.3 Audio

Figure 7.3.1 Image: © InnerFidelity, 2012

Sounds, such as the noise of certain machinery, or the background hum of daily life, have an associative as well as a pure meaning, which can be used to evoke images or ideas relevant to the main substance of what is being taught. There are, in other words, instances where audio is essential for efficiently mediating certain kinds of information.

Durbridge, 1984

7.3.1 Audio: the unappreciated medium

We have seen that oral communication has a long history, and continues today in classroom teaching and in general radio programming. In this section though I am focusing primarily on recorded audio, which I will argue is a very powerful educational medium when used well.

There has been a good deal of research on the unique pedagogical characteristics of audio. At the UK Open University course teams had to bid for media resources to supplement specially designed printed materials. Because media resources were developed initially by the BBC, and hence were limited and expensive to produce, course teams (in conjunction with their allocated BBC producer) had to specify how radio or television would be used to support learning. In particular, the course teams were asked to identify what teaching functions television and radio would uniquely contribute to the teaching. After allocation and development of a course, samples of the programs were evaluated in terms of how well they met these functions, as well as how the students responded to the programming. In later years, the same approach was used when production moved to audio and video cassettes.

This process of identifying unique roles then evaluating the programs allowed the OU, over a period of several years, to identify which roles or functions were particularly appropriate to different media (Bates, 1985). Koumi (2006), himself a former BBC/OU producer, followed up on this research and identified several more key functions for audio and video. Over a somewhat similar period, Richard Mayer, at the University of California at Santa Barbara, was conducting his own research into the use of multimedia in education (Mayer, 2009).

Although there have been continuous developments of audio technology, from audio-cassettes to Sony Walkman’s to podcasts, the pedagogical characteristics of audio have remained remarkably constant over a fairly long period.

7.3.2 Presentational features

Although audio can be used on its own, it is often used in combination with other media, particularly text. On its own, it can present:

spoken language (including foreign languages) for analysis or practice;
music, either as a performance or for analysis;
students with a condensed argument that may:
- reinforce points made elsewhere in the course;
- introduce new points not made elsewhere in the course;
- provide an alternative viewpoint to the perspectives in the rest of the course;
- analyse or critique materials elsewhere in the course;
- summarize or condense the main ideas or major points covered in the course;
- provide new evidence in support of or against the arguments or perspectives covered elsewhere in the course;
interviews with leading researchers or experts;
discussion between two or more people to provide various views on a topic;
primary audio sources, such as bird song, children talking, eye witness accounts, or recorded performances (drama, concerts);
analysis of primary audio sources, by playing the source followed by analysis;
‘breaking news’ that emphasizes the relevance or application of concepts within the course;
the instructor’s personal spin on a topic related to the course.

Audio however has been found to be particularly ‘potent’ when combined with text, because it enables students to use both eyes and ears in conjunction. Audio has been found to be especially useful for:

explaining or ‘talking through’ materials presented through text, such as mathematical equations, reproductions of paintings, graphs, statistical tables, and even physical rock samples.

This technique was later further developed by Salman Khan, but using video to combine voice-over (audio) explanation with visual presentation of mathematical symbols, formulae, and solutions.

7.3.3 Skills development

Because of the ability of the learner to stop and start recorded audio, it has been found to be particularly useful for:

enabling students through repetition and practice to master certain auditory skills or techniques (e.g. language pronunciation, analysis of musical structure, mathematical computation);
getting students to analyse primary audio sources, such as children’s use of language, or attitudes to immigration from recordings of interviewed people;
changing student attitudes by:
- presenting material in a novel or unfamiliar perspective;
- by presenting material in a dramatized form, enabling students to identify with someone with a different perspective.

7.3.4 Strengths and weaknesses of audio as a teaching medium

First, some advantages:

it is much easier to make an audio clip or podcast than a video clip or a simulation;
audio requires far less bandwidth than video or simulations, hence downloads quicker and can be used over relatively low bandwidths;
it is easily combined with other media such as text, mathematical symbols, and graphics, allowing more than one sense to be used and allowing for ‘integration’;
some students prefer to learn by listening compared with reading;
audio combined with text can help develop literacy skills or support students with low levels of literacy;
audio provides variety and another perspective from text, a ‘break’ in learning that refreshes the learner and maintains interest;
Nicola Durbridge, in her research at the Open University, found that audio increased distance students’ feelings of personal ‘closeness’ with the instructor compared with video or text, i.e. it is a more intimate medium.

In particular, added flexibility and learner control means that students will often learn better from preprepared audio recordings combined with accompanying textual material (such as a web site with slides) than they will from a live classroom lecture.

There are also of course disadvantages of audio:

audio-based learning is difficult for people with a hearing disability;
creating audio is extra work for an instructor;
audio is often best used in conjunction with other media such as text or graphics thus adding complexity to the design of teaching;
recording audio requires at least a minimal level of technical proficiency;
spoken language tends to be less precise than text.

Increasingly video is now be used to combine audio over images, such as in the Khan Academy, but there are many instances, such as where students are studying from prescribed texts, where recorded audio works better than a video recording.

So let’s hear it for audio!

Activity 7.3 Identifying the unique pedagogical characteristics of audio

1. Take one of the courses you are teaching. What key presentational aspects of audio could be important for this course?

2. Look at the skills listed in Section 1.2 of this book. Which of these skills would best be developed through the use of audio rather than other media? How would you do this using audio-based teaching?

3. Under what conditions would it be more appropriate for students to be assessed by asking them to make an audio recording? How could this be done under assessment conditions?

4. To what extent do you think redundancy or duplication between different media is a good thing? What are the disadvantages of covering the same topic through different media?

5. Can you think of any other unique pedagogical characteristics of audio?

References and further reading

Bates, A. (1985) Broadcasting in Education: An Evaluation London: Constables (out of print – try a good library)

Bates, A. (2005) Technology, e-Learning and Distance Education London/New York: Routledge

Durbridge, N. (1982) Audio-cassettes in Higher Education Milton Keynes: The Open University (mimeo)

Durbridge, N. (1984) Audio-cassettes, in Bates, A. (ed.) The Role of Technology in Distance Education London/New York: Croom Hill/St Martin’s Press

EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (2005) Seven things you should know about… podcasting Boulder CO: EDUCAUSE, June

Koumi, J. (2006). Designing video and multimedia for open and flexible learning. London: Routledge.

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Postlethwaite, S. N. (1969) The Audio-Tutorial Approach to Learning Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Company

Salmon, G. and Edirisingha, P. (2008) Podcasting for Learning in Universities Milton Keynes: Open University Press

Wright, S. and Haines, R, (1981) Audio-tapes for Teaching Science Teaching at a Distance, Vol. 20 (Open University journal now out of print).

Note: Although some of the Open University publications are not available online, hard copies/pdf files should be available from: The Open University International Centre for Distance Learning, which is now part of the Open University Library.

54

7.4 Video

Figure 9. The Open University on iTunesU

Figure 7.4.1 The Open University on iTunesU (Click to access video)

7.4.1 More power, more complexity

Although there have been massive changes in video technology over the last 25 years, resulting in dramatic reductions in the costs of both creating and distributing video, the unique educational characteristics are largely unaffected. (More recent computer-generated media such as simulations, will be analysed under ‘Computing’, in Section 7.5).

Video is a much richer medium than either text or audio, as in addition to its ability to offer text and sound, it can also offer dynamic or moving pictures. Thus while it can offer all the affordances of audio, and some of text, it also has unique pedagogical characteristics of its own. Once again, there has been considerable research on the use of video in education, and again I will be drawing on research from the Open University (Bates, 1985; 2005; Koumi, 2006) as well as from Mayer (2009).

Click on the links to see examples for many of the characteristics listed below.

7.4.2 Presentational features

Video can be used to:

demonstrate experiments or phenomena, particularly:
- where equipment or phenomena to be observed are large, microscopic, expensive, inaccessible, dangerous, or difficult to observe without special equipment (click to see an example from the University of Nottingham);
- where resources are scarce, or unsuitable for student experimentation (e.g. live animals, human body parts) (click to see an example of the anatomy of the brain, from UBC);
- where the experimental design is complex;
- where the experimental behaviour may be influenced by uncontrollable but observable variables;
illustrate principles involving dynamic change or movement (click to see an example explaining exponential growth from UBC);
illustrate abstract principles through the use of specially constructed physical models;
illustrate principles involving three-dimensional space;
demonstrate changes over time through the use of animation, slow-motion, or speeded-up video (click to see an example of how haemophilus influenzae cells take up DNA, from UBC);
substitute for a field visit, by:
- providing students with an accurate, comprehensive visual picture of a site, in order to place the topic under study in context;
- demonstrating the relationship between different elements of a system under study (e.g. production processes, ecological balance);
- by identifying and distinguishing between different classes or categories of phenomena at the site (e.g. in forest ecology);
- to observe differences in scale and process between laboratory and mass-production techniques;
- through the use of models, animations or simulations, to teach certain advanced scientific or technological concepts (such as theories of relativity or quantum physics) without students having to master highly advanced mathematical techniques;
bring students primary resource or case-study material, i.e. recording of naturally occurring events which, through editing and selection, demonstrate or illustrate principles covered elsewhere in a course;
demonstrate ways in which abstract principles or concepts developed elsewhere in the course have been applied to real-world problems;
synthesise a wide range of variables into a single recorded event, e.g. to suggest how real world problems can be resolved;
demonstrate decision-making processes or decisions ‘in action'(e.g. triage in an emergency situation) by:
- recording the decision-making process as it occurs in real contexts;
- recording ‘staged’ simulations, dramatisation or role-playing;
demonstrate correct procedures in using tools or equipment (including safety procedures);
demonstrate methods or techniques of performance (e.g. mechanical skills such as stripping and re-assembling a carburetor, sketching, drawing or painting techniques, or dance);
record and archive events that are crucial to topics in a course, but which may disappear or be destroyed in the near future, such as, for instance, street graffiti or condemned buildings (click to see an example about neon lights in Vancouver);
demonstrate practical activities to be carried out by students, on their own.

7.4.3 Skills development

This usually requires the video to be integrated with student activities. The ability to stop, rewind and replay video becomes crucial for skills development, as student activity usually takes place separately from the actual viewing of the video. This may mean thinking through carefully activities for students related to the use of video.

If video is not used directly for lecturing, research clearly indicates that students generally need to be guided as to what to look for in video, at least initially in their use of video for learning. There are various techniques for relating concrete events with abstract principles, such as through audio narration over the video, using a still frame to highlight the observation, or repeating a small section of the program. Bates and Gallagher (1977) found that using video for developing higher order analysis or evaluation was a teachable skill that needs to be built into the development of a course or program, to get the best results.

Typical uses of video for skills development include:

enabling students to recognize naturally occurring phenomena or classifications (e.g. classroom teaching strategies, symptoms of mental illness, classroom behaviour) in context;
enabling students to analyse a situation, using principles either introduced in the video recording or covered elsewhere in the course, such as a textbook or lecture;
interpreting artistic performance (e.g. drama, spoken poetry, movies, paintings, sculpture, or other works of art);
analysis of music composition, through the use of musical performance, narration and graphics;
testing the applicability or relevance of abstract concepts or generalisations in real world contexts;
looking for alternative explanations for real world phenomena.

7.4.4 Strengths and weaknesses of video as a teaching medium

One factor that makes video powerful for learning is its ability to show the relationship between concrete examples and abstract principles, with usually the sound track relating the abstract principles to concrete events shown in the video (see, for example: Probability for quantum chemistry, UBC). Video is particularly useful for recording events or situations where it would be too difficult, dangerous, expensive or impractical to bring students to such events.

Thus its main strengths are as follows:

linking concrete events and phenomena to abstract principles and vice versa;
the ability of students to stop and start, so they can integrate activities with video;
providing alternative approaches that can help students having difficulties in learning abstract concepts;
adding substantial interest to a course by linking it to real world issues;
a growing amount of freely available, high quality academic videos;
good for developing some of the higher level intellectual skills and some of the more practical skills needed in a digital age;
the use of low cost cameras and free editing software enables some forms of video to be cheaply produced.

It should also be remembered that in addition to the features listed above, video can incorporate many of the features of audio as well.

The main weaknesses of video are:

many faculty have no knowledge or experience in using video other than for recording lecturing;
there is currently a very limited amount of high quality educational video free for downloading, because the cost of developing high quality educational video that exploits the unique characteristics of the medium is still relatively high. Links also often go dead after a while, affecting the reliability of outsourced video. The availability of free material for educational use will improve over time, but currently finding appropriate and free videos that meet the specific needs of a teacher or instructor can be time-consuming or such material may just not be available or reliable;
creating original material that exploits the unique characteristics of video is time-consuming, and still relatively expensive, because it usually needs professional video production;
to get the most out of educational video, students need specially designed activities that sit outside the video itself;
students often reject videos that require them to do analysis or interpretation; they often prefer direct instruction that focuses primarily on comprehension. Such students need to be trained to use video differently, which requires time to be devoted to developing such skills.

For these reasons, video is not being used enough in education. When used it is often an afterthought or an ‘extra’, rather than an integral part of the design, or is used merely to replicate a classroom lecture, rather than exploiting the unique characteristics of video.

7.4.5 Assessment

If video is being used to develop the skills outlined in Section 7.4.3, then it is essential that these skills are assessed and count for grading. Indeed, one possible means of assessment might be to ask students to analyse or interpret a selected video, or even to develop their own media project, using video they themselves have collected or produced, using their own devices.

Activity 7.4 Identifying the unique pedagogical characteristics of video

1. Take one of the courses you are teaching. What key presentational aspects of video could be important for this course?

2. Look at the skills listed in Section 1.2 of this book. Which of these skills would best be developed through the use of video rather than other media? How would you do this using video-based teaching?

3. Under what conditions would it be more appropriate for students to be assessed by asking them to analyse or make their own video recording? How could this be done under assessment conditions?

4. Type in the name of your topic + video into Google.

How many videos come up?
What’s their quality like?
Could you use any of them in your teaching?
If so, how would you integrate them into your course?
Could you make a better video on the topic?
What would enable you to do this?

Here are some criteria I would apply to what you find:

it is relevant to what you want to teach;
it demonstrates clearly a particular topic or subject and links it to what the student is intended to learn;
it is short and to the point;
the example is well produced (clear camera work, good presenter, clear audio);
it provides something that you could not do easily yourself;
it is freely available for non-commercial use.

I have to say that most of the examples I found on the Internet do NOT meet all of these criteria! The videos I have linked to in this section do, but then some are produced for the Open University. Can traditional university in-house media departments meet this standard?

References

Bates, A. (1985) Broadcasting in Education: An Evaluation London: Constables (out of print – try a good library)

Bates, A. (2005) Technology, e-Learning and Distance Education London/New York: Routledge

Koumi, J. (2006). Designing video and multimedia for open and flexible learning. London: Routledge.

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed). New York: Cambridge University Press.

55

7.5 Computing

Figure 9.5.1 A computer-marked assignment form (University of Western Australia)

Figure 7.5.1 A computer-marked assignment form (University of Western Australia)

7.5.1 A volatile and comprehensive medium

It is debatable whether computing should be considered a medium, but I am using the term broadly, and not in the technical sense of writing code. The Internet in particular is an all-embracing medium that accommodates text, audio, video and computing, as well as providing other elements such as distributed communication and access to educational opportunities. Computing is also still an area that is fast developing, with new products and services emerging all the time. Indeed, I will treat recent developments in social media separately from computing, although technically they are a sub-category. Once again, though, social media contain affordances that are not so prevalent in more conventional computing-based learning environments.

In such a volatile medium, it would be foolish to be dogmatic about unique media characteristics, but once again, the purpose of this chapter is not to provide a definitive analysis, but a way of thinking about technology that will facilitate an instructor’s choice and use of technology. The focus is: what are the pedagogical affordances of computing that are different from those of other media (other than the important fact that it can embrace all the other media characteristics)?

Although there has been a great deal of research into computers in education, there has been less focus on the specifics of its pedagogical media characteristics, although a great deal of interesting research and development has taken place and continues in human-machine interaction and to a lesser extent (in terms of interesting) in artificial intelligence. Thus I am relying more on analysis and experience than research in this section.

7.5.2 Presentational features

Figure 9.5 'Screen size can be a real presentational limitation with smaller, mobile devices'

Figure 7.5.2 Screen size can be a real presentational limitation with smaller, mobile devices

Presentation is not really where the educational strength of computing lies. It can represent text and audio reasonably well, and video less well, because of the limited size of the screen (and video often has to share screen space with text), and the bandwidth/pixels/download time required. Screen size can be a real presentational limitation with smaller, mobile devices, although tablets such as the iPad are a major advance in screen quality. The traditional user interface for computing, such as pull-down menus, cursor screen navigation, touch control, and an algorithmic-based filing or storage system, while all very functional, are not intuitive and can be quite restricting from an educational point of view.

However, unlike the other media, computing enables the end user to interact directly with the medium, to the extent that the end user (in education, the student) can add to, change or interact with the content, at least to a certain extent. In this sense, computing comes closer to a complete, if virtual, learning environment.

Thus in presentational terms computing can be used to:

create and present original teaching content in a rich and varied way (using a combination of text, audio, video and webinars);
enable access to other sources of secondary ‘rich’ content through the Internet;
create and present computer-based animations and simulations;
structure and manage content through the use of web sites, learning management systems and other similar technologies;
with adaptive learning, offer learners alternative routes through learning materials, providing an element of personalisation;
enable students to communicate both synchronously and asynchronously with the instructor and other students;
set multiple-choice tests, automatically mark such tests, and provide immediate feedback to learners;
enable learners digitally to submit written (essay-type), or multimedia (project-based) assignments through the use of e-portfolios;
create virtual worlds or virtual environments/contexts through technology such as Second Life.

7.5.3 Skills development

Skills development in a computing environment will once again depend very much on the epistemological approach to teaching. Computing can be used to focus on comprehension and understanding, through a behaviourist approach to computer-based learning. However, the communications element of computing also enables more constructivist approaches, through online student discussion and student-created multimedia work.

Thus computing can be used (uniquely) to:

develop and test student comprehension of content through computer-based learning/testing;
develop computer coding and other ICT knowledge and skills;
develop decision-making skills through the use of simulations and/or virtual worlds;
develop skills of reasoning, evidence-based argument, and collaboration through instructor-moderated online discussion forums;
enable students to create their own artefacts/online multimedia work through the use of e-portfolios, thus improving their digital communication skills as well as assessing their knowledge;
develop skills of experimental design, through the use of simulations, virtual laboratory equipment and remote labs;
develop skills of knowledge management and problem-solving, by requiring students to find, analyse, evaluate and apply content, accessed through the Internet, to real world problems;
develop spoken and written language skills through both presentation of language and through communication with other students and/or native language speakers via the Internet.

These skills are in addition to the skills that other media can support within a broader computing environment.

7.5.4 Strengths and weaknesses of computing as a teaching medium

Many teachers and instructors avoid the use of computing because they fear it may be used to replace them, or because they believe it results in a very mechanical approach to teaching and learning. This is not helped by misinformed computer scientists, politicians and industry leaders who argue that computers can replace or reduce the need for humans in teaching. Both viewpoints show a misunderstanding of both the sophistication and complexity of teaching and learning, and the flexibility and advantages that computing can bring to teaching.

So here are some of the advantages of computing as a teaching medium:

it is a very powerful teaching medium in terms of its unique pedagogical characteristics, in that it can combine the pedagogical characteristics of text, audio, video and computing in an integrated manner;
its unique pedagogical characteristics are useful for teaching many of the skills learners need in a digital age;
computing enables learners to have more power and choice in accessing and creating their own learning and learning contexts;
it enables learners to interact directly with learning materials and receive immediate feedback, thus, when well designed, increasing the speed and depth of their learning;
it enables anyone with Internet access and a computing device to study or learn at any time or place;
it enables regular and frequent communication between student, instructors and other students;
it is flexible enough to be used to support a wide range of teaching philosophies and approaches;
it can help with some of the ‘grunt’ work in assessment and tracking of student performance, freeing up an instructor to focus on the more complex forms of assessment and interaction with students.

On the other hand, the disadvantages of computing are:

many teachers and instructors often have no training in or awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of computing as a teaching medium;
computing is too often oversold as a panacea for education; it is a powerful teaching medium, but it needs to be managed and controlled by educators;
there is a tendency for computer scientists and engineers to adopt behaviourist approaches to the use of computing, which not only alienates constructivist-oriented teachers and learners, but also underestimates or underuses the true power of computing for teaching and learning;
despite computing’s power as a teaching medium, there are other aspects of teaching and learning that require the personal interaction of a student and teacher (see Chapter 4, Section 4 and Chapter 11, Section 10). These aspects are probably less than many teachers believe, but more than many advocates of computer learning understand;
computing needs the input and management of teachers and educators, and to some extent learners, to determine the conditions under which computing can best operate as a teaching medium; and teachers need to be in control of the decisions on when and how to use computing for teaching and learning;
to use computing well, teachers need to work closely with other specialists, such as instructional designers and IT staff.

The issue around the value of computing as a medium for teaching is less about its pedagogical value and more about control. Because of the complexity of teaching and learning, it is essential that the use of computing for teaching and learning is controlled and managed by educators. As long as teachers and instructors have control, and have the necessary knowledge and training about the pedagogical advantages and limitations of computing, then computing is an essential medium for teaching in a digital age.

7.5.5 Assessment

There is a tendency to focus assessment in computing on multiple choice questions and ‘correct’ answers. Although this form of assessment has its value in assessing comprehension and for testing a limited range of mechanical procedures, computing also supports a wider range of assessment techniques, from learner-created blogs and wikis to e-portfolios. These more flexible forms of computer-based assessment are more in alignment with measuring the knowledge and skills that many learners will need in a digital age.

Activity 7.5 Identifying the unique pedagogical characteristics of computing

1. Take one of the courses you are teaching. What key presentational aspects of computing could be important for this course?

2. Look at the skills listed in Section 1.2 of this book. Which of these skills would best be developed through the use of computing rather than other media? How would you do this using computer-based teaching?

3. Under what conditions would it be more appropriate in any of your courses for students to be assessed by asking them to create their own multimedia project portfolios rather than through a written exam? What assessment conditions would be necessary to ensure the authenticity of a student’s work? Would this form of assessment be extra work for you?

4. What are the main barriers to your using computing more in your teaching? Philosophical? Practical? Lack of training or confidence in technology use? Or lack of institutional support? What could be done to remove some of these barriers?

56

7.6 Social media

Figure 7.6 The range of social media in 2010 Image: © Abhijit Kadle, Upside Learning, 2010

Figure 7.6.1 The range of social media in 2010
Image: © Abhijit Kadle, Upside Learning, 2010

Although social media are mainly Internet-based and hence a sub-category of computing, there are enough significant differences between educational social media use and computer-based learning or online collaborative learning to justify treating social media as a separate medium, although of course they are dependent and often fully integrated with other forms of computing. The main difference is in the extent of control over learning that social media offer to learners.

7.6.1 What are social media?

Around 2005, a new range of web tools began to find their way into general use, and increasingly into educational use. These can be loosely described as social media, as they reflect a different culture of web use from the former ‘centre-to-periphery’ push of institutional web sites.

Here are some of the tools and their uses (there are many more possible examples: click on each example for an educational application):

Figure 7.6.2 Examples of social media (adapted from Bates, 2011, p.25)

Type of tool	Example	Application
Blogs	Stephen’s Web Online Learning and Distance Education Resources	Allows an individual to make regular postings to the web, e.g. a personal diary or an analysis of current events
Wikis	Wikipedia UBC’s Math Exam Resources	An “open” collective publication, allowing people to contribute or create a body of information
Social networking	FaceBook LinkedIn	A social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and interact with them
Multi-media archives	Podcasts You-Tube Flikr iTunes U e-portfolios MIT Open CourseWare	Allows end users to access, store, download and share audio recordings, photographs, and videos
Virtual worlds	Second Life	Real-time semi-random connection/ communication with virtual sites and people
Multi-player games	Lord of the Rings Online	Enables players to compete or collaborate against each other or a third party/parties represented by the computer, usually in real time
Mobile learning	Mobile phones and apps	Enables users to access multiple information formats (voice, text, video, etc.) at any time, any place

The main feature of social media is that they empower the end user to access, create, disseminate and share information easily in a user-friendly, open environment. Usually the only cost is the time of the end-user. There are often few controls over content, other than those normally imposed by a state or government (such as libel or pornography), or where there are controls, they are imposed by the users themselves. One feature of such tools is to empower the end-user – the learner or customer – to self-access and manage data (such as online banking) and to form personal networks (for example through FaceBook). For these reasons, some have called social media the ‘democratization’ of the web.

In general social media tools are based on very simple software, in that they have relatively few lines of code. As a result, new tools and applications (‘apps’) are constantly emerging, and their use is either free or very low cost. For a good broad overview of the use of social media in education, see Lee and McCoughlin (2011).

7.6.2 General affordances of social media

The concept of ‘affordances’ is frequently used in discussions of social media. McLoughlin & Lee (2011) identify the following ‘affordances’ associated with social media (although they use the term web 2.0) in general:

connectivity and social rapport;
collaborative information discovery and sharing;
content creation;
knowledge and information aggregation and content modification.

However, we need to specify more directly the unique pedagogical characteristics of social media.

7.6.3 Presentational characteristics

Social media enable:

networked multimedia communication between self-organising groups of learners;
access to rich, multimedia content available over the Internet at any time or place (with Internet connection);
learner-generated multimedia materials;
opportunities to expand learning beyond ‘closed’ courses and institutional boundaries.

7.6.4 Skills development

Social media,when well designed within an educational framework, can help with the development of the following skills (click on each to see examples):

digital literacy;
independent and self-directed learning;
collaboration/collaborative learning/teamwork;
internationalisation/development of global citizens;
networking and other inter-personal skills;
knowledge management;
decision-making in specific contexts (for example, emergency management, law enforcement).

7.6.5 Strengths and weaknesses of social media

Some of the advantages of social media are as follows:

they can be extremely useful for developing some of the key skills needed in a digital age;
they can enable teachers to set online group work, based on cases or projects, and students can collect data in the field using social media such as mobile phones or iPads;
learners can post media-rich assignments either individually or as a group;
these assignments when assessed can be loaded by the learner into their own personal learning environment or e-portfolios for later use when seeking employment or transfer to graduate school;
learners can take more control over their own learning, as we have seen in connectivist MOOCs in Chapter 5;
through the use of blogs and wikis, courses and learning can be thrown open to the world, adding richness and wider perspectives to learning.

However, many students are not, at least initially, independent learners (see Candy, 1991). Many students come to a learning task without the necessary skills or confidence to study independently from scratch (Moore and Thompson, 1990). They need structured support, structured and selected content, and recognized accreditation. The advent of new tools that give students more control over their learning will not necessarily change their need for a structured educational experience. However, learners can be taught the skills needed to become independent learners (Moore, 1973; Marshall and Rowland, 1993). Social media can make the learning of how to learn much more effective but still only in most cases within an initially structured environment.

The use of social media raises the inevitable issue of quality. How can learners differentiate between reliable, accurate, authoritative information, and inaccurate, biased or unsubstantiated information, if they are encouraged to roam free? What are the implications for expertise and specialist knowledge, when everyone has a view on everything? As Andrew Keen (2007) has commented, ‘we are replacing the tyranny of experts with the tyranny of idiots.’ Not all information is equal, nor are all opinions.

These are key challenges for the digital age, but as well as being part of the problem, social media can also be part of the solution. Teachers can consciously use social media for the development of knowledge management and the responsible use of social media, but the development of such knowledge and skills through the use of social media will need a teacher-supported environment. Many students look for structure and guidance in their learning, and it is the responsibility of teachers to provide it. We therefore need a middle ground between the total authority and control of the teacher, and the complete anarchy of the children roaming free on a desert island in the novel “Lord of the Flies” (Golding, 1954). Social media allow for such a middle ground, but only if as teachers we have a clear pedagogy or educational philosophy to guide our choices and use of the technology.

For more on social media, see Chapter 8, Section 8.

Activity 7.6 Identifying the unique pedagogical characteristics of social media

1. Take one of your courses, and analyse how social media could be used in your course. In particular:

what new learning outcomes could the use of social media help develop?
would it be better just to add social media to the course or to re-design it around social media?

2. I have offered only a cursory list of the unique pedagogical characteristics of social media. Can you think of others that have not already been covered in other parts of this chapter?

3. How does this chapter influence your views on students bringing their own devices to class?

4. Are you (still) skeptical about the value of social media in education? What do you see as its downsides?

Please use the comment box to share your answers.

References

Bates, T. (2011) ‘Understanding Web 2.0 and Its Implications for e-Learning’ in Lee, M. and McCoughlin, C. (eds.) Web 2.0-Based E-Learning Hershey NY: Information Science Reference

Candy, P. (1991) Self-direction for lifelong learning San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Golding, W. (1954) The Lord of the Flies London: Faber and Faber

Keen, A. (2007) The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture New York/London: Doubleday

Lee, M. and McCoughlin, C. (eds.) Web 2.0-Based E-Learning Hershey NY: Information Science Reference

Marshall, L and Rowland, F. (1993) A Guide to learning independently Buckingham UK: Open University Press

McCoughlin, C. and Lee, M. (2011) ‘Pedagogy 2.0: Critical Challenges and Responses to Web 2.0 and Social Software in Tertiary Teaching’, in Lee, M. and McCoughlin, C. (eds.) Web 2.0-Based E-Learning Hershey NY: Information Science Reference

Moore, M. and Thompson, M. (1990) The Effects of Distance Education: A Summary of the Literature University Park, PA: American Center for Distance Education, Pennsylvania State University

57

7.7 A framework for analysing the pedagogical characteristics of educational media

I will now summarise the unique pedagogical characteristics of the different media discussed in this chapter.

Figure 7.7 presents a diagrammatic analysis of various online learning tools. I have arranged them primarily by where they fit along an epistemological continuum of objectivist (black), constructivist (blue) and connectivist (red), but also I have used two other dimensions, teacher control/learner control, and credit/non-credit. Note that this figure also enables traditional teaching modes, such as lectures and seminars, to be included and compared.

Figure 9.5.5.5 Analysis of social media from an educational perspective (adapted from Bates, 2011)

Figure 7.7 Analysis of media from an educational perspective (adapted from Bates, 2011)

Figure 7.7 represents my personal interpretation of the tools, and other teachers or instructors may well re-arrange the diagram differently, depending on their particular applications of these tools. Not all tools or media are represented here (for example, audio and video). The position of any particular tool in the diagram will depend on its actual use. Learning management systems can be used in a constructivist way, and blogs can be very teacher-controlled, if the teacher is the only one permitted to use a blog on a course. However, the aim here is not to provide a cast-iron categorization of educational media, but to provide a framework for teachers in deciding which tools and media are most likely to suit a particular teaching approach. Indeed, other teachers may prefer a different set of pedagogical values as a framework for analysis of the different media and technologies.

However, to give an example from Figure 7.7, a teacher may use an LMS to organize a set of resources, guidelines, procedures and deadlines for students, who then may use several of the social media, such as photos from mobile phones to collect data. The teacher provides a space and structure on the LMS for students’ learning materials in the form of an e-portfolio, to which students can load their work. Students in small groups can use discussion forums or FaceBook to work on projects together.

The example above is in the framework of a course for credit, but the framework would also fit the non-institutional or informal approach to the use of social media for learning, with a focus on tools such as FaceBook, blogs and YouTube. These applications would be much more learner driven, with the learner deciding on the tools and their uses. The most powerful examples are connectivist or cMOOCs, as we saw in Chapter 5.

Activity 7.7 Choosing media for a teaching module

1. Take a module or main topic of a course you are teaching. Identify the key learning outcomes then the content area to be covered.

2. Then look through the key characteristics of each of the media in this chapter, and think how each medium might be used to teach your module. Use your analysis from Activities 7.2 to 7.6. Make a list of the functions you have chosen and their relationship to content and skills in the module.

3. Using Figure 7.7, allocate a range of tools and media that you might consider using and place them on the continuum.

4. Are you still happy with your choice?

Don’t worry – we haven’t finished yet. The next chapter will provide a way to make decisions on a more realistic basis. The main purpose here is to get you thinking about possible uses of different media in your subject area.

Key Takeaways

There is a very wide range of media available for teaching and learning. In particular:

text, audio, video, computing and social media all have unique characteristics that make them useful for teaching and learning;
the choice or combination of media will need to be determined by:
- the overall teaching philosophy behind the teaching;
- the presentational and structural requirements of the subject matter or content;
- the skills that need to be developed in learners;
- and not least by the imagination of the teacher or instructor (and increasingly learners themselves) in identifying possible roles for different media;
learners now have powerful tools through social media for creating their own learning materials or for demonstrating their knowledge;
courses can be structured around individual students’ interests, allowing them to seek appropriate content and resources to support the development of negotiated competencies or learning outcomes;.
content is now increasingly open and freely available over the Internet; as a result learners can seek, use and apply information beyond the bounds of what a professor or teacher may dictate;
students can create their own online personal learning environments;
many students will still need a structured approach that guides their learning;
teacher presence and guidance is likely to be necessary to ensure high quality learning via social media;
teachers need to find the middle ground between complete learner freedom and over-direction to enable learners to develop the key skills needed in a digital age.

8

Chapter 8: Choosing and using media in education: the SECTIONS model

Purpose of the chapter

The main purpose of this chapter is to provide a framework for making effective decisions about the choice and use of media for teaching and learning. The framework used is the SECTIONS model, which stands for:

S tudents
E ase of use
C osts
T eaching functions
I nteraction
O rganisational issues
N etworking
S ecurity and privacy

On completion of this chapter, you should be able to choose appropriate media and technology for any subject that you may be teaching, and be able to justify your decision.

What is covered in this chapter

Also in this chapter you will find the following activities:

Activity 8.1 Making a preliminary decision on media selection
Activity 8.2 Knowing your students
Activity 8.4 How will cost affect your decision about what media to use?
Activity 8.5 Multimedia design principles
Activity 8.6 Using media to promote student activity
Activity 8.10 Choosing media and technologies

Key Takeaways

1. Selecting media and technologies is a complex process, involving a very wide range of interacting variables.

2. There is currently no adequate theory or process for media selection. The SECTIONS model however provides a set of criteria or questions the result of which can help inform an instructor when making decisions about which media or technologies to use.

3. Because of the wide range of factors influencing media selection and use, an inductive or intuitive approach to decision-making, but informed by a careful analysis of all the criteria in the SECTIONS framework, is one practical way to approach decision-making about media and technologies for teaching and learning.

58

8.1 Models for media selection

Figure 8 The SECTIONS model

8.1.1 What the literature tells us

Given the importance of the topic, there is relatively little literature on how to choose appropriate media or technologies for teaching. There was a flurry of not very helpful publications on this topic in the 1970s and 1980s, but relatively little since (Baytak, undated). Indeed, Koumi (1994) stated that:

there does not exist a sufficiently practicable theory for selecting media appropriate to given topics, learning tasks and target populations . . . the most common practice is not to use a model at all. In which case, it is no wonder that allocation of media has been controlled more by practical economic and human/political factors than by pedagogic considerations (p. 56).

Mackenzie (2002) comments in a similar vein:

When I am discussing the current state of technology with teachers around the country, it becomes clear that they feel bound by their access to technology, regardless of their situation. If a teacher has a television-computer setup, then that is what he or she will use in the classroom. On the other hand, if there is an LCD projector hooked up to a teacher demonstration station in a fully equipped lab, he or she will be more apt to use that set up. Teachers have always made the best of whatever they’ve got at hand, but it’s what we have to work with. Teachers make due.

Mackenzie (2002) has suggested building technology selection around Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory (Gardner, 1983, 2006), following the following sequence of decisions:

learner → teaching objective → intelligences → media choice.

Mackenzie then allocates different media to support the development of each of Gardner’s intelligences. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences has been widely tested and adopted, and Mackenzie’s allocations of media to intelligences make sense intuitively, but of course it is dependent on teachers and instructors applying Gardner’s theory to their teaching.

A review of more recent publications on media selection suggests that despite the rapid developments in media and technology over the last 20 years, my ACTIONS model (Bates, 1995) is one of the major models still being applied, although with further amendments and additions (see for instance, Baytak, undated; Lambert and Williams, 1999; Koumi, 2006). Indeed, I myself modified the ACTIONS model, which was developed for distance education, to the SECTIONS model to cover the use of media in campus-based as well as distance education (Bates and Poole, 2003).

Patsula (2002) developed a model called CASCOIME which includes some of the criteria in the Bates models, but also adds additional and valuable criteria such as socio-political suitability, cultural friendliness, and openness/flexibility, to take into account international perspectives. Zaied (2007) conducted an empirical study to test what criteria for media selection were considered important by faculty, IT specialists and students, and identified seven criteria. Four of these matched or were similar to Bates’ criteria. The other three were student satisfaction, student self-motivation and professional development, which are more like conditions for success and are not really easy to identify before making a decision.

Koumi (2006) and Mayer (2009) have come closest to to developing models of media selection. Mayer has developed twelve principles of multimedia design based on extensive research, resulting in what Mayer calls a cognitive theory of multimedia learning. (For an excellent application of Mayer’s theory, see UBC Wikis.) Koumi (2015) more recently has developed a model for deciding on the best mix and use of video and print to guide the design of xMOOCs.

Mayer’s approach is valuable at a more micro-level when it comes to designing specific multimedia educational materials, as is Koumi’s work. Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia design suggests the best combination of words and images, and rules to follow such as ensuring coherence and avoiding cognitive overload. When deciding to use a specific application of multimedia, it provides very strong guidelines. It is nevertheless more difficult to apply at a macro level. Because Mayer’s focus is on cognitive processing, his theory does not deal directly with the unique pedagogical affordances or characteristics of different media. Neither Mayer nor Koumi address non-pedagogical issues in media selection, such as cost or access. Mayer and Koumi’s work is not so much competing as complementary to what I am proposing. I am trying to identify which media (or combinations of media) to use in the first place. Mayer’s theory then would guide the actual design of the application. I will discuss Mayer’s twelve principles further in Section 5 of this chapter, which deals with teaching functions.

It is not surprising that there are not many models for media selection. The models developed in the 1970s and 1980s took a very reductionist, behaviourist approach to media selection, resulting in often several pages of decision-trees, which are completely impractical to apply, given the realities of teaching, and yet these models still included no recognition of the unique affordances of different media. More importantly, technology is subject to rapid change, there are competing views on appropriate pedagogical approaches to teaching, and the context of learning varies so much. Finding a practical, manageable model founded on research and experience that can be widely applied has proved to be challenging.

8.1.2 Why we need a model

At the same time, every teacher, instructor, and increasingly learner, needs to make decisions in this area, often on a daily basis. A model for technology selection and application is needed therefore that has the following characteristics:

it will work in a wide variety of learning contexts;
it allows decisions to be taken at both a strategic, institution-wide level, and at a tactical, instructional, level;
it gives equal attention to educational and operational issues;
it will identify critical differences between different media and technologies, thus enabling an appropriate mix to be chosen for any given context;
it is easily understood, pragmatic and cost-effective;
it will accommodate new developments in technology.

For these reasons, then, I will continue to use the Bates’ SECTIONS model, with some modifications to take account of recent developments in technology, research and theory. The SECTIONS model is based on research, has stood the test of time, and has been found to be practical. SECTIONS stands for:

S tudents
E ase of use
C ost
T eaching functions, including pedagogical affordances of media
I nteraction
O rganizational issues
N etworking
S ecurity and privacy

I will discuss each of these criteria in the following sections, and will then suggest how to apply the model.

Activity 8.1 Making a preliminary decision on media selection

1. Choose a course that you are teaching or may be teaching. Identify what media or technologies you might be interested in using. Keep a note of your decision and your reasons for your choice of media/technologies.

When you have finished reading this chapter you will be asked to do a final activity (Activity 8.10) and then you can compare your answers in the two activities after reading the whole chapter.

References

Bates, A. (1995) Teaching, Open Learning and Distance Education London/New York: Routledge

Bates, A. and Poole, G. (2003) Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/John Wiley and Son

Baytak, A.(undated) Media selection and design: a case in distance education Academia.edu

Gardner, H. (1983) Frame of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences New York: Basic Books

Gardner, H. (2006) Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons and Theory in Practice New York: Basic Books

Koumi, J. (1994). Media comparisons and deployment: A practitioner’s view. British Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 25, No. 1

Koumi, J. (2006). Designing video and multimedia for open and flexible learning. London: Routledge.

Lambert, S. and Williams R. (1999) A model for selecting educational technologies to improve student learning Melbourne, Australia: HERDSA Annual International Conference, July

Mackenzie, W. (2002) Multiple Intelligences and Instructional Technology: A Manual for Every Mind. Eugene, Oregon: ISTE

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia Learning (2nd ed). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Nel, C., Dreyer, C. and Carstens (2001) Educational Technologies: A Classification and Evaluation Journal for Language Teaching Vol. 35, No. 4

Patsula, P. (2002) Practical guidelines for selecting media: An international perspective The Useableword Monitor, February 1

UBC Wikis (2014)Documentation: Design Principles for Multimedia Vancouver BC: University of British Columbia

Zaied, A. (2007) A Framework for Evaluating and Selecting Learning Technologies The International Arab Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 4, No. 2

59

8.2 Students

: Figure 8.2 The Malaysian Ministry of Education announced in 2012 that it will enable students to bring handphones to schools under strict guidelines
Image: © NewStraightsTimes, 2012

The first criteria in the SECTIONS model is students.

At least three issues related to students need to be considered when choosing media and technology:

student demographics;
access; and
differences in how students learn.

8.2.1 Student demographics

One of the fundamental changes resulting from mass higher education is that university and college teachers must now teach an increasingly diverse range of students. This increasing diversity of students presents major challenges for all teachers, not just post-secondary teachers. However, it has been less common for instructors at a post-secondary level to vary their approach within a single course to accommodate to learner differences, but the increasing diversity of students now requires that all courses should be developed with a wide variety of approaches and ways to learn if all students in the course are to be taught well.

In particular, it is important to be clear about the needs of the target group. First and second year students straight from high school are likely to require more support and help studying at a university or college level. They are likely to be less independent as learners, and therefore it may be a mistake to expect them to be able to study entirely through the use of technology. However, technology may be useful as a support for classroom teaching, especially if it provides an alternative approach to learning from the face-to-face teaching, and is gradually introduced, to prepare them for more independent study later in a program.

On the other hand, for students who have already been through higher education as a campus student, but are now in the workforce, a program delivered entirely by technology at a distance is likely to be attractive. Such students will have already developed successful study skills, will have their own community and family life, and will welcome the flexibility of studying this way.

Third and fourth year undergraduate students may appreciate a mix of classroom-based and online study or even one or two fully online courses, especially if some of their face-to-face classes are closed to further enrolments, or if students are working part-time to help cover some of the costs of being at college.

Lastly, within any single class or group of learners, there will be a wide range of differences in prior knowledge, language skills, and preferred study styles. The intelligent use of media and technology can help accommodate these differences. So, once again, it is important to know your students, and to keep this in mind when making decisions about what media or technology to use. This will be discussed further in Chapter 9.

8.2.2 Access

Of all the criteria in determining choice of technology, this is perhaps the most discriminating. No matter how powerful in educational terms a particular medium or technology may be, if students cannot access it in a convenient and affordable manner they cannot learn from it. Thus video streaming may be considered a great way to get lectures to students off campus, but if they do not have Internet access at home, or if it takes four hours or a day’s wages to download, then forget it. Difficulty of access is a particular restriction on using xMOOCs in developing countries. Even if potential learners have Internet or mobile phone access, which 5 billion still do not, it often costs a day’s wages to download a single YouTube video – see Marron, Missen and Greenberg, 2014.

Any teacher or instructor intending to use computers, tablets or mobile phones for teaching purposes needs answers to a number of questions:

what is the institutional policy with regard to students’ access to a computer, tablets or mobile phones?
can students use any device or is there a limited list of devices that the institution will support?
is the medium or software chosen for teaching compatible with all makes of devices students might use?
is the network adequate to support any extra students that this initiative will add?
who else in the institution needs to know that you are requiring students to use particular devices?

If students are expected to provide their own devices (which increasingly makes sense):

what kind of device do they need: one at home with Internet access or a portable that they can bring on to campus – or one that can be used both at home and on campus?
what kind of applications will they need to run on their device(s) for study purposes?
will they be able to use the same device(s) across all courses, or will they need different software/apps and devices for different courses?
what skills will students need in operating the devices and the apps that will be run on them?
if students do not have the skills, would it still be worth their learning them, and will there be time set aside in the course for them to learn these skills?

Students (as well as the instructor) need to know the answers to these questions before they enrol in a course or program. In order to answer these questions, you and your department must know what students will use their devices for. There is no point in requiring students to go to the expense of purchasing a laptop computer if the work they are required to do on it is optional or trivial. This means some advance planning on your part:

what are the educational advantages that you see in student use of a particular device?
what will students need to do on the device in your course?
is it really essential for them to use a device in these ways, or could they easily manage without the device? In particular, how will assessment be linked to the use of the device?

It will really help if your institution has good policies in place for student technology access (see Section 8.7). If the institution does not have clear policies or infrastructure for supporting the technologies you want to use, then your job is going to be a lot harder.

The answer to the question of access and the choice of technology will also depend somewhat on the mandate of the institution and your personal educational goals. For instance, highly selective universities can require students to use particular devices, and can help the relatively few students who have financial difficulties in purchasing and using specified devices. If though the mandate of the institution is to reach learners denied access to conventional institutions, equity groups, the unemployed, the working poor, or workers needing up-grading or more advanced education and training, then it becomes critical to find out what technology they have access to or are willing to use. If an institution’s policy is open access to anyone who wants to take its courses, the availability of equipment already in the home (usually purchased for entertainment purposes) becomes of paramount importance.

Another important factor to consider is access for student with disabilities. This may mean providing textual or audio options for deaf and visually impaired students respectively. Fortunately there are now well established practices and standards under the general heading of Universal Design standards. Universal Design is defined as follows:

Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, refers to the deliberate design of instruction to meet the needs of a diverse mix of learners. Universally designed courses attempt to meet all learners’ needs by incorporating multiple means of imparting information and flexible methods of assessing learning. UDL also includes multiple means of engaging or tapping into learners’ interests. Universally designed courses are not designed with any one particular group of students with a disability in mind, but rather are designed to address the learning needs of a wide-ranging group.

Brokop, F. (2008)

Most institutions with a centre for supporting teaching and learning will be able to provide assistance to faculty to ensure the course meets universal design standards. BCcampus has a very useful guide for preparing web-based materials that meet accessibility standards. Norquest College and eCampus Alberta have published a more detailed guide to ensuring online materials are accessible for persons with disabilities.

8.2.3 Student differences with respect to learning with technologies

It may seem obvious that different students will have different preferences for different kinds of technology or media. The design of teaching would cater for these differences. Thus if students are ‘visual’ learners, they would be provided with diagrams and illustrations. If they are auditory learners, they will prefer lectures and podcasts. It might appear then that identifying dominant learning styles should then provide strong criteria for media and technology selection. However, it is not as simple as that.

McLoughlin (1999), in a thoughtful review of the implications of the research literature on learning styles for the design of instructional material, concluded that instruction could be designed to accommodate differences in both cognitive-perceptual learning styles and Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning cycle. In a study of new intakes conducted over several years at the University of Missouri-Columbia, using the Myers-Briggs inventory, Schroeder (1993) found that new students think concretely, and are uncomfortable with abstract ideas and ambiguity.

However, a major function of a university education is to develop skills of abstract thinking, and to help students deal with complexity and uncertainty. Perry (1984) found that learning in higher education is a developmental process. It is not surprising then that many students enter college or university without such ‘academic’ skills. Indeed, there are major problems in trying to apply learning styles and other methods of classifying learner differences to media and technology selection and use. Laurillard (2001) makes the point that looking at learning styles in the abstract is not helpful. Learning has to be looked at in context. Thinking skills in one subject area do not necessarily transfer well to another subject area. There are ways of thinking that are specific to different subject areas. Thus logical-rational thinkers in science do not necessarily make thoughtful husbands, or good literary critics.

Part of a university education is to understand and possibly challenge predominant modes of thinking in a subject area. While learner-centered teaching is important, students need to understand the inherent logic, standards, and values of a subject area. They also need to be challenged, and encouraged to think outside the box. This may clash with their preferred learning style. Indeed, the research on the effectiveness of matching instructional method to learning styles is at best equivocal. For instance, Dziuban et al. (2000), at the University of Central Florida, applied Long’s reactive behavior analysis of learning styles to students in both face-to-face classes and Web-based online classes. They found that learning style does not appear to be a predictor of who withdraws from online courses, nor were independent learners likely to do better online than other kinds of learners.

The limitation of learning styles as a guide to designing courses does not mean we should ignore student differences, and we should certainly start from where the student is. In particular, at a university level we need strategies to gradually move students from concrete learning based on personal experience to abstract, reflective learning that can then be applied to new contexts and situations. Technology can be particularly helpful for that, as we saw in Chapter 7.

Thus when designing courses, it is important to offer a range of options for student learning within the same course. One way to do this is to make sure that a course is well structured, with relevant ‘core’ information easily available to all students, but also to make sure that there are opportunities for students to seek out new or different content. This content should be available in a variety of media such as text, diagrams, and video, with concrete examples explicitly related to underlying principles. We shall see in Chapter 10 that the increasing availability of open educational resources makes the provision of this ‘richness’ of possible content much more viable.

Similarly, technology enables a range of learner activities to be made available, such as researching readings on the Web, online discussion forums, synchronous presentations, assessment through e-portfolios, and online group work. The range of activities increases the likelihood that a variety of learner preferences are being met, and also encourages learners to involve themselves in activities and approaches to learning where they may initially feel less comfortable. Such approaches to design are more likely to be effective than courses in multiple versions developed to meet different learning styles. In any case developing multiple versions of courses for different styles of learner is likely to be impractical in most cases. So avoid trying to match different media to different learning styles but instead ensure that students have a wide range of media (text, audio, video, computing) within a course or program.

Lastly, one should be careful in the assumptions made about student preferences for learning through digital technologies. On the one hand, technology ‘boosters’ such as Mark Prensky and Don Tapscott argue that today’s ‘digital natives’ are different from previous generations of students. They argue that today’s students live within a networked digital universe and therefore expect their learning also to be all digitally networked. It is also true that professors in particular tend to underestimate students’ access to advanced technologies (professors are often late adopters of new technology), so you should always try to find up-to-date information on what devices and technologies students are currently using, if you can.

On the other hand, it is also dangerous to assume that all students are highly ‘digital literate’ and are demanding that new technologies should be used in teaching. Jones and Shao (2011) conducted a thorough review of the literature on ‘digital natives’, with over 200 appropriate references, including surveys of relevant publications from countries in Europe, Asia, North America, Australia and South Africa. They concluded that:

students vary widely in their use and knowledge of digital media;
the gap between students and their teachers in terms of digital literacy is not fixed, nor is the gulf so large that it cannot be bridged;
there is little evidence that students enter university with demands for new technologies that teachers and universities cannot meet;
students will respond positively to changes in teaching and learning strategies that include the use of new technologies that are well conceived, well explained and properly embedded in courses and degree programmes. However there is no evidence of a pent-up demand amongst students for changes in pedagogy or of a demand for greater collaboration;
the development of university infrastructure, technology policies and teaching objectives should be choices about the kinds of provision that the university wishes to make and not a response to general statements about what a new generation of students are demanding;
the evidence indicates that young students do not form a generational cohort and they do not express consistent or generationally organised demands.

Graduating students that have been interviewed about learning technologies at the University of British Columbia made it clear that they will be happy to use technology for learning so long as it contributes to their success (in the words of one student, ‘if it will get me better grades’) but the students also made it clear that it was the instructor’s responsibility to decide what technology was best for their studies.

It is also important to pay attention to what Jones and Shao are not saying. They are not saying that social media, personal learning environments, or collaborative learning are inappropriate, nor that the needs of students and the workforce are unchanging or unimportant, but the use of these tools or approaches should be driven by a holistic look at the needs of all students, the needs of the subject area, and the learning goals relevant to a digital age, and not by an erroneous view of what a particular generation of students are demanding.

In summary, one great advantage of the intelligent application of technology to teaching is that it provides opportunities for students to learn in a variety of ways, thus adapting the teaching more easily to student differences. Thus, the first step in media selection is to know your students, their similarities and differences, what technologies they already have access to, and what digital skills they already possess or lack that may be relevant for your courses. This is likely to require the use of a wide range of media within the teaching.

8.2.4 The information you need about your students

It is critical to know your students. In particular, you need the following information to provide an appropriate context for decisions about media and technology:

1. What is the mandate or policy of your institution, department or program with respect to access? How will students who do not have access to a chosen technology be supported?

2. What are the likely demographics of the students you will be teaching? How appropriate is the technology you are thinking of using for these students?

3. If your students are to be taught at least partly off campus, to which technologies are they likely to have convenient and regular access at home or work?

4. If students are to be taught at least partly on campus, what is – or should be – your or your department’s policy with regard to students’ access to devices in class?

5. What digital skills do you expect your students to have before they start the program?

6. If students are expected to provide their own access to technology, will you be able to provide unique teaching experiences that will justify the purchase or use of such technology?

7. What prior approaches to learning are the students likely to bring to your program? How suitable are such prior approaches to learning likely to be to the way you need to teach the course? How could technology be used to cater for student differences in learning?

There are many different ways to get the information needed to answer these questions. In many cases, you will still have to make decisions on insufficient evidence, but the more accurate information you have about your potential students, the better your likely choice of media and technology. Almost certainly, though, you will have a variety and diversity of students, so the design of your teaching will need to accommodate this.

Activity 8.2: Knowing your students

How many of these questions can you answer off the top of your head?

What additional information do you need, and where can you find it?

References

BCcampus and CAPER-BC (2015) B.C. Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit Victoria BC: BCcampus.

Brokop, F. (2008) Accessibility to E-Learning for Persons With Disabilities: Strategies, Guidelines, and Standards Edmonton AB: NorQuest College/eCampus Alberta

Dziuban, C. et al. (2000) Reactive behavior patterns go online The Journal of Staff, Program and Organizational Development, Vol. 17, No.3

Jones, C. and Shao, B. (2011) The Net Generation and Digital Natives: Implications for Higher Education Milton Keynes: Open University/Higher Education Academy

Kolb. D. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the source of learning and development Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall

Laurillard, D. (2001) Rethinking University Teaching: A Conversational Framework for the Effective Use of Learning Technologies New York/London: Routledge

Marron, D. Missen, C. and Greenberg, J. (2014) “Lo-Fi to Hi-Fi”: A New Way of Conceptualizing Metadata in Underserved Areas with the eGranary Digital Library Austin TX: International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications

McCoughlin, C. (1999) The implictions of the research literature on learning styles for the design of instructional material Australian Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 15, No. 3

NorQuest College (2008) Accessibility to E-Learning for Persons With Disabilities: Strategies, Guidelines, and Standards Edmonton AB: ECampusAlberta

Perry, W. (1970) Forms of intellectual development and ethical development in the college years: a scheme New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston

Prensky, M. (2001) ‘Digital natives, Digital Immigrants’ On the Horizon Vol. 9, No. 5

Schroeder, C. (1993) New students – new learning styles, Change, Sept.-Oct

60

8.3 Ease of Use

Figure 8.5.2 Reliability is important! Image: © pixgood.com

Figure 8.3 Reliability is important!
Image: © pixgood.com

In most cases, the use of technology in teaching is a means, not an end. Therefore it is important that students and teachers do not have to spend a great deal of time on learning how to use educational technologies, or on making the technologies work. The exceptions of course are where technology is the area of study, such as computer science or engineering, or where learning the use of software tools is critical for some aspects of the curriculum, for instance computer-aided design in architecture, spreadsheets in business studies, and geographical information systems in geology. In most cases, though, the aim of the study is not to learn how to use a particular piece of educational technology, but the study of history, mathematics, or biology.

One advantage of face-to-face teaching is that it needs relatively little advance preparation time compared with for instance developing a fully online course. Media and technologies vary in their capacity for speed of implementation and flexibility in up-dating. For instance, blogs are much quicker and easier to develop and distribute than video. Teachers and instructors then are much more likely to use technology that is quick and easy to use, and students likewise will expect such features in technology they are to use for studying. However, what’s ‘easy’ for instructors and students to use will depend on their digital literacy.

8.3.1 Computer and information literacy

If a great deal of time has to be spent by the students and teachers in learning how to use for instance software for the development or delivery of course material, this distracts from the learning and teaching. Of course, there is a basic set of literacy skills that will be required, such as the ability to read and write, to use a keyboard, to use word processing software, to navigate the Internet and use Internet software, and increasingly to use mobile devices. These generic skills though could be considered pre-requisites. If students have not adequately developed these skills in school, then an institution might provide preparatory courses for students on these topics.

It will make life a lot easier for both teachers and students if an institution has strategies for supporting students’ use of digital media. For instance, at the University of British Columbia, the Digital Tattoo project prepares students for learning online in a number of ways:

introducing students to a range of technologies that could be used for their learning, such as learning management systems, open educational resources, MOOCs and e-portfolios;
explaining what’s involved in studying online or at a distance;
setting out the opportunities and risks of social media;
advice on how to protect their privacy;
how to make the most of connecting, networking and online searching;
how to prevent cyber-bullying;
maintaining a professional online presence.

If your institution does not have something similar, then you could direct your students to the Digital Tattoo site, which is fully open.

It is not only students though who may need prior preparation. Technology can be too seductive. You can start using it without fully understanding its structure or how it works. Even a short period of training – an hour of less – on how to use common technologies such as a learning management system or lecture capture could save you a lot of time and more importantly, enable you to see the potential value of all features and not just those that you stumble across.

8.3.2 Orientation

A useful standard or criterion for the selection of course media or software is that ‘novice’ students (students who have never used the software before) should be studying within 20 minutes of logging on. This 20 minutes may be needed to work out some of the key functions of the software that may be unfamiliar, or to work out how the course Web site is organized and navigated. This is more of an orientation period though than learning new skills of computing. If there is a need to introduce new software that may take a little time to learn, for instance, a synchronous ‘chat’ facility, or video streaming, it should be introduced at the point where it is needed. It is important though to provide time within the course for the students to learn how to do this.

8.3.4 Interface design

The critical factor in making technology transparent is the design of the interface between the user and the machine. Thus an educational program or indeed any Web site should be well structured, intuitive for the user to use, and easy to navigate.

Interface design is a highly skilled profession, and is based on a combination of scientific research into how humans learn, an understanding of how operating software works, and good training in graphic design. This is one reason why it is often wise to use software or tools that have been well established in education, because these have been tested and been found to work well.

The traditional generic interface of computers – a keyboard, mouse, and graphic user interface of windows and pull-down menus and pop-up instructions – is still extremely crude, and not isomorphic with most people’s preferences for processing information. It places very heavy emphasis on literacy skills and a preference for visual learning. This can cause major difficulties for students with certain disabilities, such as dyslexia or poor eyesight. However, in recent years, interfaces have started to become more user friendly, with touch screen and voice activated interfaces.

Nevertheless a great deal of effort often has to go into the adaptation of existing computer or mobile interfaces to make them easy to use in an educational context. The Web is just as much a prisoner of the general computer interface as any other software environment, and the educational potential of any Web site is also restricted by its algorithmic or tree-like structure. For instance, it does not always suit the inherent structure of some subject areas, or the preferred way of learning of some students.

There are several consequences of these interface limitations for teachers in higher education:

it is really important to choose teaching software or other technologies that are intuitively easy to use, both by the students in particular, but also for the teacher in creating materials and interacting with students;

when creating materials for teaching, the teacher needs to be aware of the issues concerning navigation of the materials and screen lay-out and graphics. While it is possible to add stimulating features such as audio and animated graphics, this comes at the cost of bandwidth. Such features should be added only where they serve a useful educational function, as slow delivery of materials is extremely frustrating for learners, who will normally have slower Internet access that the teacher creating the materials. Furthermore, web-based layout on desktop or laptop computers does not automatically transfer to the same dimensions or configurations on mobile devices, and mobile devices have a wide range of standards, depending on the device. Given that the design of Web-based materials requires a high level of specialized interface design skill, it is preferable to seek specialist help, especially if you want to use software or media that are not standard institutionally supported tools. This is particularly important when thinking of using new mobile apps, for instance;

third, we can expect in the next few years some significant changes in the general computer interface with the development of speech recognition technology, adaptive responses based on artificial intelligence, and the use of haptics (e.g. hand-movement) to control devices. Changes in basic computer interface design could have as profound an impact on the use of technology in teaching as the Internet has.

8.3.4 Reliability

The reliability and robustness of the technology is also critical. Most of us will have had the frustration of losing work when our word programming software crashes or working ‘in the cloud’ and being logged off in the middle of a piece of writing. The last thing you want as a teacher or instructor is lots of calls from students saying they cannot get online access, or that their computer keeps crashing. (If the software locks up one machine, it will probably lock up all the others!) Technical support can be a huge cost, not just in paying technical staff to deal with service calls, but also in lost time of students and teachers.

‘Innovation in teaching’ will certainly bring rewards these days as institutions jostle for position as innovative institutions. It is often easier to get funding for new uses of technology than funding to sustain older but successful technologies. Although podcasts combined with a learning management system can be a very low-cost but highly effective teaching medium if good design is used, they are not sexy. It will usually be easier to get support for much more costly and spectacular technologies such as xMOOCs or virtual reality.

On the other hand, there is much risk in being too early into a new technology. Software may not be fully tested and reliable, or the company supporting the new technology may go bankrupt. Students are not guinea pigs, and reliable and sustainable service is more important to them than the glitz and glamour of untried technology. It is best to wait for at least a year for new apps or software to be fully tested in general applications before adopting them for teaching. It is wise then not to rush in and buy the latest software up-date or new product – wait for the bugs to be ironed out. Also if you plan to use a new app or technology that is not generally supported by the institution, check first with IT services to ensure there are not security, privacy or institutional bandwidth issues. Thus it is better to be at the leading edge, just behind the first wave of innovation, rather than at the bleeding edge.

A feature of online learning is that peak use tends to fall outside normal office hours. Thus it is really important that your course materials sit on a reliable server with high-speed access and 24 hour, seven days a week reliability, with automatic back-up on a separate, independent server located in a different building. Ideally, the servers should be in a secure area (with for instance emergency electricity supply) with 24 hour technical support, which probably means locating your servers with a central IT service or ‘in the cloud’, which means it is all the more important to ensure that materials are safely and independently backed up.

However, the good news is that most commercial educational software products such as learning management systems and lecture capture, as well as servers, are very reliable. Open source software too is usually reliable but probably slightly more at risk of technical failure or security breaches. If you have good IT support, you should receive very few calls from students on technical matters. The main technical issue that faculty face these days appears to be software up-grades to learning management systems. This often means moving course materials from one version of the software to the new version. This can be costly and time-consuming, particularly if the new version is substantially different from the previous version. Overall, though, reliability should not be an issue.

In summary, ease of use requires professionally designed commercial or open source course software, specialized help in graphics, navigation and screen design for your course materials, and strong technical support for server and software management and maintenance. Certainly in North America, most institutions now provide IT and other services focused specifically on supporting technology-based teaching. However, without such professional support, a great deal of your time as a teacher will be spent on technical issues, and to be blunt, if you do not have easy and convenient access to such support, you would be wise not to get heavily committed to technology-based teaching until that support is available.

8.3.5 Questions for consideration

Ease of use is another critical factor in the successful use of technology for teaching. Some of the questions then that you need to consider are:

How intuitively easy to use, both by students and by yourself, is the technology you are considering?
How reliable is the technology?
How easy is it to maintain and up-grade the technology?
The company that is providing the critical hardware or software you are using: is it a stable company that is not likely to go out of business in the next year or two, or is it a new start-up? What strategies are in place to secure any digital teaching materials you create should the organisation providing the software or service cease to exist?
Do you have adequate technical and professional support, both in terms of the technology and with respect to the design of materials?
How fast developing is this subject area? How important is it to regularly change the teaching materials? Which technology will best support this?
To what extent can the changes be handed over to someone else to do, and/or how essential is it for you to do them yourself?
What rewards am I likely to get for using new technology in my teaching? Will use of a new technology be the only innovation, or can I also change my way of teaching with this technology to get better results?
What are the risks in using this technology?

61

8.4 Cost

Figure 8.4.1 Total cost of a fully online masters’ course over 7 years (from Bates and Sangrà, 2011)

8.4.1 A revolution in media

Until as recently as ten years ago, cost was a major discriminator affecting the choice of technology (Hülsmann, 2000, 2003; Rumble, 2001; Bates, 2005). For instance, for educational purposes, audio (lectures, radio, audio-cassettes) was far cheaper than print, which in turn was far cheaper than most forms of computer-based learning, which in turn was far cheaper than video (television, cassettes or video-conferencing). All these media were usually seen as either added costs to regular teaching, or too expensive to use to replace face-to-face teaching, except for purely distance education on a fairly large scale.

However, there have been dramatic reductions in the cost of developing and distributing all kinds of media (except face-to-face teaching) in the last ten years, due to several factors:

rapid developments in consumer technologies such as smart phones that enable text, audio and video to be both created and transmitted by end users at low cost;
compression of digital media, enabling even high bandwidth video or television to be carried over wireless, landlines and the Internet at an economic cost (at least in economically advanced countries);
improvements in media software, making it relatively easy for non-professional users to create and distribute all kinds of media;
increasing amounts of media-based open educational resources, which are already developed learning materials that are free for teachers and students alike to use.

The good news then is that in general, and in principle, cost should no longer be an automatic discriminator in the choice of media. If you are happy to accept this statement at face value, than you can skip the rest of this chapter. Choose the mix of media that best meets your teaching needs, and don’t worry about which medium is likely to cost more. Indeed, a good case could be made that it would now be cheaper to replace face-to-face teaching with purely online learning, if cost was the only consideration.

In practice however costs can vary enormously both between and within media, depending once again on context and design. Since the main cost from a teacher’s perspective is their time, it is important to know what are the ‘drivers’ of cost, that is, what factors are associated with increased costs, depending on the context and the medium being used. These factors are less influenced by new technological developments, and can therefore be seen as ‘foundational’ principles when considering the costs of educational media.

Unfortunately there are many different factors that can influence the actual cost of using media in education, which makes a detailed discussion of costs very complex (for a more detailed treatment, see Bates and Sangrà, 2011). As a result, I will try to identify the main cost drivers, then provide a table that provides a simplified guide to how these factors influence the costs of different media, including face-to-face teaching. This guide again should be considered as a heuristic device. So see this section as Media Costs 101.

8.4.1 Cost categories

The main cost categories to be considered in using educational media and technologies, and especially blended or online learning, are as follows:

8.4.1.2 Development

These are the costs needed to pull together or create learning materials using particular media or technologies. There are several sub-categories of development costs:

production costs: making a video or building a course section in a learning management system. Included in these costs will be the time of specialist staff, such as web designers or audio-visual specialists, as well as any costs in web design or video production;
your time as an instructor: the work you have to do as part of developing or producing materials. This will include planning/course design as well as development. Your time is money, and probably the largest single cost in using educational technologies, but more importantly, if you are developing learning materials you are not doing other things, such as research or interacting with students, so there is a real cost, even if it is not expressed in dollar terms;
copyright clearance if you are using third party materials such as photos or video clips. Again, this is more likely to be thought of as time rather than money;
probably the cost of an instructional designer in terms of their time.

Development costs are usually fixed or ‘once only’ and are independent of the number of students. Once media are developed, they are usually scalable, in that once produced, they can be used by any number of learners without increased development costs. Using open educational resources can greatly reduce media development costs.

8.4.1.3 Delivery

This includes the cost of the educational activities needed during offering the course and would include instructional time spent interacting with students, instructional time spent on marking assignments, and would include the time of other staff supporting delivery, such as teaching assistants, adjuncts for additional sections and instructional designers and technical support staff.

Because of the cost of human factors such as instructional time and technical support needed in media-based teaching, delivery costs tend to increase as student numbers increase, and also have to be repeated each time the course is on offer. In other words, they are recurrent. However, increasingly with Internet-based delivery, there is usually a zero direct technology cost in delivery.

8.4.1.4 Maintenance costs

Once materials for a course are created, they need to be maintained. Urls go dead, set readings may go out of print or expire, and more importantly new developments in the subject area may need to be accommodated. Thus once a course is offered, there are ongoing maintenance costs.

Instructional designers and/or media professionals can manage some of the maintenance, but nevertheless teachers or instructors will need to be involved with decisions about content replacement or updating. Maintenance is not usually a major time consumer for a single course, but if an instructor is involved in the design and production of several online courses, maintenance time can build to a significant amount.

Maintenance costs are usually independent of the number of students, but are dependent on the number of courses an instructor is responsible for, and are recurrent each year.

8.4.1.5 Overheads

These include infrastructure or overhead costs, such as the cost of licensing a learning management system, lecture capture technology and servers for video steaming. These are real costs but not ones that can be allocated to a single course but will be shared across a number of courses. Overheads are usually considered to be institutional costs and, although important, probably will not influence a teacher’s decision about which media to use, provided these services are already in place and the institution does not directly charge for such services.

8.4.2 Cost drivers

The primary factors that drive cost are

the development/production of materials;
the delivery of materials;
number of students/scalability;
the experience of an instructor working with the medium;
whether the instructor develops materials alone (self-development) or works with professionals.

Production of technology-based materials such as a video program, or a Web site, is a fixed cost, in that it is not influenced by how many students take the course. However, production costs can vary depending on the design of the course. Engle (2014) showed that depending on the method of video production, the development costs for a MOOC could vary by a factor of six (the most expensive production method – full studio production – being six times that of an instructor self-recording on a laptop).

Nevertheless, once produced, the cost is independent of the number of students. Thus the more expensive the course to develop, the greater the need to increase student numbers to reduce the average cost per student. (Or put another way, the greater the number of students, the more reason to ensure that high quality production is used, whatever the medium). In the case of MOOCs (which tend to be almost twice as expensive to develop as an online course for credit using a learning management system – University of Ottawa, 2013) the number of learners is so great that the average cost per student is very small. Thus there are opportunities for economies of scale from the development of digital material, provided that student course enrolments can be increased (which may not always be the case). This can be described as the potential for the scalability of a medium.

Similarly, there are costs in teaching the course once the course is developed. These tend to be variable costs, in that they increase as class size increases. If student-teacher interaction, through online discussion forums and assignment marking, is to be kept to a manageable level, then the teacher-student ratio needs to be kept relatively low (for instance, between 1:25 to 1:40, depending on the subject area and the level of the course). The more students, the more time a teacher will need to spend on delivery, or additional contract instructors will need to be hired. Either way, increased student numbers generally will lead to increased costs. MOOCs are an exception. Their main value proposition is that they do not provide direct learner support, so have zero delivery costs. However, this is probably the reason why such a small proportion of participants successfully complete MOOCs.

There may be benefits then for a teacher or for an institution in spending more money up front for interactive learning materials if this leads to less demand for teacher-student interaction. For instance, a mathematics course might be able to use automated testing and feedback and simulations and diagrams, and pre-designed answers to frequently asked questions, with less or even no time spent on individual assignment marking or communication with the teacher. In this case it may be possible to manage teacher-student ratios as high as 1:200 or more, without significant loss of quality.

Also, experience in using or working with a particular medium or delivery method is also important. The first time an instructor uses a particular medium such as podcasting, it takes much longer than subsequent productions or offerings. Some media or technologies though need much more effort to learn to use than others. Thus a related cost driver is whether the instructor works alone (self-development) or works with media professionals. Self-developing materials will usually take longer for an instructor than working with professionals.

There are advantages in teachers and instructors working with media professionals when developing digital media. Media professionals will ensure the development of a quality product, and above all can save teachers or instructors considerable time, for instance through the choice of appropriate software, editing, and storage and streaming of digital materials. Instructional designers can help in suggesting appropriate applications of different media for different learning outcomes. Thus as with all educational design, a team approach is likely to be more effective, and working with other professionals will help control the time teachers and instructors spend on media development.

Lastly, design decisions are critical. Costs are driven by design decisions within a medium. For instance cost drivers are different between lectures and seminars (or lab classes) in face-to-face teaching. Similarly, video can be used just to record talking heads, as in lecture capture, or can be used to exploit the affordances of the medium (see Chapter 7), such as demonstrating processes or location shooting. Computing has a wide and increasing range of possible designs, including online collaborative learning (OCL), computer-based learning, animations, simulations or virtual worlds. Social media are another group of media that also need to be considered.

Figure 8.4.2 attempts to capture the complexity of cost factors, focusing mainly on the perspective of a teacher or instructor making decisions. Again, this should be seen as a heuristic device, a way of thinking about the issue. Other factors could be added (such as social media, or maintenance of materials). I have given my own personal ratings for each cell, based on my experience. I have taken conventional teaching as a medium or ‘average’ cost, then ranked cells as to whether there is a higher or lower cost factor for the particular medium. Other readers may well rate the cells differently.

Figure 8.4.4.1 Cost drivers for educational media

Figure 8.4.2 Cost drivers for educational media

Although the time it takes to develop and deliver learning using different technologies is likely to influence an instructor’s decision about what technology to use, it is not a simple equation. For instance, developing a good quality online course using a mix of video and text materials may take much more of the instructor’s time to prepare than if the course was offered through classroom teaching. However, the online course may take less time in delivery over several years, because students may be spending more time on task online, and less time in direct interaction with the instructor. Once again, we see that design is a critical factor in how costs are assessed.

In short, from an instructor perspective, time is the critical cost factor. Technologies that take a lot of time to use are less likely to be used than those that are easy to use and thus save time. But once again design decisions can greatly affect how much time teachers or instructors need to spend on any medium, and the ability of teachers and students to create their own educational media is becoming an increasingly important factor.

8.4.3 Issues for consideration

In recent years, university faculty have generally gravitated more to lecture capture for online course delivery, particularly in institutions where online or distance learning is relatively new, because it is ‘simpler’ to do than redesign and create mainly text based materials in learning management systems. Lecture capture also more closely resembles the traditional classroom method. Pedagogically though (depending on the subject area) it may be less effective than an online course using collaborative learning and online discussion forums. Also, from an institutional perspective lecture capture has a much higher technology cost than a learning management system.

Also, students themselves can now use their own devices to create multimedia materials for project work or for assessment purposes in the form of e-portfolios. Media allow instructors, if they wish, to move a lot of the hard work in teaching and learning from themselves to the students. Media allow students to spend more time on task, and low cost, consumer media such as mobile phones or tablets enable students themselves to create media artefacts, enabling them to demonstrate their learning in concrete ways. This does not mean that instructor ‘presence’ is no longer needed when students are studying online, but it does enable a shift in where and how a teacher or instructor can spend their time in supporting learning.

Activity 8.4 How will cost affect your decision about what media to use?

Are concerns about the possible cost/demands on your time influencing your decisions on what media to use? If so in what ways? Has this section on costs changed your mind?
How much time do you spend preparing lectures? Could that time be better spent preparing learning materials, then using the time saved from delivering lectures on interaction with students (online and/or face-to-face)?
What kind of help can you get in your institution from instructional designers and media professionals for media design and development? What media decisions will the answer to this question suggest to you? For instance, if you are in a k-12 school with little or no chance for professional support, what kind of media and design decisions are you likely to make?
If you were filling in the cells for Figure 8.4.2, what differences would there be with my entries? Why?
In Figure 8.4.2, add the following media: e-portfolios (in computing) and add another section under computing: social media. Add blogs, wikis and cMOOCs. How would you fill in the cells for each of these for development, delivery, etc.? Are there other media you would also add?
Do you agree with the statement: It would now be cheaper to replace face-to-face teaching with purely online learning, if cost was the only consideration? What are the implications for your teaching if this is really true? What considerations would still justify face-to-face teaching?

Please share your answers in the comment box below.

References

Bates, A. (2005) Technology, e-Learning and Distance Education London/New York: Routledge

Bates, A. and Sangrà, A. (2011) Managing Technology in Higher Education San Francisco: Jossey–Bass/John Wiley and Co

Engle, W. (2104)UBC MOOC Pilot: Design and Delivery Vancouver BC: University of British Columbia

Hülsmann, T. (2000) The Costs of Open Learning: A Handbook Oldenburg: Bibliotheks- und Informationssytem der Universität Oldenburg

Rumble, G. (2001) The Cost and Costing of Networked Learning Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 5, Issue 2

University of Ottawa (2013)Report of the e-Learning Working Group Ottawa ON: The University of Ottawa

62

8.5 Teaching and media selection

Figure 8.5.1 People do not necessarily learn better ... when the speaker's image is added to the screen (Meyer, 2009).

Figure 8.5.1 People do not necessarily learn better … when the speaker’s image is added to the screen (Mayer, 2009).

8.5.1 The importance of design in multimedia teaching

Chapter 7 discussed the various pedagogical differences between media. Identifying appropriate uses of media is both an increasingly important requirement of teachers and instructors in a digital age, and a very complex challenge. This is one reason for working closely with instructional designers and media professionals whenever possible. Teachers working with instructional designers will need to decide which media they intend to use on pedagogical as well as operational grounds, which was the purpose of Chapter 7.

However, once the choice of media has been made, by focusing on design issues we can provide further guidelines for making appropriate use of media. In particular, having gone through the process suggested in Chapter 7 of identifying possible teaching roles or functions for different media, we can then draw on the work of Mayer (2009) and Koumi (2006, 2015) to ensure that whatever choice or mix of media we have decided on, the design leads to effective teaching.

Mayer’s research focused heavily on cognitive overload in rich, multimedia teaching. From all his research over many years, Mayer identified 12 principles of multimedia design, based on how learners cognitively process multimedia:

8.5.2.1 Coherence

People learn better when extraneous words, pictures and sounds are excluded rather than included. Basically, keep it simple in media terms.

8.5.2.2 Signalling

People learn better when cues that highlight the organization of the essential material are added. This replicates earlier findings by Bates and Gallagher (1977). Students need to know what to look for in multimedia materials.

8.5.2.3 [Avoid] Redundancy

People learn better from graphics + narration, than from graphics, narration and on-screen text.

8.5.2.4 Spatial contiguity

People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near rather than far from each other on the page or screen

8.5.2.5 Temporal contiguity

People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively.

8.5.2.6 Segmenting

People learn better when a multimedia lesson is presented in user-paced segments rather than as a continuous lesson. Thus several ‘YouTube’ length videos are more likely to work better than a 50 minute video.

8.5.2.7 Pre-training

People learn better from a multimedia lesson when they know the names and the characteristics of the main concepts. This suggests a design feature for flipped classrooms, for instance. It may be better to use a lecture or readings that provide a summary of key concepts and principles before showing more detailed examples or applications of such principles in a video.

8.5.2.8 Modality

People learn better from graphics and narration than from animation and on-screen text. This reflects the importance of learners being able to combine both hearing and viewing at the same time to reinforce each other in specific ways.

8.5.2.9 Multimedia

People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone. This also reinforces what I wrote in 1995: Make all four media available to teachers and learners (Bates, 1995, p.13).

8.5.2.10 Personalization

People learn better from multimedia lessons when words are in conversational style rather than formal style. I would go even further than Mayer here. Multimedia can enable learners (particularly distance learners) to relate to the instructor, as suggested by Durbridge’s research (1983, 1984) on audio combined with text. Providing a ‘human voice and face’ to the teaching helps motivate learners, and makes multimedia teaching feel that it is directed solely at the individual learner, if a conversational style is adopted.

8.5.2.11 Voice

People learn better when the narration in multimedia lessons is spoken in a friendly human voice rather than a machine voice.

8.5.2.12 [No] image

People do not necessarily learn better from a multimedia lesson when the speaker’s image is added to the screen.

In re-reading Mayer’s work, I am struck by the similarities in findings, using different research methods, different multimedia technologies, and different contexts, to the research from the Audio-Visual Media Research Group at the British Open University in the 1970s and 1980s (Bates, 1985).

More recently, the University of British Columbia has done an excellent job of suggesting how Mayer’s design principles could be operationalised. Staff at the University of British Columbia have combined Mayer’s findings with Robert Talbert’s experience from developing a series of successful screencasts on mathematics, into a set of practical design guidelines for multimedia production.

Talbert’s key design principles are:

Keep it Simple: focus on one idea at a time.
Keep it Short: keep videos to a length 5-6 minutes max. to maximize attention.
Keep it Real: model the decision making and problem solving processes of expert learners.
Keep it Good: be intentional about planning the video. Strive to produce the best video and audio quality possible.

8.5.3 Teaching as a weak discriminator in media selection

Most teachers and instructors would put the effectiveness of a medium for teaching and learning as the first criterion. If the technology is not educationally effective, why would you use it? However, if a student cannot access or use a technology, there will be no learning from that technology, no matter how it is designed. Furthermore, motivated teachers will overcome weaknesses in a particular technology, or conversely teachers inexperienced in using media will often under-exploit the potential of a technology.

Thus design decisions are critical in influencing the effectiveness of a particular technology. Well-designed lectures will teach better than a poorly designed online course, and vice versa. Similarly, students will respond differently to different technologies due to preferred learning styles or differences in motivation. Students who work hard can overcome poor use of learning technologies. It is not surprising then that with so many variables involved, teaching and learning is a difficult discriminator for selecting and using technologies. Access (and ease of use) are stronger discriminators than teaching effectiveness in selecting media.

8.5.4 Questions for consideration

Therefore, it is not enough to focus just on the design of multimedia materials, as important as design is, even considering just the pedagogical context. The choice and use of media need to be related to other factors (what Mayer calls ‘boundary conditions’), such as individual differences between learners, the complexity of the content, and the desired learning outcomes. Thus when considering media from a strictly teaching perspective, the following questions need to be considered:

Who are my students?
What content needs to be covered?
What are the desired learning outcomes from the teaching in terms of skills development?
What instructional strategies or approaches to learning do I plan using?
What are the unique pedagogical characteristics of different media? How might different media help with the presentation of content and development of student skills in this course?
What is the best way to present the content to be covered in this course? How can media help with the presentation of content? Which media for what content?
What skills am I trying to develop on this course? How can media help students with the development of the requisite skills for this course? Which media for which skills?
What principles do I need to use when designing multimedia materials for their most effective use?

Working through these questions is likely to be an iterative rather than a sequential process. Depending on the way you prefer to think about and make decisions, it may help to write down the answers to each of the questions, but going through the process of thinking about these questions is probably more important, leaving you with the freedom to make choices on a more intuitive basis, having first taken all these – and other – factors into consideration.

Activity 8.5 Multimedia design principles

How well do you think Meyer’s design principles would apply to classroom teaching?

Which principles would also work in a classroom context and which wouldn’t?

Under what conditions would Meyer’s principles work in a classroom context?

Please share your answers in the comment box below.

References

Bates, A. (1985) Broadcasting in Education: An Evaluation London: Constables

Bates, A. (1995) Teaching, Open Learning and Distance Education London/New York: Routledge

Durbridge, N. (1983) Design implications of audio and video cassettes Milton Keynes: Open University Institute of Educational Technology

Durbridge, N. (1984) Audio cassettes, in: Bates, A. (ed.) The Role of Technology in Distance Education London: Routledge (re-published in 2014)

Koumi, J. (2006). Designing video and multimedia for open and flexible learning. London: Routledge

Koumi, J. (2015) Learning outcomes afforded by self-assessed, segmented video-print combinations Academia.edu (unpublished)

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed). New York: Cambridge University Press

UBC Wikis (2014) Documentation: Design Principles for Multimedia Vancouver BC: University of British Columbia

63

8.6 Interaction

The fifth element of the SECTIONS model for selecting media is interaction. How do different media enable interaction? The ‘affordance’ of interaction is critically important, as there is now an overwhelming amount of research evidence to suggest that students learn best when they are ‘active’ in their learning. But what does this mean? And what role can or do new technologies play in supporting active learning?

8.6.1. Types of learner interaction

There are three different ways learners can interact when studying (Moore, 1989), and each of these ways requires a somewhat different mix of media and technology.

8.6.1.1 Interaction with learning materials

Figure 9.6.1 Computers enable 'inherent' interaction

Figure 8.6.1.1 Computers enable learners to interact with learning materials (also ‘inherent’ interaction)

This is the interaction generated when students work on a particular medium, such as a printed textbook, a learning management system, or a short video clip, without direct intervention from an instructor or other students. This interaction can be ‘reflective’, without any overt actions, or it can be ‘observable’, in the form of an assessed response, such as a multiple choice test, or as a contribution to a discussion, or as notes to assist memory and comprehension.

Computer technology can greatly facilitate learners’ interaction with learning resources. Self-administered online tests can provide feedback to students on their comprehension or coverage of a subject area. Such tests can also provide feedback to teachers on topic areas where students are having difficulty, and can also be used for grading of students on their comprehension. Using standard test software built into learning management systems, students can be automatically assessed and graded on their comprehension of course materials. More advanced activities might include composing music using software that converts musical notation to audio, entering data to test concepts through online simulations, or participating in games or decision-making scenarios controlled by the computer. Thus computer-managed learner interaction is particularly good for developing comprehension and understanding of concepts and procedures, but it has limitations in developing the higher order learning skills of analysis, synthesis and critical thinking, without additional human intervention of some kind.

There are other ways besides computer-managed learning to facilitate interaction between learners and learning material. Textbooks may include activities set by the author (as in this textbook), or instructors can set student activities around set readings. Other student activities might include reading text or watching videos embedded in a learning management system, conducting a structured approach to finding and analyzing web-based materials, or downloading and editing information from the web to create e-portfolios of work. These activities may or may not be assessed, although evidence suggests that students, and in particular students studying online, tend to focus more an assessed activities.

In other words, with good design and adequate resources, technology-based instruction can provide high levels of student interaction with the learning materials. There are strong economic advantages in exploiting the possibilities of learners’ interaction with learning materials, because intense student-interaction with learning resources increases the time students spend on learning, which tends to lead to increased learning (see Means et al., 2010). Perhaps more importantly, such activity, when well designed, can reduce the time the teacher needs to spend on interacting with each student.

8.6.1.2 Interaction between students and teacher

Figure 9.6.1.2 Student-teacher interaction

Student-teacher interaction is often needed though in order to develop many of the higher order learning outcomes, such as analysis, synthesis, and critical thinking. This is particularly important for developing academic learning, where students are challenged to question ideas, and to acquire deep understanding. This often requires dialogue and conversation, either one-on-one between instructor and students, or between an instructor and a group of students. The role of the teacher in for instance either face-to-face seminars or online collaborative learning is therefore critical.

Some technologies, such as online discussion forums, enable or encourage such dialogue or discourse between students and instructors at a distance. The main limitation of student-teacher interaction is that it can be time-demanding for the teacher, and therefore does not scale easily.

8.6.1.3 Student – student interaction

Figure 8. A student directed seminar at UBC Image: © University of British Columbia, 2014

High quality student-student interaction can be provided equally well both in face-to-face and online learning contexts. Asynchronous online discussion forums built into learning management systems can enable this kind of interaction. Connectivist MOOCs and communities of practice also enable student-student interaction.

Again though quality depends on good design. Merely putting students together in a group, whether online or face-to-face, is not likely to lead to either high levels of participation or high quality learning without careful thought being given to the educational goals of discussion within a course, the topics for discussion and their relationship to assessment and learning outcomes, and without strong preparation of the students by the instructor for self-directed discussions (see Chapter 4, Section 4, for more on this.)

In a technologically rich learning environment, then, a key decision for a teacher or course designer is choosing the best mix of these three different kinds of interaction, taking into consideration the epistemological approach, the amount of time available for both students and instructor, and the desired learning outcomes. Technology can enable all three kinds of interaction.

8.6.2 The interactive characteristics of media and technologies

Different technologies can enhance or inhibit each of the three types of interactivity outlined above. This again means looking at the dimension of interactivity as it applies to different media and technology. This dimension has three components or points on the dimension in terms of the extent an active response from a user is required when a medium or technology is used for teaching.

8.6.2.1 Inherent interactivity

Some media are inherently ‘active’ in that they ‘push’ learners to respond. An example is adaptive learning, where students cannot progress to the next stage of learning without interacting through a test that ascertains whether they have learned sufficiently to progress to the next stage, or what ‘corrective’ learning they still need to do. Behaviourist computer-based learning is inherently interactive, as it forces learners to respond. It is not surprising that technologies that control how a learner responds are often associated with more behaviourist approaches to teaching and learning.

8.6.2.2 Designed interactivity

Although some media or technologies are not inherently interactive, they can be explicitly designed to encourage interaction with learners. For instance, although a web page is not inherently interactive, it can be designed to be interactive, by adding a comment box or by requiring users to enter information or make choices. In particular, teachers or instructors can add or suggest activities within a particular medium. A podcast can be designed so that students stop the podcast every few minutes to do an activity based on the content of the podcast. This approach can be can applied just as much to textbooks, where activities can be included, as to web pages.

In many cases, though, a medium will require the intervention of a teacher or instructor both to set activities around the learning materials and to provide appropriate feedback, thus adding to rather than reducing the workload of instructors. Thus where instructors have to intervene either to design activities or to provide feedback, the cost or time demands on the instructor are likely to be greater than if the other two kinds of interaction are used.

8.6.2.3 User-generated interaction

Some media may not have explicit interaction built in, but end users may still voluntarily interact with the medium, either cognitively and/or through some physical response. For instance someone in an art gallery may cognitively or emotionally respond to a particular painting (while others may just glance at it or pass it by). Students may choose to make sketches or drawings from the painting. Learners may respond in similar ways to reading a novel or poem. The creators of the work may in fact deliberately design the work to encourage reflection or analysis, but not in explicit ways, leaving the interpretation of a work to the viewer or reader. (This of course is a constructivist approach to learning.) Media that encourage learners independently to be active without the necessary intervention of a teacher or instructor also have cost advantages, although the quality of the interaction will be more difficult to monitor or assess.

8.6.2.4 Who’s in control?

Thus one dimension of interactivity is control: to what extent is interaction controlled or enabled by the technology, by the creators/instructors, or by the users/learners? It can be seen that this is a complex dimension, once again influenced by epistemological positions, and also by design decisions on the teacher’s part. These categories of interactivity are in no way ‘fixed’, with different levels or types of interaction possible within the same medium or technology. In the end, interaction needs to be linked to desired learning outcomes. What kind of interaction will best lead to a particular type of learning outcome, and what technology or medium best provides this kind of interaction?

8.6.3 Interaction and feedback

Feedback is an important aspect of interaction, and timely and appropriate feedback on learner activities is often essential for effective learning. In particular to what extent is feedback possible within a particular medium? Although for instance a learner may respond actively to a poem in a book, feedback on that interaction is usually not available just from the reading. Some other medium will need to be used to provide that feedback, such as a face-to-face poetry class or an online discussion forum.

On the other hand, with computer-based learning, once a student has responded to a multiple-choice question, the computer can mark the question and give almost instant feedback. However, with some technologies such as print, providing appropriate or immediate feedback to learners on their activities may be difficult or impossible. Although ‘model’ or ‘correct’ answers might be provided in a text on another page, quality feedback on activities must be provided by a teacher or instructor when using a printed medium.

Thus media and technologies again differ in their capacity to provide various kinds of feedback. From a teaching perspective, it is important to be clear about what kind of feedback is likely to be most effective, and then the most effective way to provide that feedback. In particular, under what circumstances is it appropriate to automate feedback, and when should feedback be provided by a teacher, instructor or perhaps a teaching assistant?

8.6.4 Analysing the interactive qualities of different media

In Figure 8.6.4 I have analysed the interactive qualities of different educational media along two different dimensions: different types of student interaction; and characteristics of the medium, in terms of whether interaction is built into the medium, or needs to be added through deliberate design, or whether it is left to the learner to decide how to interact.

Figure 8.6.3 Media and student interaction

Figure 8.6.4 Media and student interaction

I have allocated a number of different media here according to the type of learner activity they help generate. The actual location though of some of these media will be dependent on design decisions made by the instructor. For instance, a podcast could be accompanied by an activity (designed), or just be a straight broadcast, with the student left to interpret its meaning and purpose in the course (learner-generated). In some cases, an activity may be triggered by one medium (such as a podcast) but the actual activity and the feedback may take place in another medium (such as through an online assessment).

8.6.5 Summary

Thus it can be seen that media and technology are somewhat slippery when it comes to categorising them in terms of interaction, because instructors and learners often have a choice in how the medium will actually be used, and that will affect how learner interaction and feedback takes place within a single medium. Thus once again the quality of the design of the interactive experiences is as important as the medium of choice for enabling the activity, although an inappropriate choice of technology can reduce the level of activity and/or the quality of the interactions. In reality teachers and learners are likely to use a combination of media and technologies to ensure high quality interactivity. However, using a number of different media is likely to increase cost and workload for both instructors and learners.

Once again, there is no evaluative judgement on my part in terms of which media or characteristics provide the ‘best’ interactivity. The choice of medium should depend on the kind of activities that are judged important by a teacher or instructor within the overall context of the teaching. The purpose of this analysis is to sensitize you to the differences between educational media in generating or facilitating different types of interactivity, so that you can make informed decisions. In this case, though, there are no clear media or technology ‘winners’ in terms of interactivity. Design decisions are likely to be more important than technology choice. Nevertheless, technology can enable students separated from their instructors still to get quality activities and feedback, and when appropriately used, technology used to support activities can result in more time on task for students.

8.6.6 Questions for consideration

1. In terms of the skills I am trying to develop, what kinds of interaction will be most useful? What media or technology could I use to facilitate that kind of interaction?

2. In terms of the effective use of my time, what kinds of interaction will produce a good balance between student comprehension and student skills development, and the amount of time I will be interacting personally or online with students?

Activity 8.6 Using media to promote student activity

1. Go to YouTube and type in your subject area into the ‘search’ box.

2. Choose a YouTube video from the list that comes up that you might recommend to your students to watch.

3. What kind of interaction would the YouTube video require from your students? Does it force them to respond in some way (inherent)?

4. In what way are they likely to respond to the YouTube on their own, e.g. make notes, do an activity, think about the topic (learner-generated)?

5. What activity could you suggest that they do, after they have watched the YouTube video (designed)? What type of knowledge or skill would that activity help develop? What medium or technology would students use to do the activity?

6. How would students get feedback on the activity that you set? What medium or technology would they and/or you use for getting and giving feedback on their activity?

7. How much work for you would that activity cause? Would the work be both manageable and worthwhile? Could the activity be scaled for larger numbers of students?

8. How could the YouTube video have been designed to generate more or better activity from viewers or students?

If you want to share your response, please use the comment box below.

Reference

Means, B. et al. (2009) Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies Washington, DC: US Department of Education

Moore, M.G. (1989) Three types of interaction American Journal of Distance Education, Vol.3, No.2

64

8.7 Organisational issues

Figure 9.7.1 earning Environments self-service video recording studio, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne Image: © University of Melbourne, 2014

Figure 8.7.1 Learning Environments self-service video recording studio, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne
Image: © University of Melbourne, 2014

8.7.1 Institutional readiness for teaching with technology

One of the critical issues that will influence the selection of media by teachers and instructors is

the way the institution structures teaching activities;
the instructional and technology services already in place;
the support for media and technology use that their institution provides.

If an institution is organised around a set number of classroom periods every day, and the use of physical classrooms, the teachers are likely to focus mainly on classroom delivery. As Mackenzie was quoted in Section 8.1: ‘Teachers have always made the best of whatever they’ve got at hand, but it’s what we have to work with. Teachers make due.’ The reverse is equally true. If the school or university does not support a particular technology, teachers and instructors quite understandably won’t use it. Even if the technology is in place, such as a learning management system or a video production facility, if an instructor is not trained or oriented to its use and potential, then it will either be underused or not used at all.

Most institutions that have successfully introduced media and technology for teaching on a large scale have recognized the need for professional support for faculty, by providing instructional designers, media designers and IT support staff to support teaching and learning. Some institutions also provide funding for innovative teaching projects.

A major implication of using technology is the need to reorganise and restructure the teaching and technology support services in order to exploit and use the technology efficiently. Too often technology is merely added on to an existing structure and way of doing things. Reorganisation and restructuring is disruptive and costly in the short-term, but usually essential for successful implementation of technology-based teaching (see Bates and Sangrà, 2011, for a full discussion of management strategies for supporting the use of technology for teaching in higher education, and Marshall, 2007, for a method to assess institutional readiness for e-learning).

Because of the inertia in institutions, there is often a bias towards those technologies that can be introduced with the minimum of organisational change, although these may not be the technologies that would have maximum impact on learning. These organisational challenges are extremely difficult, and are often major reasons for the slow implementation of new technology.

8.7.2 Work with professionals

Figure 9.7.2 Chris Crowley is an Instructional Designer/Project Manager for UBC's Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology. He is involved in the design, development and delivery of online courses and learning resources in a number of subject areas including Soil Science.

Figure 8.7.2 Chris Crowley is an Instructional Designer/Project Manager for UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology. He is involved in the design, development and delivery of online courses and learning resources in a number of subject areas including Soil Science.

Even those experienced in using media for teaching and learning would be wise to work with professional media producers when creating any of the media discussed in this chapter (with the possible exception of social media). Indeed, it is usually useful if not essential to work also with an instructional designer to determine before too much work is done which media are likely to be the most appropriate. It is important for the choice of technology to be driven by educational goals, rather than starting with a particular medium or technology in mind.

There are several reasons for working with professionals:

they understand the technology and as a result will enable you to develop a better product more quickly than working alone;
two heads are better than one: working collaboratively will result in new and better ideas about how you could be using the medium;
instructional designers and professional media producers will usually be familiar with project management and budgeting for media production, enabling resources to be developed in time and on budget. This is important as it is easy for teachers or instructors to get sucked into spending far more time than necessary on producing media.

The key point here is that although it is now possible for teachers and instructors to produce reasonably good quality audio and video on their own, they will always benefit from the input of professionals in media production.

8.7.3 Questions for consideration

1. How much and what kind of help can I get from the institution in choosing and using media for teaching? Is help easily accessible? How good is the help? Do the support people have the media professionalism I will need? Are they up to date in the use of new technologies for teaching?

2. Is there possible funding available to ‘buy me out’ for a semester and/or to fund a teaching assistant so I can concentrate on designing a new course or revising an existing course? Is there funding for media production?

3. To what extent will I have to follow ‘standard’ technologies, practices and procedures, such as using a learning management system, or lecture capture system, or will I be encouraged and supported to try something new?

4. Are there already suitable media resources freely available that I can use in my teaching, rather than creating everything from scratch? Can I get help from the library for instance in identifying these resources and dealing with any copyright issues?

If the answers are negative for each of these questions, you would be wise to set very modest goals initially for using media and technology. Nevertheless the good news is that it is increasingly easy to create and manage your own media such as web sites, blogs, wikis, podcasts and even simple video production. Furthermore students themselves are often capable and interested in participating or helping with creating learning resources, if given the chance. And above all, there is an increasing amount of really good educational media coming available for free use for educational purposes, as we shall see in Chapter 10.

References

Bates, A. and Sangrà, A. (2011) Managing Technology in Higher Education San Francisco: Jossey–Bass/John Wiley and Co.

Marshall, S. (2007). eMM Version Two Process Assessment Workbook Version 2.3.Wellington NZ: Victoria University of Wellington

65

8.8 Networking

Figure 8.8.1 UBC’s Math Exam Wiki (click on image to go to web page)

8.8.1 The impact of networking on course design

This is a change from earlier versions of the SECTIONS model, where ‘N’ stood for novelty. However, the issues that I previously raised under novelty have been included in Section 8.3, ‘Ease of Use’. This has allowed me to replace ‘Novelty’ with ‘Networking’, to take account of more recent developments in social media.

In essence, an increasingly important question that needs to be asked when selecting media is:

how important is it to enable learners to network beyond a course, with others such as subject specialists, professionals in the field, and relevant people in the community? Can the course, or student learning, benefit from such external connections?

If the answer to this is an affirmative, then this will affect what media to use, and in particular will suggest the use of social media such as blogs, wikis, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google Hangout.

There are at least five different ways social media are influencing the application of networking in course design:

as an addition to credit-based online software/technology;
credit course design using only social media;
student generated learning resources;
self-managed learning groups;
instructor-led open educational resources.

8.8.2 Supplementing ‘standard’ learning technologies

Some instructors are combining social media for external networking with ‘standard’ institutional technologies such as a learning management system. The LMS, which is password protected and available only to the instructor and other enrolled students, allows for ‘safe’ communication within the course. The use of social media allows for connections with the external world (contributions can still be screened by the course blog or wiki administrator by monitoring and approving contributions.)

For instance, a course on Middle Eastern politics could have an internal discussion forum focused on relating current events directly to the themes and issues that are the focus of the course, but students may manage their own, public wiki that encourages contributions from Middle East scholars and students, and indeed anyone from the general public. Comments may end up being moved into and out of the more closed class discussion forum as a result.

8.8.3 Exclusive use of social media for credit courses

Other instructors are moving altogether away from ‘standard’ institutional technology such as learning management systems and lecture capture into the use of social media for managing the whole course. For instance, UBC’s course ETEC 522 uses WordPress, YouTube videos and podcasts for instructor and student contributions to the course. Indeed the choice of social media on this course changes every year, depending on the focus of the course, and new developments in social media. Jon Beasley-Murray at the University of British Columbia built a whole course around students creating a high level (featured-article) Wikipedia entry on Latin American literature (Latin American literature WikiProject – see Beasley-Murray, 2008).

8.8.4 Student generated learning resources

This is a particularly interesting development where students themselves use social media to create resources to help other students. For instance, graduate math students at UBC have created the Math Exam/Education Resources wiki, which provides ‘past exams with fully worked-out and reviewed solutions, video lectures & pencasts by topic‘. Such sites are open to anyone needing help in their studying, not just UBC students.

8.8.5 Self-managed learning groups

cMOOCs are an obvious example of self-managed learning groups using social media such as webinars, blogs and wikis.

8.8.6 Instructor-led open educational resources

YouTube in particular is becoming increasingly popular for instructors to use their knowledge to create resources available to anyone. The best example is still the Khan Academy, but there are many other examples. xMOOCs are another example.

Once again, the decision to ‘open up’ teaching is as much a philosophical or value decision as a technology decision, but the technology is now there to encourage and enable this philosophy.

8.8.7 Questions for consideration

How important is it to enable learners to network beyond a course, with others such as subject specialists, professionals in the field, and relevant people in the community? Can the course, or student learning, benefit from such external connections?
If this is important, what’s the best way to do this? Use social media exclusively? Integrate it with other standard course technology? Delegate responsibility for its design and/or administration to students or learners?

References

Beasly-Murray, J. (2008) Was introducing Wikipedia to the classroom an act of madness leading only to mayhem if not murder? Wikipedia, March 18

66

8.9 Security and privacy

Figure 9.9 Privacy ranking by Privacy International, 2007 Red: Endemic surveillance societies Strong yellow: Systemic failure to uphold safeguards Pale yellow: Some safeguards but weakened protections http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy#mediaviewer/File:Privacy_International_2007_privacy_ranking_map.png

Figure 8.9.1 Privacy ranking by Privacy International, 2007
Red: Endemic surveillance societies
Strong yellow: Systemic failure to uphold safeguards
Pale yellow: Some safeguards but weakened protections
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy#mediaviewer/File:Privacy_International_2007_privacy_ranking_map.png

This too is a change from earlier versions of the SECTIONS model, where ‘S’ stood for speed, in terms of how quickly a technology enabled a course to be developed.. However, the issues that I previously raised under speed have also been included in Section 8.3, ‘Ease of Use’. This has allowed me to replace ‘Speed’ with ‘Security and privacy’, which have become increasingly important issues for education in a digital age.

8.9.1 The need for privacy and security when teaching

Teachers, instructors and students need a private place to work online. Instructors want to be able to criticize politicians or corporations without fear of reprisal; students may want to keep rash or radical comments from going public or will want to try out perhaps controversial ideas without having them spread all over Facebook. Institutions want to protect students from personal data collection for commercial purposes by private companies, tracking of their online learning activities by government agencies, or marketing and other unrequested commercial or political interruption to their studies. In particular, institutions want to protect students, as far as possible, from online harassment or bullying. Creating a strictly controlled environment enables institutions to manage privacy and security more effectively.

Learning management systems provide password protected access to registered students and authorised instructors. Learning management systems were originally housed on servers managed by the institution itself. Password protected LMSs on secure servers have provided that protection. Institutional policies regarding appropriate online behaviour can be managed more easily if the communications are managed ‘in-house.’

8.9.2 Cloud based services and privacy

However, in recent years, more and more online services have moved ‘to the cloud’, hosted on massive servers whose physical location is often unknown even to the institution’s IT services department. Contract agreements between an educational institution and the cloud service provider are meant to ensure security and back-ups.

Nevertheless, Canadian institutions and privacy commissioners have been particularly wary of data being hosted out of country, where it may be accessed through the laws of another country. There has been concern that Canadian student information and communications held on cloud servers in the USA may be accessible via the U.S. Patriot Act. For instance, Klassen (2011) writes:

Social media companies are almost exclusively based in the United States, where the provisions of the Patriot Act apply no matter where the information originates. The Patriot Act allows the U.S. government to access the social media content and the personally identifying information without the end users’ knowledge or consent.
The government of British Columbia, concerned with both the privacy and security of personal information, enacted a stringent piece of legislation to protect the personal information of British Columbians. The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) mandates that no personally identifying information of British Columbians can be collected without their knowledge and consent, and that such information not be used for anything other than the purpose for which it was originally collected.

Concerns about student privacy have increased even more when it became known that countries were sharing intelligence information, so there remains a risk that even student data on Canadian-based servers may well be shared with foreign countries.

Perhaps of more concern though is that as instructors and students increasingly use social media, academic communication becomes public and ‘exposed’. Bishop (2011) discusses the risks to institutions in using Facebook:

privacy is different from security, in that security is primarily a technical, hence mainly an IT, issue. Privacy needs a different set of policies that involves a much wider range of stakeholders within an institution, and hence a different (and more complex) governance approach from security;
many institutions do not have a simple, transparent set of policies for privacy, but different policies set by different parts of the institution. This will inevitably lead to confusion and difficulties in compliance;
there is a whole range of laws and regulations that aim to protect privacy; these cover not only students but also staff; privacy policy needs to be consistent across the institution and be compliant with such laws and regulation;
Facebook’s current privacy policy (2011) leaves many institutions using Facebook at a high level of risk of infringing or violating privacy laws – merely writing some kind of disclaimer will in many cases not be sufficient to avoid breaking the law.

The controversy at Dalhousie University where dental students used Facebook for violent sexist remarks about their fellow women students is an example of the risks endemic in the use of social media.

8.9.3 The need for balance

Although there may well be some areas of teaching and learning where it is essential to operate behind closed doors, such as in some areas of medicine or areas related to public security, or in discussion of sensitive political or moral issues, in general though there have been relatively few privacy or security problems when teachers and instructors have opened up their courses, have followed institutional privacy policies, and above all where students and instructors have used common sense and behaved ethically. Nevertheless, as teaching and learning becomes more open and public, the level of risk does increase.

8.9.4 Questions for consideration

1. What student information am I obliged to keep private and secure? What are my institution’s policies on this?

2. What is the risk that by using a particular technology my institution’s policies concerning privacy could easily be breached? Who in my institution could advise me on this?

3. What areas of teaching and learning, if any, need I keep behind closed doors, available only to students registered in my course? Which technologies will best allow me to do this?

References

Bishop, J. (2011) Facebook Privacy Policy: Will Changes End Facebook for Colleges? The Higher Ed CIO, October 4

Klassen, V. (2011) Privacy and Cloud-Based Educational Technology in British Columbia Vancouver BC: BCCampus

67

8.10 Deciding

Figure 8 The SECTIONS model

If you’ve worked your way right through the last three chapters, you are probably feeling somewhat overwhelmed by all the factors to take into consideration when selecting media. It is a complex issue, but if you have read all the previous sections, you are already in a good position to make well informed decisions. Let me explain.

8.10.1 Deductive versus inductive decision-making

Many years ago, when I first developed the ACTIONS model, I was approached by a representative of a large international computer company who offered to automate the ACTIONS model (this was in the days when data was entered to computers using punched cards). We sat down over a cup of coffee, and he outlined his plan. Here’s how the conversation went.

Pierre. Tony. I’m really excited about your model. We could take it and apply it in every school and university in the world.

Tony. Really? Now how would you do that?

Pierre. Well, you have a set of questions that teachers have to ask for each of the criteria. There is probably a limited set of answers to these questions. You could either work out what those answers are, or collect answers from a representative sample of teachers. You could then give scores to each technology depending on the answers they give. So when a teacher has to make a choice of technology, they would sit down, answer the questions, then depending on their answers, the computer would calculate the best choice of technology. Voilà!

Tony. I don’t think that’s going to work, Pierre.

Pierre: But why not?

Tony. I’m not sure, but I have a gut feeling about this.

Pierre. A gut feeling? My English is not so good. What do you mean by a gut feeling?

Tony. Pierre, your English is excellent. My response is not entirely logical, so let me try and think it through now, both for you and me, why I don’t think this will work. First, I’m not sure there is a limited number of possible answers to each question, but even if there is, it’s not going to work.

Pierre. Well, why not?

Tony. Because I’m not sure how they would score their response to each question and in any case there’s going to be interaction between the the answers to the questions. It’s not the addition of each answer that will determine what technology they might use, but how those answers combine. From a computing point of view, there could be very many different combinations of answers, and I’m not sure what the significant combinations are likely to be with regard to choosing each technology.

Pierre. But we have very big and fast computers, and we can simplify the process through algorithms.

Tony. Yes, but you have to take into account the context in which teachers will make media selections. They are going to be making decisions about media all the time, in many different contexts. It’s just not practical to sit down at a computer, answer all the questions, then wait for the computer’s recommendation.

Pierre. But won’t you give this a try? We can work through all these problems.

Tony. Pierre, I really appreciate your suggestion, but my gut tells me this won’t work, and I really don’t want to waste your time or mine on this.

Pierre. Well, what are you going to tell teachers then? How will they make their decisions?

Tony. I will tell them to use their gut instinct, Pierre – but influenced by the ACTIONS model.

This really is a true story, although the actual words spoken may have been different. What we have in this scenario is a conflict between deductive reasoning (Pierre) and inductive reasoning (Tony). With deductive reasoning, you would do what Pierre suggests: start without any prior conceptions about which technology to use, answer each of the questions I posed at the end of each part of the SECTIONS model, then write down all the possible technologies that would fit the answers to each question, see what technology would best match each of the questions/criteria, and ‘score’ each technology on a recommended scale for each criterion. You would then try to find a way to add all those answers together, perhaps by using a very large matrix, and then end up with a decision about what technology to use.

My suggestion is very different. Mine is a more inductive approach to decision making. The main criterion for inductive reasoning is as follows:

As evidence accumulates, the degree to which the collection of true evidence statements comes to support a hypothesis, as measured by the logic, should tend to indicate that false hypotheses are probably false and that true hypotheses are probably true.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

In terms of selecting media, you probably start with a number of possible technologies in mind at the beginning of the process (hypotheses – or your gut feeling). My suggested process is start with your gut feeling about which technologies you’re thinking of using, but keeping an open mind, then move through all the questions suggested in each of the SECTIONS criteria. You then start building more evidence to support or reject the use of a particular medium or technology. By the end of the process you have a ‘probabilistic’ view of what combinations of media will work best for you and why. This is not an exercise you would have to do every time. Once you have done it just a few times, the choice of medium or technology in each ‘new’ situation will be quicker and easier, because the brain stores all the previous information and you have a framework (the SECTIONS model) for organising new information as it arrives and integrating it with your previous knowledge.

Now you’ve read this chapter you already have a set of questions for consideration (I have listed them all together in Appendix 2 for easy reference). You are now in the same position as the king who asked the alchemist how to make gold. ‘It’s easy’, said the alchemist, ‘so long as you don’t think about elephants.’ Well, having read the three chapters on media in full, you now have the elephants in your head. It will be difficult to ignore them. The brain is in fact a wonderful instrument for making intuitive or inductive decisions of this kind. The trick though is to have all this information somewhere in your head, so you can pull it all out when you need it. The brain does this very quickly. Your decisions won’t always be perfect, but they will be a lot better than if you hadn’t already thought about all these issues, and in life, rough but ready usually beats perfect but late.

8.10.2 Grounding media selection within a course development framework

Media selection does not happen in a vacuum. There are many other factors to consider when designing teaching. In particular, embedded within any decision about the use of technology in education and training will be assumptions about the learning process. We have already seen earlier in this book how different epistemological positions and theories of learning affect the design of teaching, and these influences will also determine a teacher’s or an instructor’s choice of appropriate media. Media selection is just one part of the course design process. It has to fit within the broader framework of course design.

Set within such a framework, there are five critical questions that need to be asked about teaching and learning in order to select and use appropriate media/technologies:

who are the students?
what are the desired learning outcomes from the teaching?
what instructional strategies will be employed to facilitate the learning outcomes?
what are the unique educational characteristics of each medium/technology, and how well do these match the learning and teaching requirements?
what resources are available?

Hibbitts and Travin’s (2015) alternative to ADDIE presents the following learning and technology development model that incorporates the various stages of course design:

Figure 9.10.2 Hibbits and Travin's Learning + technology development model

Figure 8.10.2 Hibbitts and Travin’s Learning + technology development model

The SECTIONS model is strategy that could be used for assessing the technology fit within this course development process. Whether you are using ADDIE or an agile design approach, then, media selection will be influenced by the other factors in course design, adding more information to be considered. This will all be mixed in with your knowledge of the subject area and its requirements, your beliefs and values about teaching and learning, and a lot of emotion as well.

All this further reinforces the inductive approach to decision making that I have suggested. Don’t underestimate the power of your brain – it’s far better than a computer for this kind of decision-making. But it’s important to have the necessary information, as far as possible. So if you skipped a part of this chapter, or the previous two chapters on media, you might want to go back over it!

Activity 8.10: Choosing media and technologies

1. Choose the same course that you chose for Activity 8.1.

2. Go to Appendix 2, and see how many of the questions you can answer. Use Chapter 8 to help, if necessary, including your answers to some the activities in Chapter 8.

3. When you have answered as many questions as you can from Appendix 2, what media or technologies will you now think of using. How does this differ from your original list? If there are changes, why?

Key Takeaways

1. Selecting media and technologies is a complex process, involving a very wide range of interacting variables.

3. Because of the wide range of factors influencing media selection and use, an inductive or intuitive approach to decision-making, informed by a careful analysis of all the criteria in the SECTIONS framework, is one practical way to approach decision-making about media and technologies for teaching and learning.

9

Chapter 9: Modes of delivery

The purpose of the chapter

When you have completed this chapter you should be able to:

determine the most appropriate mode of delivery for any course or program you wish to offer;
determine what factors should influence this decision;
better identify the role of classroom teaching when students can now increasingly study most things online.

What is covered in this chapter

Also in this chapter you will find the following activities:

Activity 9.1 Where on the continuum are your courses?
Activity 9.2 Defining the ‘magic of the campus’
Activity 9.3 Knowing your students
Activity 9.4 Deciding on the mode of delivery
Activity 9.5 Redesigning your classroom space

Key Takeaways from this chapter

1. There is a continuum of technology-based learning, from ‘pure’ face-to-face teaching to fully online programs. Every teacher or instructor needs to decide where on the continuum a particular course or program should be.

2. We do not have good research evidence or theories to make this decision, although we do have growing experience of the strengths and limitations of online learning. What is particularly missing is an evidence-based analysis of the strengths and limitations of face-to-face teaching when online learning is also available.

3. In the absence of good theory, I have suggested four factors to consider when deciding on mode of delivery, and in particular the different uses of face-to-face and online learning in blended courses:

student characteristics and needs;
your preferred teaching strategy, in terms of methods and learning outcomes;
the pedagogical and presentational requirements of the subject matter, in terms of (a) content and (b) skills;
the resources available to you as an instructor (including your time).

4. The move to blended or hybrid learning in particular means rethinking the use of the campus and the facilities needed fully to support learning in a hybrid mode.

68

9.1 The continuum of technology-based learning

Figure 10.1 Why get on the bus when you can study online?

Figure 9.1.1 Why get on the bus when you can study online? (UBC bus loop)

In Chapters 6, 7 and 8, the use of media incorporated into a particular course or program was explored. In this chapter, the focus is on deciding whether a whole course or program should be offered partly or wholly online. In Chapter 10 the focus is on deciding when and how to adopt an approach that incorporates ‘open-ness’ in its design and delivery.

9.1.1 The many faces of online learning

Online learning, blended learning, flipped learning, hybrid learning, flexible learning, open learning and distance education are all terms that are often used inter-changeably, but there are significant differences in meaning. More importantly, these forms of education, once considered somewhat esoteric and out of the mainstream of conventional education, are increasingly taking on greater significance and in some cases becoming mainstream themselves. As teachers and instructors become more familiar and confident with online learning and new technologies, there will be more innovative methods developing all the time.

At the time of writing though it is possible to identify at least the following modes of delivery:

classroom teaching with no technology at all (which is very rare these days);

blended learning, which encompasses a wide variety of designs, including:
- technology-enhanced learning, or technology used as classroom aids; a typical example would be the use of Powerpoint slides and/or clickers;
- the use of a learning management system to support classroom teaching, for storing learning materials, set readings and perhaps online discussion;
- the use of lecture capture for flipped classrooms;
- one semester on a residential-type campus and two semesters online (the Royal Roads University model);
- a shortened time on campus spent on campus hands-on experience or training preceded or followed by a concentrated time spent studying online (an example is apprenticeship training for mature students at Vancouver Community College, or what the University of British Columbia calls the compressed classroom experience);
- hybrid or flexible learning requiring the redesign of teaching so that students can do the majority of their learning online, coming to campus only for very specific face-to-face teaching, such as lab or hands-on practical work, that cannot be done satisfactorily online (for examples, see below);
fully online learning with no classroom or on-campus teaching, which is one form of distance education, including:
- courses for credit, which will usually cover the same content, skills and assessment as a campus-based version;
- non-credit courses offered only online, such as courses for continuing professional education;
- fully open courses, such as MOOCs;
- open educational resources, available for free downloading online, which either instructors or students can access to support teaching and learning.

There is an important development within blended learning that deserves special mention, and that is the total re-design of campus-based classes that takes greater advantage of the potential of technology, which I call hybrid learning, with online learning combined with focused small group face-to-face interactions or mixing online and physical lab experiences. In such designs, the amount of face-to-face contact time is usually reduced, for instance from three classes a week to one, to allow more time for students to study online.

In hybrid learning the whole learning experience is re-designed, with a transformation of teaching on campus built around the use of technology. For instance:

Carol Twigg at the National Center for Academic Transformation has for many years worked with universities and colleges to redesign usually large lecture class programs to improve learning and reduce costs through the use of technology. This program has been running successfully since 1999;
Virginia Tech many years ago created a successful program for first and second year math teaching built around 24 x 7 computer-assisted learning supported by ‘roving’ instructors and teaching assistants (Robinson and Moore, 2006);
The University of British Columbia launched in 2013 what it calls a flexible learning initiative focused on developing, delivering, and evaluating learning experiences that promote effective and dramatic improvements in student achievement. Flexible learning enables pedagogical and logistical flexibility so that students have more choice in their learning opportunities, including when, where, and what they want to learn.

Thus ‘blended learning’ can mean minimal rethinking or redesign of classroom teaching, such as the use of classroom aids, or complete redesign as in flexibly designed courses, which aim to identify the unique pedagogical characteristics of face-to-face teaching, with online learning providing flexible access for the rest of the learning.

9.1.2 The continuum of online learning

Thus there is a continuum of technology-based learning:

Figure 10.1.2 The continuum of technology-based teaching

Figure 9.1.2 The continuum of technology-based teaching

(adapted from Bates and Poole, 2003)

9.1.3 Decisions, decisions!

These developments open up a whole new range of decisions for instructors. Every instructor now needs to decide:

what kind of course or program should I be offering?
what factors should influence this decision?
what is the role of classroom teaching when students can now increasingly study most things online?
if content is increasingly open and free, how does that affect my role as an instructor?
when should I create my own material and when should I use open resources?
should I open up my teaching to anyone, and if so, under what circumstances?

This chapter aims to help you answer these questions.

Activity 9.1 Where on the continuum are your courses?

1. If you are currently teaching, where on the continuum is each of your courses? How easy is it to decide? Are there factors that make it difficult to decide where on the continuum any of your courses should fit?

2. How was it decided what kind of course you would teach? If you decided, what were the reasons for the location of each course on the continuum?

3. Are you happy with the decision(s)?

Please use the comment box below to share your responses.

References

Bates, A. and Poole, G. (2003) Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Robinson, B. and Moore, A. (2006) Virginia Tech: the Math Emporium in Oblinger, D. (ed.) Learning Spaces Boulder CO: EDUCAUSE

69

9.2 Comparing delivery methods

Figure 9.2.1 Which is the best?

Many surveys have found that a majority of faculty still believe that online learning or distance education is inevitably inferior in quality to classroom teaching (see for instance Jaschik and Letterman, 2014). In fact, there is no scientifically-based evidence to support this opinion. The evidence points in general to no significant differences, and if anything suggests that blended or hybrid learning has some advantages over face-to-face teaching in terms of learning performance (see, for example, Means et al., 2009).

9.2.1 The influence of distance education on online learning

We can learn a great deal from earlier developments in distance education. Although the technology is different, fully online learning is, after all, just another version of distance education.

Much has been written about distance education (see, for instance, Wedemeyer, 1981; Peters, 1983; Holmberg, 1989; Keegan, 1990; Moore and Kearsley, 1996; Peters, 2002; Bates, 2005; Evans et al., 2008) but in concept, the idea is quite simple: students study in their own time, at the place of their choice (home, work or learning centre), and without face-to-face contact with a teacher. However, students are ‘connected’, today usually through the Internet, with an instructor, adjunct faculty or tutor who provides learner support and student assessment.

Distance education has been around a very long time. It could be argued that in the Christian religion, St. Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians was an early form of distance education (53-57 AD). The first distance education degree was offered by correspondence by the University of London (UK) in 1858. Students were mailed a list of readings, and took the same examination as the regular on-campus students. If students could afford it, they hired a private tutor, but the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens called it the People’s University, because it provided access to higher education to students from less affluent backgrounds. The program still continues to this day, but is now called the University of London International Programmes, with more than 50,000 students worldwide.

In North America, historically many of the initial land-grant universities, such as Penn State University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of New Mexico in the USA, and Memorial University, University of Saskatchewan and the University of British Columbia in Canada, had state- or province-wide responsibilities. As a result these institutions have a long history of offering distance education programs, mainly as continuing education for farmers, teachers, and health professionals scattered across the whole state or province. These programs have now been expanded to cover undergraduate and professional masters students. Australia is another country with an extensive history of both k-12 and post-secondary distance education.

Qualifications received from most of these universities carry the same recognition as degrees taken on campus. For instance, the University of British Columbia, which has been offering distance education programs since 1936, makes no distinction on student transcripts between courses taken at a distance and those taken on campus, as both kinds of students take the same examinations.

Another feature of distance education, pioneered by the British Open University in the 1970s, but later adopted and adapted by North American universities that offered distance programs, is a course design process, based on the ADDIE model, but specially adapted to serve students learning at a distance. This places a heavy emphasis on defined learning outcomes, production of high quality multimedia learning materials, planned student activities and engagement, and strong learner support, even at a distance. As a result, universities that offered distance education programs were well placed for the move into online learning in the 1990s. These universities have found that in general, students taking the online programs do almost as well as the on-campus students (course completion rates are usually within 5-10 per cent of the on-campus students – see Ontario, 2011), which is somewhat surprising as the distance students often have full-time jobs and families.

It is important to acknowledge the long and distinguished pedigree of distance education from internationally recognised, high quality institutions, because commercial diploma mills, especially in the USA, have given distance education an unjustified reputation of being of lower quality. As with all teaching, distance education can be done well or badly. However, where distance education has been professionally designed and delivered by high quality public institutions, it has proved to be very successful, meeting the needs of many working adults, students in remote areas who would otherwise be unable to access education on a full-time basis, or on-campus students wanting to fit in an extra course or with part-time jobs whose schedule clashes with their lecture schedule. However, universities, colleges and even schools have been able to do this only by meeting high quality design standards.

At the same time, there has also been a small but very influential number of campus-based teachers and instructors who quite independently of distance education have been developing best practices in online or computer-supported learning. These include Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff who were experimenting with online or blended learning as early as the late 1970s at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Marlene Scardamalia and Paul Bereiter at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, and Linda Harasim at Simon Fraser University, who all focused particularly on online collaborative learning and knowledge construction within a campus or school environment.

There is also plenty of evidence that teachers and instructors in many schools, colleges and universities new to online learning have not adopted these best practices, instead merely transferring lecture-based classroom practice to blended and online learning, often with poor or even disastrous results.

9.2.2 What the research tells us

There have been thousands of studies comparing face-to-face teaching to teaching with a wide range of different technologies, such as televised lectures, computer-based learning, and online learning, or comparing face-to-face teaching with distance education. With regard to online learning there have been several meta-studies. A meta-study combines the results of many ‘well-conducted scientific’ studies, usually studies that use the matched comparisons or quasi-experimental method (Means et al., 2011; Barnard et al., 2014). Nearly all such ‘well-conducted’ meta-studies find no or little significant difference in the teaching methods, in terms of the effect on student learning or performance. For instance, Means et al. (2011), in a major meta-analysis of research on blended and online learning for the U.S. Department of Education, reported:

In recent experimental and quasi-experimental studies contrasting blends of online and face-to-face instruction with conventional face-to-face classes, blended instruction has been more effective, providing a rationale for the effort required to design and implement blended approaches. When used by itself, online learning appears to be as effective as conventional classroom instruction, but not more so.

Means et al. attributed the slightly better performance of blended learning to students spending more time on task. This highlights a common finding, that where differences have been found, they are often attributed to factors other than the mode of delivery. Tamim et al. (2011) identified ‘well-conducted’ comparative studies covering 40 years of research. Tamim et al. found there is a slight tendency for students who study with technology to do better than students who study without technology. However, the measured difference was quite weak, and the authors state:

it is arguable that it is aspects of the goals of instruction, pedagogy, teacher effectiveness, subject matter, age level, fidelity of technology implementation, and possibly other factors that may represent more powerful influences on effect sizes than the nature of the technology intervention.’

Research into any kind of learning is not easy; there are just so many different variables or conditions that affect learning in any context. Indeed, it is the variables we should be examining, not just the technological delivery. In other words, we should asking a question first posed by Wilbur Schramm as long ago as 1977:

What kinds of learning can different media best facilitate, and under what conditions?

In terms of making decisions then about mode of delivery, we should be asking, not which is the best method overall, but:

What are the most appropriate conditions for using face-to-face, blended or fully online learning respectively?

Fortunately, there is much research and best practice that provides guidance on that question, at least with respect to blended and online learning (see, for instance, Anderson, 2008; Picciano et al., 2013; Halverson et al., 2013; Zawacki-Richter and Anderson, 2014). Ironically, we shall see that what we lack is good research on the unique potential of face-to-face teaching in a digital age when so much can also be done just as well online.

9.2.3 Challenging the supremacy of face-to-face teaching

Although there has been a great deal of mainly inconclusive research comparing online learning with face-to-face teaching in terms of student learning, there is very little evidence or even theory to guide decisions about what is best done online and what is best done face-to-face in a blended learning context, or about the circumstances or conditions when fully online learning is in fact a better option than classroom teaching. Generally the assumption appears to have been that face-to-face teaching is the default option by virtue of its superiority, and online learning is used only when circumstances prevent the use of face-to-face teaching, such as when students cannot get to the campus, or when classes are so large that interaction with students is at a minimum.

However, online learning has now become so prevalent and effective in so many contexts that it is time to ask:

what are the unique characteristics of face-to-face teaching that make it pedagogically different from online learning?

It is possible of course that there is nothing pedagogically unique about face-to-face teaching, but given the rhetoric around ‘the magic of the campus’ (Sharma, 2013) and the hugely expensive fees associated with elite campus-based teaching, or indeed the high cost of publicly funded campus-based education, it is about time that we had some evidence-based theory about what makes face-to-face teaching so special. This will be discussed further in Section 9.6

In the meantime, a method for determining which mode of delivery (face-to-face, blended or online) will be discussed in the next sections.

Activity 9.2 Defining the magic of the campus

1. Can you define the ‘magic of the campus’? What is it about face-to-face teaching that makes it special, compared with teaching online? Write down the three things you think are the most important.

2. Could you do the same for teaching online? If not, what are the things that make the campus special?

Please share your responses in the comment box below.

References

Anderson, A. (ed.) (2008) The Theory and Practice of Online Learning Athabasca AB: Athabasca University Press

Barnard, R. et al. (2014) Detecting bias in meta-analyses of distance education research: big pictures we can rely on Distance Education Vol. 35, No. 3

Bates, A.W. (2005) Technology, e-Learning and Distance Education London/New York: Routledge

Evans, T., Haughey, M. and Murphy, D. (2008) International Handbook of Distance Education Bingley UK: Emerald Publishing

Halverson, L. R., Graham, C. R., Spring, K. J., & Drysdale, J. S. (2012). ‘An analysis of high impact scholarship and publication trends in blended learning’ Distance Education, Vol. 33, No. 3

Holmberg, B. (1989) Theory and Practice of Distance Education New York: Routledge

Jaschik, S. and Letterman, D. (2014) The 2014 Inside Higher Ed Survey of Faculty Attitudes to Technology Washington DC: Inside Higher Ed

Keegan, D. (ed.) (1990) Theoretical Principles of Distance Education London/New York: Routledge

Means, B. et al. (2009) Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies Washington, DC: US Department of Education

Moore, M. and Kearsley, G. (1996) Distance Education: A Systems View Belmont CA: Wadsworth

Ontario (2011) Fact Sheet Summary of Ontario eLearning Surveys of Publicly Assisted PSE Institutions Toronto: Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities

Peters, O. (1983) Distance education and industrial production, in Sewart et al. (eds.) Distance Education: International Perspectives London: Croom Helm

Peters, O. (2002) Distance Education in Transition: New Trends and Challenges Oldenberg FGR: Biblothecks und Informationssystemder Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenberg

Picciano, A., Dziuban, C. and & Graham, C. (eds.), Blended Learning: Research Perspectives, Volume 2. New York: Routledge, 2013

Schramm, W. (1977) Big Media, Little Media Beverley Hills CA/London: Sage

Sharma, S. (2013) The Magic of the Campus Boston MA: LINC 2013 conference (recorded presentation)

Tamim, R. et al. (2011) ‘What Forty Years of Research Says About the Impact of Technology on Learning: A Second-Order Meta-Analysis and Validation Study’ Review of Educational Research, Vol. 81, No. 1

Wedemeyer, C. (1981) Learning at the Back Door: Reflections on Non-traditional Learning in the Lifespan Madison: University of Wisconsin Press

Zawacki-Richter, O. and Anderson, T. (eds.) (2014) Online Distance Education: Towards a Research Agenda Athabasca AB: AU Press, pp. 508

70

9.3 Which mode? Student needs

Figure 9.3 Who are your students?

It will be suggested that when making choices about mode of delivery, teachers and instructors need to ask the following four questions:

who are – or could be – my students?
what is my preferred teaching approach?
what are the content and skills that I need to teach?
what resources will I have to support my decision?

As always, start with the learners.

9.3.1 Fully online/distance learners

Research (see for instance Dabbagh, 2007) has repeatedly shown that fully online courses suit some types of student better than others: older, more mature students; students with already high levels of education; part-time students who are working and/or with families. This applies not only to MOOCs (see Chapter 5) and other non-credit courses, but even more so to courses and programs for credit.

Today, ‘distance’ is more likely to be psychological or social, rather than geographical. For instance, from survey data regularly collected from students at the University of British Columbia:

less than 20 per cent give reasons related to distance or travel for taking an online course;
most of the 10,000 or so UBC students (there are over 60,000 students in total) taking at least one fully online course are not truly distant. The majority (over 80 per cent) live in the Greater Vancouver Metropolitan Area, within 90 minutes commute time to the university, and almost half within the relatively compact City of Vancouver. Comparatively few (less than 10 per cent) live outside the province (although this proportion is slowly growing each year);
on the other hand, two thirds of UBC’s online students have paid work of one kind or another;
many undergraduate students in their fourth year take an online course because the face-to-face classes are ‘capped’ because of their large size, or because they are short of the required number of credits to complete a degree. Taking a course online allows these students to complete their program without having to come back for another year;
the main reason for most UBC students taking fully online courses is the flexibility they provide, given the work and family commitments of students and the difficulty caused by timetable conflicts for face-to-face classes.

This suggests that fully online courses are more suitable for more experienced students with a strong motivation to take such courses because of the impact they have on their quality of life. In general, online students need more self-discipline in studying and a greater motivation to study to succeed. This does not mean that other kinds of students cannot benefit from online learning, but extra effort needs to go into the design and support of such students online.

On the other hand, fully online courses really suit working professionals. In a digital age, the knowledge base is continually expanding, jobs change rapidly, and hence there is strong demand for on-going, continuing education, often in ‘niche’ areas of knowledge. Online learning is a convenient and effective way of providing such lifelong learning. Lifelong learners are often working with families and really appreciate the flexibility of studying fully online. They often already have higher education qualifications such as a first degree, and therefore have learned how to study successfully. They may be engineers looking for training in management, or professionals wanting to keep up to date in their professional area. They are often better motivated, because they can see a direct link between the new course of study and possible improvement in their career prospects. They are therefore ideal students for online courses (even though they may be older and less tech savvy than students coming out of high school). The most rapid area of growth in online courses is for masters programs aimed at working professionals. What is important for such learners is that the courses are technically well designed, in that learners do not need to be highly skilled in using computers to be able to study the courses.

So far, apart from MBAs and teacher education, public universities have been slow in recognising the importance of this market, which at worse could be self-financing, and at best could bring in much needed additional revenues. The private, for-profit universities, though, such as the University of Phoenix, Laureate University and Capella University in the USA have been quick to move into this market.

One other factor to consider is the impact of changing demographics. In jurisdictions where the school-age population is starting to decline, expanding into lifelong learning markets may be essential for maintaining student enrolments. Fully online learning may therefore turn out to be a way to keep some academic departments alive.

However, to make such lifelong learning online programs work, institutions need to make some important adjustments. In particular there must be incentives or rewards for faculty to move in this direction and there needs to be some strategic thinking about the best way to offer such programs. The University of British Columbia has developed a series of very successful, fully online, self-financing professional masters’ programs. Students can initially try one or two courses in the Graduate Certificate in Rehabilitation before applying to the master’s program. The certificate can be completed in less than two years while working full-time, and paying per course rather than for a whole Master’s year, providing the flexibility needed by lifelong learners. UBC also partnered with Tec de Monterrey in Mexico, with the same program being offered in English by UBC and in Spanish by Tec de Monterrey, as a means of kick-starting its very successful Master in Educational Technology program, which over time has doubled the number of graduate students in UBC’s Faculty of Education. We shall see these examples are important when we examine the development of modular programming in Section 9.9.

Online learning also offers the opportunity to offer programs where an institution has unique research expertise but insufficient local students to offer a full master’s program. By going fully online, perhaps in partnership with another university with similar expertise but in a different jurisdiction, it may be able to attract students from across the country or even internationally, enabling the research to be more widely disseminated and to build a cadre of professionals in newly emerging areas of knowledge – again an important goal in a digital age.

Often it is also assumed that isolated or remote learners are the main market for fully online learners in that they are distant from any local school, college or university. Certainly in Canada, there are such students and the ability to study locally rather than travel great distances can be very appealing. However, it is worth noting that the vast majority of online learners are urban, living within one hour’s travel of a college or university campus. It is the flexibility rather than the distance that matters to these learners, and really remote and isolated students may not have good study skills or broadband access. Thus they may need to be introduced gradually to online learning, with often strong local face-to-face support initially.

9.3.2 Blended learning learners

In terms of blended learning, the ‘market’ is less clearly defined than for fully online learning. The benefit for students is increased flexibility, but they will still need to be relatively local in order to attend the campus-based sessions. The main advantage is for the 50 per cent or more of students, at least in North America, who are working more than 15 hours a week to help with the cost of their education and to keep their student debt as low as possible. Also, blended learning provides an opportunity for the gradual development of independent learning skills, as long as this is an intentional teaching strategy.

The research also suggests that these skills of independent learning need to be developed while students are on campus. In other words, online learning, in the form of blended learning, should be deliberately introduced and gradually increased as students work through a program, so by the time they graduate, they have the skills to continue to learn independently – a critical skill for the digital age. If courses are to be offered fully online in the early years of a university career, then they will need to be exceptionally well designed with a considerable amount of online learner support – and hence are likely to be expensive to mount, if they are to be successful.

The main reason for moving to blended learning then is more likely to be academic, providing necessary hands-on experiences, offering an alternative to large lecture classes, and making student learning more active and accessible when studying online. This will benefit most students who can easily access a campus on a regular basis.

9.3.3 Face-to-face learners

Many students coming straight from high school will be looking for social, sporting and cultural opportunities that a campus-based education provides. Also students lacking self-confidence or experience in studying are likely to prefer face-to-face teaching, providing that they can access it in a relatively personal way.

However, the academic reasons for preference for face-to-face teaching by freshmen and women are less clear, particularly if students are faced with very large classes and relatively little contact with professors in the first year or so of their programs. In this respect, smaller, regional institutions, which generally have smaller classes and more face-to-face contact with instructors, have an advantage.

We shall see later in this chapter that blended and fully online learning offer the opportunity to re-think the whole campus experience so that better support is provided to on-campus learners in their early years in post-secondary education. More importantly, as more and more studying moves online, universities and colleges will be increasingly challenged to identify the unique pedagogical advantages of coming to campus, so that it will still be worthwhile for students to get on the bus to campus every morning.

9.3.4 Know your learners

It is therefore very important to know what kind of students you will be teaching. For some students, it will be better to enrol in a face-to-face class but be gradually introduced to online study within a familiar classroom environment. For other students, the only way they will take the course will be if it is available fully online. It is also possible to mix and match face-to-face and online learning for some students who want the campus experience, but also need a certain amount of flexibility in their studying. Going online may enable you to reach a wider market (critical for departments with low or declining enrolments) or to meet strong demand from working professionals. Who are (or could be) your students? What kind of course will work best for them?

We shall see that identifying the likely student market for a course or program is the strongest factor in deciding on mode of delivery.

Activity 9.3 Knowing your students

1. Choose one of your courses. Do you know the key student demographics: age, gender, working or not, single or with families, language skills? If not how could you get this information?

2. If you had this information, would it change the way you teach?

3. If you are teaching a face-to-face class, are there other kinds of students who would be interested in taking your course if it was online?

Reference

Dabbagh, N. (2007) The online learner: characteristics and pedagogical implications Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, Vol. 7, No.3

71

9.4 Choosing between face-to-face and online teaching on campus

Analysing student demographics may help to decide whether or not a course or program should be either campus-based or fully online, but we need to consider more than just student demographics to make the decision about what to do online and what to do on campus for the majority of campus-based courses and programs that will increasingly have an online component.

9.4.1 A suggested method

I am going to draw on a method used initially at the U.K. Open University for designing distance education courses and programs in science in the 1970s. The challenge was to decide what was best done in print, on television, via home experiment kits, and finally in a one week residential hands-on summer school at a traditional university. Since then, Dietmar Kennepohl, of Athabasca University, has written an excellent book about teaching science online (Kennepohl, 2010). Also, the Colorado Community College System has recently been using a combination of remotely operated labs for student practical work, combined with home kits, for teaching online introductory science courses (Contact North, 2013; Schmidt and Shea, 2015). These all suggest a pragmatic method for making decisions about mode of delivery.

The most pragmatic way to go about this is to trust the knowledge and experience of subject experts who are willing to approach this question in an open-minded way, especially if they are willing to work with instructional designers or media producers on an equal footing. So here is a process for determining when to go online and when not to, on purely pedagogical grounds, for a course that is being designed from scratch in a blended delivery mode.

Figure 9.4.1 Can the study of haematology be done online?
Image: CC Wikimedia Commons: National Cancer Institute, USA

I will choose a subject area at random: haematology (the study of blood), in which I am not an expert. But here’s what I would suggest if I was working with a subject specialist in this area:

Step 1: identify the main instructional approach.

This is discussed in some detail in Chapters 2 to 4, but here are the kinds of decision to be considered:

Table 9.4.2 Which teaching approach?

This should lead to a general plan or approach to teaching that identifies the teaching methods to be used in some detail. In the example of haematology, the instructor wants to take a more constructivist approach, with students developing a critical approach to the subject matter. In particular, she wants to relate the course specifically to certain issues, such as security in handling and storing blood, factors in blood contamination, and developing student skills in analysis and interpretation of blood samples.

Step 2. Identify the main content to be covered

Content covers facts, data, hypotheses, ideas, arguments, evidence, and description of things (for instance, showing or describing the parts of a piece of equipment and their relationship). What do they need to know in this course? In haematology, this will mean understanding the chemical composition of blood, what its functions are, how it circulates through the body, descriptions of the relevant parts of cell biology, what external factors may weaken its integrity or functionality, etc., the equipment used to analyse blood and how the equipment works, principles, theories and hypotheses about blood clotting, the relationship between blood tests and diseases or other illnesses, and so on.

In particular, what are the presentational requirements of the content in this course? Dynamic activities need to be explained, and representing key concepts in colour will almost certainly be valuable. Observations of blood samples under many degrees of magnitude will be essential, which will require the use of a microscope.

There are now many ways to represent content: text, graphics, audio, video and simulations. For instance, graphics, a short video clip, or photographs down a microscope can show examples of blood cells in different conditions. Increasingly this content is already available over the web for free educational use (for instance, see the American Society of Hematology’s video library). Creating such material from scratch is more expensive, but is becoming increasingly easy to do with high quality, low cost digital recording equipment. Using a carefully recorded video of an experiment will often provide a better view than students will get crowding around awkward lab equipment.

Step 3. Identify the main skills to be developed during the course

Skills describe how content will be applied and practiced. This might include analysis of the components of blood, such as the glucose and insulin levels, the use of equipment (where ability to use equipment safely and effectively is a desired learning outcome), diagnosis, interpreting results by making hypotheses about cause and effect based on theory and evidence, problem-solving, and report writing.

Developing skills online can be more of a challenge, particularly if it requires manipulation of equipment and a ‘feel’ for how equipment works, or similar skills that require tactile sense. (The same could be said of skills that require taste or smell). In our hematology example, some of the skills that need to be taught might include the ability to analyse analytes or particular components of blood, such as insulin or glucose, to interpret results, and to suggest treatment. The aim here would be to see if there are ways these skills can also be taught effectively online. This would mean identifying the skills needed, working out how to develop such skills (including opportunities for practice) online, and how to assess such skills online.

Let’s call Steps 2 and 3 the key learning objectives for the course.

Step 4: Analyse the most appropriate mode for each learning objective

Then create a table as in Figure 9.4.3

Figure 10.5.4 Allocating mode of delivery

Figure 9.4.3 Allocating mode of delivery

In this example, the instructor is keen to move as much as possible online, so she can spend as much time as possible with students, dealing with laboratory work and answering questions about theory and practice. She was able to find some excellent online videos of several of the key interactions between blood and other factors, and she was also able to find some suitable graphics and simple animations of the molecular structure of blood which she could adapt, as well as creating with the help of a graphics designer her own graphics. Indeed, she found she had to create relatively little new material or content herself.

The instructional designer also found some software that enabled students to design their own laboratory set-up for certain elements of blood testing which involved combining virtual equipment, entering data values and running an experiment. However, there were still some skills that needed to be done hands-on in the laboratory, such as inserting glucose and using a ‘real’ microscope to analyse the chemical components of blood. However, the online material enabled the instructor to spend more time in the lab with students.

It can be seen in this example that most of the content can be delivered online, together with a critically important skill of designing an experiment, but some activities still need to be done ‘hands-on’. This might require one or more evening or weekend sessions in a lab for hands-on work, thus delivering most of the course online, or there may be so much hands-on work that the course may have to be a hybrid of 50 per cent hands-on lab work and 50 per cent online learning.

With the development of animations, simulations and online remote labs, where actual equipment can be remotely manipulated, it is becoming increasingly possible to move even traditional lab work online. At the same time, it is not always possible to find exactly what one needs online, although this will improve over time. In other subject areas such as humanities, social sciences, and business, it is much easier to move the teaching online.

This is a crude method of determining the balance between face-to-face teaching and online learning for a blended learning course, but it least it’s a start. It can be seen that these decisions have to be relatively intuitive, based on instructors’ knowledge of the subject area and their ability to think creatively about how to achieve learning outcomes online. However, we have enough experience now of teaching online to know that in most subject areas, a great deal of the skills and content needed to achieve quality learning outcomes can be taught online. It is no longer possible to argue that the default decision must always be to do the teaching in a face-to-face manner.

Thus every instructor now needs to ask the question: if I can move most of my teaching online, what are the unique benefits of the campus experience that I need to bring into my face-to-face teaching? Why do students have to be here in front of me, and when they are here, am I using the time to best advantage?

9.4.2 Analyse the resources available

There is one more consideration besides the type of learners, the overall teaching method, and making decisions based on pedagogical grounds, and that is to consider the resources available.

9.4.2.1 The time of the instructor

In particular, the key resource is the time of the teacher or instructor. Careful consideration is needed about how best to spend the limited time available to an instructor. It may be all very well to identify a series of videos as the best way to capture some of the procedures for blood testing, but if these videos do not already exist in a format that can be freely used, shooting video specially for this one course may not be justified, in terms of either the time the instructor would need to spend on video production, or the costs of making the videos with a professional crew.

Time to learn how to do online teaching is especially important. There is a steep learning curve and the first time will take much longer than subsequent online courses. The institution should offer some form of training or professional development for instructors thinking of moving online or into blended learning. Ideally instructors should get some release time (up to one semester from one class) in order to do the design and preparation for an online course, or a re-designed hybrid course. This however is not always possible, but one thing we do know. Instructor workload is a function of course design. Well designed online courses should require less rather than more work from an instructor.

9.4.2.2. Learning technology support staff.

If your institution has a service unit for faculty development and training, instructional designers and web designers for supporting teaching, use them. Such staff are often qualified in both educational sciences and computer technology. They have unique knowledge and skills that can make your life much easier when teaching online. (This will be discussed further in Chapter 11.)

The availability and skill level of learning technology support from the institution is a critical factor. Can you get the support of an instructional designer and media producers? If not, it is likely that much more will be done face-to-face than online, unless you are already very experienced in online learning.

9.4.2.3 Readily available technology

Most institutions now have a learning management system such as Blackboard or Moodle, or a lecture capture system for recording lessons. But increasingly, instructors will need access to media producers who can create videos, digital graphics, animations, simulations, web sites, and access to blog and wiki software. Without access to such technology support, instructors are more likely to fall back on tried and true classroom teaching.

9.4.2.4 Colleagues experienced in blended and online learning

It really helps if there are experienced colleagues in the department who understand the subject discipline and have done some online teaching. They will perhaps even have some materials already developed, such as graphics, that they will be willing to share.

9.4.2.5 Money

Are there resources available to buy you out for one semester to spend time on course design? Many institutions have development funds for innovative teaching and learning, and there may be external grants for creating new open educational resources, for instance. This will increase the practicality and hence the likelihood of more of the teaching moving online.

We shall see that as more and more learning material becomes available as open educational resources, teachers and instructors will be freed up from mainly content presentation to focusing on more interaction with students, both online and face to face. However, although open educational resources are becoming increasingly available, they may not exist in the topics required or they may not be of adequate quality in terms of either content or production standards (see Section 9.7 for more on OERs).

The extent to which these resources are available will help inform you on the extent to which you will be able to go online and meet quality standards. In particular, you should think twice about going online if none of the resources listed above is going to be available to you.

9.4.3 The case for multiple modes

Increasingly, it is becoming difficult to separate markets for particular courses or programs. Although the majority of students taking a first year university course are likely to be coming straight from high school, some will not. There may be a minority of students who left high school directly for work, or went to a two year college to get vocational training, but now find they need a degree. Especially in professional graduate programs, students may be a mix of those who have just completed their bachelor’s course and are still full-time students, and those that are already in the work-force but need the specialist qualification. There will be a mix of students in third and fourth year undergraduate courses, some of whom will be working over 15 hours a week, and others who are studying more or less full time. In theory, then, it may be possible to identify a particular market for mainly face-to-face, blended or fully online learning, but in practice most courses are likely to have a mix of students with different needs.

If, though, as seems likely, more and more courses will end up as blended learning, then it is worth thinking about how courses could be designed to serve multiple markets. For instance, if we take our haematology course, it could be offered to full-time third year undergraduate students studying biology, or it could also be offered either on its own or with other related courses as a certificate in blood management for nurses working in hospitals. It might also be useful for students studying medicine who have not taken this particular course as an undergraduate, or even for patients with conditions related to their blood levels, such as diabetes.

If for instance our instructor developed a course where students spent approximately 50 per cent of their time online and the rest on campus, it may eventually be possible to design this for other markets as well, with perhaps practical work for nurses being done in the hospital under supervision, or just the online part being offered as a short MOOC for patients. For some courses (perhaps not haematology), it may be possible to offer the course wholly online, in blended format or wholly face-to-face. This would allow the same course to reach several different markets.

9.4.4 Questions for consideration in choosing modes of delivery

In summary, here are some questions to consider, when designing a course from scratch:

1. What kind of learners are likely to take this course? What are their needs? Which mode(s) of delivery will be most appropriate to these kinds of learners? Could I reach more or different types of learners by choosing a particular mode of delivery?

2. What is my view of how learners can best learn on this course? What is my preferred method(s) of teaching to facilitate that kind of learning on this course?

3. What is the main content (facts, theory, data, processes) that needs to be covered on this course? How will I assess understanding of this content?

4. What are the main skills that learners will need to develop on this course? What are the ways in which they can develop/practice these skills? How will I assess these skills?

5. How can technology help with the presentation of content on this course?

6. How can technology help with the development of skills on this course?

7. When I list the content and skills to be taught, which of these could be taught:

fully online
partly online and partly face-to-face
can only be taught face-to-face?

8. What resources do I have available for this course in terms of:

professional help from instructional designers and media producers;
possible sources of funding for release time and media production;
good quality open educational resources.

9. What kind of classroom space will I need to teach the way I wish? Can I adapt existing spaces or will I need to press for major changes to be made before I can teach the way I want to?

10. In the light of the answers to all these questions, which mode of delivery makes most sense?

Activity 9.4 Deciding on the mode of delivery

1. Can you answer the questions above for a possible new course that you would like to teach? Would this replace an existing course, or run along side it?

References

Contact North (2013) The Colorado Community College System Sudbury ON: Contact North

Kennepohl, D. (2010) Accessible Elements: Teaching Science Online and at a Distance Athabasca AB: Athabasca University Press

Schmidt, S. and Shea, P. (2015) NANSLO Web-based Labs: Real Equipment, Real Data, Real People! WCET Frontiers

72

9.5 The future of the campus

Figure 10.5.1 The magic of the campus? Image: © Cambridge Advanced Studies Program, Cambridge University, U.K., 2015

As more and more teaching is moved online, even for campus-based students, it will become increasingly important to think about the function of face-to-face teaching and the use of space on campus.

9.5.1 Identifying the unique characteristics of face-to-face teaching in a digital world

Sanjay Sarma, Director of MIT’s Office of Digital Learning, made an attempt at MIT’s LINC 2013 conference to identify the difference between campus-based and online learning, and in particular MOOCs. He made the distinction between MOOCs as open courses available to anyone, reflecting the highest level of knowledge in particular subject areas, and the ‘magic’ of the on-campus experience, which he claimed is distinctly different from the online experience.

He argued that it is difficult to define or pin down the magic that takes place on-campus, but referred to

‘in-the-corridor’ conversations between faculty and staff;
hands-on engineering with other students outside of lectures and scheduled labs;
the informal learning that takes place between students in close proximity to one another.

There are a couple of other characteristics that Sharma hinted at but did not mention explicitly in his presentation:

the very high standard of the students admitted to MIT, who ‘push’ each other to even higher standards;
the importance of the social networks developed by students at MIT that provide opportunities later in life.

Easy and frequent access to laboratories is a serious contender for the uniqueness of campus-based learning, as this is difficult to provide online, although there is an increasing number of developments in remote labs and the use of simulations. Opportunities for dating and finding future spouses is another contender. Probably the most important though is access to social contacts that can further your career.

I leave it to you to judge whether these are unique features of face-to-face teaching, or whether the key advantages of a campus experience are more specific to expensive and highly selective elite institutions. For most teachers and instructors, though, more concrete and more general pedagogical advantages for face-to-face teaching need to be identified.

9.5.2 The law of equal substitution

In the meantime, we should start from the assumption that academically, most courses can be taught equally well online or face-to-face, what I call the law of equal substitution. This means that other factors, such as cost, convenience for teachers, social networking, the skills and knowledge of the instructor, the type of students, or the context of the campus, will be stronger determinants of whether to teach a course online or on campus than the academic demands of the subject matter. These are all perfectly justifiable reasons for privileging the campus experience.

At the same time, there are likely to be some critical areas where there is a strong academic rationale for students to learn in a face-to-face or hands-on context. In other words, we need to identify the exceptions to the law of equal substitution. These unique pedagogical characteristics of campus-based teaching need to be researched more carefully, or at least be more theory-based than at present, but currently there is no powerful or convincing method or rationale to identify what the uniqueness is of the campus experience in terms of learning outcomes. The assumption appears to be that the campus experience must be better, at least for some things, because this is the way we have always done things. We need to turn the question on its head: what are the academic or pedagogical justification for the campus, when students can learn most things online?

9.5.3 The impact of online learning on the campus experience

This question becomes particularly important when we examine how an increased move to blended or hybrid learning is going to impact on learning spaces. In some ways, this may turn out to be a ticking time bomb for schools, colleges and universities.

9.5.3.1 Rethinking the design of classrooms

As we move from lectures to more interactive learning, we will need to think about the spaces in which learning will take place, and how pedagogy, online learning and the design of learning spaces influence one another. To make it worthwhile for students to come to campus when they can do an increasing amount of their study online, the on-campus activities must be meaningful. If for instance we want students to come to campus for inter-personal communication and intense group work, will there be sufficiently flexible and well-equipped spaces for students to do this, remembering that they will want to combine their online work with their classroom activities?

In essence, new technology, hybrid learning and the desire to engage students and to develop the knowledge and skills needed in a digital age are leading some teachers and architects to rethink the classroom and the way it is used.

Figure 10.5.2 Design for a classroom from Steelcase

Steelcase, a leading American manufacturer of office and educational furniture, is not only conducting impressive research into learning environments, but is way ahead of many of our post-secondary institutions in thinking through the implications of online learning for classroom design. Their educational research website, and two of their reports: Active Learning Spaces and 360°: Rethinking Higher Education Spaces are documents that all post-secondary institutions and even k-12 planners should be looking at.

In Active Learning Spaces, Steelcase reports:

Formal learning spaces have remained the same for centuries: a rectangular box filled with rows of desks facing the instructor and writing board….As a result, today’s students and teachers suffer because these outmoded spaces inadequately support the integration of the three key elements of a successful learning environm

Teaching in a Digital Age

Teaching in a Digital Age

A.W. (Tony) Bates

Contents

1

Scenario A: A university professor addresses change

2

About the book - and how to use it

i. Why this book?

ii. The audience for the book

iii. Why an ‘open’ textbook?

iv. Independent reviews of the book

v. Different ways to use the book

vi. An overview of the content

Chapter 1 Fundamental change in Education

Chapters 2-5: Epistemology and teaching methods

Chapters 6-8: Media and technology

Chapters 9-10: Modes of delivery and open education

Chapter 11 and Appendix 1: Ensuring quality in teaching in a digital age

Chapter 12: Institutional support

Scenarios

Other features

vii. Acknowledgments and thanks

viii. Over to you

3

About the author

4

Other books by the author

5

Updates and revisions

1

Chapter 1: Fundamental Change in Education

The purpose of this chapter

What is covered in this chapter

Key Takeaways from the Chapter

1

1.1 Structural changes in the economy: the growth of a knowledge society

1.1.1 The digital age

1.1.2 The changing nature of work

1.1.3 Knowledge-based workers

Activity 1.1 Thinking about skills

References

2

1.2 The skills needed in a digital age

Activity 1.2 What skills are you developing in your students?

References

3

1.3 Should education be tied directly to the labour market?

4

1.4 Change and continuity

Activity 1.4 Change and continuity

References

5

1.5 The impact of expansion on teaching methods

References

6

1.6 Changing students, changing markets for higher education

1.6.1 Greater diversity of students

1.6.2 The lifelong learning market

1.6.3 Digital natives

1.6.4 From elitism to success

Activity 1.6 Dealing with diversity

References

7

1.7 From the periphery to the center: how technology is changing the way we teach

1.7.1. Fully online learning

1.7.2. Blended and hybrid learning

1.7.3. Open learning

1.7.4. MOOCs

1.7.5 Managing the changing landscape of education

References

8

1.8 Navigating new developments in technology and online learning

Activity 1.8 Main conclusions from Chapter 1

Key Takeaways

2

Chapter 2: The nature of knowledge and the implications for teaching

Purpose of the chapter

What is covered in this chapter

Key Takeaways