eCornell Research Blog

The Way We Learn Now

By Amy Christen

Nearly a decade into the new millennium, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: a 20^th century education is a bad fit for 21^st century learners. Many of today’s learners fail to acquire the skills and competencies they need to find productive employment and meet the challenges now facing the societies in which they live.

To align educational practice to 21st century workforce needs, a transformation is in order:

• Curricula must be created that do a better job of preparing students to thrive in a globally networked, increasingly information-driven economy.

• Enabling technology must be integrated more fully and consistently into the pedagogy.

• Today’s connected learners require methods of engagement that correspond to the ways they interrelate and communicate outside the classroom.

• Education systems must become less compartmentalized and insular by seeking partnerships inside and outside the education community.

Read the complete article.

 

Is M-Learning for Real?

(From What Works in Enterprise Learning Newsletter, March 15, 2007.)

M-learning, the delivery of training content on digital media devices, is in its infancy. Or is it? Bersin & Associates has been following this trend with recent research studies which indicate that the use of mobile devices is increasing. In a survey of 514 e-learning content developers, one-third of respondents said they were now delivering some content via mobile devices.

For some companies, rapid delivery is the primary reason for using m-learning. Content can be sent to mobile devices with virtually no production time. Corporations with large sales forces are now providing up-to-the-minute training on new products, competitors, and technologies using both audio and video devices. Telecommunications giant Ericsson delivers all sales training on mobile phones (Sony Ericsson phones, obviously).

Other companies are using m-learning as part of blended learning curricula. For instance, after participating in classroom instruction on installing a new part, field service representatives then receive just-in-time training modules on mobile devices. When they return to the field, representatives can refer to procedural videos if they need a refresher.

While m-learning is still in testing and prototyping phases in many organizations, the interest in this delivery mode is clear. We expect this trend toward m-learning to grow exponentially over the next several years. Fueling the transition is a new set of tools and technology to make mobile content easier to build and deliver. Systems from Giunti Labs and LiquidTalk are examples. Mobile devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated, as well.

Training managers should begin thinking now how m-learning could be used in conjunction with other learning deliveries within their organizations. It likely won't be long until the cell phones, iPods, and other devices that are so ubiquitous will become important components of your learning initiatives.

The Story-Centered Curriculum

By Roger C. Schank, president and CEO, Socratic Arts

School has to change. The world has changed radically in the last 100 years while academia has stayed the same. This state of affairs must end or students will be learning increasingly irrelevant material taught using ever-more-outdated methods.

In contrast to a passive, subject-oriented curriculum, a Story-Centered Curriculum (SCC) can be viewed as a carefully designed apprenticeship-style learning experience in which the student encounters a planned sequence of real-world situations constructed to motivate the development and application of knowledge and skills in an integrated fashion. A realistic story, at the core of each SCC, provides a meaningful, motivating role for the student, designed to ensure that the student faces exactly the right progression of challenges to stretch and build his or her abilities. While the "characters" that a student encounters in a traditional apprenticeship are primarily concerned with their own life goals, the characters in a Story-Centered Curriculum are specifically constructed to further the student's education by providing appropriate challenges. Mentors play the expert role, providing one-on-one coaching, help, and feedback to the student, while encouraging self-directed learning. Through these mechanisms, the SCC provides accelerated experiential learning.

If we really want to prepare students for the world in which we live, a good way is by having them practice in a fictional version of that world. They come out more curious about the issues in that field and empowered by new skills they have acquired in the natural course of the experience.

Read the full article.

Dialogue-Intensive Learning

By Richard Dool, D.Mgt, Assistant Professor, Seton Hall University

Online class discussions can offer the sort of depth and intensity seldom found in campus classrooms. In his latest article for eLearn Magazine, Seton Hall Assistant Professor Richard Dool explains how to create the right climate for spirited discourse, manage the participants, and leverage the proceedings so that real learning can take place via Dool's "dialogue-intensive" discussion model. Read the full article.

Consensus: Podcasting Has No 'Inherent' Pedagogic Value

By Paul McCloskey

A bevy of recent studies on students' experience listening to recorded lectures via podcasts confirms what many lecturers already know: that the pedagogical value of  podcasts depends almost entirely on student motivation and the learning "context" of the application.

Read the entire article.

Eduventures Survey Identifies Four Key Adult Education Groups

The “traditional” 18-to-22-year-old full-time undergraduate student residing on campus represents little more than 16 percent of the higher-education population in the United States--fewer than 3 million of the more than 17 million students enrolled today. The vast majority of students are, in fact, adult learners who, according to a recent Eduventures survey, fall into one of four categories: Career Advancers, Career Changers, Enrichment Seekers, and Regulatory Compliers.

Read the full article to learn more about their goals, curriculum preferences, and what influences their enrollment decisions.

Learn While You Drive

In this short article from eLearn Magazine, Frank Linton, EdD, a researcher at a not-for-profit organization near Washington, D.C., talks about how he uses text-to-speech software to turn his commuting time into learning time. Read the full article.

USES AND POTENTIALS OF WIKIS IN THE CLASSROOM

This article in the online journal Innovate explores how wikis can be ideal platforms to bridge the gap between today's digitally native students and digitally immigrant teachers. Today's educators are acculturated to a print paradigm while students are increasingly products of a digitally-based secondary-oral paradigm. The authors argue that electronic and cyber technologies—especially wikis—can potentially combine the best aspects of both print and secondary-oral paradigms, allowing educators to move freely across the print-oral continuum. Wikis provide a unique interface where information is not fixed (as in a print model) but fluid and flexible to meet the needs of the community (as in the pre-literate age). After addressing some controversies over the use of wikis as scholarly and educational resources, the authors advocate the use of wikis as a teaching and learning tool.

Read the complete article.

Social Software as a Tool for Distributed Research

Ulises Mejias examines how social software—information and communications technologies that facilitate the collaboration and exchange of ideas—enables students to participate in distributed research, an approach to learning in which knowledge is collectively constructed and shared. During Fall 2005, Mejias taught a graduate seminar that provided students with hands-on experience working with blogs, wikis, Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds, and distributed classification systems. The use of these social software tools allowed the class to function as a distributed research community where students were responsible for contributing something new to the study of the topic at hand. In their course activities, students engaged in a critical analysis of the affordances of social software—what the software facilitates and what it prevents in different contexts—and were asked to apply their newly acquired skills and knowledge to promote a social cause of their choosing. Mejias illustrates one possible approach for applying social software in a constructivist learning setting and describes the projects he assigned in order to get students to think critically about issues of design, interaction, access, and social impact.

Read the full article.

WEB 2.0: A NEW WAVE OF INNOVATION FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING?

This is an interesting treatise from Bryan Alexander covering all issues pertaining to Web 2.0 and linking it to teaching and learning. What it lacks in original thinking it makes up for in comprehensiveness. Most of the learning applications discussed are direct translations, such as the bookmarking and blogging applications.

Predictions for 2006

E-learning Experts Map the Road Ahead

By Lisa Neal, Editor-in-Chief, eLearn Magazine

As eLearn Magazine nears its fifth anniversary, we have seen the world of online learning change in many significant ways. Who, in 2002, envisioned the popularity of podcasts, wikis, and blogs? Yet for all the emphasis on how content can be created and disseminated, there has been too little focus on the quality of the learning experience. That's why my prediction for 2006 is that people will realize that technology, no matter how innovative, is just an enabler. New technologies only succeed if they help people learn. Read on for more predictions from some of the most thoughtful and opinionated people in the e-learning field.

Audio Learning Is Back

In a recent news release, Kineo, a UK-based consultancy practice, reported the results of a recent survey indicating that audio learning is back and it's here to stay. As mobile learning devices become ubiquitous, Kineo predicts that 2006 will see a major increase in audio learning.

The survey shows that over 50% of respondents use audio learning at least occasionally, both in formal and informal contexts. 50% stated that an MP3 player was their preferred means of accessing audio learning.

When asked what types of content are best suited to audio learning, the top response was leadership and management, followed by sales. This is not surprising as these subjects rely heavily on personality, storytelling and immediate relevance to learners’ issues--needs which audio learning delivers on excellently.

Commenting on the survey findings, Kineo partner Matt Fox noted: “Audio learning is nothing new, but thanks to MP3 players, we have new channels for delivery and it's encouraging to see that over half of our survey group are tapping into those channels. Informal and mobile learning will be hot topics in 2006 and audio learning is at the intersection of both.”

He also issued a challenge to those responsible for procuring and designing learning solutions: “We've reached the point where audio learning must be part of what we consider in our learning solutions. It's easy to create, gives experts a real voice, and is informal and disposable. But we have to do two things: Design it properly – short, modular clips, not 30 minute monologues. And, make access easier – nearly 40% of survey respondents believe they don't have the right technology to access audio.”

The full results of Kineo's survey are available on the Kineo website.

"Podcast" is 2005 Word of the Year

Technological words, terms and acronyms have dominated this year's Word of the Year awards. The winner, as named by editors of New Oxford American Dictionary, is "podcast". It is the second year in a row that a tech term has been awarded the top gong. Last year US dictionary publisher. Merriam-Webster had the word "blog" as its top pick.

"Podcast" has been defined by the dictionary as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the internet for downloading to a personal audio player." The downloads are played on MP3 players and typically on one of Apple Computer's iPod personal digital players. Podcasting has taken off over the past year with thousands of such downloads now available via a number of sites and services including Apple's popular iTunes facility. Since the introduction of the iPod video player in October there are now video podcasts as well.

The word will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006.

The word first appeared in a story in The Sydney Morning Herald on January 18, this year. It has spawned a host of derivate words such as "bodcast" (a video podcast produced by the Playboy organisation) and "podjack" (the act of passing off some else's podcast feed as your own).

Erin McKean, editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary, said "podcast" was considered for inclusion last year but it was felt not enough people were using it or even understood what it meant. "This year it's a completely different story," she said. "The word has finally caught up with the rest of the iPod phenomenon."

Among this year's runners-up are:

• ICE (defined as "an entry stored in one's mobile  phone that provides emergency contact information")
• lifehack (defined as "a more efficient or effective way of completing an everyday task")
• rootkit (defined as "software installed on a computer by someone other than the owner, intended to conceal other programs or processes, files or system data")

Read the full article.

Talking-Head Video Is Boring Online

by Jakob Nielsen

Eyetracking data show that users are easily distracted when watching video on websites, especially when the video shows a talking head and is optimized for broadcast rather than online viewing.

As broadband connectivity has grown, websites have increased their use of video clips. Unfortunately, many of these videos are produced for television broadcast and are thus unsuitable for the online environment.

In 1997, [Nielsen] wrote an analysis of TV vs. computers that still holds: broadcast TV is a medium for relaxation, where the "user" sits back and becomes immersed in whatever the program directors decided to air. In fact, TV users are usually called "viewers," emphasizing their passive mode of engagement. In contrast, computer users sit forward and drive their own experience through a continuous set of choices and clicks.

Because of this fundamental difference in user experience, broadcast video feels boring on the Web. There's nothing to do, no choices, no user control.

Read the entire article.

E-learning 2.0

Here is an excellent article written by Stephen Downes and published in eLearn magazine. Downes does a great job summing up the development and current state of e-learning, while anticipating future directions. There are many important trends highlighted here and most are linked to additional sources. The article itself strikes me as a good example of hyperlinked learning — using the power of the web to inform, open doors, and provide a pathway for user-centered, active learning.

Link: eLearn: Feature Article.

Podcasting in Academic and Corporate Learning

Podcasting. You may have heard the term and wondered what it meant. Or you may already be listening to podcasts and pondering how they might be used with learners. This article provides a basic explanation of podcasting, highlights some uses in learning, offers a Q+A from a corporate supplier, and then provides links to more information.

Delivering the Dream: Models for Intelligent Assistance

By delivering personalized, customized, contextualized information, learning professionals can make people more effective in their tasks, and more effective over time. Here are four key models you can use to paint a rich picture of the knowledge you need: a content model, a user model, a context model, and a task model. Read more.

Centrax Defines Guidelines to Improve E-Learning

As companies rapidly develop e-learning in-house, the CAI Ratio (Content Area Interaction Ratio), developed by Centrax Corp., will help developers follow guidelines to make the programs more visually engaging and interactive. The CAI Ratio is the total number of interactive screens (for example, drag-and-drop questions, simulated tools and so forth) versus the number of static content screens. Read more.

E-Learning Standards Update

The e-learning industry continues to expand every day, and the methods and tools necessary to create and maintain content and infrastructure applications are complicated. Enter e-learning standards.

 

The goal of standards is to provide fixed data structures and communication protocols for e-learning objects and cross-system workflows. This enables interoperability between applications, such as an LMS and third-party or in-house developed content, by providing uniform communication guidelines that can be used throughout the design, development, and delivery of learning objects. When these standards are incorporated into off-the-shelf products, developers can base their purchasing decisions on quality and appropriateness rather than compatibility.

Here’s a non-technical look at evolving e-learning standards, what the standards intend to achieve, the key players involved in developing the standards, and some implications for the future.

Cost Comparison: Instructor-Led Vs. E-Learning

by Paul T. Walliker

To help managers better understand the relationship between cost and delivery methodology, Caterpillar University has constructed a mathematical model to better calculate the key cost components. Read the entire article.

Trend: Podcasting in Academic and Corporate Learning

By Eva Kaplan-Leiserson

Podcasting. You may have heard the term and wondered what it meant. Or you may already be listening to podcasts and pondering how they might be used with learners. This article will provide a basic explanation of podcasting, highlight some uses in learning, offer a Q+A from a corporate supplier, and provide links to more information.

E-Quality in E-Learning at Deloitte

The University of Southern Australia has supported an e-learning research study within Deloitte Consulting LLP. Nick van Dam, Global Chief Learning Officer at Deloitte Consulting LLP and author of the e-Learning Fieldbook, has written an article about the study. This article first appeared in CLO Magazine.

http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/article/0,1002,sid%253D20062%2526cid%253D54977,00.html

Corporations Re-think Generic E-learning

Elearnity, Europe 's leading Corporate Learning Analyst, announced research concluding that large corporate adopters are changing their approach and contractual commitments for generic e-learning to better focus the value proposition. Corporates are focusing on driving recurrent usage around a narrow set of generic titles linked to major business initiatives, and are increasingly adopting non-traditional forms of e-learning such as on-line reference materials for on-demand learning support to an often sceptical audience. Read more.

Trend: Mobile Reality (A Tale of Two Experts)

By Eva Kaplan-Leiserson
The term has been bandied about for years now. Mobile learning, aka m-learning, seems to be on everyone’s lips but few people’s mobile devices.  Learning Circuits’s associate editor Eva Kaplan-Leiserson talks to two of the field’s foremost experts to sort the reality from the hype. What’s currently working in m-learning, and why? What’s been stopping its widespread adoption? And what’s necessary to make it more pervasive? Read more.

Teaching as Performance in the Electronic Classroom

"New developments in online educational technology have a profound effect on notions of intellectual property. Theories of the social construction of technology explain the extremely unstable nature of new technologies. Walter Ong’s theory of the alphabet effect provides insight into the ways in which knowledge changes as media of communication change. Shoshana Zuboff’s ideas on how managerial knowledge is transformed by technology help us understand how certain kinds of knowledge resist being textualized. These ideas help us understand the effects of new teaching technologies in terms of a long–standing struggle between two views of knowledge: knowledge as performance and knowledge as thing."

Click on the link to read the full paper, authored by Doug Brent at the University of Calgary.
Link: Teaching as performance in the electronic classroom.

Blogging Clicks With Colleges

First the Internet turned colleges upside down, extending classrooms and changing the way people learned. Next came Napster and other file-sharing tools, then Web logs. Now blogs are morphing into the next big thing on campus: wikis.

Link: Blogging Clicks With Colleges (washingtonpost.com).

PERSONAL LEARNING

by Denham Gray

“The key to learning is not the medium nor the message, it is the quality of the dialog with your peers that really matters. " Read the entire post.

eLearning Guild's "Current Trends in e-Learning" Research Report

"Current Trends in e-Learning" presents a series of snapshots that capture certain key trends in e-learning, as reported by The eLearning Guild Members and Associates through their participation in the ten Guild Research surveys conducted in 2004.

Collaborative Rapid E-Learning Development

The concept of rapid e-learning is being increasingly adopted among training practitioners. Training executives who have developed and deployed successful programs over the last several years have given their organizations a taste of the power and accessibility of electronic distribution for training materials. Now, the organizations want more of it - and they want it faster. The concept of rapid e- learning, at a high level, involves making the training process more accessible to subject matter experts and reducing the "time-to-learn" over that of traditional development cycles.

The popular technologies for rapid e-learning are mostly variations of PowerPoint conversion tools and systems. But these solutions only address a portion of the real issues in making e-learning more accessible. These solutions have their limits for the type of training they can effectively produce.

This case study discusses another approach to the rapid e-learning challenge: one that addresses not only content development but also process, asset management, and leveraging an existing infrastructure. Download this free case study.

Interview: The Future According to Elliott Masie

By Ryann Ellis

Industry analyst and futurist Elliott Masie heads The MASIE Center, a Saratoga Springs, New York, think tank focused on how organizations can absorb technology and create continuous learning and knowledge within the workforce. Ryann Ellis, editor of Learning Circuits, ASTD's online magazine covering e-learning, interviewed Mr. Masie to get his thoughts regarding how the e-learning industry is evolving. Read the full interview.

THE MISSING INSTRUCTOR: DOES E-LEARNING PROMOTE ABSENTEEISM?

By Glenn Gordon Smith and Marypat Taveras, Stony Brook University

The text-based interaction of e-learning arguably creates more work for an instructor. That, coupled with the lack of face-to-face contact with students, makes teacher absenteeism easier to rationalize (and harder to notice). Online instructors often go absent from their classes for spans of time simply not tolerated in the traditional classroom. The irony is that the current model of e-learning sets student needs and instructor workload in opposition-online students need interaction with their instructors far more than their face-to-face counterparts. It may seem politically expedient to ignore such a problem. However, instructors, students and universities would all benefit from practical solutions to this dilemma. Read more.

Trend: Augmented Reality Check

By Eva Kaplan-Leiserson

The future of learning is what one developer calls “blended learning on steroids.” Just as training designers now choose among classroom-based training, synchronous online seminars, asynchronous Web-based training, and other options when determining the best delivery mechanism for learning content, in the near future those designing training will choose among training delivered in the real environment, via augmented reality, or in a virtual environment.

Full article.

Rapid E-Learning: A Growing Trend

By Dianne Archibald

Even though e-learning is having a major impact on corporate education, many believe it has never lived up to its promise. Enter rapid e-learning.

Full article.

EVALUATING THE DEVELOPMENT OF ONLINE COURSE MATERIALS

By George P. Schell, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Wilmington

If online courses are to become a permanent feature of higher education—not merely a fad of the dot-com era—college faculty must believe that developing online materials has academic value. In addition, such online education requires certain resources to be in place. Resources technological in nature are easy to identify: computers with browser software, Internet access, servers, and so forth. Other resources are less obvious: computer skills of both students and the developers of online materials, and, an essential component: the resources needed to sustain that development. As content and concepts in college courses evolve, so must online materials. And as technology changes, so do the delivery methods for online materials. Faculty must be motivated to update and renew their course materials and keep up with advances in their delivery. Is faculty motivated? And just how do the perceptions of academics in the US compare with the views of their counterparts abroad?

I conducted a study to examine the similarities and differences between U.S. and non-U.S. faculty in their perceptions of developing online course materials, taking into account such factors as resources and demographics. The results demonstrate that U.S. and non-U.S. faculty share similar views on the academic value of Web-based materials despite varying demographics.

The efficacy of online course materials has already been established (Alvi et al, 1997, Benbunan-Fitch, 2002, Hiltz and Turoff, 2002). Faculty continues to develop and deliver online course materials even though they realize it may hinder their academic career (Schell, 2004). Faculty seems to be devoted to the development of online course materials even after the initial incentives have been discontinued. The motivation for faculty to develop and deliver online materials appears to endure beyond the monetary and professional reward systems.

There is, however, little research regarding the similarities and differences among faculty that develop these materials. The U.S. currently accounts for the majority of Web use, however, non-U.S. countries are increasing their Web use and the amount of content posted on the Web. It is useful to examine non-U.S. views about online materials because the Internet knows no borders.

I developed a survey to collect information about individual faculty members, their schools, and each member’s perception of the academic value of developing online course materials. For this analysis, schools in the United States and non-U.S. schools were compared. There were 481 observations from U.S. schools and 48 observations from non-U.S. schools. Of these 48, 26 countries were represented: from Australia to Saudi Arabia; Mexico to Turkey; the United Kingdom to the Ukraine. It was important for this article that non-U.S. schools represented many different countries—no more than six observations came from a single non-U.S. country.

Responses from Canada (36 observations) are not included in this analysis. It was felt that while Canadian schools are certainly distinct from schools in the United States, Canadian faculty might not be viewed as distinctly non-U.S. because of the close proximity of the two countries, the shared conference experiences that result, and faculty training in each other's universities.

All those surveyed have developed and used online course materials so that they would be able to express their views based upon first-hand experience. Only responses from colleges offering at least a bachelors degree were included in the analysis. Again, the focus of the survey is to determine the academic value placed on developing online course materials.

SURVEY SAYS

It’s important to note that an analysis of variance was performed on questions from the survey. The results were informative in situations where significant differences were found and also where no significant difference was found.

The distribution between public versus private institutions were very similar. The sizes of the academic institutions were also similar: The most frequent response was a school size less than 5,000 students (about ten percent of respondents reported more than 30,000 students). Doctoral programs were offered frequently at responding U.S. and non-U.S. schools. The length of time the respondents had been teaching was similar and their computer expertise/experience was also similar.

Overall, non-U.S. faculty places a higher academic value on developing online materials than U.S. faculty. The reason may be that non-U.S. faculty members generally have a more favorable opinion of the effectiveness of the online learning experience. Faculty was asked "How would you compare the effectiveness of a Web-based learning experience to a traditionally taught learning experience?" Their responses are shown in Table 1. The differences did not prove statistically significant but the trend of the last two responses implies non-U.S. faculty believes more deeply in the effectiveness of Web-based learning.

The terminal degrees attained by respondents were markedly different: 48.9 percent of non-U.S. faculty had master’s degrees while 44.7 percent had doctorates. In contrast, U.S. respondents reported 22.9 percent had master’s degrees while 74.8 percent had doctorates. The distribution of job titles reflects the differences in terminal degrees. Table 2 shows titles from adjuncts to full professors. (Note that the rank of the respondent was evenly distributed among the categories of professorship for U.S. and non-U.S. faculty.)

TABLE 1: COMPARE WEB-BASED AND TRADITIONALLY TAUGHT LEARNING EXPERIENCES

Web-based experience is much less effective than traditionally taught experience

NON-U.S. RESPONSE: 0.00%

U.S. RESPONSE: 2.10%

Less effective than traditionally taught experience

NON-U.S. RESPONSE: 17.00%

U.S. RESPONSE: 20.10%

Equivalent to traditionally taught experience

NON-U.S. RESPONSE: 27.70%

U.S. RESPONSE: 37.30%

More effective than traditionally taught experience

NON-U.S. RESPONSE: 40.40%

U.S. RESPONSE: 31.20%

Web-based experience is much more effective than traditionally taught experience

NON-U.S. RESPONSE: 14.90%

U.S. RESPONSE: 9.30%

TABLE 2: DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONDENTS’ RANK

full time adjunct/lecturer

NON-U.S.: 31.10%

U.S.: 7.70%

assistant professor

NON-U.S.: 15.60%

U.S.: 23.00%

associate professor

NON-U.S.: 17.80%

U.S.: 24.80%

full professor

NON-U.S.: 13.30%

U.S.: 27.60%

To rank the importance of teaching and research in regards to promotion and tenure, a scale of zero to ten was used—a value of zero meant no importance while a value of ten meant critical importance. Fifty percent of the non-U.S. respondents' reported a nine or ten value for research while only 19.1 percent reported nine or ten for the importance of teaching. However, only 31.1 percent of U.S. respondents reported values nine or ten for research importance and 38.9 percent for teaching. The non-U.S. respondents clearly respect research as an academic endeavor more than their U.S. counterparts while U.S. faculty is more concerned about teaching.

In earlier studies (such as Schell, 2004) a negative relationship was found in U.S. schools between the value of research and the value of developing online materials. However, non-U.S. schools show a positive relationship. This may be due to their higher opinion of an online learning experience. On the other hand, the survey shows that U.S. faculty uses online materials significantly more than non-U.S. faculty. These intuitively conflicting results appear to be caused by a fewer resources available to non-U.S. students.

While few schools from either group required their students to own computers (6.4 percent for non-U.S. and 8.1 percent for U.S.), the computer lab resources available to students differed significantly. While only 5.9 percent of U.S. respondents reported their resources were either "not enough" or "poor,” 29.8 percent of non-U.S. schools associated their lab resources with these categories. In fact, 40.1 percent of U.S. respondents reported their lab resources were "excellent." While non-U.S. faculty may have a higher regard for online materials, their responses show non-U.S. students have less access to the resources required to consume online materials.

Both U.S. and non-U.S. faculty note a significant increase in the effort required to incorporate technology into their courses. While the responses between U.S. and non-U.S. faculty were not statistically different, the increase itself is significant. Over 25 percent of respondents from both groups reported a value of nine or ten (labeled "increased dramatically") when asked if their efforts had increased.

Both groups were asked their views of the academic value of developing online materials as it affects the promotion and tenure decision. The respondents' believed there was more value in development of online materials compared to the beliefs of their colleagues, chairs, promotion/tenure committees, or administrators. The U.S. and non-U.S. responses were not statistically different. However, in one respect the non-U.S. respondents were more optimistic than their U.S. counterparts.

The scale of choice was from zero (“no academic value”) to ten (“critical”). Looking at the responses of the faculty members' views across all values from zero to ten, there was little difference. However, we can estimate the momentum of the views by comparing the optimistic responses (the value is critical) to the pessimistic values (no value to develop online materials). Differencing the percentage of respondents reporting a value of nine or ten versus respondents reporting zero or one will provide a measure of the optimism of the respondents.

The difference of optimistic (nine or ten reported) compared to pessimistic (zero or one) was 15.2 percent compared to 2.2 percent for non-U.S. faculty. U.S. faculty had a 10.8 percent optimistic view versus an 8.2 percent pessimistic view. Non-U.S. faculty is clearly more optimistic in the view of developing online materials as an academically valuable effort.

THE SIMILARITIES ARE EVIDENT

While there are differences between non-U.S. faculty and their US counterparts, there is much common ground. When it comes to believing in the value of developing online course materials, both groups agree there is academic value. Both groups also respond that their colleagues, chairs, and administrators attribute less value to developing online materials.

It appears that non-U.S. faculty place higher academic value on developing online materials. They feel more strongly in the value of developing materials to help them achieve promotion and tenure. And while both groups rate the efficacy of online course materials higher compared to traditional face-to-face teaching, non-U.S. faculty believes more strongly that online course materials are more effective.

These results are surprising because non-U.S. faculty reported that their students have less access to the technology needed to utilize online materials. Personal ownership of computers, as well as the access to computer lab resources, is lower for non-U.S. respondents.

The survey did not contain questions that would explain the oddity of non-U.S. faculty believing more in the value of online course materials even though they have less resources. Perhaps that is the answer itself: Those less affluent with resources tend to regard their worth higher.

The bottom line is that both U.S. and non-U.S. faculty believe in the academic value of developing online course materials – Non-U.S. faculty even more than their counterparts in the U.S. As the utilization of Web resources shifts towards greater and greater non-U.S. users, we can only expect that the development and use of online course materials will grow.

REFERENCES

Alvi, M., Yoo, Y., and Vogel, D. (2000). Using Information Technology to Add Value to Management Education. Academy of Management Journal, December 1997, 1310-1333.

Benbunan-Fitch, R. (2002). Asynchronous Collaboration Around Multimedia Applied to On-demand Education. Journal of MIS, Spring 2002, 117-145.

Hiltz, S. and Turoff, M. (2002). What Makes Learning Networks Effective? Communications of the ACM, April 2002, 56-59.

Schell, G. (2004). Universities Marginalize Online Courses. Communications of the ACM, July 2004, 53-56.

ASTD Releases its 2004 State of the Industry Report

U.S. organizations continue to maintain their investment in employee learning and use technology-based delivery methods more than ever before, according to the American Society for Training & Development’s (ASTD) "2004 State of the Industry Report."

“Investing in employee learning continues to be a priority for business leaders,” said Brenda Sugrue, senior director of research for ASTD and author of the ASTD "2004 State of the Industry Report." “Organizations are linking learning to performance and the bottom line, and they understand the relationship between creating a skilled workforce and achieving enterprise-wide success,” she said.

This year’s report includes new features such as additional measures of efficiency and a new taxonomy for learning delivered by technology. Three hundred forty-four U.S. organizations of varying sizes from different industries submitted data to ASTD’s Benchmarking Service detailing how they invested in and delivered learning to their employees in 2003. They also predicted how their learning expenditures and delivery methods may change in 2004. Highlights from the report include:

• Annual training expenditure per employee remained steady at about $820 in 2003.    
• Training delivery via learning technologies increased significantly to 23.6 percent in 2003, up from 15.4 in 2002.    
• Managerial/supervisory training and processes/procedures/business practices were the top learning content areas (13 percent each) in 2003.    
• Organizations provided 26 hours of formal learning per employee in 2003, which is consistent with prior years.    
• The employee groups receiving the largest percentage of training expenditure in 2003 were those in management positions, including first-line supervisors, middle and senior managers, and executives (28 percent combined), followed by customer service employees (18 percent).

New this year, the ASTD "2004 State of the Industry Report" includes collective data from the 2003 and 2004 ASTD BEST Award winners. The BEST Awards recognize organizations that connect learning and organizational performance. Common characteristics of the BEST winning organizations include:

• High level of investment in learning.    
• Measurement and demonstration of efficiency and effectiveness of the learning function.    
• Alignment of learning with business needs and individual employee competency needs.    
• Provision of a broad range of internal and external learning opportunities.    
• Chief-level (or C-level) involvement and support for learning.    
• Combination of learning with other performance improvement solutions.

In addition to the release of the "2004 State of the Industry Report," ASTD celebrated Dec. 1 as “Employee Learning Day.” Tony Bingham, ASTD’s president and CEO, reminded business leaders to develop employees’ skills so they can succeed at their jobs. “Workforce development is critical for organizational success, and business leaders must take stock of their employee learning programs and measure them against best practices in leading organizations,” he states. “We hope that organizations will take Employee Learning Day --and more days in the future -- to celebrate the growth of their employees’ knowledge and skills as a prime contributor to competitive advantage.”

For more information: http://www.astd.org

BECAUSE WISDOM CAN’T BE TOLD (OR READ ONLINE)

This is my take on an article written in 1940 by Charles I. Gragg for the Harvard Alumni Bulletin titled Because Wisdom Can’t be Told. (Buy this article, it’s worth every cent of the $6.50).

In this article, Gragg dissects and criticizes the stand-up lecture based method of teaching and compares it with the case-based approach for learning. His main arguments for the case-based approach center around the purposeful thinking and collaboration of groups of students engaged in learning activities around real-world situations.

What I found really surprising is that we in the e-learning industry are facing the same problem that Gragg faced with the lecture mode way back in 1940: wisdom can’t be told (or read online).

Here are some lines of Gragg’s lines of reasoning:

"It can be said flatly that the mere act of listening to wise statements and sound advice does little for anyone. In the process of learning, the learner’s dynamic cooperation is required"

“Thinking out original answers to new problems or giving new interpretations to old problems is assumed in much undergraduate instruction to be an adult function as, as such, one properly denied to students. The task of the student commonly taken to be one chiefly of familiarizing himself with accepted thoughts and accepted techniques, these to be actively used some later time. The instruction period, in other words, often is regarded both by students and teachers as a time for absorption.”

“…the business school must be able to do more for its students than could be accomplished in a corresponding period of actual business experience.” 

“Yet no amount of information, whether of theory or fact, in itself improves insight and judgment or increases ability to act wisely under conditions of responsibility.”

The way forward now is the same as it was in 1940: to help students exercise their thoughts and views in a democratic and collaborative context around authentic situations and all the while being facilitated and guided by instructors to reach shared understanding. The idea here is to have memorable learning experiences. The sooner we understand the notion of providing experiences, rather than just courses, the better it will be for our students and for the health of our industry.

Read the full article.

Order Charles Gragg's article.

LC Annual E-Learning Trends 2004

Learning Circuits has just published its annual survey of e-learning. The results of two online surveys indicate some interesting trends for both level of involvement and applications. Here are the conclusions:

"What can we conclude from this data? It seems as though the general e-learning practitioner is getting smarter and more specific about what he or she does. They’re defining e-learning in narrower terms--to cover the actual learning experiences (i.e., virtual classrooms, simulations, e-courseware) rather than the infrastructure systems that their organizations use to develop and support e-learning (i.e., LMS, LCMS, authoring tools).

In addition, an increasing number of employees and managers are not only aware of e-learning, but also are interested in using it. More important, even though technology and cost issues ranked as their highest concerns, managers are conscious of the culture issues involved in implementing a successful e-learning strategy.

Finally, e-learning developers are increasing their personal skill levels, which, hopefully, will raise the quality of future online programs."

Link:
                        LC Annual E-Learning Trends 2004
                .

Outsourced Training Creates Bottom-Line Profits, Report Shows

After surveying several top international firms, analysts from research organization brandonhall.com have found that outsourcing certain corporate education functions can drive significant cost savings. In addition, the cutting-edge technologies and educational techniques offered by many outside training organizations can enhance learning programs. Read More.

U.S. Academic Leaders Say Online Education is Critical to Long-Term Strategy

The 2004 Sloan Survey of Online Learning, Entering the Mainstream: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the U. S." (www.sloan-c.org/resources/survey.asp), was released at the 10th Annual Sloan-C International Conference. The report shows online enrollments continue to grow at rates faster than average for the broader student population, and institutes of higher education expect the rate of growth to continue increasing.

The comprehensive survey by Babson College and Sloan-C concludes that the expected average growth rate for online students for 2004 is 24.8 percent, up from 19.8 percent in 2003. "Last year's online enrollment projection has been realized. There are 2.6 million students learning online this semester and there is no evidence enrollment has reached a plateau," says Jeff Seaman, chief information officer and director of operations of The Sloan Consortium.

The second annual survey is based on responses from more than 1100 colleges and universities and represents the state of online education in U.S. Higher Education. "Online learning is indeed entering the mainstream," says Frank Mayadas, president of Sloan-C and program director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "Last year we found that a majority of academic leaders said online learning was just as good as traditional, face-to-face classroom instruction. This year's results confirm the finding and show that schools offering online courses believe their online students are at least as satisfied as those actually in the classroom."

The majority of all schools (53.6 percent) agree that online education is critical to their long-term strategy. Among public and private for-profit institutions almost two-thirds (more than 65 percent) agree. "At the University of Central Florida, we have found that online education compares favorably with face-to-face instruction," UCF president John Hitt says. "Today's students are comfortable learning and communicating online, and we can increase our enrollment and diversity without burdening our already crowded classroom schedule."

The study was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (www.sloan.org) and conducted by the Sloan Center for Online Education at Olin (www.olin.edu) and Babson Colleges (www.babson.edu), as well as The Sloan Consortium (www.sloan-c.org).        

VOICE AND TEXT: AN EXPLORATION OF MODALITY EFFECTS IN COMPUTER-AIDED INSTRUCTION

The results of this thesis challenge a basic assumption of multimedia design, which aims to 
make learning more stimulating in the belief that sensory stimulation is, without 
qualification, conducive to learning. Indeed, the major finding of this study, that bimodal 
presentation (text with voice) had a hindering, rather than a facilitative, effect on learning 
performance was not in line with dual-coding theory, which formed the theoretical premise 
of this research.” View the full article.