UWIDEC APC P. 4

2004/2005

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES

ACADEMIC PROGRAMME COMMITTEE OF THE UWIDEC

OCTOBER 27, 2004

 

BLENDED LEARNING/ASYNCHRONOUS DELIVERY:

A UWIDEC PROJECT FOR 2004/5

(click here for a PDF version)

By Professor Stewart Marshall
Director, UWIDEC
20 October 2004

Preamble

In the document “UWIDEC Strategies for 2004/5”, it was noted that UWIDEC will need to provide education that is scaleable (i.e., courses can be taught to 40 or to 4000+ students) and also flexible in:

•  Time – students can enrol and study at anytime;

•  Place - students can enrol and study anywhere (and in this way, equalize higher education opportunities, e.g., for those who are unable to leave the home base for a variety of reasons, and between the campus countries and the non-campus countries);

•  Mode – study can be any mixture of modes on the continuum from face-to-face to totally online.

An essential strategy towards achieving the above is the move away from dependence on synchronous technologies (e.g., teleconferencing and face-to-face tutorials) to a greater use of asynchronous technologies (e.g., email discussion lists and audio/video recorded lectures). The aim is to allow students to complete their program without the need for any attendance (using asynchronous delivery), but to provide optional facilities for face-to-face or other synchronous support for those who need it early in their program. The removal of the need for attendance also addresses the problems of limited physical and timetable space for tutorials and teleconferences, both of which created restrictions on the scalability of UWIDEC courses.

 

Online teaching

At the core of asynchronous modes of teaching is the use of the Internet to facilitate e-learning and online teaching. Roberts et al (2000) describe four models of online teaching in use within the Faculty of Informatics and Communication at Central Queensland University in Australia: the naïve model, the standard model, the evolutionary model, and the radical model :

The naïve model may be characterized as “putting the lecture notes on the Web”. No extra facilities are provided, and the notes used in live face-to-face lectures are transformed with minimal alteration into a web-based format.

The standard model attempts to actively utilize the advantages provided by the technology to allow a significant degree of communication and interaction between students and staff. Features include:

  • A range of electronic resources linked to from the course home page;
  • Electronic copies of all printed course materials;
  • Lecture slides in PowerPoint format;
  • Any notes arising out of on-campus lectures and tutorials;
  • Workshop tasks and solutions;
  • Assignment marking guidelines;
  • Hints and tips for the current examination;
  • An electronic course discussion list.

The evolutionary model takes the standard model as a basis and supplements it with many other features, including:

  • A CD-ROM of a mirror of the Web site as it pertains at the beginning of semester;
  • Pre-recorded audio lectures available both on the CD and from the Web;
  • Web-based archives of mailing list discussions from previous semesters;
  • Electronic assignments submission, recording marking, and return.

The radical model dispenses with lectures entirely. Instead, students are formed into groups, and learn by interacting amongst themselves and using the vast amount of existing Web-based resources, with the instructor providing guidance as and when required. Distinguishing features of the radical model include:

  • A video/CD-ROM sent out to all students prior to the commencement of semester explaining the “way the course works”;
  • Minimal traditional instruction from the instructor;
  • An expectation that students will use the set text, and make extensive use of search engines and other facilities to seek out resources available on the Web;
  • Compulsory use of the course mailing list for communication;
  • The replacement of lectures by online electronic presentations prepared by the students themselves, each based on the topic for that week;
  • The allocation of students into groups, each of which is responsible not only for providing an electronic presentation at some point during the semester, but also for responding critically to all other such presentations.

The model facilitates online collaborative learning (Roberts, 2003)1 based on a socio-cultural constructivist2 model of learning. A couple of Faculty colleagues (Wal Taylor and John Dekkers) and I described this radical model as an “emancipatory” approach to learning and listed six major advantages of the approach (Taylor et al, 2003).

The UWIDEC Blended Learning/Asynchronous Delivery Project

Resource based “blended” learning

Whilst the radical model of online teaching may not appeal to many in UWI at the present time, UWIDEC needs to move quickly to adopt at least the standard model to enable asynchronous delivery before it is left behind by the competition. At the core of asynchronous delivery there must be a learning resource package (print material, CD-Rom, website, links to online resources, etc) that provides the content, together with a means of interacting with lecturers/tutors and other students so as to facilitate social and interactive learning. The learning resource package and the interaction can be conducted in various media utilizing several modes of communication. This combination is often referred to as “blended learning”.

Ultimately, UWIDEC needs to move to the situation where students can (if they wish) complete all their courses without any physical tutorial/lecture attendance at all. Thus, whilst we might still support some limited synchronous delivery, this would not be essential for satisfactory completion of the course. In this transitional phase we might not be able to attain this.

To support students and help them to get the most out of this form of learning, we would also need to develop a UWIDEC “Introduction to blended learning” package (along the lines of the online learning course already trialled).

Asynchronous delivery platform

After an analysis of the various learning management systems available, it has been agreed that we should use the open source software “Moodle” as our learning management software for the development of “blended learning” courses. This platform is designed to be very similar to WebCT - so any staff learning the latter should be able to move easily to the former. Moodle has been adopted by MITS at Mona Campus and it has also been installed at Cave Hill by the IT Services for use by interested individuals, so support for it is growing in UWI.

Moodle will be installed on a UWIDEC development server on each campus for use by our academic development teams. Ultimately, Moodle will need to interface with BANNER for student validation and enrolment details, and also interface with our UWIDEC staff and course databases (yet to be created) so that “standard” websites for courses can be created automatically. However, in the short term, we will need to use alternative methods for establishing websites and validating students.

“Just In Time Lectures”

UWIDEC now has approval from OAS to use software that is based on Internet technologies rather than having to use the separate Carnegie-Mellon platform for the production of the “Just In Time Lectures” CD-Roms. This change will enable UWIDEC to “piggy-back” on that project to move UWIDEC into “blended learning”.

 

The Project Plan

A minimum of ten courses (currently coordinated by “early adopters” or similar) will be selected and put into the new Blended Learning/Asynchronous Delivery mode for delivery in first semester of the next academic year 2005/6. Special emphasis will be placed on adapting first year courses (especially for first year Management Studies).

Each course will have at least the following “standard” package for “blended learning”:

  • The printed resources that UWIDEC currently provides;
  • A “standard” website comprising course outline, course admin details, email discussion list, links to resources (and these would include links to electronic versions of the UWIDEC printed resources);
  • A CD-Rom comprising lectures (PowerPoint slides with audio and/or video).

Given time, technology and willingness on the part of the Coordinators, this “standard” package will be extended to include streaming lectures online (same as on CD-Rom), online quizzes and self-assessment exercises, online submission of assignments, online collaborative group work by students, etc.

To create all this, UWIDEC will need to train the developers, coordinators and tutors. A Project Execution Schedule (PDF file) is attached, with initial training scheduled to start this year. Course Writers/Coordinators Workshops will be held concurrently in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad on December 6th – 8th, 2004. The Tutors' Workshop for the Jamaica and Northern Caribbean participants will be held in Jamaica and will run concurrently with the Tutors' Workshop in Barbados and the Tutors' Workshop for Trinidad and the Eastern Caribbean in Trinidad, on December 8th - 10th.

This training will then be followed early next year by more intensive training based around the actual courses being developed (as part of the course development process).

 

(Click here for PDF document: Project Execution Schedule)

 

 

Endnotes

1 For resources about online collaborative learning see Tim Roberts' website at: http://clp.cqu.edu.au/

2 For socio-cultural constructivism see Barbara Jaworski, (1996) “Constructivism and Teaching - The socio-cultural context” available at: http://www.grout.demon.co.uk/Barbara/chreods.htm. See also Peter Doolittle, (2001) “Complex Constructivism: A Theoretical Model of Complexity and Cognition” available at: http://edpsychserver.ed.vt.edu/research/complex1.html

 

References

Rice, R. (1993). “Media appropriateness using social presence theory to compare traditional and new organizational media”. Human Communication Research , 19 (4), 451- 484.

Roberts, T.S., Jones, D. and Romm, C.T. (2000). “Four Models of Online Education”. Proceedings of TEND 2000 , Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Roberts T.S. (ed.) (2003). Online Collaborative Learning: Theory and Practice , Information Science Publishing, Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Taylor, W., Dekkers, J. & Marshall, S. (2003). “ Community Informatics - Enabling Emancipatory Learning”. In T. McGill (ed) Current Issues in IT Education . IRM Press, Hershey, PA, USA, 367-375

Wallace, A. and Yell, S. (1997). “New literacies in the virtual classroom”. Southern Review , 30 :3. Published at: www.infocom.cqu.edu.au/Staff/Susan_Yell/Teaching/fmctl/liter.htm.