The influence of communication technologies and approaches to study on transactional distance in blended learning

This paper explores the role played by communication technologies and study orientations in the amplification and reduction of transactional distance in blended learning. Factor analysis and structural equation modelling of different communication modes (face to face, email and telephone) revealed that students experience at least some transactional distance when separated from their tutors. Email was found to facilitate the highest levels of immediacy of dialogue for most students. The conclusion is that strategic students are best placed to benefit from blended learning, and that the effects of transactional distance could be analysed more deeply if two subvariables of dialogue were recognised. These are social presence (the perception of connectedness between students and their tutors) and immediacy (the temporal effects of dialogue)

An examination of the capabilities required by university tutors in online learning environments and the factors affecting the relative importance of these capabilities

The Internet is influencing some would say revolutionizing most aspects of our society, including distance education (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek,2003). There has been a worldwide movement to implement online education technologies in Universities. In Australia, use of these technologies has coincided with the development of pedagogics to improve the merging of distance education and asynchronous, anywhere / anytime learning (Cashion & Palmieri, 2002; Harper, Hedberg, Bennett, & Lockyer, 2000). However, using technology to teach at a distance requires different capabilities than traditional face-to-face teaching. In the revolutionary situation which distance education finds itself, online tutors find themselves acting as pathfinders in uncharted territory finding their way through the ether in the hope of discovering what works in this new environment. The purpose of this study was to examine the online learning milieu to identify what capabilities are required of online tutors. To do this, it was necessary to determine what environmental factors affect online tutor capabilities and what the relationship was between the capabilities and the factors. This was accomplished by exploring the perceptions of online tutors, students and unit coordinators to discover what they felt are the capabilities possessed by effective online tutors. This study was grounded within text-based tertiary online learning environments at a public University in Australia. The research employed an ethnographic design with the major methods of data collection being interviews of online tutors, students and unit coordinators in addition to electronic and face-to-face observation. Data was analyzed using techniques of qualitative analysi

Learning recursively: integrating PBL as an authentic problem experience [Plenary presentation]

[Abstract]: Problem based learning (PBL) is widely recognised as a desirable approach to education of future professionals. One strong basis for its appeal is the use of authentic problems of practice, which make the relevance of what is being learned apparent to the learners and encourage development of attitudes and skills that will be central to continuing professional growth beyond graduation. However, the change from traditional lecture-based courses to PBL presents challenges to educators and the institutions in which they work. In many respects, the implementation of PBL can be itself an experience in PBL for the educator. This presentation will address some of the challenges associated with integrating PBL in a university setting from the perspective of those who design and teach courses using PBL, which will be understood as a spectrum of practices rather than a single approach that must be replicated in every instance

An agent system to support student teams working online

Online learning is now a reality, with distributed learning and blended learning becoming more widely used in Higher Education. Novel ways in which undergraduate and postgraduate learning material can be presented are being developed, and methods for helping students to learn online are needed, especially if we require them to collaborate with each other on learning activities. Agents to provide a supporting role for students have evolved from Artificial Intelligence research, and their strength lies in their ease of operation over networks as well as their ability to act in response to stimuli. In this paper an application of a software agent is described, aimed at supporting students working on team projects in the online learning environment. Online teamwork is problematical for a number of reasons, such as getting acquainted with team members, finding out about other team members’ abilities, agreeing who should do which tasks, communications between team members and keeping up to date with progress that has been made on the project. Software agents have the ability to monitor progress and to offer advice by operating in the background, acting autonomously when the need arises. An agent prototype has been developed in Prolog to perform a limited set of functions to support students. Team projects have a planning, doing and completing stage, all of which require them to have some sort of agent support. This agent at present supports part of the planning stage, by prompting the students to input their likes, dislikes and abilities for a selection of task areas defined for the project. The agent then allocates the various tasks to the students according to predetermined rules. The results of a trial carried out using teams working on projects, on campus, indicate that students like the idea of using this agent to help with allocating tasks. They also agreed that agent support of this type would probably be helpful to both students working on team projects with face to face contact, as well as for teams working solely online. Work is ongoing to add more functionality to the agent and to evaluate the agent more widely

Distance learning of foreign languages

doi: 10.1017/S0261444806003727This article provides a critical overview of the field of distance language learning, challenging the way in which the field is often narrowly conceptualised as the development of technology-mediated language learning opportunities. Early sections focus on issues of concept and definition and both theoretical and pedagogical perspectives on the field. Emphasis is placed on evident shifts from a concern with structural and organisational issues to a focus on transactional issues associated with teaching/learning opportunities within emerging paradigms for distance language learning. The next section reviews choices and challenges in incorporating technology into distance language learning environments, foregrounding decisions about technology made in particular sociocultural contexts, the contribution of ‘low-end’ technologies and research directions in developing new learning spaces and in using online technologies. The investigation of learner contributions to distance language learning is an important avenue of enquiry in the field, given the preoccupation with technology and virtual learning environments, and this is the subject of section six. The two final sections identify future research directions and provide a series of conclusions about research and practice in distance language learning as technology-mediated interactions increasingly come to influence the way we think about the processes of language learning and teaching

Using ODL and ICT to develop the skills of the unreached: a contribution to the ADEA triennial of the Working Group on Distance Education and Open Learning

Innovation in technology is occurring at rapid pace thus shrinking the distances and making information and knowledge more than ever accessible to everyone irrespective of where the person resides. This paper consists of four main articles. The first one deals with technological trends. The second one focuses on the deployment and use of open and distance education mode in rural areas by documenting initiatives that embrace information and communication technologies (ICTs). Due to challenges faced in rural areas only a few success stories/cases currently exist and some of these are cited in this article. The challenges faced in the deployment of ICT enhanced ODL have been highlighted as well as the potential of developing and delivering effective and relevant ODL programmes in rural areas in order to ensure that issues of educational equity and social exclusion rural communities are adequately addressed. ICTs in ODL are perhaps the greatest tool to date for self-education and value addition to any community’s development efforts, yet poor rural communities particularly in Africa do not have the necessary awareness, skills or facilities to enable themselves to develop using ICTs. Inadequate ICT infrastructures in rural areas remain a major source for the digital divide in Africa and for under-performance of distance learners. The third one analyses the support provided to ODL learners who often encounter difficulties in completing their studies through the distance education mode due to loneliness, uncertainties and de-motivation. ICT has not been able to sufficiently support distance learners in overcoming those obstacles efficiently. An investigation regarding those learning supports has been conducted in ten distance learning institutions, along with an intensive literature review with the aim of understanding the high percentage of dropout rates of distant learners. The learners’ interactions have been scrutinized through content analysis of their synchronous exchanges, during a completely online course. After taking into account the limited technical and human resources in Africa, a technological virtual environment along with a pedagogical framework has been proposed with the aim of giving adequate educational support to them. The fourth article has explored The Open University (UK) and its efforts to use new technologies to deliver online courses to difficult-to- reach learners in prison environments. The case study analysed here is an international course (called, B201- Business Organisations and their environments) which also touches an African cohort of learners. The implications for designing and delivering online ODL to the complex unreachable environments of prisons anywhere, and particularly in Africa, have been discussed

Using electronic resources to support dialogue in undergraduate small‐group teaching: The ASTER project

Learning through dialogue is an important element of UK higher education, supported by tutorial, seminar and workshop classes. Since 1998, the ASTER project has been exploring how Information and Communication Technologies support learning in small groups (http://cti‐psy.york.acuk/aster/). Electronic resources are developed and used in courses to support a wide range of learning needs, from delivery of content to interactive teaching tools and assessment. The manner in which they are integrated into a course dictates the extent to which they support and extend learning. The ASTER survey has identified the use of a range of new technologies to support learning through dialogue in a variety of contexts. Many of the uses are common across disciplines, though we have observed some differences in the range of tools used, and how they are implemented in and beyond the classroom. These differences are partly determined by the subject content of resources, and by the activities that ICT tools support. Another factor influencing this variation seems to be traditions of academic discourse. The findings suggest that educational technology needs to support both generic education practice, and the special needs of particular disciplines

Security and Online learning: to protect or prohibit

The rapid development of online learning is opening up many new learning opportunities. Yet, with this increased potential come a myriad of risks. Usable security systems are essential as poor usability in security can result in excluding intended users while allowing sensitive data to be released to unacceptable recipients. This chapter presents findings concerned with usability for two security issues: authentication mechanisms and privacy. Usability issues such as memorability, feedback, guidance, context of use and concepts of information ownership are reviewed within various environments. This chapter also reviews the roots of these usability difficulties in the culture clash between the non-user-oriented perspective of security and the information exchange culture of the education domain. Finally an account is provided of how future systems can be developed which maintain security and yet are still usable