emissia.offline ART 752
Mar 27, 2000
received from: Jim Shimabukuro jamess@hawaii.edu
and Bert Kimura bert@hawaii.edu
via Vladimir Romanenko vladimir@VR1682.spb.edu
via Ev Shepherd shepherd@asu.edu
FIFTH ANNUAL TEACHING IN THE COMMUNITY COLLEGES ONLINE
CONFERENCE (A COMPLETELY ONLINE CONFERENCE)
April 12-14, 2000
Theme: A VIRTUAL ODYSSEY: What's Ahead for New Technologies in Learning?
PREVIEW OF PRESENTATIONS FOR THE 2000 CONFERENCE: REAL AND VIRTUAL LANDMARKS
Here, at the start of the 21st century, when we look at the educational landscape before
us and focus on the frontier where the real and virtual worlds are mixing and merging, we
can begin to identify five major landmarks of concern that will shape our course in the
next few years.
1)The most prominent is communication: How do we maintain our humanity, our sense of
community, in a world that is defined by electronics?
2)The second is development: How do we cross from here to there, from a world defined by
real space and time to a virtual world that we've only begun to explore?
3)The third critical concern is assessment: How do we know if online instruction is
effective?
4)The fourth is hybridity: With one foot in the traditional and the other in the virtual,
what are the hybrid paths into terra incognita?
5)And the fifth is access: How can we use the Internet to cultivate global education
that's accessible to all, especially to the disadvantaged and to those with special needs?
Communication, development, assessment, hybridity, and access--these are the five major
landmarks.
FIRST LANDMARK: COMMUNICATION
Not surprisingly, the most prominent landmark of concern is the potential for new
technologies to alienate and isolate individual learners. For many educators, however, the
real strength of the Internet is, ironically, its power to facilitate and enhance
communication. A large number of presentations will focus on this communicative advantage,
gathering around three themes: learning communities, interaction, and collaboration.
Learning Communities
In the first few years of the new millennium, we can expect the emphasis in colleges
around the world to be on using the new technologies to facilitate and enhance the sense
of community in online and hybrid classes, focusing on person- to-person interaction and
collaboration. Frank W. Yurgens, in "Community and Collaboration in Online English
Composition," uses e-mail, ICQ, MOO, and threaded group discussions in his
second-semester freshman course to encourage a sense of community and collaboration. The
theme of his course is cyberspace and the effects that it has had and continues to have on
our society. Ernestine K. Enomoto and Lynn Tabata, in "Creating Virtual Learning
Communities through Distance Learning Technologies," use a variety of electronic,
multimedia technologies in their graduate course to create a viable, interactive, virtual
learning community.
Presenters will discuss theories and research that inform the construction of online
learning communities. Bridget Arend, in "The Art of Letting Go: Using Groups
Effectively Online," will explore theories and techniques of group dynamics and group
processes, and will share her discoveries re best practices in composing, moderating, and
evaluating online groups. Anne Bliss, in "Identity and Presence in Web-based
Courses," will explore the technological and sociocultural aspects of online
instruction, which can disallow, permit, or enable the creation of successful learning
communities in which true identities can be safely revealed, and both teachers and
students can establish an authentic presence. And Lori Herod, in "Interpersonal
Presence in Computer- Mediated Conferencing Courses," will discuss interpersonal
presence, which may be thought of as the cues we use to form impressions of one another
(e.g., personality, attitudes, likes/dislikes) and by which relationships of varying
depth, duration, and purpose are formed.
The Internet will expand the limits of community to include networking that stretches far
beyond the traditional classroom. For example, Michael Coghlan and Vance Stevens, in
"An Online Learning Community -- The Students' Perspective," will discuss their
web-based writing course: The Webheads community has evolved into a full-fledged online
learning community where students may or may not be actively or officially studying
English, and peer tutoring in matters pertaining to English language learning and the use
of new learning technologies are strong elements in the interactions of community members.
Interaction
The challenge for online instructors will be to discover and exploit the interactive,
humanizing potential of the Internet. Bradley W. Bleck, in "John Dewey's 'Educative
Experience' and MOOs as Learning Environments," will demonstrate that by establishing
a relationship between the relatively new technology of the MOO and the often accepted
educational philosophy of Dewey, at least one of the barriers keeping faculty from
teaching with technology may be eliminated or reduced: the fear that teaching with
technology will be less interactive, less human, and less effective.
Presenters will describe specific ways to generate interactivity. For example, Joyce D.
Meyer, in "Citizenship on the Internet," will discuss experiential exercises and
other assignments, requirements, recommendations, and guidelines that encourage student
participation in the on- line community; she will also explore how instructors can be
proactive in promoting the qualities of good netizenship. Julie Gibson and Philip
Rutherford, in "Growing a Natural Classroom Dynamic on the Web," will provide a
step-by-step demonstration of how they are using interactive web pages to deliver courses
and learning support.
Barbara L. Nubile, in "Managing Online Communication with On- Campus Students,"
will describe how she uses WebBoard. She will also provide an opportunity to explore her
site, which includes a WebBoard tutorial that allows users to access the site, post
questions, and explore the possibilities of an online conferencing system. Marie Jasinski
and Sivasailam "Thiagi" Thiagarajan, in "Virtual Games Real Learning: A
Seriously Fun Way to Learn Online," will share virtual games that rely on
communication technologies such email, bulletin boards, and chat; these activities offer
unique opportunities for learner-to-learner and learner-to-facilitator interactions.
Presenters will report on interactive strategies in various disciplines. For example,
Katherine Watson, in "Creating an Administrative/Educational Nexus for Language
Learners Online: A Learning Community Born from Interactivity," uses the multifaceted
Web with French language students working to improve their fluency online. Merilyn Taylor
and Fred Biddulph, in "Developing a Truly Interactive Undergraduate On-line
Course," will discuss the challenges involved in developing and teaching an on-line,
interactive advanced undergraduate course in curriculum development. Michael Benton, in
"Problematizing the Borders of Popular, Elite, and Resistant Culture: Guillermo
Gomez-Pena, Bennetton, Adbusters, Douglas Rushkoff and Taco Bell," will discuss the
Internet as an excellent medium to explore the different representations of popular,
elite, and resistance cultures through an examination of online discourses.
Collaboration
The virtual environment offers unprecedented opportunities for collaborative learning
activities. Jan-Michelle Sawyer, in "The Online Phenomena of Transformative
Learning," will discuss ways in which learners actively create knowledge and meaning
through experimentation, discovery, and exploration of ideas shared online. She says that
it is the relationships and interactions among people through which knowledge is primarily
generated in online courses. Lynn E. Davie and John Stathakos, in "Collaborative
Learning on the Internet: Learning Partnerships in the Online Classroom," will share
a collaborative online model, learning partnerships, highlighting administrative,
teaching, and learning benefits.
Professors are discovering innovative strategies to encourage collaboration. Vanessa
Dennen, in "Using Problem-based Learning in the Online Classroom: A Study of
Collaborative Learning Groups," will discuss the effectiveness as well as the
additional hurdles she encountered when applying problem- based learning (PBL) in her
online course. Ruby Evans, in "Providing a Learning-Centered Instructional
Environment," will describe a learning-centered instructional environment in which
students are actively, cooperatively, and collaboratively engaged. Thomas R. Danford, in
"Collaborative Group Work in OnLine Biology Courses," will discuss the unique
nature of the MOO that allows for construction of a collaborative project via a
"janitor character" so that each group member contributes anonymously to the
project: specifics of collaborative group work (CGW) evaluation and grading as well as
examples from introductory biology and microbiology courses will be highlighted.
SECOND LANDMARK: DEVELOPMENT
The second most prominent landmark of concern is development, or how to make our way in
this uncertain terrain. The three areas that presenters will focus on are program,
instructional, course, and professional.
Program Development
The first few years of the new millennium will see an increase in planning for the
development of comprehensive online programs. Many colleges are offering online degree
programs. Judy A. Serwatka, in "Distance Learning for Computer Information Students:
What Works, What Doesn't," will report on developments at Purdue University Calumet,
where they have expanded online course offerings for Computer Information students to
include all of the courses in their Associate Degree and have just gotten that degree
approved by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education as an on-line degree; their next
step is to offer their Bachelor Degrees on-line.
Veronica E. Lyaschenko, in "Distance Education for Central Asia through the
Internet," will discuss a model of the virtual university system that is needed in
Central Asian colleges, including the kinds of courses that might be offered, procedures
for attending online classes, and evaluation.
Once programs are in place. the competition for online students will be fierce. Jacquelyn
G. Abromitis, in "Trend Analysis of Distance Education and Implications for Public
Postsecondary Institutions," feels that public higher education institutions, both
4-year and 2-year, are in a position to be leaders in distance education, and if they do
not take the opportunity to capture the "market," privatized colleges will take
the market from them. Re marketing, Bruce Cheung, in "Online Alumni and Classified
Community," suggests that the success of online programs will depend on promotions
aimed at the appropriate classified communities.
A critical issue in the development of online programs is compensation. Jeannette L.
Sasmor, in "The Innovation College--An Update," will report on faculty load for
online courses, both for development and delivery; intellectual property rights; potential
copyright problems; and models for long-term profit sharing between the college and
faculty. She says that the spirit of cooperation and mutual problem- solving lends
optimism to the work.
While there are many advantages to the virtual medium, Ed Coll advises caution. In
"From On Ground Face Time to Virtually Yours," he warns that the transformation
of traditional higher education into virtual learning environments is driven by the
corporate desire to privatize public resources to maximize profits and create a large,
low- wage, highly skilled labor pool.
Instructional Development
In "Looking Backward: Using the Past to Examine the Future," Denis Hlynka and
Eric Crone will explore milestones in the history of instructional and information
technologies to provide a context for new technologies in learning. In the coming years,
the educational landscape will be transformed by new technologies. Palmer W. Agnew, Anne
S. Kellerman, and Bernardo Torres, in "Some Technologies, Trends, and Price Break
Throughs Offering Advantage to Teachers in the 21st Century," will discuss ClearType,
the bandwidth time line, implications for Web appliances such as Motorola's cell phone,
significant price breakthroughs in technology, and video digitizing cards.
Online instructors will continue to explore and discover innovative uses for the new
technologies. For example, Lisa Weber and Jennifer Lieberman, in "Strategies for
Effective Use of Chat: When, Why, and How to Make It Work," will describe pedagogical
uses of chat and chat-room management techniques as well as coping strategies for
instructors and their students, with a special focus on the language classroom. Rachelle
Darabi and Deb Sewards, in "Teaching Students to Publish Web Pages in a Writing
Class," will report on web page design and its value in teaching the importance of
audience: students understand that their product can be viewed by anyone with internet
access.
Marguerite "Mimi" Will, in "ALT + CTRL + DEL = Successful Online
Learning," will present several examples illustrating how each student can create
his/her own individualized plan for success in her web-based class in Intermediate
Internet and Web Techniques, in its third year. Francois Lachance, in "Reading and
Searching: Tools and Skills," will discuss text- analysis software and how it
enhances a user's willingness to conduct re-iterative and successive searches on the same
body of material; within an environment of computer-mediated communication, an individual
user's results can be shared and discussed with other users.
Applications of the new technologies must be informed by sound learning theories. Alan
Altany, in "Learning with Technology: Spiritual, Mystical and Paradoxical Memories of
the Future," will discuss a radical need to recall forgotten visions of learning as
necessary if learning technologies are to be more than constantly passing fads and
innovations leading nowhere on a deadening, though spectacular, information superhighway.
Satoru Shinagawa, in "Teaching Japanese On-line," will share what he has
discovered about new study habits that students will need to develop to learn a language
online.
Instructors are merging new technologies with successful traditional strategies. For
example, Susan Gaer, in "Project Based Learning: Pros and Cons," will share her
experiences with language instruction through technology enhanced project work in a
community college non-credit setting. Jane Sisk, in "The Emerging Role of the
Electronic Mentor," will provide an initial analysis of the role of the electronic
mentor within new learning technologies.
Mark Mabrito, in "Designing and Developing an Online Writing Course," will
suggest ways to develop an online writing course (specifically, an undergraduate course in
business writing) that accommodates various learning styles, effectively uses resources of
the Web, and attempts to simulate features of the face-to-face classroom. Mary I.
Dereshiwsky, in "The Ten Commandments of Success in CyberInstruction," will
share ten "rules of thumb" for a positive experience in web-based teaching and
learning.
Course Development
The new technologies will alter the ways in which courses are developed. With an eye on
the issues involved in developing an online course, Danilo M. Baylen and Joan Glacken, in
"Educating Health Care Professionals at a Distance: A Case Study of an Online
Course," will describe and discuss the process of building a prototype and the
lessons they learned from their experience. Emily Golson, in "Sorting Out Different
Expectations for Online Courses," will describe the different expectations that
shaped one of their university's first online courses; they will also discuss the various
accommodations that have gone into three years of teaching the course.
Kwi Park-Kim, in "Teaching On-line: Lessons Learned from CUNY On-Line Project,"
will focus on issues related to migrating to online courses and best practices for
improving online communication. Online instruction requires more than simply placing
course content on the web for student learners. Libby Roeger, in "Teaching Aristotle
New Tricks: Building Ethos and Pathos--Audience Appeal into Web-Based Instruction,"
will discuss quality teaching and how instructors must consider how ethos (credibility)
and pathos (emotional appeal) may be applied to course content in order to facilitate
reader/student and writer/teacher communication.
D. Jason Nolan, in "VASE: The Virtual Assignment Server Environment," will
report on the VASE project, which is designed to develop a web-based environment for the
creation, completion, submission, and publication of student course work over the world
wide web. Key issues are educator- centred, web-based software environments, open-source
technologies for education, and relocalizing the control of online learning technologies
into the hands of the educators and out of the control of non-teaching technicians.
Professional Development
With all these innovations in the wind, perhaps the greatest challenge is in the area of
professional development. Karen McComas, in "Developing and Sustaining Online
Communities for Teachers," will chronicle the development of a community of teachers
who share an interest in teacher research; the demands of participating in an online
community, sustaining an online community, and engaging in teacher research activities
will be discussed. A key issue in the decision to make the move to a virtual classroom is
readiness: Irene Ilott, Penelope Robinson, and Ruth Garner, in "Enabling Occupational
Therapists and Physiotherapists to Engage in the Information Age," will report the
results of a study to determine whether those working in the health and social care sector
are ready to engage in the information age.
It isn't surprising that an effective medium for professional development just happens to
be the Internet. Claire Brooks and Carole McCulloch, in "Avatars, Teachers and Other
Mythological Creatures: Use of Fictionalised Identities for Professional Development in
Teaching and Learning Online," will describe how they used avatars (fictional,
created personalities) as teaching aids during a statewide professional development
program for Victorian (Australian) vocational educational sector workers.
Jeffrey Ferris Cooper, in "Mr. C's MUVE LinC Project," will report on a project
designed to help K-12 educators collaborate online both through synchronous and
asynchronous means utilizing several Educational MUVEs. A long-standing medium for
professional development has been professional journals; in the virtual world, however,
new issues emerge. D. Michele Jacobsen and Charles F. Webber, in "Electronic
Publication: A New Medium with Emergent Editorial Issues," will outline key online
editorial issues that include institutional recognition of editorial work in an online
format, journal design, submission-to-publication time lines, automatic international
readership, site maintenance and archiving, copyright, interactivity, and reader
accessibility.
THIRD LANDMARK: ASSESSMENT
In the midst of these changes, many are advising caution. Cody Ding, in "Evaluating
with Technology: Spectacular Danger and Myth of the Future Learning," warns that
seemingly fancy and spectacular ways of learning, enabled by technology, may be more of a
myth in terms of what it can do for our education; there is a great need for us to calm
down and evaluate the consequences of online learning.
Daniel D. Gross and Vicki Burford, in "Communicating Care in Online Courses:
Rhetorical Strategies for Meeting Expressed Student Confusion and Frustration with Online
Instruction," suggest an evaluative strategy. In their study, they analyzed,
categorized, and critiqued actual responses to expressed student confusion and frustration
with online courses.
Deb LaPointe, in "Distance Learning Course Evaluations: What Do Distance Learners
Expect from Us?", suggests course monitoring and evaluation to inform instructors
about distance learners' expectations, difficulties the distance learners are
experiencing, breakdowns in communication systems, and the kind of help individual
distance learners need.
Studies comparing traditional and virtual classes may also be useful. Brian Miller, in
"Nutrition Education Online: An Alternative to Large-Class Environments?", will
report on his comparison of academic achievement between undergraduate students in an
introductory nutrition course online and students taking the same course in a large-class
lecture format.
FOURTH LANDMARK: HYBRIDITY
Perhaps the most prevalent trend in the coming years will be toward hybrid approaches.
Greg Beatty, in "Learning from Hybridity: Lessons for a Present Future," defines
hybridity as classes that are part online, part face-to-face (F2F), or F2F with
technological augmentation. E. Marshall Wick, in "Creating Significant Differences
through Web Enhanced Courses," will focus on the various web features in courses such
as Business Law and Introduction to Business that can make a significant difference in the
learning process, especially for students who have a weak command of language.
The new technologies are often viewed as a new mode of learning. John Fitzsimmons and
Wendy O'Brien, in "Online Resistance: Learning Learning Modalities while Studying the
Short Story," suggest that encouraging student competence in various modalities may
resolve many difficulties of using online, flexible learning, i.e., online becomes one of
many possibilities.
Some professors feel that approaches to online teaching are content-specific, i.e.,
certain techniques are not compatible with their discipline. However, Amy Braziller and
Diane Hegeman, in "Hybrid Instruction as a Learning Solution," will argue that
their high-tech, high-touch approach can be used for all disciplines and all styles of
teaching.
Vincent K. Pollard, in "Digital Equity in Online-enhanced Political Science
Classes," will share concerns and inferences arising from his experiences in teaching
online- enhanced introductory and advanced political science courses and a senior project
tutorial; the presentation will summarize focused case studies in sufficient detail, and
Pollard will invite the audience to agree, question, or challenge both his enthusiasm and
his concerns.
FIFTH LANDMARK: ACCESS
The promise of the Internet is universal access, especially to those with special needs.
Ruth Garner, Margaret Dilloway, and Pearl Whiten, in "Uniting Europe: Tackling
Employment Needs of People from Disability or Disadvantaged Groups through Learning
Technology," will report on the UK JOB project, a European-funded program that
delivers remote vocational guidance to people with disabilities and from disadvantaged
groups: the different approaches taken by the UK, Italy, Finland, Spain, France, and
Greece will be briefly described and the key features of shared learning between different
cultures will be discussed.
Sara K. Hendley and Jackie Waller, in "Enabling People with the Greatest Need to
Access the Best of What Is Available: Preparing Tutors, Therapists and Mentors to Use ICT
to Deliver Services to People in Their Own Home," will demonstrate how the JOB
project has been really innovative in piloting a new service to people with disabilities
in their own home, in exploring delivery through Computer Mediated Communication to this
client group, and in delivering a seamless service; they will also discuss the Virtual
Tutors programme that was developed under the project.
Mary Hricko, in "Distance Education and Special Needs Students: Providing Access with
Adaptive Technologies," will examine how adaptive technologies in the classroom
should be applied in the distance learning setting. Mary Ellen Nourse, in "Adaptive
Technologies for 2000," will review commercial, shareware, and freeware resources
available for physically challenged computer users.
Another aspect of universal access is the breaking of national and cultural barriers to
learning. Loretta Kasper, in "Collaborative Focus Discipline Research and the
Internet: A Content-Based Intercultural Exchange," will describe a content-based,
intercultural Internet collaboration in which CUNY ESL students, as part of a
project-based curriculum, worked with college students in other parts of the country/world
to research topics in a discipline of choice.
Gloria L. Mcmillan, in "Hosting Live Global Literary Sessions at DU MOO," will
discuss the original idea to hold global literary sessions (GLS) at a MOO, using hosts
from the country of the author or genre being studied.
To Register: http://leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/tcon2000
For additional registration info, email Diane Goo (dgoo@hawaii.edu)
Edit. correction: A.Akhayan, The Emissia Laboratory, St.Petersburg, SU