INTER-MEDIA COLUMN

 

Internet Resources: Distance Education, Media Centers, and the Internet


by Michael J. Albright
MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship, v4#1, Summer 1996

 Distance education has been around in one form or another since the 1830s (or the 1720s, depending upon which book you read). It has had its ebbs and flows during this period, but if distance ed ever had a "boom" era, we are in it now, and have been in it for about the past decade thanks to some remarkable advances in the delivery technologies available to us. One of these, of course, is the Internet.

 College and university courses incorporating Internet functions are impossible to count but undoubtedly number in the tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands in the U.S. alone. The World Lecture Hall (WLH), a terrific site maintained at the University of Texas providing links to Web-based college and university courses listed 965 courses in 88 disciplines in late June 1996, up from 532 courses in 72 disciplines in January. These are courses that have been submitted to the WLH by their professors, so the list is hardly all-inclusive.

 Many thousands of additional courses do not have Web components but use electronic mail, listservs, newsgroups, chat software, Gopher, and other Internet features to communicate and share information. While the vast majority of these courses are conducted in conventional face-to-face classrooms with the Internet used as a supplement, these applications certainly could be (and are) applied to distance education courses as well.

 Indeed, we are seeing a dramatic growth in the number of courses, and in fact complete degree programs, delivered entirely via the Internet. Proprietary organizations such as the University of Phoenix and University Online have evolved to broker college courses and

 assist higher education institutions in delivering courses via the Internet. In a well-publicized announcement, the Western Governors Association recently decided to move ahead with establishment of a virtual university with much of its instruction delivered online. These are exciting times.

 Media centers on many campuses are being asked to support these endeavors. While the computing/information technology units normally provide software, hardware, and networking support, we are the INSTRUCTIONAL technology experts. Our most important roles will be in providing consultation services to faculty regarding the conceptualization and design of an Internet-based course (or course components), training faculty to use the Internet effectively in their teaching (which goes well beyond things like basic instruction in setting up a newsgroup or the fundamentals of HTML), and assisting in the development of course Web pages and other materials for delivery via the Internet. This column will attempt to point you at some useful resources.

 

Models for Internet-Based Teaching

It is helpful to start with a basic understanding of how the Internet can be used within a distance education environment. In fact, Saltzberg and Polyson (1995) prefer the use of "distributed learning" to "distance learning," since the Internet provides distributed resources. They define distributed learning as, "...an instructional model that allows

 instructor, students, and content to be located in different, non-centralized locations so that instruction and learning occur independent of time and place. The distributed learning model can be used in combination with traditional classroom-based courses, with traditional distance learning courses, or it can be used to create wholly virtual classrooms."

 Saltzberg and Polyson differentiate between two models for WWW-based college and university teaching that easily extend beyond the Web to other Internet applications. In the Course Supplement Model, instructor and students meet in the conventional face-to-face setting, and most instruction is delivered synchronously. The WWW is used to distribute course materials such as the syllabus, announcements, sample exams, assignment information, glossaries of terms, study tips, slides and handouts, and lists of enrolled students and e-mail addresses, and to provide links to Web sites related to the course content.

 In the Virtual Classroom Model, the instructor and students do not meet face-to-face, and the course is conducted asynchronously and online. Although many of the examples of virtual courses we have involve students at a single location but participating in a non-traditional way, the virtual classroom concept is ideally suited for a distance education course in which students may participate from anywhere in the world. All of the Web uses found in the Course Supplement Model could be applied. In addition, a virtual course could also include:

     
  • online lectures and instructional materials, 
  • interactive multimedia made possible by "plug-ins" (which will be the topic of a future column),

    •  

  • remote access to library resources, 
  • one-to-one communications via e-mail, 
  • asynchronous group discussions via a listserv or newsgroup, 
  • synchronous group discussions using chat software, 
  • experiential learning opportunities such as MOOs or WOOs, 
  • online testing and assessment, and 
  • online course evaluation (Saltzberg & Polyson, 1995).
A brief word of explanation may be in order. MOOs were devised neither by Jane Smiley nor the Dairy Science department here at Iowa State. MOO stands for MUD Object-Oriented, with MUD itself an acronym for Multi-User Dimension (or Dungeon if you go back to its roots in the Dungeons and Dragons game). A MOO is an online, text-based, real-time virtual reality environment involving multiple participants in role-playing simulations. While MOO servers are commonly accessed via Telnet, a WOO (Web Object Oriented) is a MOO accessed through the WWW. At the risk of sending you off into alphabetic overload, VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) shows some very interesting potential for presenting three dimensional participatory learning experiences.

 In reality, most courses using the Internet are hybrids of the two models and fall somewhere on the continuum between them. Of the total, a relatively small percentage are purely virtual courses.

 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Internet-Based Teaching

As with any other form of distance education, Internet-based teaching has distinct advantages and disadvantages. We need to be aware of these in our consultations with faculty clients. The advantages include:
     
  • The resources are available to any computer on the Internet with the proper software. Distance education courses on the Internet could attract students from just about anywhere 
  • No space or time restrictions are present in a virtual course. Time zone differences are consequential only during scheduled synchronous chat sessions 
  • Internet resources such as WWW-based materials are distributable across multiple platforms. It makes no difference if the participants are on Macs or PCs or about anything else 
  • The technology is relatively easy to use 
  • Sources are available across the entire Internet 
  • Web-based materials are easy to update, providing student access to current information 
  • The Internet provides a student-centered learning environment 
  • A variety of learning opportunities can be provided to accommodate learning style differences 
  • Students become skilled at using Internet resources

    •  The disadvantages of Internet-based teaching may also be significant. 

  • Traffic congestion on the Internet may become a major issue. Accessing Web sites can be extremely frustrating at peak periods during the day, particularly for those students participating via slow modems. 
  • A plethora of Web-based courses can overwhelm the computing resources of the institution. Imagine the effect on public computer labs if just one 600-student Intro to Sociology course requires access to the Internet two or three times per week! 
  • Courses may focus on the technology rather than the content 
  • Web-based course materials may be time consuming for the professor to develop, and page authoring may have a stiff learning curve for some 
  • Faculty members must accept a new teaching paradigm, that of facilitator and manager of learning rather than a disseminator of information. In a virtual course, the professor does little professing. 
  • Although today's students as a whole are more technologically literate than ever before, many are technophobes who find the Internet confusing and intimidating, just like some faculty 
  • The active learning required by Internet-based course activities may be difficult for students conditioned by prior courses to be passive

    •  *Page 111*

     

  • Lack of access may handicap some students, and in distance education lack of access will exclude students. This is a significant issue in rural and lower socioeconomic neighborhoods. 
  • Courses with Internet components often attract non-student participants, especially on the Web 
  • Copyright violations on the WWW are there in plain sight for viewing by the legal copyright holders and their attorneys, not to mention the jury. This requires somewhat of a shift in the thought processes of faculty accustomed to committing flagrant copyright violations in the closed environment of the conventional classroom. 
  • An active, effective campus support system is essential for faculty to make maximum use of the Internet as a teaching tool. This is where we enter the picture.

Web Resources Related to Distance Education and the Internet

The matter of access is becoming less and less of an issue. During the last couple of years, a whole new genre of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) has entered the scene, with more than 3,000 of them providing software and unlimited Internet access at affordable monthly rates (typically under $30). Most homes in America can dial up to an ISP port with a local call. Two Web sites provide convenient links to ISPs: The following sites offer links and helpful general information about the Internet and college teaching: Several Web sites provide links to college and university courses that have WWW components. I strongly encourage you to access these sites and explore in person the ways in which college faculty are using the Web.

 

 The following are excellent examples of virtual courses. These URLs were good the last time I checked. However, since all these courses have been completed, their Web sites may well have been deactivated by the time you read this.

 

The following are general distance education sites. Many are more appropriate for the general theme of this issue than this specific column.

 

Reference

Saltzbert, S., & S. Polyson. (1995). Distributed learning on the World Wide Web. Syllabus, 9(1):10-12.

 Michael J. Albright is an Instructional Development Specialist in the Media Resources Center, Iowa State University. His e-mail address is mikealbr@iastate.edu, and his URL is http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mikealbr/

 

 This article copyright (c) by Michael Albright. All Rights Reserved. All commercial use requires permission of the author and the editors of this journal.

Hypertext links are not maintained by the author or Editors of MC Journal.

 ISSN 1069-6792
  Lori Widzinski, Editor (widz@acsu.buffalo.edu)
  Revised: 08/27/98
  URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/publications/mcjrnl/v4n1/intern5.html