From Our Readers

Which Technology for Distance Learning?

Roger Kropf

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Editor's note: With this issue, Connect launches a new feature. "From Our Readers" will include letters written to our authors in response to past articles, as well as other reader feedback.

This article originated as an e-mail response to George Sadowsky's article, "The Appropriate Role of Information Technology in Instruction," in the Spring 1998 issue. Make sure you visit the other letters from our readers that were sent to Melissa Whitney, a contributing author, about 56k modems.

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I believe there is too little discussion of which mix of technologies to use in courses where students and faculty work at some distance from each other. The debates I have read focus on whether such "distance learning" can really produce the same outcomes as face-to-face learning in the classroom. Often the comparison is to courses that use a single technology such as interactive television.

When faculty design distance learning courses, they should ask, "What mix of available technologies will improve the chances of achieving the learning objectives I have for a particular group of students?" To suggest why technology selection is so important, I will briefly describe two distance learning projects I have been involved with.

With the support of an NYU Curriculum Development Challenge Grant, Professor Victor Rodwin and I taught a course in the fall of 1997, in conjunction with the University of Paris IX (Dauphine). The course, "Health Care Reform in the U.S. and Europe," met every Monday for two hours at the NYU Telecommunications Department's studio on 12th Street. About an hour and a half was devoted to an interactive television session. The broadcast consisted primarily of guest lectures related to the theme of the course. Speakers came from health care and regulatory bodies in the United States, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

While the course proved to be intellectually stimulating and offered students access to people who could not have been gathered in any one place without a much larger budget, we began to recognize some problems related to the choice of technologies.

Language

We knew that language would be a challenge, but still agreed that English would be the only language used. Our colleague in Paris soon told us that our speakers in New York spoke too fast and used too much jargon. On reflection, we realized that the technology itself resulted in subtle differences in how our speakers behaved. When they looked at the camera, they slowed down to speak to people for whom English was a second language. When they addressed the students in New York, they reverted to a normal, faster and more jargon-laden English.

As the semester progressed, we tried to make adjustments. For example, we periodically stopped to turn control over to Professor LePen for questions and discussion, hoping that this would remind speakers to adjust their pace and use of English, while giving the French faculty and students a chance to ask for clarification. We also briefed our guest speakers on the problem.

Internet Resources

While NYU students all had e-mail and Internet access, the French students did not. ACF made available AltaVista Forum group collaboration software from Digital {www.altavista.software.digital.com/forum}. With this, we set up a forum to encourage discussion among the American students, and hopefully with a few of their French colleagues. We had viewed the text-based group collaboration software as an extra -- a nice but not critically important addition to what was primarily going to be an interactive television course.

As the semester continued, it became clear to me that we hadn't thought well enough about which technologies to use. Here are some of the questions which, in retrospect, we should have asked.

Which Technologies Best Support A Multi-Language Environment?

We focused on the student needs that related to intellectual growth. Our concern was in developing content and an environment which fostered learning by providing exposure to experts and the exchange of ideas. How the technology reduced or exacerbated the language barrier wasn't considered.

I can read my e-mail many times before I respond, but a live broadcast requires immediate and accurate language translation. Therefore, as language skills decline, the advantage goes to the technology that offers time for reflection and the use of a dictionary, whether electronic or paper. If the focus of foreign language instruction is the written rather than the spoken word, text becomes the easier medium for learning.

In retrospect, we knew very little about the French students' English language skills. Text-based communication might have reduced the language barrier. Since the infrastructure for that was not available, we needed alternative strategies. Before we do such a course again, we need to understand students' language skills and what technologies are available to enhance communication.

Which Technologies are Available?

In the case just discussed, the most important challenge is to select a mix of technologies that will allow a multi-language group with varying language competencies to interact and learn. As noted earlier, a constraint is the technologies that students have access to. Where students lack Internet access but have live, interactive broadcasts available, emphasis on this technology (as well as overnight mailing of videotapes and faxes) will produce a different mix than would situations in which Internet access is widely available but assembling students in one room for live broadcasts would be difficult.

Many technologies are used in distance learning programs, including small group or one-to-one video-conferencing; previously recorded video (made accessible on tape, CD or the Internet); and synchronous text-based discussions. Synchronous discussions, or "chat," require that all participants be connected at the same time. Asynchronous discussions utilize software that stores messages and often organizes them according to topic, producing a discussion "thread." (For more information on asynchronous learning networks, see www.aln.org. A typology of choices in distance learning can be found in Morten Flate Paulsen, "The Online Report on Pedagogical Techniques for Computer-Mediated Communication" at home.nettskolen.nki.no/~morten.) In designing this course, we considered only two technologies: interactive broadcasts and asynchronous threaded discussion.

Two additional options for combining technologies are:

Option #1

Conduct live special lectures and videotape them for later viewing by students. In this case, the objective is to produce a record of the lecture content and subsequent interaction among experts brought together to discuss the content. The student, by intent, is not the focal point. Learning occurs in subsequent broadcasts (after students have reviewed the videotapes and sought help, if needed, in understanding them), and in text-based discussions (synchronous or asynchronous).

Option #2

Students become the leaders of a live "discussion with the experts." They prepare by reading, looking at prior video-taped discussions and trading e-mail or faxes with the experts to set an agenda. When they don't understand the material they receive, they ask for supplemental materials. The broadcast itself is broken into relatively short intervals of perhaps 30 minutes, between which each student group discusses what has been said, asks for support, and frames questions.

Option #1 allows for more text-based learning. Option #2 relies less on Internet communications and more on interactive broadcast technology, but attempts to reduce the amount of quick translation that students are expected to do of new material. Other designs are possible, and I make no attempt to create a typology or develop a process for developing and selecting alternatives. The objective here is to emphasize the importance of critical and creative thinking.

Supporting Learning Among Widely-Separated Learners

Supporting students who work alone in widely-separated communities requires different choices on the mix of technology. Consider the Network For Healthcare Management, a consortium of fourteen universities, whose faculty offers the courses for an M.S. degree in Health Services Administration. The infrastructure for the program is maintained at the University of Colorado at Denver, where the computer server, program manager and six of the faculty reside. Other faculty are located in Michigan, Alabama, Minnesota, Washington, New Hampshire, New York, Arizona, California, Ontario and Missouri. (For further information, go to {www-bus.colorado.edu/execed} Replacement URL: http://www.colorado.edu/execed/, and select Executive Masters of Health Administration.)

Students in this program come from all over the United States and Canada. When I first taught the course on information systems for health services administration, students lived the as far west as Guam, and as far east as St. John's, Newfoundland. Very few students lived within 100 miles of each other. Students spend nine weeks over two years living in hotels in the Denver area. In addition to a one-week orientation, they spend two weeks each semester in residence (in January and July). The remainder of the time they communicate using FirstClass asynchronous collaboration software by SoftArc (www.softarc.com).

The importance of face-to-face contact in distance learning should not be underestimated. Students work in study groups during the semester, and complete their weekly assignments as teams. Mutual adjustment and support is required for effective performance. The benefits of meeting, talking, eating and working with people in a comfortable physical environment are substantial.

The mix of technologies that is used here is dramatically different from what was described earlier. Students cannot gather in a few groups for live television broadcasts. Since they use regular telephone lines and modems, video-conferencing will not provide satisfactory performance. Computer chat is possible, but requires scheduling of communications. All of the students work, and in five time zones. This has led, not surprisingly, to a focus on asynchronous communications.

Current and Future Choices

Could a different mix of technologies be used? As the ability to deliver video and audio content over the Internet improves and the price drops, students might receive more multimedia content (see Jan Ozer's article, "A Medium for Your Message: We Test Six Software Packages That Deliver Audio/Video Presentations Over the Internet," in PC Magazine at www.pcmag.com). Course materials provided now consist entirely of texts and readings, supplemented with an occasional article scanned in and made available for downloading. A significant challenge will be the development of such content in a specialized field like health administration. This is less likely to be a problem in fields where large numbers of students make the development of materials more profitable.

Rather than innovation for the sake of innovation, we need to think of what needs would be met that aren't being met now. The nine weeks that students spend together reduce the need for video-conferencing, if the intent is to develop a more personal rapport among students.

Delivering multimedia content would address an important need. Since my course concerns information systems, text alone is inadequate. Students could benefit from having software demos available to use. While it is easy for me to direct them to vendor sites on the Internet, it would be beneficial if I could serve as their guide to integrate concepts in the course with what they see there. The ability to deliver presentations over the Internet that include text, audio and video concerning the use of software would be a valuable enhancement to the course.

For international distance learning, we also need to monitor the progress being made in language translation software. We might laugh at some of the translations produced, but such software can significantly reduce the time spent with a dictionary by providing side-by-side translations. Digital Equipment Corporation currently offers free access to translation software on the Internet, at babelfish.altavista.digital.com, that can translate e-mail, web pages and text from a word processor. Chat servers with translation capabilities are now on the market, as well. For more on translation software, see Emily Cohen's article, "International Language: Translation Software," in PC Magazine (at www.pcmag.com).

The purpose of this article was to highlight the importance of making choices in the technology selected for distance learning. Thinking about only one technology is a mistake, although a lack of resources may force us to start out that way. We need to select and utilize a mix of technology because we believe that the outcome will be better for a particular group of students. As I have suggested, that mix will be different for international learning, but will also differ depending on who the students are, and what they need to learn. [ C ]

Roger Kropf is a professor of Health Policy and Management in the Wagner School of Public Service.
roger.kropf@nyu.edu

Posted May 18, 1998. Revised April 25, 2004.