Information Science Reference

Table of Contents:

Foreword

Carolyn Ashe, University of Houston-Downtown, USA

Section I: Introducing New Perspectives on Online Learning

Section one introduces the audience to the historical developments of online learning within the educational and business context. With more than thirty years of research on the subject of online learning, this section will further present how advances in information and communication technology as well as new techniques for teaching have given new perspectives for teaching in the online environments. This section is well versed with strategies, models, and tools to help manage and sustain an online learning environment for the adult learner.

Chapter I: The Online Adult Learner: Profiles and Practices

Judith Parker, Teachers College/Columbia University, USA

While the online adult learners are growing in numbers, the diversity in what motivates them and what they expect from an online course has grown as well. This paper explores the current literature as well as qualitative and quantitative data from course surveys and student reflections in online courses taught by the author in an attempt to profile these learners, determine why they are taking online courses and investigate their evolving attitudes toward technology. It includes summaries and student quotes to portray the individual thoughts of online adult learners.

Chapter II: Online Pedagogical Effectiveness in Adult Contexts

A longitudinal study of students in the Training and Development program at Curtin University of Technology has been undertaken in an attempt to develop a framework which describes the dimensions of pedagogical effectiveness in online teaching and learning. The research began in 2004, and data have been collected from the sample group of students in the program from 2004–2007. As a result of Analysis and review of the findings, the Online Pedagogical Effectiveness Framework (OPEF) emerged incrementally. The new framework challenges the traditional importance placed on the centrality of teaching skills and the need for student interaction in online teaching and learning, which according to this study, diminished over time. This has ramifications for the interchangeability of the roles of teacher, learner, and instructional designer peers and colleagues.

Chapter III: A Theoretical Model for Designing Online Education in Support of Lifelong Learning

Lawrence A. Tomei, Robert Morris University, USA

The escalating infusion of online education to promote lifelong learning has triggered a re-examination of teaching and learning not witnessed since perhaps the advent of the printed text book. Text books changed the landscape of individualized learning as professors added reading to their inventory of instructional strategies. Today, distance education, in all its manifestations from programmed instruction to Web-based courses, requires instructors to employ new strategies in course design and delivery in order to engage students and promote learner-centered activities. The rapid growth of distance education (especially for the adult learner) serves to challenge traditional methodologies in which education is designed, delivered, and assessed. This chapter introduces a new model for designing instruction using this state-of-the-art venue; an archetype for effective instructional design for lifelong learning.

Chapter IV: A Brief History of eLearning

Terry T. Kidd, Texas A&M University, USA

The purpose of this chapter is to explore prior research associated with the history of eLearning. While issues related to the eLearning, technology and innovation adoption, the online environment, the role of faculty in online environments, and preparing faculty for online instruction are important, it is prudent to examine the history of this innovation in order to chart the future of such practices.

Chapter V: Online Learning: A Transforming Educational Environment for Adults in Higher Education

The authors describe the distributed learning program (Online@UCF) at the University of Central Florida (UCF) that serves a number of adult learners. They present outcomes from several years of research collected by the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness on adults enrolled in online courses. Paradoxically, most educators in online learning focus on millennial generation students, their learning styles, and preference for Web 2.0 technologies. However, research at UCF confirms that online education resonates with adult students because it responds to their lifestyle needs, provides more active learning environments, and empowers their learning beyond classroom boundaries. This chapter examines the strategic elements required for successful adult online programs and explores components of online student satisfaction. The authors conclude by considering the opportunities and challenges for adults in online distance education.

Chapter VI: The Role of Individual Learner Differences and Success in the Online Learning Environments

“Education over the Internet will be the next big killer application,” says John Chambers, President and CEO of Cisco Systems. He also states that online learning will be much bigger than the last killer application of the Internet  e-mail (Friedman, 1999). The recent surge in online learning has opened up the eyes of many educators to the growing possibilities of online learning and teaching. As these online offerings continue to grow, the educational impact will have far reaching implications for schools, teachers and students. In order to better understand the effectiveness of the online environment as an instructional delivery medium, research needs to be conducted focusing on factors that contribute to the effectiveness of the learning environment. In particular, individual learner differences are an important variable when evaluating online learning success. This chapter will discuss various individual learner differences and how they relate to student success in the online learning environment.

Section II: New Frontiers for Online Teaching and Adult Learning Practice

As information and communication technologies become ubiquitous, new challenges and opportunities present themselves to the adult learner. Now in the 21st century and with decades of research, Section II presents new and innovation solutions to challenges and opportunities to online learning for adult learners. This section is complete with first hand testimonies, strategies, and guides to help the reader understand this new frontier of learning.

Chapter VII: Fear Factors: Hidden Challenges to Online Learning for Adults

The purpose of this chapter is: (1) to examine the interrelationship between andragogy and online learning; (2) to uncover the hidden challenges to successful online learning for non-traditional students; and (3) to uncover hidden challenges in faculty adoption of online instruction. The authors believe that fear is often the biggest factor which can present itself in a variety of ways. A study was conducted to identify those hidden challenges facing students and faculty who choose not to take or teach online courses. This study identifies how institutions can support students and faculty who desire to take or teach online courses. This study also discusses how online learning is aligned with andragogy , which traditionally leverages learners’ experience, independence, and interaction (Gibbons & Wentworth, 2001).

Chapter VIII: Factors Learning to a Quality eLearning Experience

The Internet became available to the general public in the mid 1990’s. At that time, a few institutions starting using the net as a vehicle for providing course credit. Since this early time, the number of institutions offering classes and full degrees online has grown exponentially. At one northeastern institution, the growth has been from 4 courses in 1996 to over 500 courses today. At the same time, most institutions now have updated their classrooms with ever more sophisticated technical capabilities, such as access to the Web for presentations, synchronous videos, and clickers for taking class polls. Others use technology as an add-on to the class room creating hybrid, blended, or e-learning experiences. In the late 90’s classes were primarily text based, using either in house developed web pages, and later using self contained course management shells such as WebCT and Blackboard, which required the users to create content, but the linkages and communication tools were self contained. Some authors have developed taxonomies to look at quality [media richness, student interaction, etc.], but not enough has been done to compare online learning and e-learning to traditional classroom based learning. The contribution of this paper will be to report on the findings of previous studies relating to the assessment of online course delivery and the online component of blended learning classes. The results of the research findings should provide significant contributions to the performance improvement of e-learning.

Chapter IX: Anytime/Anywhere Online Learning: Does It Remove Barriers for Adult Learners?

Terry A. Morris, Harper College, USA

Even with the convenience of anytime/anywhere online learning, adult learners still encounter barriers and challenges. This chapter explores the growth of online education in higher education and the participation of adult learners. The chapter introduces K. Patricia Cross’ research about the situational, dispositional, and institutional barriers faced by adult learners in the 1980s. The relevancy of these barriers to today’s adult distance learners is examined. Characteristics of adult learners are discussed. New barriers for learners introduced by online education are explored, including social interaction barriers, technology barriers, student-support barriers, pedagogy barriers, and accessibility barriers. Suggestions for removing and/or reducing these barriers are provided, including providing technical support services, offering online orientations, pre-assessing student readiness, providing professional development opportunities for faculty which model andragogy and online course methodology, and designing online courses to support learning preferences of adult learners. Recommendations are made for future research.

Chapter X: The Evolution and Influence of Social Presence Theory on Online Learning

Patrick R. Lowenthal, University of Colorado Denver, USA

The theory of social presence is perhaps the most popular construct used to describe and understand how people socially interact in online learning environments. However, despite its intuitive appeal, researchers and practitioners alike often define and conceptualize this popular construct differently. In fact, it is often hard to distinguish between whether someone is talking about social interaction, immediacy, intimacy, emotion, and/or connectedness when they talk about social presence. Therefore, the focus of this chapter is on outlining the evolution of the construct of social presence in an effort to understand better its relationship to online learning.

Chapter XI: Pedagogical Mediator as The Strategic Competence at University Professors Building in Constructionist Online Environment

Flávia Amaral Rezende, Art Institute of Campinas University (UNICAMP), Brazil

The rapid dissemination and integration of the World Wide Web (also know as Internet), and its related technologies, has resulted in major growth of the educational field through the Internet in such areas as e-learning and e-training. In August 2002, the Ministry of Education established the rules for distance education courses at the university level (Portaria nº 2.253) allowing up 20% of the total course hours to be administered through distance education. At the same time, the Comitê de Educação a Distância from the Distance Education Secretary – SEED/MEC published the Distance Education Quality Indicators, which presents pedagogical guidelines that are clearly constructionist, consistent with those adopted by the Brazilian informatics in education program developed during the 1980’s and 90’s.

However an important question remains: how to prepare university professors to be able to function in highly interactive constructionist learning environments? How to develop competencies as planning, designing and implementing such constructionist courses? This research has simultaneously investigated two aspects: developing, implementing and evaluating the characteristics of a constructionist environment and, at the same time, the use of this environment as part of an introductory on-line course to prepare a group of professors from Universidade Cidade de São Paulo (Brazil) to be able to function as mediators in the constructionist online learning environment.

The findings indicate that it is possible to create a constructionist learning environment and to prepare university professors through online courses based upon Inverted Symmetry concepts and upon the in-service course based on the estar-junto-virtual (“virtual being together”) approach, to build what we called IN-VISIBLE REFLECTIVE NETWORK, thus allowing the professors to assume news roles not only in the online environment but in the face-to-face education situation as well. This course is the firs step for continuous long life learning to be a “ciber teacher”.

Chapter XII: The Paradigm Shift for Adult Education: From Educational Slavery to Learning Freedom of Human Brain with Synaptic Learning

Nishikant Sonwalkar, USDLA and Sonwalkar Consulting Group, USA

This chapter starts with the metaphor of educational slavery to indicate conventional mode of teaching practiced in the class room with a teacher-centric approach and proposes a brain-based synaptic learning approach for student-centric that leads to learning freedom. The chapter describes the basic functions connected with the anatomy of human brain and then crystallizes it to three main functions, namely, perception, cognition and interaction. The tree functions are then related to three sides of the pedagogical framework of learning cube. With the learning cube pedagogical framework author proposes an adaptive learning approach that enhances the synaptic activity in the human brain leading to long term retention for adult learners. A proposal is made to create a five-factored cognitive ability chart based on diagnostics of perception, cognition, interaction, memorization and assimilation. The cognitive ability chart is then used to create individualized prescription for enhancement of adult learning using synaptic learning environment. The chapter concludes by providing a road map for achieving learning freedom for human brain with synaptic learning.

Chapter XIII: Empowering the Culture of Quality Research within Ethical Standards in Distance Education

J.O. Osiki, National University of Lesotho, Lesotho

Fundamental in today’s Distance Higher education (DHE) in the African sub-regions, is how to continue to harness the dividends inherent in the multi-dimensionality of empowerment, for inducing a virile tradition of research, through the shared-benefits of academic/intellectual symbiotism. In such atmosphere, the mentor is less egoistic and willing to provide leadership as a motivator for a value-driven research orientation of the committed protégés. Using the cyclical model, while the novelty of early academic irritants are to be acknowledged, learners’ emotionality is identified as raw material for boosting both qualitative and quantitative research skills, within clearly defined workplaces’ standards. The acquisition of relevant skills and its benefits is therefore sinequanon for nurturing and sustaining research culture especially in DHE.

Chapter XIV: Developing Social Skills through an On-line Learning Environment: a Qualitative Study

The rapid pace of social change deriving from technological and financial revolution and globalization, effects greatly people’s lives. Adults nowadays need to stay relevant with their environment, to be proactive and to take important decisions that affect their personal and professional future. Thus, they need to be equipped with advanced social skills such as time management, leadership, communication, teamwork, problem solving, flexibility etc. Such skills can be developed through training programs, designed and delivered upon the Adult Education and Experiential Learning theories and principles. A central aim of this chapter is to highlight the methods through which e-learning can contribute to the development of social skills, implementing at the same time the above mentioned principles, in the context of a large organization.

Chapter XV: Mixed Research and Online Learning: Strategies for Improvement

As online education continues to grow, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the nuances of online learning. However, to date, research on online learning has largely been characterized as being low quality. To increase the quality and promote rigor in online education research, researchers are beginning to argue for the importance of using mixed research. Yet, to date, very little mixed research has been conducted in the area of online learning. Further, the little “mixed” research that has been conducted suffers from a host of problems. Researchers need to be aware of the complexities of conducting mixed research and some of the issues that can be overlooked. This chapter focuses on some important steps and key considerations that researchers of online learning must make when conducting mixed research, in hopes to increase the rigor and quality of online learning research studies.

Chapter XVI: Digital Games for Online Adult Education: Trends and Issues

Muhammet Demirbilek, Suleyman Demirel University, Turkey

Digital games are a strong motivating and engaging factor in adult learning. When students are engaged in the learning process, they learn and retain more. Engagement can come though emotion, relaxation, and especially through fun. This chapter provides guidance to online adult educators searching for ways to use the digital games more effectively in their practice and give an overview of pedagogical approaches to digital games in online training and learning. In addition, benefits and pitfalls associated with using digital games in online adult education and general attributes of digital games were provided. The purpose of this chapter was to highlight the potential of digital games in online Adult education. Therefore, it will be a useful reference for teachers with an interest in the use of digital game based learning for online Adult teaching and training. It is expected that this chapter helps educators make the most effective use of the electronic games available today, offering expert guidance on digital games to serve the needs of all Adult learners.

Section III: Case Studies of Online Learning

Chapter XVII: Applying Distance Learning and Structural/Pedagogical Methods to an Adult Learner Program: The Case of Global Business Management

Adult learner students are becoming a key segment of the undergraduate college market; however adults have a different set of needs, orientations, and approaches to learning. This paper examines the background and characteristics of adult learners, together with various approaches to meeting the needs of these non-traditional students (distance learning, intensive and block scheduling, modular learning, etc.). The application of these methods and techniques are illustrated in the structure and implementation of a real-life adult learner program for business undergraduates.

Chapter XVIII: A Costume Odyssey a.k.a. Teaching Costume History in a 21st Century Classroom

This chapter will explain how we have integrated the Course Management System-WebCT into the teaching of Costume History at the University of Houston’s School of Theatre and Dance. It will focus on two topics, 1) delivering the course in hybrid mode to enhance student learning experiences, and 2) conducting course evaluation to collect student feedback on the course design and delivery for future improvement.

Chapter XIX: Project Management for Project-based Learning: A Case Study of Course Projects with Small Virtual Instructional Design Teams

Shahron Williams van Rooij, George Mason University, USA

This chapter reports the results of a case study in which the final project outcomes of small virtual instructional design teams using Project Management in an online graduate-level course are compared with teams using a less-structured approach. Based on the findings, the author offers the following recommendations for structuring project-based learning in small virtual teams: (a) assess through pre- or in-course questioning individual motivators of success and performance in virtual teams, (b) provide teams with templates with which to document roles, responsibilities, milestones and key deliverables, and (c) offer time and schedule management tips to reinforce/extend entry skills in team project management and participation. This case study can serve as a resource to eLearning practitioners seeking research-based best practices for both managing and participating in project teams that may have limited human and material resources and that may be distributed over a number of geographic locations and time zones.

Chapter XX: Perspectives of Online Doctoral Students in Educational Leadership

Vicky Gilpin, Richland Community College and Cerro Gordo High School, USA

This study examines the perspectives of adult learners in an online Educational Leadership doctoral program. A qualitative survey research instrument was used to elucidate and explore phenomenological themes connected to student attitudes and perspectives regarding the experience of adult online education, the perceived challenges of an online doctoral program, the perceived benefits of an online doctoral program, student or teacher-connected strategies for success within online graduate education, the on-ground residencies in connection with the asynchronous aspects of the program, the perception of an online doctoral degree within their fields, and recommendations for online doctoral programs in the future. The findings suggest that strategies to increase student success in doctoral online programs should include a recognition of differentiated instruction toward multiple intelligences, increased communication of the dissertation or program timeline, an examination of how online students meet the contact hour requirements through teams, residencies, and individual time management, and an exploration of the social aspect of online learning.

Chapter XXI: Impact of E-Learning on Adult Education: A Changing Postmodern Approach

In the present consumer educational market, educational institutions are rapidly incorporating more online opportunities. The various issues that learners and instructors cope with are addressed from the literature and our adult students. The key issue is creating a quality learning experience for adult students. Not only does the instructor need to incorporate what we already know about adult learning, but they must also approach the course development with a constructivist mindset. The major force in creating a quality learning experience is the discussion generated. Instructors must assist students in creating their own knowledge and develop the ability to discuss in a virtual environment.

Chapter XXII: Nontraditional Students and Information Technology: The Siren Call of the Virtual Classroom and its Impact on Progressive Educational Ideals

The adult college student, caught between the competing demands of work and home, has recently become a valuable commodity in today’s fast-changing American universities. The authors argue that the response of the university to the personal circumstances and credentialing needs of adult learners, accentuated by the forces of globalization and the availability of new information technologies, particularly the Internet, has been to focus upon the efficient delivery of information deemed important in our post-industrial society. This response, particularly well exemplified by the virtual classroom, is not conducive to the fluid and open-ended inquiry associated with progressive education. In the end, the authors speculate, adult students may taste the true progressive and constructivist approaches to learning better outside the confines of formal higher education.