Final Thoughts... Perceptions of Online Learning

I think that as standards are being implemented and improved, the perception of distance learning is improving. There was some bad publicity concerning online universities where it appeared that if one could finance the degree, one could earn the degree, whether qualified or not. Certainly in some of my online earlier online classes at other institutions, I met up with classmates who were in no way qualified to be in any graduate program, due to their lack of even the simplest writing skills or their inability to grasp and apply complex ideas. The result of the bad publicity was, in the end, positive, as it compelled online schools to improve their standards, and made potential online students aware of the differences between poor programs and more robust, demanding curricula worthy of a college education. I believe that because of this crisis of public perception, online learning experiences have undergone constructive change; as a result, opinions are gradually changing and computer-based education is finding growing acceptance.

Popularity Will Follow Availability

Parents have been seeking better choices for educating their children for many years. Twenty years ago, as a homeschooling parent, I was part of a small minority with few resources to choose from. Today homeschools and home-based online schools are much more commonplace, as parents realize that the traditional public school does not fit every child. I believe that this will continue to grow in the short term and be considered much more “normal” within the next 10 years. Colleges may take somewhat longer, again because of public perceptions. As the major colleges begin to offer online courses, however, it will be more acceptable to have a distance education. Harvard and MIT are offering online courses that mirror their traditional offerings (Lewin, 2012). Stanford has offered a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), albeit without Stanford credit (Carey, 2012). There is movement, even while there is resistance; I believe that before another 20 years pass, we will see major universities offering full degree programs that carry the same prestige as attending the ground campus currently hold.

Institutional Resistance to Change

Online schools focus on teaching and learning. There is no sports agenda, and there are no corporate or federally funded laboratory complexes. Learners do not have to find themselves in second place to a professor’s research and textbook authoring schedule. Given the cost to maintain the major institutions of learning, one would suppose that online education, with its ability to cut costs through technology and economies of scale, would appeal to cash-strapped brick-and-mortar schools. This has not been the case until recently. I suspect that the biggest reason for traditional colleges and universities to oppose online learning efforts is, as Steven Pearlstein (2010) noted, “…that they would disrupt just about everything – routines, hierarchies, to say nothing of the incomes and job security of the tenured faculty” (p. 1). In spite of the resistance to change, however, the Sloan Consortium’s eighth annual survey reported that online enrollments enjoyed a 21% growth rate for the 2010 school year, compared with 2% growth for traditional schools; furthermore, almost 30% of all students in higher education now take at least one course online (Allen & Seaman, 2011). Clearly, a movement for distance learning exists, whether the traditional educational establishment wishes it or not.

Consumer Demand

George Siemens (2010) states:

“Growing acceptance of distance education is fueled by:

·         The increase in online communication

·         Practical experience with new tools

·         Growing sense of comfort with online discourse, and

·         Ability to communicate with diverse and global groups.”

I see all of these factors at work in my own life and the lives of my family and friends. As an example, consider how I use the Internet on any given day:   

1.      I keep a grocery list on my smart phone, complete with estimated cost and the capability to enter the actual cost. While I’m out, I can check my bank balance and all recent activity, so I know I can pay for the groceries. While I’m standing in line, I can check email and send out a message telling my family where I am and how soon they can expect me to be home. 

2.      I’m sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for my appointment. Earlier, I downloaded my course readings to my iPad and made sure they were in the machine’s memory, knowing I would probably not have a connection at the clinic. While I wait, I read, and the application on the iPad allows me to add comments, highlight text, and even write in the margins just as I would do when I was an undergraduate with hard text books in the 1970s.

3.      I pay every bill except my rent online. I could use my bank’s online bill pay feature for this last one, but I like my landlord and enjoy seeing him once a month when he comes by for the check.

4.      In my house, we never, ever watch a movie or television program without a computer handy; we use it to look up trivia, fueled by questions like “Wasn’t that guy on the Stargate series?” “Where was this filmed? The scenery looks like Moab,” or “What year did this movie come out?” We are so accustomed to having information at our fingertips that we feel deprived when we go to the movies in a theater and don’t have the answers right at hand.

I am by no means alone in this continuous-connection existence. Everywhere I look, people are connecting with their stored information, and with one another, using their Internet connections. As the newer generations are born to this lifestyle, the notion of school online will become more and more acceptable, and demand will overcome resistance to change as it currently exists. In my own role as an instructional designer, I will use my variety of social connections to advocate for online education, both in the higher learning venue and in the realm of P-12 (preschool through high school), where I believe there is great potential to improve the “school” experience for young people.

Changing what Education Means

Education as we have known it consisted of a teacher having the information and the student learning it. The structure of traditional education was formal and hierarchical. Students were assigned to their learning peers based on age, not ability, and location of school district rather than choice of venue. It did not matter if these age-peered students from the same neighborhood had the same interests or needs; the educational system determined for them what was needed and how it should be taught. The future of learning, I believe, will be much more open and learner centered.

Particularly at the high school level, where students are developing self-awareness and a sense of the future, courses will no longer be taken as part of “college prep” or “vocational” tracks, but as a body of interest for the individual student. The teenager who once had to choose between higher mathematics for college and “shop” class for welders will be able to combine those interests for a practical connection to structural engineering. Students whose learning world is a blend of online and face-to-face courses will be able to move effortlessly between these worlds to meet the objectives they set for themselves. My intention is to provide the online portion of this learning experience, while encouraging students to look outside the expected norms and find the network that fits their interests and plans, both in the virtual world and in their everyday “real world” lives.

A Focus on the Learner                             

One area where I see a serious need for improvement is the education of the brightest and most intellectually gifted individuals. My experience with so-called “gifted” classes has, for the most part, consisted of “harder” classes with more work added, but no real connection to what the students wanted to explore, or encouragement to seek information on their own. There is no value in adding on work to keep the bright student occupied while the others struggle to catch up. In an online learning environment, the student can be set free to discover the wide world of information available from experts all over the world. Rather than closing students into a test-driven box, I want to offer a relevant opportunity to seek out answers and connect with others of similar interests to create communities of practice where participants work together to achieve new levels of learning. Stephen Downes (2008) proposes informal learning, where

“People pursue their own objectives in their own way, while at the same time initiating and sustaining an ongoing dialogue with others pursuing similar objectives. Learning and discussion is not structured, but rather, is determined by the needs and interests of the participants” (p. 14).

This is precisely the kind of education I want to offer students as I move into the arena of distance learning. I picture myself as a guide, directing learners in one route or another to get them started, and then providing an open map for them to follow in any direction they choose to achieve their personal learning goals. I believe that each person has within himself or herself the thirst for knowledge. Traditional education has not quenched the thirst so much as attempted to convince the learner that the knowledge only comes in one flavor. My wish is to open up the learning “cooler” and let the students choose the best flavor for themselves; in other words, I want to offer all the world has to learn and let the learners decide which portions are relevant and applicable to their individual lives.

A Lasting Legacy?

I spend a lot of time sharing my ideas on education with my grown children; two of them are in college now, one online and one in traditional school. They both intend to pursue secondary education as their career field, so these talks are not just my rambling on about what I am studying; our exchange of ideas is relevant to them, and to the students whose lives they will effect in years to come. So, while I intend in my own career to be a catalyst for educational change, I also hope to pass on my dreams to a new generation of educators. I suppose it could be said that I am “walking the talk” in my pursuit of my own online degree, but I believe I will be most effective in the future by becoming part of the online collaboration of educators, instructional designers, and other advocates for using technology. I am gradually building my own network of likeminded people and organizations, exchanging ideas with some of the finest minds in distance education and advocating for open learning for everyone. I see a day when everything we know will be available to anyone who wants to know it; the online world will be the neighborhood library of the distance learner of tomorrow.

References

Allen, I., & Seaman, J. (2011). Going the Distance: Online education in the United States, 2011. Sloan Consortium. Retrieved from http://babson.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_6Xpu84FGPyTh6CM&SaveButton=1&SSID=SS_0Bw5T45abJ3su0c

Carey, K. (2012, May 14). Stanford's credential problem. Retrieved from The Chronical of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/stanfords-credential-problem/46851

Downes, S. (2008). The future of online learning: Ten years on. Retrieved from Half an Hour: http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2008/11/future-of-online-learning-ten-years-on_16.html

Lewin, T. (2012, May 2). Harvard and M.I.T. team up to offer free online courses. Retrieved from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/education/harvard-and-mit-team-up-to-offer-free-online-courses.html

Pearlstein, S. (2010, August 11). Despite scandal, for-profit education offers valuable model. Retrieved from Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/10/AR2010081006390.html

Siemens, G. (2010). The Future of Distance Education. Laureate Education.

Photo Credits

Making Too Much Money? Wealthy Affiliate University Scam. Retrieved from http://www.wealthyaffiliateuniversityscam.com/images/wealthy-affiliate-banner.jpg

Harvard/MIT Online Classes. Ste(a)m Scholars Pathway Project. Retrieved from http://kcen.images.worldnow.com/images/18066992_BG1.jpg

No Football. The Eastside Perspective. Retrieved from http://theeastsideperspective.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/bad-college-programs-1.jpg

Kindle 3 ways. Planning Startups Stories. Retrieved from http://timsstuff.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/Kindle_Reader_4-12.jpg

Media-Interactive-Community. TNCC English 109. Retrieved from http://community.tncc.edu/faculty/dollieslager/images/learner_centered.gif

Online Scholar. Examiner. Retrieved from http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/large_lightbox/hash/18/1d/181d1c4cc4384b4aa60dfdf56e1981fa.JPG

          

          This week’s task was to create a “best practices” guide for a training manager who has gained his company’s permission to convert his current classroom-only training courses to a blended learning format. Blended learning combines classroom time with online time, and requires a change in the materials used as well as the methods of instruction. In blended learning, the trainer becomes a facilitator, guiding and encouraging the employee learners as they make their way through training. The learners, in the meantime, are removed from their passive classroom roles and compelled to interact with one another and with a variety of online resources. They will be involved in discussion boards with the guidance of the trainer. They may view video instruction or narrated presentations. They might listen to podcasts created for their courses. Above all, they will begin to interact with one another in discussion board environments, and possibly in the creation of problem-solving, collaborative online wikis. In addition to the increased interaction among learners, blended learning offers the advantages of time savings, and allows the diverse employee population to be trained with consideration for a variety of learning styles.

          As the conclusion of my “Best Practices” guide says, the move from classroom-only to blended instruction for job training requires careful planning, and with consideration to the various elements included in this type of learning experience, will provide a successful outcome for the employee/learners and for the company. The use of pre-planning strategies, along with thoughtful choice of materials and attention to the needs of the learners, will ensure that company objectives for training are met while employees benefit from the instruction and apply it to their own work performance. Encouraging interactivity among learners will have positive effects in the workplace, as team performance is improved through meaningful discussion and constructive group work. While there are many differences to be found between traditional classroom training and blended learning, the advantages to be gained from the blended training method are worth the effort and will prove themselves in a well-trained, team-oriented workforce.


The PDF of the entire "Best Practices" guide can be found at 
Best Practices Guide to Blended Training (Click on link to open document)

Open Source Course: Living “Mi Vida Loca”

This week I have been tasked with finding an online open course of my choosing to evaluate against criteria I have learned in my Distance Learning class. I have been thinking about learning Spanish, since it is clear that the U.S. is moving in a direction where Spanish will undoubtedly be as important in our everyday lives as French is in Canada. Spanish may not be an official language here, but it will certainly be helpful in a wide variety of situations. Following links from the Open Culture listings of foreign language classes, I found one that describes me perfectly: “Mi Vida Loca,” which translates to “My Crazy Life” is a wonderful, engaging course in elementary Spanish that has all the elements I would look for in a course for myself or others (BBC, 2009). The course is offered by the BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/. I have to say that in all the language classes I have ever taken, I have rarely had as much fun with the first lessons as I am having with this course.

The course is thoroughly planned out for distance learning. In Teaching and Learning at a Distance (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012) there is a listing of what distance learners should have in any course. These elements are:

·         Content that they feel is relevant to their needs

·         Clear directions for what they should do at every stage of the course

·         As much control of the pace of learning as possible

·         A means of drawing attention to individual concerns

·         A way of testing their progress and getting feedback from their instructors

·         Materials that are useful, active, and interesting (p. 176).

This course meets each of these requirements in several ways. It is a learner-centered course which offers a number of different learning methods within each module, so that students having diverse learning styles can all benefit from the course in ways that work best for them. There are individual lessons within course sections, each building on what has been learned in the previous lesson. In addition to the video lessons, the course website provides a full syllabus, along with a user’s guide and a teacher’s guide. Each lesson can be printed out from PDF format, and there are additional printouts with grammar rules, vocabulary lists, and other information that the designers consider important to a complete Spanish learning situation, such as unfamiliar pronunciation of familiar letters.

“Mi Vida Loca’s” opening page has an embedded video that appears to be a trailer for an intrigue film, complete with the kind of rhythmic music one would expect with James Bond or the Bourne thrillers. As a student, I was drawn into the story from the start, and the “cliffhanger” endings on the lessons leave me wanting to hurry on to the subsequent module to find out what happens next. This has the effect of creating a desire to learn beyond my original need to learn Spanish. Each lesson has an animated box below the loading screen in which new vocabulary words and their meanings appear for a few moments and then disappear as other words fade in. This serves as a quick and simple preparation for the lesson about to begin, and stops when the loading is complete.

The "Phrase Book" Man

The structure of the lessons is a blend of various types of media. The video “episodes” take us through a mystery that begins in Madrid. From time to time a “phrase book” opens up, and the man inhabiting the pages explains something that just happened, or provides a second chance to pronounce and learn the words that have been presented. Sometimes words are offered that haven’t been used in the dialogue yet, but are about to be in the next scene. All lessons are set up to allow the student to go back as many times as needed to master a skill, and for those who have taken the course and want a refresher, there are video-only episodes without subtitles, for self-check and practice.

I love the interactive portions of the lessons. The activities are interesting and varied; as a student this gave me a fresh look at each area being taught without feeling as it I’d done it all before. For example, a sentence might be written out, and individual words or phrases are underlined and clickable, so that we learn each section of the sentence and then put it all together. In other areas, there are pauses during which we are asked to answer the person speaking to us in the video, and we can click on one area to listen to the correct answer, or another area to move on to the next scene. This gives the student an excellent opportunity to self-test on the pronunciation and correct usage of the vocabulary learned to this point. There are many opportunities to check one’s learning, and it is always possible to go back to any portion of the lesson that the student wishes to re-visit, as an indexed timeline will take the student back to any part of the previous scene.

"Pay the Driver" game

The lesson also allows some simple game play. For example, when the taxi driver asks for 25 Euros, the student is presented with a number of bills, and it’s the student’s task to pick the correct bills to place in the driver’s hand by clicking and dragging. Picking the right bills triggers the game to tell the student that this is correct, and the “Next” arrow is now clickable to go on further in the story. In another lesson, a word search allows us to make our best guesses at some new vocabulary based on its pronunciation. These opportunities to interact with the lesson make it fun, but at the same time give us reinforcement for the items we’ve just learned, or preparation for what we are about to learn. Lessons continue to develop the story line of the “mystery,” while offering clear and interesting opportunities to learn everyday phrases. All new words have a speaker icon beside them, so we can click and listen as many times as we need to pronounce the vocabulary correctly and use the correct phrases called for in the dialogue.

I love learning languages and have taken college courses for many years, but I can honestly say that none of those courses has been as engaging, or taught as well in as short a time, as the BBC’s “Mi Vida Loca” course in Spanish. I’m looking forward to all the lessons, and even to the test at the end! I would recommend BBC language courses to anyone, based on this one that I’ve found so complete and useful. Open source learning is offering new prospects for personal improvement to people who want to learn something new and either have no access or cannot afford formal educational settings. As the variety and number of courses increases on the Internet, the playing field becomes more and more level in terms of learning opportunities for everyone. Sources such as the BBC serve the worldwide community of learners with well-developed, well-planned and well-executed examples of open source distance learning.

References

BBC. (2009). Mi Vida Loca. Retrieved from BBC Languages: Spanish: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/index.shtml

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Photo Credits

All photos © BBC 2012 and taken from http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/