Online Education by Morten Flate Paulsen

Online Education An International Analysis of Web-based Education and Strategic Recommendations for Decision Makers

Morten Flate Paulsen http://home.nettskolen.nki.no/~morten/ NKI Distance Education www.nki.no

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About the Author Morten Flate Paulsen http://home.nettskolen.nki.no/~morten/ Doctor of Education, Pennsylvania State University Master of Science in Engineering, Norwegian Institute of Technology Director of Development, The NKI Internet College Adjunct Professor, Centre for Distance Education, Athabasca University Morten Flate Paulsen has worked with online education since 1986. He designed the EKKO computer conferencing system for distance education and established the NKI Internet College in 1987. This college was probably the first European online college, and few (if any) online colleges in the world has been longer in continuos operation. He was the founder of The Distance Education Online Symposium (DEOS), when he worked with the American Center for the Study of Distance Education at The Pennsylvania State University. He was the founding editor of DEOSNEWS and the first moderator of DEOS-L. DEOS is not only the oldest on-line source of information, ideas, and discussions on the subject of distance education but is consistently referred to as one of the most highly regarded, indeed probably the most highly regarded of such sources. Numbers alone do not tell the whole story, and it is impossible to say, from an analysis of "hits" just how many people read the various items on DEOS and DEOS-L, but there are in excess of 4600 subscribers in over 80 different countries. Paulsen has headed the development of the Specialization Program in International Online Education (www.nettskolen.com/spice). The program comprises five three-credit courses about online education delivered internationally via the Internet. He has taken part in the following EU-funded projects: • Mediaweb: Multimedia Courseware On the World Wide Web Working • CISAER: Courses on the Internet: Survey, Analysis, Evaluation, Recommendation • MMWWWK: Multimedia WWW Kernel For Distance Learning Paulsen's dissertation is on "Pedagogical Techniques for Computer-mediated Communication". This research included a survey of 150 online teachers in 30 countries.

Online Education An International Analysis of Web-based Education and Strategic Recommendations for Decision Makers ďŁŠ 2000 Morten Flate Paulsen http://home.nettskolen.nki.no/~morten/

Executive Abstract This report presents an international analysis of courses on the Internet, and it provides strategic recommendations about issues of importance to online education. The results and discussions are based on literature reviews, catalogue entries submitted by 130 institutions in 26 countries, and 72 interviews with key persons at these institutions. The catalogue data were collected from March 98 to February 99 and the interviews were conducted in the spring of 1999. The research has been conducted within the CISAER project which is supported by the European Leonardo da Vinci program. The project aims to provide a comprehensive, state-ofthe-art survey of course provision on the web with professional analysis, balanced evaluation and far-reaching recommendations which will provide the field of vocational education and training in the EU with a tool for dealing with this new training dimension. Global Issues The CISAER catalogue includes entries from institutions in all continents. In addition to four transnational institutions, the catalogue includes entries from institutions in 26 countries. It is likely that there is an overrepresentation of institution from countries that have English as an official language since the primary research language was English. Still, it would be quite easy to include many more entries from North America, since the listing from this area is intentionally partial. Among the 130 catalogue entries, 45.4% were from the English language countries: USA, UK, Australia, Canada, and Ireland. There is a steady growth of institutions that offer online courses to students in other countries, and the analysis presents many examples of international collaboration and thinking. However, most of the global initiatives seem to be experiments and ambitions rather than main priorities. Most institutions or consortia have not identified international markets as an initial priority. Competitiveness The survey indicates that institutions in Europe (60.8%), North America (21.5%), and Australia with New Zealand (7.7%) overwhelmingly outnumbers institutions in South America (3.1%), Asia (3.1%), and Africa (0.8%). Even though the researchers have a better knowledge of Europe, North America, and Australia than they have of the rest of the world, the survey testifies that these continents overwhelmingly dominate web-based education. North America dominates the world of online education. Some of the reasons for this dominance are the well developed Internet infrastructure, the economic strength of the

educational providers, the international dominance of the English language, the well developed university systems, and the famous brand-name universities. The linguistic diversity in Europe is problematic for global competitiveness. Hence, UK providers seem to have a more international approach than providers in other European countries. Different national systems of degrees, certificates, and grades also make it more difficult to compete globally. A European harmonization of these systems will increase the competitiveness. Further, unlike North America, higher education in Europe is largely state funded, and this could resist change and become a barrier to competitiveness. The most obvious example is that national regulations in countries such as Sweden and Germany prevent institutions from charging tuition fees. The Australian institutions are among the largest and most advanced in this analysis. Since the courses also are provided in English, Australian institutions should be very competitive in the emerging global market. Institutional Issues A Canadian competitive analysis of online post-secondary education reports that the biggest surprise was the lack of institutional strategy for online learning initiatives. A large number of the CISAER institutions offer quite few web-courses. As many as 23.1% of the institutions report to have only one web-course, and 46.2% of them report to offer less than 5 courses. Only four institutions reported to have 100 courses or more. From this, one can infer that much of the activities are experimental and not pivotal for the institutions. The survey also showed that 29.3% of the institutions report that they have 100 or fewer students. Only four institutions reported to have more than 5000 students. The relatively low enrolment numbers also indicate that web-based instruction is not pivotal to these institutions. One may conclude that there is a dominance of web-courses in the fields of computer and information sciences and by courses in education. Except from these two fields, web-courses cover a very broad range of subjects. The number of subject areas that was offered varied considerably between the institutions. Nearly half of the institutions offer courses in only one category and only five offered courses in five or more categories. None of the surveyed institutions seem to provide enough online courses and support services that this analysis would characterize them as virtual or online universities. The survey shows that 60.0% of the 130 institutions belong to the university and college sector, 10.0% to the traditional open university and distance education sector, and 9.2% were classified as companies or corporations. Administrative Issues An administrative system should be able to handle students, teachers, courses, and course material. An online college may have to handle thousands of students, hundreds of teachers, and a large number of courses with password restricted web-pages, discussion forums, distribution lists, class rosters, and student presentations. It may also have to provide administrative systems for the dispatch of textbooks, handling of tuition and examination fees, and organization of local examinations. These services constitute a major challenge for many traditional institutions.

Institutions that plan to offer large scale and professional online education need an administrative system which is integrated with the web. To accomplish this, institutions may follow several strategies. The simplest strategy is probably to collaborate with an institution that already has a functional administrative system. Another solution, which requires more technical competence, is to develop an in-house system based on common Internet services. The third option is to purchase a standard system for online education. These standard systems are continuously being improved, but they may still need much local adaptation. They may only meet some of the administrative needs, and they could place some pedagogical limitations on the courses. A discouraging, but important observation is that a number of institutions do not use the web for administrative purposes. Outsourcing is an option that does not seem to be much used, only one instance was identified. Many of the institutions have developed in-house administrative solutions in combinations with standard Internet software. The standard administrative systems that were mentioned in the interviews were FirstClass, WebCT, and Lotus Notes. Advertising and Financial Issues It is implicit in many of the interviews that advertising of programs and courses is an important function of the web-services. The tuition fees for web-courses seem to vary considerably among institutions and courses. Some courses are free and open to everyone, and others seem to have full or partial external funding. One may ask how many of these initiatives that will continue when the external funding ceases. The institutions that operate with tuition fees seem to have fees that are the same or not very different from fees in traditional courses. The analysis has revealed few, if any, examples of institutions with substantial income from student fees. Likewise, there seem to be few institutions that can claim that provision of web-based courses has been an economic success, if they disregard external research and development grants. Pedagogical Issues The tutors seem to be both part-time teachers that are engaged just for the online courses and full-time teachers that also teach some online courses. It is also interesting to observe that distributed experts and students take part in the tutoring. An analysis of the interviews indicates that the tutors at least conduct the following functions which are extracted from the statements below: • • • •

Organizational functions: structure discussions, pacing, put forward initiatives Social functions: monitor groups Intellectual functions: answer questions, guiding students on the Internet Assessment functions: give feedback to assignments, correct submissions

Human tutoring seems to be much more common than machine tutoring, but some institutions include machine tutoring in addition to human tutoring. Most institutions seem to combine individual tutoring with group tutoring. The focus between the two could however vary. Online teaching is in many courses supplemented with face-to-face meetings, video- or audioconferences, or telephone contact.

Some institutions have course development teams, others use the tutor as the sole designer of a course. The different models probably have implications for both quality control and development time. Accreditation The interview analysis implies that accreditation of online courses and programs is very similar to the institutions' traditional accreditation schemes. Degrees, diplomas, certificates, and statements of completions are all widely used. The accreditation seem to be the same independent on whether the course or program is offered online or not. Many institutions basically state that the accreditation is the same as for campus courses. Accreditation could be an important competitive advantage and several strategies could be followed to achieve the necessary accreditation. Collaboration with institutions in other countries could result in bilateral accreditation. Assessment While summative assessment of online courses seem to be very traditional and often has a face-to-face component, formative assessment is more experimental and based on online activities. Most of the institutions apply several assessments methods in a course or program. Tutor assessment is the most common form of assessment found in the interviews. The interviews reveal many examples of self-assessment, but they imply that computer assessment is relatively scarce. However there are several examples of online quizzes, multiple choice tests, and some examples of interactive exercises. The interview analysis imply that peer assessment is relatively scarce. The interviews indicate that some courses have no assessment simply because they are self-study courses with no tutors. Enrollment and Progress Flexibility Both enrollment and progress can be more or less flexible. However, the two main models found in the interviews are group enrollment and progress and individual enrollment and progress. These models represent two different strategies that have important consequences for marketing strategies, administrative systems, and pedagogical approaches. The interviews testify that group based enrollment and progression is far more used than individual enrollment and progression. The analysis identified 46 institutions that used the group model and 12 that followed the individual model. In addition, 11 institutions offered both models. The preponderance of the group model could come from conventional thinking that sustain the semester and term system in traditional educational systems. Another possible reason is that the institutions have a well-considered perception that team work and collaborative learning is hard to achieve with individual enrollment and progress. One can however argue that many students will prefer individual flexibility and that many institutions lack systems, structures, and competence on individual enrollment and progression. If so, one may hypothesize that open universities and distance teaching institutions should be more disposed of individual flexibility than traditional universities and colleges. However, the analysis has not found evidence to support this hypothesis.

Future Development The interest in online education is high, and it seems to proliferate rapidly and globally. A Canadian analysis shows that the primary expansions strategies are more and diverse programs, international students, and new and nice markets such as corporate training. The CISAER interviewees foresaw a future with more web-courses, additional online services, better quality of the courses, enhanced focus on teacher training, further collaborations with other institutions, and additional organizational consequences. Barriers There are a number of barriers that must be overcome before online education can become a large scale success. Among them are financial barriers, resistance to change, bandwidth limitations, access limitations, insufficient search facilities, copyright issues, and barriers to online assessment. The financial barriers are important. The analysis showed that few institutions had substantial income from student fees. At the same time, the cost of development and maintenance could be high. In addition, national regulations in some countries denies institutions the opportunity to charge tuition fees. The interviews testify that there are a number of barriers to effective use of online assessment. Among them are public and institutional regulations, traditions for physical attendance, technical limitations, student identification, and detection of plagiarized digital material. Strategic Recommendations In conclusion, the report provides eight recommendations for politicians, educational administrators, and online educators: 1. Promote national and international harmonization of degrees, certificates, credits, and grades to facilitate online mobility of students 2. Oppose national regulations that inhibits institutions from charging tuition fees 3. Focus on cost effective online education 4. Develop better systems for administration of online education 5. Support initiatives for training of online teachers, administrators, and instructional designers 6. Oppose regulations and attitudes that inhibits online assessment 7. Support further research on online pedagogy and didactics 8. Develop and implement strategies to reduce the workload of online teachers

Table of Contents LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................................................. 11 LIST OF CASE STUDIES ................................................................................................................................ 11 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................... 12 THE CISAER PROJECT.................................................................................................................................... 12 ADDITIONAL ONLINE CATALOGUES ................................................................................................................. 13 RECOMMENDED BOOKS................................................................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER 2. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY ................................................................... 14 DATA COLLECTION .......................................................................................................................................... 14 Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe..................................................................................................... 14 North America and UK .............................................................................................................................. 16 Asia, Australia, and Africa......................................................................................................................... 16 South America and Southern Europe......................................................................................................... 17 INSTRUMENTATION .......................................................................................................................................... 18 LIMITATIONS.................................................................................................................................................... 20 CHAPTER 3. GLOBAL ISSUES IN ONLINE EDUCATION...................................................................... 22 GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF INSTITUTIONS ................................................................................................. 22 AFRICA ............................................................................................................................................................ 24 ASIA ................................................................................................................................................................ 25 AUSTRALIA AND OCEANIA ............................................................................................................................... 28 EUROPE ........................................................................................................................................................... 31 NORTH AMERICA............................................................................................................................................. 36 LATIN AMERICA .............................................................................................................................................. 40 GLOBALIZATION .............................................................................................................................................. 43 COMPETITIVENESS ........................................................................................................................................... 49 CHAPTER 4. INSTITUTIONAL ISSUES IN ONLINE EDUCATION ....................................................... 51 NUMBER OF ONLINE COURSES PER INSTITUTION............................................................................................. 51 NUMBER OF ONLINE STUDENTS PER INSTITUTION ........................................................................................... 53 SUBJECT AREAS .............................................................................................................................................. 55 Institutions that Offer a Broad Range of Subjects ..................................................................................... 57 CATEGORIES OF INSTITUTIONS THAT OFFER ONLINE COURSES ........................................................................ 60 Virtual and Online Universities ................................................................................................................. 61 Universities ................................................................................................................................................ 62 University Departments or Centers............................................................................................................ 64 Colleges ..................................................................................................................................................... 66 Open and Distance Teaching Universities................................................................................................. 68 Distance Education Institutions ................................................................................................................. 70 Consortia ................................................................................................................................................... 74 Companies or Corporations....................................................................................................................... 76 Secondary Education Institutions .............................................................................................................. 78 Organizations and Associations................................................................................................................. 81 Undefined Category of Institutions ............................................................................................................ 82 CHAPTER 5. ADMINISTRATIVE ISSUES IN ONLINE EDUCATION ................................................... 84 NO WEB-BASED ADMINISTRATION .................................................................................................................. 84 COLLABORATION OR OUTSOURCING ................................................................................................................ 85 IN-HOUSE DEVELOPMENT ................................................................................................................................ 85 STANDARD ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEMS ........................................................................................................... 87 CHAPTER 6. ADVERTISING AND FINANCIAL ISSUES ......................................................................... 91 ADVERTISING .................................................................................................................................................. 91 EXTERNAL FUNDING........................................................................................................................................ 92

TUITION FEES .................................................................................................................................................. 92 Open and Free Courses ............................................................................................................................. 93 Both Free Courses and Tuition Courses.................................................................................................... 94 Same Price as Traditional Courses............................................................................................................ 94 Variable Prices and Discounts .................................................................................................................. 95 Tuition Fees per Credit .............................................................................................................................. 95 Tuition Fees per Course............................................................................................................................. 96 Tuition Fees per Semester.......................................................................................................................... 96 Tuition Fees per Degree or Certificate ...................................................................................................... 96 OTHER FINANCIAL ISSUES ............................................................................................................................... 97 CHAPTER 7. PEDAGOGICAL ISSUES IN ONLINE EDUCATION ......................................................... 98 COURSE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT .............................................................................................................. 98 ONLINE TUTORING .......................................................................................................................................... 98 Who Are the Tutors? .................................................................................................................................. 98 What Do the Tutors Do? ............................................................................................................................ 99 Human Tutoring vs. Machine Tutoring.................................................................................................... 100 Individual and Group Tutoring................................................................................................................ 101 Online and Offline Tutoring..................................................................................................................... 102 Asyncronous Tutoring.............................................................................................................................. 103 ACCREDITATION OF ONLINE COURSES........................................................................................................... 104 ASSESSMENT ................................................................................................................................................. 105 Summative Assessment............................................................................................................................. 106 Formative Assessment.............................................................................................................................. 106 Assessment Methods................................................................................................................................. 107 Combinations of Assessment Methods ..................................................................................................... 108 Tutor Assessment ..................................................................................................................................... 108 Self-assessment ........................................................................................................................................ 110 Computer Assessment .............................................................................................................................. 110 Peer Assessment....................................................................................................................................... 111 No Assessment.......................................................................................................................................... 111 ENROLLMENT AND PROGRESS FLEXIBILITY ................................................................................................... 111 Group Enrollment and Progress.............................................................................................................. 112 One Institution, Two Models.................................................................................................................... 114 Individual Enrollment and Progress........................................................................................................ 114 CHAPTER 8. THE FUTURE OF ONLINE EDUCATION......................................................................... 116 MORE WEB-COURSES .................................................................................................................................... 117 ADDITIONAL SERVICES .................................................................................................................................. 117 BETTER QUALITY .......................................................................................................................................... 118 TRAINING OF TEACHERS ................................................................................................................................ 118 COLLABORATION ........................................................................................................................................... 119 POLICY AND ORGANIZATION.......................................................................................................................... 119 MISCELLANEOUS ........................................................................................................................................... 120 CHAPTER 9. BARRIERS TO SUCCESSFUL ONLINE EDUCATION ................................................... 122 FINANCIAL BARRIERS .................................................................................................................................... 122 RESISTANCE TO CHANGE ............................................................................................................................... 122 BANDWIDTH LIMITATIONS ............................................................................................................................. 123 ACCESS LIMITATIONS .................................................................................................................................... 123 INSUFFICIENT SEARCH FACILITIES AND COPYRIGHT ISSUES ........................................................................... 124 BARRIERS TO ONLINE ASSESSMENT .............................................................................................................. 124 CHAPTER 10. STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS TO ONLINE EDUCATORS AND POLICY MAKERS ......................................................................................................................................................... 126 PROMOTE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL HARMONIZATION OF DEGREES, CERTIFICATES, CREDITS, AND GRADES TO FACILITATE ONLINE MOBILITY OF STUDENTS ............................................................................................. 126 OPPOSE NATIONAL REGULATIONS THAT INHIBITS INSTITUTIONS FROM CHARGING TUITION FEES .................... 126 FOCUS ON COST EFFECTIVE ONLINE EDUCATION ............................................................................................ 126

DEVELOP BETTER SYSTEMS FOR ADMINISTRATION OF ONLINE EDUCATION .................................................... 127 SUPPORT INITIATIVES FOR TRAINING OF ONLINE TEACHERS, ADMINISTRATORS, AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNERS ...................................................................................................................................................................... 127 OPPOSE REGULATIONS AND ATTITUDES THAT INHIBITS ONLINE ASSESSMENT................................................. 127 SUPPORT FURTHER RESEARCH ON ONLINE PEDAGOGY AND DIDACTICS .......................................................... 128 DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT STRATEGIES TO REDUCE TEACHER WORKLOAD.................................................... 128 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................ 131 APPENDIX 1. LIST OF INSTITUTIONS AND WEB-ADDRESSES ........................................................ 133

List of Tables Table 1. Distribution of interviews requested and answers received ....................................... 15 Table 2. Distribution of institutions per country ...................................................................... 22 Table 3. Distribution of institutions per continent.................................................................... 23 Table 4. Comparison of the Boshier and the CISAER distributions per region....................... 23 Table 5. Distribution of institutions per number of courses ..................................................... 51 Table 6. Distribution of institutions per number of students .................................................... 53 Table 7. Distribution of institutions per subject area................................................................ 56 Table 8. Examples that show the broad range of courses offered online ................................. 57 Table 9. Distribution of institutions per category..................................................................... 61 Table 10. Assessment matrix.................................................................................................. 108

List of Case Studies Case Study 1: Africa. The African Virtual University.............................................................. 24 Case Study 2: Asia. The Indira Gandhi National Open University .......................................... 27 Case Study 3: Australia. Edith Cowan University.................................................................... 29 Case Study 4: Europe. The Open University of the Netherlands.............................................. 33 Case Study 5: North America. Central Michigan University ................................................... 39 Case Study 6: South America. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina.................................. 41 Case Study 7: Globalization. University of British Columbia.................................................. 46 Case Study 8: Globalization. The Virtual University of Monterrey......................................... 48 Case Study 9: Institution with many courses. The New York Institute of Technology............ 52 Case Study 10: Institution with many students. The University of South Australia ................ 54 Case Study 11: Institution with a broad range of subjects. The Macquarie University............ 59 Case Study 12: University. The University of Exeter............................................................... 63 Case Study 13. University Departments or Centers. Birkbeck College.................................... 65 Case Study 14: College. Bellevue Community College ........................................................... 67 Case Study 15: Open university. The Open University of Hong Kong .................................... 69 Case Study 16: Distance education institution. NKI Department of Distance Education ........ 71 Case Study 17: Consortium. NITOL ........................................................................................ 74 Case Study 18: Company. The MBA International Institute .................................................... 77 Case Study 19: Secondary education. The Swedish National Institute of Distance Education 79 Case Study 20: Organization. The Pacific University College of Optometry .......................... 82 Case Study 21: Institution with substantial expansion. NKS Distance Education ................. 116

Chapter 1. Introduction The foundation for this report is the authors participation in the CISAER project, but the discussions also draw heavily on the authors doctoral thesis: Teaching Techniques for Computer-mediated Communication (Paulsen 1998) and from his work as the Director of Development at The NKI Internet College (www.nettskolen.com). Further inspiration and insight come from the development of the Specialization Program in International Online Education (www.nettskolen.com/spice), a project which is headed by the author. The CISAER Project This report is based on an analysis of the 130 entries presented in the CISAER catalogue of web courses and the 72 interviews that were conducted with key persons at these institutions. The institutions are listed in the appendix and the bracket references used throughout this report refer to the catalogue entries [number] and the respective interviews <number> as they are listed in the appendix. The 140 pages of interviews are not public, but the CISAER catalogue can be found via http://www.nettskolen.com/alle/in_english/cisaer. CISAER (Courses on the Internet: Survey, Analysis, Evaluation, Recommendation) is a project supported by the European Leonardo da Vinci program. The project aims to provide a comprehensive, state-of-the-art survey of course provision on the web with professional analysis, balanced evaluation and far-reaching recommendations which will provide the field of vocational education and training in the EU with a tool for dealing with this new training dimension. The CISAER project partners are: • • • •

Ana Dias, Tecminho, Portugal Desmond Keegan, Distance Education International, Ireland Robin Mason, The Open University, UK Morten Flate Paulsen and Torstein Rekkedal, NKI, Norway

The CISAER catalogue aims to provide a comprehensive annotated web-catalogue with links to institutions that provide Internet courses with some use of the web. The courses must also comply with the following criteria: 1. At least one of the following should be web-based: • student interaction with tutor or fellow students • access or submission of assignments • access to course resources • activities/simulations/experiences 2. The courses must not be private in-company training, nor offered only to full-time campusbased students. In June 1998, the project team decided to carry out approximately 20 interviews each, which would compile about 80 interviews with representatives from institutions in the catalogue.

Additional Online Catalogues There are other catalogues of course providers that could be the focus of similar analysis. Among them are: • • • • • • • • •

The World Lecture Hall: (http://www.utexas.edu/world/lecture/) TeleCampus online course directory: (http://database.telecampus.com) TeleCampus, Listing of classes (http://telecampus.edu/) Beta Online Course Database: (http://www.pbnet.com/external/disted.nsf/) Arragob, Database of programs (http://www.arragon.com) Globewide Network Academy, Listing of online courses (http://www.gnacademy.org/) New Promise Interactive Index of Online Courses and Degrees (http://www.caso.com/index.htm) Peterson's Distance Learning Database Site (http://www.petersons.com/dlearn/) Directory of Online Colleges, Internet Universities and Training Institutes (http://www.geteducated.com/dlsites.htm)

Recommended Books Some classic books were written about online education before the web was introduced. An early, significant book was Mindweave edited by Mason and Kaye (1989). Later important contributions were Online education edited by Harasim (1990), Empowering networks edited by Waggoner (1992), Computer-mediated Communication and the Online Classroom edited by Berge and Collins (1995), and Learning Networks written by Harasim, Hiltz, Teles, and Turoff (1995). These books cover a broad range of issues related to online education, none includes in-depth studies of teaching techniques for CMC. More recent books that could be recommended are: • • • • • • • •

Web-Based Instruction (Khan 1997) Building a Web-Based Education System (McCormack and Jones 1998) Web-Based Training Cookbook. Everything you need to know for online training (Hall 1997) Web-Teaching, A Guide to Designing Interactive Teaching for the World Wide Web (Brooks 1997) Web-Based Training: Using Technology to Design Adult Learning Experiences (Driscoll and Alexander 1998) Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom (Palloff and Pratt 1999) Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to Building a Highly Skilled Workforce (Schank 1997) Creating the Virtual Classroom: Distance Learning with the Internet (Porter 1997)

Chapter 2. Research Design and Methodology This chapter describes how the data in the CISAER catalogue and the CISAER interviews were collected. Further, the instruments used for data collection are discussed along with the limitations of the research. Data Collection The catalogue data were collected from March 98 to February 99 and the interviews were conducted in the spring of 1999. The project partners were given responsibilities of collecting information from the regions of the world according to the following list: • • • •

Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe, Torstein Rekkedal and Morten Flate Paulsen North America and UK, Robin Mason Asia, Australia, and Africa, Desmond Keegan South America and Southern Europe, Ana Dias

These efforts to collect data resulted in 130 catalogue entries. Later, some more entries were received and presented in a separate file. These additions to the CISAER catalogue have not been subjected to an analysis here, but they are available via http://www.nettskolen.com/alle/in_english/cisaer. The partners were able to conduct 72 interviews via e-mail, telephone, and face-to-face meetings. In the following sections, the methologies used in each of the regions are presented. Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe Torstein Rekkedal and Morten Flate Paulsen have procured information to the catalogue via email to institutions and distribution lists and via presentations at conferences. E-mail requests were posted to the following institutions: • EDEN, The European Distance Education Network • SOFF, The Norwegian Executive Board for Distance Education at University and College Level • CTU, The Danish National Centre for Technology Supported Learning • KK-Stiftelsen, The Swedish Foundation for Knowledge and Competence Development E-mail requests were posted to the following distribution lists: • Andrea, A Network for Distance Education Reporting from European Activities • DEOS, The Distance Education Online Symposium • IFIP's-Working Group on informatics and ICT in secondary education Requests for registration were also procured in presentations at the following international conferences:

• RIBIE'98, a conference hosted in Brasilia by the Iberian American Network of Educational Computing and Telecommunications • Towards the Global Virtual University Alliance, a workshop in Barcelona organized by the International Council for Open and Distance Education • TeleTeaching98, a conference in Vienna organized by the International Federation for Information Processing In addition, a research assistant was engaged in searching the web for potential providers of courses on the web. More than one hundred sites were identified and individual requests were e-mailed to these sites. The Interviews The project agreed interview form was presented as a word document with an introduction, and explanation and sent by e-mail to the contact persons at 24 selected institutions: Table 1. Distribution of interviews requested and answers received Country N distributed Denmark 1 Finland 2 Germany 6 Iceland 1 Netherlands 3 Norway 8 Sweden 3 Total 24

N received 1 1 4 1 1 7 2 17

The accompanying letter said that the interviewer would phone the interviewee to carry out a telephone interview. The interviewees could also answer the interview by e-mail if so preferred. About half the interviewees preferred to answer the interview by e-mail, while the other half was interviewed on the phone. The phone interviews were taped and transcribed by the interviewer. To secure correct understanding both by the interviewees (of the questions) and the interviewer (of the message), the following procedure was applied: The interview form included a description of the CISAER project and the information we were searching for The form also included some constructed example answers After the interview on the phone had been drafted, the transcript was sent to the interviewee for confirmation, correction, and possible additions and clarifications Responses received by e-mail were, if found necessary, supplied with suggestions for changes and additions, which were confirmed by the interviewee either on the telephone or on e-mail Most of the interviewees, who responded by e-mail were also contacted by phone, in a couple of cases the final transcript was a result of a combination of e-mail and phone interviews When the interviewee had accepted the transcript of “final version” the interviews were presented on a passworded web-site available for the interviewees only. Here they could read their own answers, compare with others, and if necessary suggest changes to be made. 15

North America and UK Robin Mason was responsible for procuring catalogue entries from North America and UK. The survey of institutions was carried out using the following methodologies: awareness raising on listservs a self-completion form on the web site surveying relevant literature (including journals, reports, conference proceedings and newsletters) searches on the web a visit to North America and attendance at a number of web-related conferences. The interviews were drawn partially from the UK (11 interviews) and partially from North American (9 interviews) entries in the catalogue. They represent a range of different webbased delivery strategies: some make extensive use of the web, others make only partial use; some are part of a major program of web delivery, others are one-off courses. The interviews were made via face-to-face meetings and via e-mail. Asia, Australia, and Africa Desmond Keegan was responsible for procuring information from these continents, and the first round of questionnaires was sent by e-mail to a group of known experts in the following countries: Australia China Egypt Fiji India Indonesia Japan

Jordan Korea Malaysia New Zealand Philippines Saudi Arabia

Singapore South Africa Sri Lanka Swaziland Taiwan Thailand

Over 350 experts were contacted directly by e-mail. If no reply was given after 6 weeks, these experts were mailed again. A second part of the research was to contact a selection of experts according to geographic expertise. This was done by e-mail, post and fax. The following countries were targeted:

Afghanistan Bangladesh Bhutan Cook Islands DPR Korea Fiji India Indonesia Iran Japan Kazakstan Kiribati Kyrgyzstan Lao Malaysia Maldives Marshall Islands Mongolia Myanmar

Nepal Nius Pakistan Papua New Guinea Philippines Republic Of Korea Russian federation Samoa Solomon Islands Sri Lanka Tajikistan Thailand Tonga Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vietnam

Ivory coast Ethiopia Central African Republic and Chad Burundi Senegal United Republic of Tanzania Zimbabwe Zaire Nigeria Mozambique Kenya Burkina Faso Benin Namibia

The catalogue work for Asia, Australia, and Africa was followed up with 18 interviews. South America and Southern Europe Ana Dias was responsible for procuring entries from South America and Southern Europe. The methodological approach was based on pro-active and continuous evolving procedures. The methodological procedures were characterized by different dimensions of research, used in an interactive mode, and composed of the following interactive procedures: Search on existing compendiums of web-based courses International search engines Country level search engines Newsgroups and Mailing lists Ordinary mail Personal contacts and partner contacts. The searched compendiums of web-based courses included Boshier, McGreal, Corrigan, and Hobsons. The information provided in these catalogues was extensive but not of great use to find information from South America and Southern Europe. The catalogues address mainly North American and Canadian institutions. By using international search engines, like Altavista, Yahoo, Infoseek and others, we searched for institutions and organizations that fit our aims. The search was exhaustively made by country, by type of institution (university, college, foundation, association, enterprise), by department, etc. The key words used for the search were: distance learning, distance education, online training, online education, online learning, open and distance learning, and flexible learning. When an online learning provision was found, the institution was contacted in order to confirm and access the data found. By using this method, we found some 17

institutions that fit our aim. The main problem that arose with this strategy was the difficulty to confirm the data. In fact we needed the institutions to give feedback on the data. In most of the cases the information available on the Internet did not have a contact person, no phone or fax number, nor address of the institution, only a server e-mail address. We used this address to try and contact the right person to speak with, but we faced several difficulties. Most of the time, no one would answer and, in other cases, responses where too slow. It was a very time consuming process so we took on this strategy at a slower pace. Country level search engines could provide more accurate information. In fact, by using the national search engines and the country languages we found the results to be more valuable than by using international search engines. For instance in Brazil, we used Portuguese as a search language and the main search was done with the Brazilian search engines (CADĂ&#x160;, ACHEI, SURF). These kind of search engines provided us with more detailed data and more accurate information for the catalogue. The advantage of speaking the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s language is essential in order to follow this line of investigation. The use of newsgroups and mailing lists provided a great deal of contacts and answers via email. The most relevant mailing lists were: ISPO (Information Society Project Office), MidasNet (INFO 2000 contact points), IRC (Innovation Relay Centers), UETP (University Enterprise Training Partnership), Majordomo (ISPO), URL:, Europa, and Cordis. Among the newsletters were: Agora, and ImpressĂŁo Digital. The use of all those facilities and particularly the use of mailing lists was of great value because they reach a lot of people. The use of ordinary mail can be seen as a old method for reaching information, especially in a project dealing with online learning. We wrote to the national ministries of education, national training bodies, and other relevant national organizations in the European countries involved, but we did not receive any answers. We also contacted some international organizations and bodies using this method and we received one answer. Using personal contacts and partner contacts was the most successful strategy. The contacts were made personally by phone and e-mail and in most cases we had favorable responses. One of the most interesting processes developed under this method was the networking among contacted people. Some of the people contacted helped us a great deal because they forwarded information to others. The phone contacts were frequent and can be considered crucial for this strategy. Finally, 16 interviews were conducted via face-to-face meetings, telephone, and e-mail. Three of the interviews were conducted with institutions that were not represented in the catalogue. These are CNED <132> in France, The Virtual University of the technological system of Monterrey <133> in Mexico, and GECSA <131> in Spain. Instrumentation Four fill in forms, similar to the one presented in Figure 1, were made available via http://home.nettskolen.nki.no/~morten/cisaer/. The information entered in the forms was automatically forwarded as e-mail to the respective partners for compilation of regional catalogues.

Figure 1. The CISAER fill in form

An interview guide, as shown in Figure 2,was made for the interviews. Figure 2. The CISAER interview guide This is the official CISAER format for the interviews: Institution: URL: Contact person: E-mail: 1. Type of institution University/college/corporation/other 2. Use of the WWW in the course(s) Presentation/communication/administration/teaching 3. WWW and other media All www/CD ROM/paper/other 4. Type of media used www for content/interactivity/sound, video/Java 5. Type of communication One-online/one-to-one/one-to-many/many-to-many 6. Type of student tutoring No tutoring/human tutoring/machine tutoring/group tutoring 7. Assessment TMAs/CMAs/Peer assessment/examinations 8. Accreditation Degree/diploma/certificate/statement of completion 9. Costs in euros Costs of course to students/full cost/module, course or degree cost/other costs 10. Enrolment Fixed start/fixed finish/flexible start/flexible finish Conclusion

Limitations At the CISAER web-pages, it was stated that the courses must comply with these criteria to be listed in the CISAER catalogue:

1. At least one of the following should be web-based: • student interaction with tutor or fellow students • access or submission of assignments • access to course resources • activities/simulations/experiences 2. The courses must not be private in-company training, nor offered only to full-time campusbased students. The researchers did not spend much time to verify that these criteria actually were met or to discuss different interpretation of them. This may have resulted in some variations in the quality of data. The project partners have better contacts in Western Europe and North America than they have in the rest of the world. Similarly, their knowledge of other languages than those spoken in these regions is very limited. It should also be clear that the CISAER partners decided to focus more on Europe than on North America.

Chapter 3. Global Issues in Online Education This chapter discusses the geographic distributions of the analyzed institutions along with some observations, examples, and case studies from each continent. Finally, globalization of online education is discussed. Geographic Distribution of Institutions The analysis includes information from institutions in all continents. In addition to the four transnational institutions, the analysis includes catalogue entries from 130 institutions in 26 countries and interviews with key persons in 72 institutions from 22 countries. In Table 2, the countries are sorted by number of catalogue entries per country. Table 2. Distribution of institutions per country Country USA UK Norway Portugal Australia Canada Germany Sweden Spain Ireland Transnational Brazil Italy The Netherlands Denmark Finland Turkey Austria Belgium China Cyprus Iceland India Israel Japan New Zealand South Africa France Mexico Sum

Catalogue entries 20 15,4 % 17 13,1 % 7,7 % 10 7,7 % 10 6,9 % 9 6,2 % 8 5,4 % 7 5,4 % 7 4,6 % 6 3,8 % 5 3,1 % 4 3,1 % 4 3,1 % 4 2,3 % 3 1,5 % 2 1,5 % 2 1,5 % 2 0,8 % 1 0,8 % 1 0,8 % 1 0,8 % 1 0,8 % 1 0,8 % 1 0,8 % 1 0,8 % 1 0,8 % 1 0,8 % 1 0,0 % 0 0,0 % 0 130

Interviews 8 11,1 % 11 15,3 % 9,7 % 7 9,7 % 7 8 11,1 % 1,4 % 1 5,6 % 4 2,8 % 2 6,9 % 5 5,6 % 4 1,4 % 1 2,8 % 2 2,8 % 2 1,4 % 1 1,4 % 1 1,4 % 1 0,0 % 0 0,0 % 0 0,0 % 0 1,4 % 1 0,0 % 0 1,4 % 1 1,4 % 1 0,0 % 0 0,0 % 0 1,4 % 1 1,4 % 1 1,4 % 1 1,4 % 1 72

The home countries of the researchers (Ireland, Norway, UK, and Portugal) are likely overrepresented in the analysis because the researchers have better knowledge of their home

countries than other countries. Similarly, it is likely that there is an overrepresentation of institution from countries that have English as an official language since the primary research language was English. Still, it would be quite easy to include many more entries from North America, since the listing from this area is intentionally partial. Among the 130 catalogue entries, 59 (45.4%) were from the English language countries: USA, UK, Australia, Canada, and Ireland. Table 3. Distribution of institutions per continent Continent North America Europe Asia Latin America Africa Australia and New Zealand Transnational Sum

Catalogue entries 21,5 % 28 60,8 % 79 3,1 % 4 3,1 % 4 0,8 % 1 7,7 % 10 3,1 % 4 130 100.1 %

Interviews 9 12,5 % 47 65,3 % 2 2,8 % 3 4,2 % 1 1,4 % 9 12,5 % 1 1,4 % 72 100.1 %

Table 3 indicates that institutions in Europe (60.8%), North America (21.5%), and Australia with New Zealand (7.7%) overwhelmingly outnumbers institutions in South America (3.1%), Asia (3.1%), and Africa (0.8%). Even though the researchers have a better knowledge of Europe, North America, and Australia than they have of the rest of the world, the survey testifies that these continents overwhelmingly dominate web-based education. Boshier et al. (1997) made a survey of educational web sites found via international search engines in 1997. They found 127 sites with a distribution as shown in Table 4. Table 4. Comparison of the Boshier and the CISAER distributions per region Region USA Canada Australia/New Zealand UK Other European Countries Asia Latin America Africa Transnational Sum

Percent Boshier N=127 64.5 10.2 9.4 11.0 1.6 2.4 0.8 0 0 99.9

Percent CISAR N=130 15.4 6.2 7.7 13.1 47.7 3.1 3.1 0.8 3.1 100.2

The CISAER analysis and the Boshier analysis seem to agree that countries with English as an official language seem to dominated web-based education. This obviously worried Boshier and his Canadian colleagues who discussed the U.S. dominance in the article World Wide America? (Wilson et al., 1998). However, the CISAER analysis has shown that there is much more activities in the other European countries than Boshier found in his survey.

Many educators are concerned with the dominance of English as the language of global education. Countries with a minor national language may find it difficult to compete in a global market with countries that have English as their first language. Other educators are worried about cultural imperialism as a result of Western institutions export of online courses to the Third World. Gayol and Schied, discuss these issues in their article Cultural Imperialism in the Virtual Classroom. Africa This analysis includes very limited information about African initiatives. There are probably many more initiatives than the two that were found. The African institutions included in the analysis are The African Virtual University [4] and the Pinelands High School [78]. The only entry from an individual African country was from the Pinelands High School [78] (http://www.wcape.school.za/subject/CS/PHS/main.htm) in South Africa. The school offers a course in computer studies for grade 11. The course has 70 students who study in groups of four. Three students outside the physical school are interacting in co-operative learning groups with students in the physical school building. It is emphasized that the course is a pilot project and that web teaching must take into consideration that local telephone calls are expensive. Case Study 1: Africa. The African Virtual University

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Desmond Keegan. The African Virtual University [4] (http://www.avu.org) is a project sponsored by the World 24

Bank. Its goal is to build capacity in the universities of sub-Saharan countries to enable them to better meet the needs of their students and exploding enrolments. The courses are currently being delivered from institutions in the US, Ireland, and Canada, with plans to expand to French speaking countries to serve the needs of the Francophone African countries. The courses being delivered are primarily in the fields of mathematics, science, computers, and telecommunications. It is intended that after the first three years, the project will become wholly "Africanized" with all courses originating from African institutions. The project coordinator is at the University of New Mexico. It is planned that there will be three realizations: English, French, Portuguese. The English program is well developed with at least 8 African universities in a selection of countries receiving lectures by satellite from a number of American and European universities which include the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, New Jersey Institute of Technology, the Dublin Institute of Technology and the University of Limerick in Ireland. Much progress has been made in the French program planning and work is commencing on the Portuguese dimension. The project has an extensive web-site at www.avu.org and uses the www in courses for library access, for course access, for e-mail, for file sharing and for discussion groups. Experiments are being made with the digital downloading of satellite materials. The university model is the provision of live lectures by satellite with telephone interaction. 75% of the materials are live broadcast and 25% taped, using MPEG II compression for a one way video interaction with telephone return. Various providers are positioned to provide course materials on the www, including US private corporations and the download of materials by internet model link up to the satellite is being trialled. There is growing use of the web-site for e-mail communication, file sharing, and course and library access. The model is to use international course materials in the local setting. Various forms of assessment are used depending on the originating university. At present the main courses are on credit business training. Student costs depend on the local university structures, and the course schedules depend on the satellite lecture programs. The African Virtual University and a growing number of universities in North America and Europe is fast establishing itself as a major innovation and a successful contributor to African education. The model, trialled and perfected in English-speaking African countries, is now being developed in French-speaking African countries and being commenced in Portuguesespeaking countries. There is a growing use of the web in student interaction and course delivery.

Asia This analysis includes very limited information about Asian initiatives. There are obviously many more initiatives than the four that were found. The Asian institutions were the Open University of Hong Kong [28], the Indira Gandhi National Open University [42], the Gordon College of Education [48] in Israel, and the Japanese WIDE Project [53].

The Gordon College of Education [48] (http://www.macam98.ac.il/chtml/ish) in Israel reports to have 10 students in a course about differences between genders in language, culture, physiology and the brain. The college is for preservice teachers and the course is in Hebrew. The Japanese WIDE project [53] (http://www.sfc.wide.ad.jp/soi) reports to have 500 students and 8 courses about Internet technology and computer science. The WIDE project is the biggest researchers' group in Japan in the Internet technology area. It started the 'School of Internet' (SOI) experimental project to research a new form of University on the Internet environment where anyone can learn from anywhere anytime. Current focused area is 'Internet technology'. SOI provides several lectures from public and private Universities. The lectures are provided by synchronized video and web materials online. Students can submit and review their assignments to each other. The course surveys are performed online as well. The Open University of Hong Kong (HKOU) [28] (http://www.ouhk.edu.hk) reports to have 630 students in 4 courses on business information systems, Internet, and telecommunications. The Open University is at its experimental stage in using the Internet to deliver its courses. In addition to a print version of the course, B321 Advanced Business Systems offers an electronic version, in which students can get access to the course materials stored in a server housed at the university, or through the Internet. Submission of assignments, return of marked assignments, discussion among tutors and students, e-mail facilities, on line evaluation of the course, and a number of other administrative functions can be done through electronic means. As for U123 Introduction to Internet, most of the course is in print form, although there is regular reference to and activities carried out on the Internet. There is one online study unit in which students study through logging on the Internet. Discussion groups and e-mail facilities are also provided for tutors and students of the course. The two CT courses are on telecommunications, and a lot of references for the courses are accessed through the Internet. The catalogue also includes an entry from the secretary-general in the National Commission of the Republic of Uzbekistan for UNESCO. It states that several Internet providers have been established in the country and several sites are functioning in order to open access for global networks. The new informational technologies on distance education has been applied in Uzbekistan since 1997, but so far there are no web courses. Currently they are using TV and Radio channels for educational programs and various educational multimedia programs (on CD-ROM or diskettes) within institutional local area networks.

Case Study 2: Asia. The Indira Gandhi National Open University

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Desmond Keegan. The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) [42] (http://www.ignou.edu) in India offers two courses about Internet Awareness and about Web Design and Site Maintenance. The university has taken initiatives to launch its courses through the web. This will be accessible to all the students in remote areas. Many Multi-Media Learning Centres have been established to provide services to the students. IGNOU is an open university with an enrolment of 300,000. 200,000 of these are enrolled in web-based courses. The web is used for presentation, communication, administration, and teaching. The web provides an online learning environment including database and administration. IGNOU use WEBCT, but they had made very considerable development themselves before they bought WEBCT. Internet database construction is not their core business and they were not willing to proceed and to maintain what they had developed, so they chose WEBCT. They find it very economic and have now worked closely with WEBCT for over 12 months. Online materials must be given piecemeal to prevent students this age of racing ahead and around the materials. The design is kept simple but they start with the web and work back from there. This means they offer a consortium of online teaching from all content online to no content online. The decision depends on the nature of the content and whether they are developing from new or adapting an existing course to the web. They find that the Internet is a cheaper way to update course content, especially in subjects where they change content

annually like: Taxation, accounting and legal studies. IGNOU use CD ROM for heavy audio and video content. They have limited clips of audio and video on the web, but heavy audio and graphics are called up from a CD ROM. Some of the activity is Java based, but they try to avoid Java because it is too costly. The chart system in WEBCT is Java based. Assignments are submitted as attachments to a bulletin board. Tutoring is by lecturing staff. IGNOU donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t use machine tutoring, except from FAQs. They don't recommend synchronous communication because it damages the flexibility of the system, but they have some group tutoring to classes of 24. IGNOU use e-mail, conferencing and chat rooms, but the students do not use chat rooms a lot. There is no emphasis on SAQs. They use TMAs a lot and they are marked by the lecturing staff. CMAs are used a little: quizzes with a database behind them. Assessment is formative rather than summative and there are no examinations. There is no peer assessment, but occasional joint projects. Accreditation includes diplomas, certificates, and statement of completion. This course so far is free to learners, as it is a pilot project. Enrolment is flexible, but in some courses students have to wait until a class of 10 is accumulated. They have today 2,500 enrolments in 15 subjects, with 50 more in development. The number of students is 70, though a large part of these take part in other face-to-face courses at the school. There are some open modules on the site and information pages. This is a pilot project and did not receive any direct state or public funding. The designers see the price of internet calls (on an upward trend) as a major problem for the development of these type of courses. The designers of the course feel that the state is not approaching the development of web training as seriously as it might. They are not aware of any state sponsored studies or projects in this area.

Australia and Oceania The Australian entries are dominated by institutions in the university and college sector. Among these are several of the institutions that report to have the most online students and courses. Australia has also a system of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions that are advanced providers of web-courses. The Australian institutions are among the largest and most advanced in this analysis. Since the courses also are provided in English, Australian institutions should be very competitive in the emerging global market. Some of the Australian institutions are described in the following. Wodonga Institute of TAFE (www.wodonga.tafe.edu.eu) offers courses in management and leadership, electronics and electrotechnology, information technology, professional development, nursing, and welding supervision. These courses are available to post secondary students. They can be undertaken in conjunction with traditional on-campus courses or print28

based off-campus courses. Learning and teaching strategies vary across the courses. Frequently they consist of a text-based framework of information in addition to activities which include asynchronous and synchronous communication with teachers and peers, plus online and workplace activities. Some courses are supported by textbooks and use the online technology primarily for collaborative work by class members, submission of assignments and communication between all members of the class. Some courses are only available to a minimum number of students, while others can be completed by individuals working at their own pace. A number of courses are still at a developmental stage. TAFE SA Online (http://www.tafe.sa.edu.au/top/) has more than 1000 students in over 100 subjects in 20 accredited courses. The online courses provide learning materials, guidance, tracking, and instructions from TAFE tutors who communicate with students through e-mail and online discussion groups. Students can also interact with one another and TAFE SA support staff through the online learning environment. Some courses are delivered entirely online while others are supported with a range of printed materials or other learning resources. Individual and collaborative learning tasks are designed to be undertaken off and online. Assignments can be completed online or delivered electronically to the lecturer for marking. Online quizzes are also used for self-assessment and for some areas of final assessment. Case Study 3: Australia. Edith Cowan University

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Desmond Keegan. Edith Cowan University [12] <12> (http://www.cowan.edu.au) is a university in Perth, Western Australia. The university's virtual campus for web-based training has an enrolment of 8000 students in over 120 units in more than 30 courses. 15.000 of the university's 20.000 students have access to the web for library and other services. As of August 1998, 5 courses are completely web-based. Focus is on interactive learning environments which are supported

with chat rooms, discussion boards and listervs. Course notes are provided online in a variety of formats including html and pdf. Many units contain media enhancements such as video, animation and sound. Access to other academic resources such as library and study skills support are provided. Administrative services such as enrolment, timetables and access to personal records of progress are also available. The web is used for presentation, communication, administration, and teaching, but to differing degrees for the different courses. Administrative use includes enrolment and students contacting the administration to find out their examination results. The web is used together with other media. This could range from the web plus lecturing oncampus to the web plus CD ROM plus you name it for distance education. The web is used predominantly for content and for interaction between people. The student has a web page and initiates the CD ROM and or video clip through it. Basically ours is a home-grown system because we began teaching on the internet in 1992 and there was nothing available. We added Graphical User Interfaces in 1995. Our system is UNIX based and we use various bits of public domain software available on the internet. We have looked at the commercially available kernels but do not believe that they are better than our system. We do not believe that a system the size of ours, or what ours will shortly be, can be comfortably accommodated on a commercial kernel. Some of our academics use WebCT or Top Class for their own courses and we will provide student links to these, but the university Virtual Campus will remain our own development. Communication is primarily e-mail and bulletin boards with some web involvement providing each student with e-mail to the tutor and to other students. It provides the distance education students, who may be 1000 km away from each other, to communicate with each other and provides peer support. The system is based on tutors not machines. Students may submit electronically but there is no electronic marking or return of corrected assignments. No official examinations are on the web. The 20 year history of our distance education provision continues: students go to schools, libraries, colleges etc to do their examinations. Accreditation is provided through degrees, diplomas, certificates, and statements of completion. Many full degrees are offered with web dimensions. Only 4 courses are available totally on the web, except for the examinations. Every course is available traditionally, some are available online. some materials of other courses are available online. There are issues here of equity and of academic culture. Students can work online but tutors prefer to print out the assignments and post them back to the students. some students have computers at home and we can make the assumption that they can get on the net. The prices are exactly the same as for traditional face-to-face courses. They are moving towards flexible start and flexible finish, but they have a lot of students from many Asian countries and need to proceed prudently. The web is being used and will be used very widely for teaching in Australia. They run external courses both at a distance and on the web in which students never come to Western Australia, let alone to the university. People move a lot nowadays and the norm will be that they are able to study for their degrees anytime, anywhere. 30

Europe As a project funded by the EU, the researchers have focused especially on institutions in Europe. However, the researchers had no success in obtaining catalogue entries from institutions in the two EU-countries France and Greece. However, the analysis includes an interview with CNED, the National Center for Distance Education in France <132>. CNED is not a University but woks in consortia with the French Universities in order to provide Degree level diplomas and certificates by the University. Another interesting institution that is not included in the catalogue is the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (www.uoc.es). However, the interviews include an entry from GECSA - Gestion del Conocimiento s. a <131> which is a private enterprise managed by the Universita Oberta de Catalonya and the Spanish Telecom â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Telefonica. A selection of interesting catalogue entries is compiled in the following. In a conclusion presented in the CISAER interim report, Ana Dias wrote: In Southern Europe and South America we found several initiatives dealing with the cultural and structural change in the Education and Training Sector. Those initiatives are exploring the pedagogical issues. We found projects that include virtual classrooms, virtual libraries, virtual coffee shops, chat rooms and other virtual structures. The Government of Cyprus [29] (http://www.kypros.org/Greek) offers a course in learning Greek. The course is on an open web site. Kypros-Net, in conjunction with the Cyprus Broadcast Corporation, offers the possibility of learning Greek on the Internet. The course consists of 105 lessons contained in audio files plus a web board for student interaction. There is an English/Greek dictionary, spell checker, and downloadable Greek fonts. The University of Helsinki [32] (http://avoin.helsinki.fi) in Finland has 160 students in 10 courses about law, mathematics, chemistry, academic writing, communication, data processing, etc. They are using simple technology, courses should be used by modems from homes. They are building an open learning environment, where it is possible for anyone to study, get guidance and get office-services as well as communicate with peer students. Helsinki university is the largest university in Finland, and they try to offer virtual courses from different university fields. The amount of courses is increasing all the time, but most of the courses are on basic level. They have collected all Finnish open university courses in one database (http://www.avoinyliopisto.fi/). There, one can find all the virtual or distance education courses offered by Finnish open universities. Istituto Tecnologie Didattiche - C.N.R. [50] (http://www.itd.ge.cnr.it/) in Italy has 150 students in 5 courses in open and distance learning for small and medium enterprises, environmental education, and teachers training. Based on FirstClass, ITD tutors propose an online project-based approach. According to the content and objectives of the course, students may work in groups or individually. According to distance of students from ITD, there may be face-to-face sessions or videoconference sessions as well. In the case of the ODL for SMEs course, trainers based in Genoa also attend face-to-face lessons. In the case of the International course Eumedea, on environmental education, training takes place mainly online and occasionally through multi-point videoconference. ITD is also partner in the T3 project (http://www.ex.ac.uk/telematics/T3/welcome.html) where a number of teacher training

institutions are developing and experimenting with international, web-based courses for teachers. IFB - Instituto de Formação Bancaria [75] (http://www.ifb.pt) in Portugal has 47 students in the course Financial Markets. IFB is the department for professional training of the Portuguese Banks Association. Advanced training methodologies, using telematics media, are often used. Thousands of students have already attended the IFB distance learning courses, mostly coming from the bank and financial sector. The "Introduction to Financial Market Via Internet" intends to set up a virtual school. The participants are organized in teams with a tutor who directs the learning process through e-mail and computer conferences. The course is divided in units and each student also receives written materials and video. CECENET – Instituto de Técnicas Educativas; [79] (http://www.cece.es) in Spain offers 4 courses in Quality, Values, Education Technology, and Administration. The CECENET is the first Spanish web program for non-university education. Its purpose is to provide the nonuniversity education world with all the services and information that satisfy its needs and implements a more efficient administration of resources. The CECENET is coordinated by the Instituto de Tecnicas Educativas that serves 46 federations across Spain. The methodology used is based on self-study at home, classroom lectures, telephone and Internet tutoring. These courses are attended by directors and trainers that work at the education centers. UNED [80-82] (http://www.uned.es), the Spanish Open University, is represented with three entries in the catalogue. The Psychology Faculty [80] (http://www.uned.es/proyectos/ing/Telementos.htm) has12 students and 3 courses in Law, Economics, and Psychology. The Foteumidis project has the objective to teach disabled persons using mail, telephone, Internet, e-mail, connecting the computers to the RDSI public line and receiving information via audio and video. The project was designed to help people with deficiency or disability learn and develop their knowledge without having to leave their home or workplace. The disabled students that participated in the project belong to the study centers placed in Cádiz (3), Toledo (3), Murcia (2), Terrasa (1), Las Palmas (1), Mallorca (1), and Tenerife (1). The technologies used are: personal computers, multi-videoconference using ISDN, communications system, and access to ISDN network. The Food Engineering department of Lund Institute of Technology [86] (http://anka.livstek.lth.se) in Sweden has 15 students in the course IT-aided Distance Learning for the Food Industry. The course consists of 10 modules e.g. Food Technology (3), Food Engineering (3), Nutrition, Food Microbiology, Food analyses, and Statistics. Most of the modules are given according to problem-based learning via Internet. The cases are presented via Internet and for the meetings once a week, the students are using computer-based programs as Iparty and NetMeeting. For communication teacher-student and student - student e-mail and the web are used. The students are part-time students supposed to follow 4 modules per year. The students are coming to Lund 3-5 times per semester for introductions, to do laboratory work and final examination. Abacus Learning Systems [94] (http://www.abacus-uk.co.uk) in the U.K. has 4 courses about online training. The training is mainly delivered 'virtually' in the Abacus Virtual College through the medium of the learner's computer connected to a 'virtual classroom' by a telephone line. Products and services offered by Abacus Learning Systems are: online training courses in the Abacus Virtual College, consultancy to help organizations understand the concepts and set 32

up their own online learning and networking systems, rent space in the Abacus Virtual College, and sales of FirstClass conferencing software. The Centre for Labour Market Studies at the University of Leicester [102] (http://www.clms.le.ac.uk/) has 1000 students in 6 courses about Training, Human Resource Management, and Performance Management. The Centre offers three Masters courses, two Diploma courses, and one Certificate course by distance learning. Approximately 1000 students are enrolled on these courses in 30 different countries. The Web is used to provide resources and support students through online conferencing. Extensive use is made of e-mail for submission of assignments and support of students. UK providers seem to have a more international approach than providers in other European countries. This could be inferred from the following catalogue statements: • • • •

Approximately 1000 students are enrolled on these courses in 30 different countries [102]. The course exploits modern developments in communications, which means that students from any country may study the course at home, at work or in a university [103]. The Open University is a dedicated distance teaching institution with students across Europe and in some cases even worldwide [108]. It is marketed internationally in association with other Universities around the world [109].

Case Study 4: Europe. The Open University of the Netherlands

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Torstein Rekkedal. The Open University of the Netherlands [54] (http://www.ou.nl) claims to have 360 courses and 2500 students. All courses have general web-services, some more (fully online). 33

The Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNL) is a public educational institution, funded by the government. It has - by law - a double function: developing and delivering adult distance education in 7 domains social, cultural, law, business, economics, natural and technical sciences innovation of higher education in general The main office is in Heerlen. Current Situation For the complete university and all courses, a complete web-based architecture has been designed, comprising of four webs: InfoNet (general audience with official info), HouseNet (intranet web for staff), OpenNet (free net for students and staff) and StudyNet (official course supporting web). All students have authorized access to their study environment on the web. This study environment automatically gives access to all info in relation to courses they have subscribed to. This info could be: descriptive information, newsgroups, ftp, mail, groupware, real audio and video plug-inns, recent developments in relation to the content of the course, etc. Newsgroup can be informal or formal. Formal newsgroup are only accessible for specific students to discuss assigned themes. The implementation of the StudyNet provision is growing and depends on the current developments of courses (revision, new courses, updating). Student access is growing too. Of 24.000 students, about 4000 make now daily use of the facilities. As to the university staff, all of them use the HouseNet provision since it replaced the printed information and communication provisions. Future Situation At this moment OUNL is designing, developing, and implementing a completely new integrated system called ELO (Electronic Learning environment). The last paragraphs of this case study describe the main features of this ELO-environment. The online environment at the same time introduces completely new educational approaches to learning and working online: competency-based education. This means that while OUNL move from second generation to third generation distance education we also change the complete curriculum structure and educational modeling of the courses: task based education, groupware-based activities. This ELO is being developed in line with OUNL's two missions: own distance education and innovation of higher education in general. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why they will make ELO available for other institutions. OUNL use a broad mixture of media. The actual StudieNet environment can be viewed as: a static set of webs that build upon information that are stored and maintained in separate databases (student information, course database, ) with a base set of electronic provisions for all the 411 courses: mail, ftp (downloading software), discussion groups, descriptive information (comparable to course catalogue), news, etc. At the content level there still a lot of referring to the still predominant set of printed materials, videos, tapes, CD-ROM and CDaudio. Depending on specific course requirements, they add groupware (BCWS, real audio/video, audio graphics, etc.

The introduction of StudieNet in all OUNL-courses builds upon materials that have been designed in line with the second generation paradigm of distance education in mind. This implies that most materials are still based on print-based sets of materials with extra media resources such as audio, video, CD-ROM, etc. The use of the StudieNet therefore focuses especially on coping with exploitation issues, such as, news, discussion groups and tutoring. But while revising, updating and making new courses, the StudieNet provision becomes the core of the course design and production. A good example is the course Visual Programming with Java that consists of a working book, a CD ROM and a complete web where students can find an online introduction, discussion groups, examples of Java-work, etc. Depending on the level of involvement of tutors in the courses, they are responsible for structuring the open and closed discussion in the discussion groups (threaded discussions). They give answers to questions, monitor groups, give feedback to elaborations of task assignments, and put forward initiatives. There are specific courses where the tutoring also focuses on pacing the work of students (keeping track of their work, start date, end date, etc.). E-mail is not the favorite medium, they prefer the discussion groups to prevent work overload of tutors in their mail box. For certain courses where BCWS was implemented as groupware, the tutor (next to the content experts) takes a different role and responsibility. Now most communication is a-synchronous, individual to institution. Depending on the adoption of the StudieNet as a core element of the course design there is - in advanced courses the introduction of synchronous media (audio graphics, groupware) and the fact that the course design build upon group work that implies working with student teams online. Assessment is still a separate activity that by law is organized in study centers in controlled environments. A number of advanced courses build upon the elaboration of tasks that together form a dossier that is the base for the final evaluation, next to eventually a restricted summative test that checks basic knowledge. In the oncoming innovative competency-based design (ELO) they expect that student task resolution is the actual base for assessment and there is no direct need to organize an extra assessment session in a study center. At the political/strategic level this direction is yet to be approved and backed with a number of procedural arrangements to be able to say that such assessment approaches conform to the legal regulations. Course accreditation is a procedural activity based on the scores that result form the assessment approach described above. Students receive a certificate for each course completed. A set of certificates leads to a diploma when all courses have been taken successfully. Whether a course is taken on the internet does not affect the value of the certificate. The course fee is the same as for the earlier print-based courses. Students are urged to subscribe for a trajectory of courses. This helps the institution to cope with organizational problems when adopting a completely open access approach. Students in this approach can only start taking courses at two moments a year. At this moment there are six ways to subscribe at the OUNL: basic trajectory (f600,-- Dutch Guilders for at least two modules + extra guidance, support, introductory sessions, â&#x20AC;Ś) 35

subscription for a year (f1980,- Dutch Guilders for at least six modules, all in) subscription for a semester (f990,-- Dutch Guilders for at least 3 modules, all in) subscription for a period to cope with planning problems subscription for an individual module/course in a diploma line subscription for an individual module/course (f360,- Dutch Guilders, all-in: materials, assessment, support As stated earlier students are urged to subscribe for trajectories (sets of courses with extra support and provisions, regular meetings, fixed group of colleagues/students) or subscription for a year/semester. Pricing differs depending on the option students choose from this menu But as a rule of thumb; the preferred subscription mode is the cheapest and the options ranked at the end of the menu are the more expensive ones. This sounds as a contradiction but is in line with are objective to orient more students to trajectories. As explained above, they try to break down the complete openness of the system by offering pre-structured trajectories that bring together students, a number of courses and resources. The subscription menu shows the degree of autonomy that is still allowed, but at the expense of a higher price to be paid by students. Now all courses (411) are accessible on the web in the StudieNet environment, but the number of courses that completely build upon the potential of that web is still limited although gradually growing. At this moment 22 courses can truly be called web-based which means that they offer more than the static provisions that have been described above. As stated earlier OUNL envision that by the year 2002, all courses will be web-based. The ELOsystem plays a major role in this. ELO is the future way to go. Next to the systems design we also develop new organizational and procedural structures to implement the innovation and to support the transition phase. At this moment the use of StudieNet could be called a perfect solution for the transition of a second generation towards a third generation approach towards distance education. Especially the educational changes implied with the ELO-system (competency-based education) put forward the biggest problems and challenges.

North America North America dominates the world of online education, and this report will just present some examples of from the continent. Some of the reasons for this dominance are the well developed Internet infrastructure, the international dominance of the English language, and the well developed university systems. In February 1999, Industry Canada engaged TeleLearning Network Inc. to conduct a competitive analysis of key institutional providers of online post-secondary education (Massey and Curry, 1999). The report includes an analysis of educational providers that invested substantial resources and planning in online learning, and have achieved a significant market share in North America. The institutions included were: University of Phoenix Online, Open University UK, Western Governors University, California Virtual University, Standford 36

Online, Nova Southeastern University, Indiana University, and University of Illinois. In addition the report includes three Canadian institutions that just had entered the field of online learning: the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, Athabasca University, and the Technical University of British Columbia. Finally, the report mentions the following institutions to watch: The University of Industry in England, New York University, Pennsylvania State University's World Campus, Jones International University, Royal Roads University, Northumberland Institute, and the University of Waterloo MoT Program. In a conclusion presented in the CISAER interim report, Robin Mason wrote: The North American listing is intentionally partial and attempts to provide a range: small one-off courses by niche organisations, web courses provided by distance and continuing education divisions of large universities, courses which are fully web-based and courses which are only partially web-based. Most provide (human) tutoring, but a few do not; most have fixed entry and exit, but some do not. The aim of the North American selection has been to show diversity and range of applications of web use. The extensive listings provided by the TeleCampus Online Courses database indicate much more web activity in North America. However, the listing is restricted to courses which are wholly delivered on the web, but significantly, also includes courses offered as part of campus programmes. This database indicates a 76% origin of web courses in the US; 19% from Canada; 3 % from Australia and 2% other. Obviously the method of gathering information accounts for the low representation of European courses, but another element may be that European uses of the web are not in the 'wholly online' category and hence would not qualify for entry in this database. As a result of a visit to North America and attendance at a number of web related conferences, we are aware of a significant increase in web-based teaching activity even by comparison with a year ago. A very recent publication, Distance Training (Schreiber and Berge, 1998) also catalogues a range of North American companies, business and government organisations which are rapidly moving face-to-face training to web-based delivery. We visited one such company - US West - and was shown a very impressive and extensive web-based training programme. We also visited a number of universities and colleges which were embarking on substantial programmes of web-based delivery of courses. Teams had been assembled to carry out the work, including technology specialists, subject specialists, evaluators and a director to oversee and coordinate the work. In short, webbased teaching has moved beyond the trials stage and into strategic roll-out. Some examples of Canadian institutions are included in the following: Mount Royal College [25] (http://wwwacad.mtroyal.ab.ca/adc/accn/index.htm) in Canada offers a course about nursing. ACCN 1300 Physiology is the first complete online course in a series of courses offered by the Advanced Studies in Critical Care Nursing (ACCN) Program. The course has been developed for use with Netscape 3.0 and makes use of ToolVox plug-in

that allows voice audio files to be played, ShockWave which allows animations to be played, and Powwow Personal Communication which is a web-based conferencing system which allows real-time chat and supports both moderated and unmoderated conferencing for up to 50 people. The University of British Columbia [27] (http://itesm.cstudies.ubc.ca/info/) in Canada offers 5 courses on technology-based distributed learning for a maximum of 100 students per course. Aimed at academics, instructional designers, instructors and program administrators in postsecondary education, the courses use the Internet to enable participants to learn online about technology-based distributed learning. Delivered internationally, these courses can be taken individually or as part of a UBC Post-Graduate Certificate in Technology-Based Distributed Learning developed in collaboration with the Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM), Mexico. Linked through the Internet from as many as 17 different countries, students interact with each other and their instructors to discuss issues in the field and collaborate on assignments. Some examples of US institutions are included in the following: The California State University at Dominguez Hills [114] (http://www.csudh.edu/dominguezonline/donet.htm) offers 13 courses in the areas of Communication, Humanities, Technology, and Management. It offers certificate, undergraduate, and postgraduate level courses. Internet classes are conducted entirely on the web. Online activities include assignments, research, class discussion, student-instructor communication, online field trips, and guest speakers. Concord University School of Law [118] (http://www.concord.kaplan.edu/) offers 16 law courses. It is a new institution established by Kaplan Educational Centers in October 1998 to offer a Juris Doctorate degree wholly online via state-of-the-art technology. The target learners are working students, professionals, family caretakers, learners in rural communities, and others whose circumstances prevent them from pursuing a legal education at traditional institutions. The degree is a four year graduate program. Students will view lectures on the Internet at their own convenience 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The lectures will be presented using streaming technology. Students will have online access to a law library to complete their assignments and fulfill curriculum requirements, including case studies, legal arguments, and statutory codes. They will also take interactive exams online. In establishing Concord University, Kaplan, a subsidiary of The Washington Post, is building on its years of expertise in offering LSAT preparation classes that help students succeed in law school. The University will complement Kaplan's 1,200 study centers in the U.S. and abroad, where it offers test preparation, training, and career fairs. The LR Communications Systems, Inc [121] (http://www.LRcom.com) offers 1 course in Effective Written Communication. Each participant is assigned a personal consultant who provides five detailed evaluations of the writing a student produces on the job. After reading the first of five units of text, the student submits (by mail, fax, or e-mail) a job-related letter, memo, or report. The student's consultant acts as the intended reader and studies the assignment for clarity, effect, and how well it achieves its objectives. The consultant also analyzes the document for grammatical correctness, structure, sequence, and language. Within one week, students receive corrections on the original, as well as a detailed, two- to three-page

commentary which guides the student toward improvement. As a one-on-one self-paced process, this course works for individuals at all levels and functions within an organization. Case Study 5: North America. Central Michigan University

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Robin Mason. More than 25 years ago, Central Michigan University www.cel.cmich.edu.edu/faq/home.htm) recognized the need for degree programs for adults who couldn't participate in traditional programs. The seed of what is now the College of Extended Learning (CEL) was planted in 1971. CEL was established to deliver off-campus degree programs to this adult learner population. During the past quarter century CEL has undergone a gradual expansion, from mainly serving the home state of Michigan, to serving locations around the US, Canada and Mexico. In addition to more than 40 program centers where students enroll in classes, CMU offers a cohort delivery format that allows CEL to bring a program to companies or other organizations. Other delivery efforts to address problems for adults who may not be able to attend traditional classes are made through the Independent Learning and Distance Delivery division. In short, CEL has a history of correspondence teaching which is now being upgraded to include Web delivery.

For the fully online courses, students are required to provide themselves with a system which accesses Java and JavaScripting. Extensive use is made of Web-based real-time chat, as well as asynchronous conferencing. Across the range of courses and programs offered online, all aspects of the Web are used: presentations, teaching, communication and administration. Print is still used on many courses, and set text books are a major component of most courses. Tutors mark assignments and examinations, which students must take under proctored conditions. Accreditation is provided both at undergraduate and graduate levels. For example, there is a B.Sc. in Community Development, and another in Administration. The costs of courses varies, but the following is typical: $158 per credit for undergraduate courses $187 per credit for graduate courses. Most courses have fixed start and finish dates, but students registering through the Independent Study route can start and finish at their convenience.

Latin America This analysis includes very limited information about Latin American initiatives. There are obviously many more initiatives than the few that were found. All four South American catalogue entries are from Brazil. These are the Virtual University [16], Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina [17], Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro [18], and Universidade Virtual [19]. In addition, an interview was conducted with the Virtual University of the technological system of Monterrey <133> in Mexico. The Virtual University of the technological system of Monterrey <133> is a Education Institution based in Teaching - Learning systems that operates throughout the more advanced communication technologies and electronic networks. Aiming to support the technological campus and to provide training/education in different context in Mexico, Latin America, United States of America and Canada the Universidad Virtual (UV) offers courses at professional levels, masters and doctorates, and continuing education level. The Virtual University [16] (http://www.ibase.org.br/~ined/) is supported by the Einstein College in São Paulo. It has 350 students and 7 courses in Social Behavior, Childcare, and Museumology. The Virtual University was founded in 1997 with the intention of providing free distance education courses to an open market. The course materials, such as, graphics, photos, and other images, are online. The courses can only be accessed using a password. The total of registrations is 50 per course and the other candidates will have to register on a waiting list. Theses courses could be financed by organizations that have interest in becoming part of the process. There is also an online library where subjects and books could be consulted; organization and participation in a virtual seminar that discusses basic orientations on how to plan, present a research paper and application for project finance. The resources in the seminar are e-mail and discussion lists. The seminar is opened to any interested person or professional. The Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro [18] (http://www.maxwell.lambda.ele.puc-rio.br) in Brazil reports to have 110 students in 6 electrical engineering courses. The Maxwell Project is under development by the Electrical Engineering Department. The site has been used as a support to regular undergraduate and 40

graduate courses which are taught on campus. External users have access to the site. Next semester the number of courses is expected to be 12 and the number of students to be over 200. The Universidade Virtual [19] (www.universidadevirtual.br) has 38 students in 2 courses on education, environment, and political sciences. The Virtual University is part of a traditional face-to-face University. The University of Brasilia - UnB is a public institution, Federal Level, with approximately 15 000 students. This University, which is promoting the project Universidade Virtual has an excellent evaluation upon their courses and teachers. The project offering courses via the Internet has a reasonable acceptance by the teachers of UnB. Case Study 6: South America. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Ana Dias. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina - Laboratory of Distance Education (LED) [17] (http://www.led.ufsc.br) has 500 students and 17 courses in Ergonomics, Production Engineering, Information Systems Engineering, Applied Intelligence, and Education. LED started producing customized courses in 1995. Since then they have been developing courses using a combination of different media, and attending a large number of students. The courses are build after a diagnosis for the need of the institutions involved (public and private) and the students' identification, creating a specific methodology, planning, media production,

implementation and evaluation. Today they have 300 masters and doctoral students in courses using videoconference, Internet and face-to-face meetings, more than 100 students in certificate courses using Internet, print material and face-to-face workshops and more than 160.000 enrolls in non-certificate courses all over Brazil. The Laboratory is a research center devoted to design and administrate courses at a distance that are adequate to the students context and provide support for the professors and students involved. The LED – Distance Education Lab from the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina: Is a Federal University depending on the Federal Government and the Ministry of Education and Culture from Brazil. This interview was done by phone with Prof. Barcia – LED Manager and with Prof. João Vernney - LED Coordinator. Other information was provided online by Engª Rosangela Rodrigues. The LED uses the web for presentation, communication, administration and teaching in their courses. Web site overview: 1) common area with information, curricula, working teams, statistics, etc 2) restricted area for students - online distance learning environment containing learning activities. The courses are customized, meaning that the media used depend on the students’ needs and contexts. Depending on the aims of the course and on the student group needs and context, the following media can be used: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

videoconference teleconference ( one way video, two way audio) internet ( working environment – tools and pedagogical strategies) CD-ROM Video Printed materials Free phone line

The decision on the type of media used depends on the objectives of the course, the nature of the content, the group of students’ needs and the students’ context (technological and other). The courses are customized for each group of students, usually the students are from the same company or institution or university and they are located in different cities in Brazil. Using a Virtual University metaphor the student is seen as an identity member of a virtual community, responsible for the construction of knowledge. The student can use the working rooms, the library, the forums and he/she can make publication online. All programming was made in order to make the students’ life easier, and everything is in natural language. All types of communication are used: institution to student, student to institution, student to student, student online. In particular, in the student to student communication there is a component of collaborative work between students - they accomplish tasks together in small groups. 42

Responsible teachers for the content provide the courses tutoring. Machine tutoring is not used. The tutoring is provided to a student or to a group of students. Answers to students queries are dealt with in a maximum of 24h. The LED offers different types of courses: 1) Doctorates 2) Masters and Specialization's (500 students ) 3) Continuous Training Courses (Capacity): 60h-80h courses spread along 3 months a total of 160 000 students enrolled in the last 3 years. In Masters and Specialization courses they use mainly TMA (Tutor Mediated Assessment) and local examinations (the student must go to the nearest evaluation center and in the presence of the evaluators give a seminar or do an examination or present a paper). In the Continuous Training Courses they use TMA (Tutor Mediated Assessment) there is no CMA (Computer Mediated Assessment) and no examinations. There is no peer assessment, but occasional collaborative work. In the Masters and Specialization courses a diploma and a certificate are provided and the course is recognized by the Federal Government and the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Culture. In the Continuous Training Courses a participation certificate is provided to students. The costs are calculated by groups of students and negotiated with the client which can be an institution, a university or an enterprise. On average, a 2 years Master course will cost the client 157 120 EUROS for a group of 20 students. Enrolment is not flexible. It begins and ends on fixed dates.

Globalization There is a steady growth of institutions that offer online courses to students in other countries. Some provide courses to one institution in another country, others enroll students dispersed in many countries, and finally, there are institutions that support their countrymen abroad. In the preface to her book Global Education, Robin Mason (1998) stated: I find no evidence for the emergence of one or even several global players preparing to take over higher education on a global scale. Unlike the soft drinks market, education is unlikely to be dominated by a few giant providers. Why? Because it is too difficult; there is too little money to be made, too many complex issues to handle, and too great a need for â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;people skillsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; rather than technical skills.

In the paper Technology, Distance Education and National Development, Bates (1997) presents three models of international technology-based distance delivery: 1. Direct delivery to individuals in another country. 2. Inter-institutional direct delivery from one country to another. 3. Joint partnership between institutions in different countries. In Distance Education across National Borders, Mason (1994) distinguishes between four categories of intercultural courses: 1. Franchise Type: in which one partner designs, develops, examines and makes awards, while the other recruits students and provides support mechanisms. 2. Marketplace Type: in which one institution purchases course materials from the other, adapts and delivers them and examines learners and awards credits. 3. Collaborative Type: in which several institutions jointly design and develop courses which they use in their respective institutions independently of each other. 4. Technology-Based Type: in which students from other countries access the host institution via electronic communication (possibly enhanced by printed materials, occasional videoconferences or even face-to-face meetings). Independent of which type an institution chooses, the pivotal issue of global courses is how well cultural issues are addressed. These issues include language, educational tradition, perception of educational imperialism, national policy on certification and transfer of credit, and local support structures. The four institutions listed as transnational in the catalogue are the International Telecommunication Union [1], LEB [2], Nordisk NetthĂ¸gskole [3], and The African Virtual University [4] (Case Study 1). These institutions are very different as described in the following paragraphs. The International Telecommunication Union [1] (http://www.itu.int/VTC) reports to have 200 students in 3 courses. In the framework of its activities aimed at fostering the use of information technologies in the telecommunication training sector in developing countries, the ITU has developed the Virtual Training Center (VTC). The aim of the center is to offer services typically provided by a traditional training center, online. It also aims at satisfying some of the new training requirements generated by a modern, information-oriented society. Services offered include the access to information (for example about material and courses available, service providers), access to training material, distance tutoring and participation in virtual classes, distance consultancy services, etc. The VTC currently offers the following non-accredited web-based courses: Developing Distance Learning Material, Using the Internet for Distance Learning, and Spectrum Management. These courses make extensive use of the web for access to course resources, student interaction with tutor and fellow students, access and submission of assignments, and asynchronous discussions. Additional courses with similar characteristics are under development: Business Management Development Plan, Frontline Management, Wireless Access Systems, and so on. LEB [2] (www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/9648/Index.html) is an initiative to share Internet information to the Hispanic people. It provides non formal education translated to Spanish

from American universities. LEB reports to have 2 courses. The focus is on science, ethics, and economy. The target groups are students and teachers. Nordisk Netthøgskole [3] (http://www.nnhs.com) is a collaborative project between Scandinavian providers of web-based courses. The project partners are Nettskolen (http://www.nettskolen.com) in Norway, Göteborg University (http://www.vu.gu.se/) in Sweden, and The Graphic Arts Institute of Denmark (http://www.dgh.dk/). Some general statements in the interviews and catalogue indicated international initiatives: •

• •

TDC, Tecnologias de Comunicação <74>, is a private company owned by the Portugal Telecom Group. The distance training offer of TDC varies depending on target group needs and facilities. TDC works closely with the PALOPS (Portuguese Speaking Countries), namely in Africa with Mozambique, Guiné Bissau, S.Tomé and Principe, Cabo Verde, and Angola. CAFE MONDIAL [38] is a European Consortium of universities, colleges, and private institutions providing professional training via the web. The consortium emerged from an EU telematics Applications Project. The University of Twente [56] has a Masters of Science in Education Training and Systems Design for international (non-Dutch) students that makes heavy use of the web, including for distance participation.

The globalization of online education is a much discussed issue, but only a few of the interviews included comments on globalization in the conclusions and future plans: • •

• • •

Digito Formação <73> in Portugal. The web is an excellent tool for globalization. Universidade Virtual <19> in Brazil. Globalization is happening. In the future, there will be a better promotion of networks in the sense of distance education networks that share know-how and the international contacts will become channels for exchanging information. TRAINET <51> in Italy. Globalization – the use of internet and information society tools is not a global thing. In fact, in the US and Europe, the use is current but the same cannot be said for Africa. The use will grow, but again not in a homogeneous way. UNED <80> in Spain. The future will bring facilities in several aspects, namely in the diffusion of materials, in the access of updated information (we will be able to know what the others are doing at a global scale). The Open University of Hong Kong <28>. In Hong Kong we use the web for commerce. For education students still want print and not a computer monitor. Submission of assignments via the web is of growing importance. The web is very important for geographic extension of our courses to China. It is very convenient to deliver the materials via the web rather than shipping them.

Some statements with regard to tutoring also indicated some global perspectives: • •

<27> Tutors are supplied from the course team, but adjunct faculty around the world are also used. Twenty students are assigned to each tutor. <102> Tutors make overseas teaching visits and there is a residential weekend for the M.Sc. course.

â&#x20AC;˘

<4> The model is to use international course materials in the local setting.

Case Study 7: Globalization. University of British Columbia

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Robin Mason. The Distance Education and Technology unit of the University of British Columbia has designed a web based program to help education professionals around the world address the issue of how to use technology in teaching. Linked through the Internet from as many as 17 different countries, students interact with each other and their instructors to discuss issues in the field and collaborate on assignments. The five courses in the program give participants the opportunity to learn about, and experience, technology-based distributed learning by discussing issues and collaborating online with others from around the world. Each course is limited to 100 students. The program has been developed jointly with the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico. The course covers the use of technology both for campus and off-campus students.

Set books and journal articles form a major part of the course content, but the web is used for teaching and presentation as well. The main use, however, is for the course discussions. Students are required to have a machine which supports sound, as many of the web pages are annotated with audio clips. Occasional videoconference discussions between UBC and Monterrey are an additional medium of communication for those students who are based at these institutions. One of the courses, "Selecting and using technologies for distributed learning" uses the web plus a CD-ROM to enable participants to analyze and apply criteria for selecting and using educational technologies. The program draws heavily on the extensive experience of the course team as well as the research literature in the field. Tutors are supplied from the course team, but adjunct faculty around the world are also used. Twenty students are assigned to each tutor. There are two main streams of enrolment in these courses, one for certificate-credit and one destined for graduate credit. Participants have a choice of fully participating as a regular student or as an audit student in both streams of enrollment. Participants who earn a minimum final grade of 60% in each of the five courses will be awarded a UBC graduate "Certificate in Technology-based Distributed Learning.' However, participants may also enroll in a single course without the intention of completing all five. Following academic approval from the Faculty of Education, participants who qualify for entry as a graduate student for UBC's Faculty of Education may also apply credit from these courses towards the Faculty's Masters in Education. The tuition fee per course is $695 (Canadian), however the complete cost with text books, delivery and taxes is between $850 and $900 (Canadian), depending on location. The courses have fixed start and finish dates, and each lasts for 13 weeks. The full program can be completed in 2 years and 4 months.

Case Study 8: Globalization. The Virtual University of Monterrey

The Virtual University of the technological system of Monterrey (http://www.sistema.itesm.mx/english/uv.htm) is a Education Institution based in Teaching Learning systems that operates throughout the more advanced communication technologies and electronic networks. Aiming to support the technological campus and to provide training/education in different context in Mexico, Latin America, United States of America and Canada the Universidad Virtual (UV) offers courses at professional, Masters, Doctorates, and Continuing Education levels. In order to provide the students with knowledge and with tools for their own development, the UV has put in practice in all its courses educational models that convert the process centered in teaching to a process centered in collaborative learning. In this context the teacher, more then the teaching role, is responsible for designing experiences, exercises and activities that improve the collaboration processes. Throughout collaborative learning it is desired that the student: Learn by them selves

Learn from their colleagues through conversations and discussions Solve problems in a collaborative way. The UV at the moment has three satellite channels that connect it with 8 countries. They offer 150 courses by semester and 500 hours of satellite transmission per week. This system allows the UV to have 29,887 students in the American Continent. The tools provided for the students and teachers in their courses are: World Wide Web E-mail discussion groups (hypernews, Netscape news, etc.) online conferences (chat) FTP Learning Space CD-ROMS One Touch Interaction Remote Systems Satellites Systems Videos Videoconference The UV network is composed by 14 emission sites at the following campus: The Monterrey Technological Campus and the Universities of Carnegie Mellon and Thunderbird (USA), Universities of Waterloo and British Colombia (Canada) and the Universidad Pontificia Catolica de Chile. There are 730 receiving sites:69 that offer degree level courses and Pos-graduate, 95 offer programs for the development of teachers, and 566 use programs from Aula Virtual Empresarial ( Entrepreneurs Virtual Class) The UV counts also with 18 associated sites: University of Texas, Georgia Institute of Technology, Stanford University, San Francisco State University, University of Wisconsin, Mount Royal College, Purdue University, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, George Mason University, Simon Fraser University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of British Colombia, Brown University, University of California, Universidad de Belgrano, Universitat de Aalaborg.

Competitiveness In their competitive analysis of key international providers of online post-secondary education, Massey and Curry (1999, iii) state: Most institutions or consortia have not identified international markets as an initial priority. For U.S. institutions, this may be the result of a large domestic market. For Stanford Online, TechBC, Illinois, and Indiana, the local area was considered the prime geographical market. The danger in thinking locally is that a provider may be

unprepared for a competitive threat from outside that region. Stanford Online is already looking to exploit its existing client base to become more national. The CISAER survey indicates that institutions in Europe (60.8%), North America (21.5%), and Australia with New Zealand (7.7%) overwhelmingly outnumbers institutions in South America (3.1%), Asia (3.1%), and Africa (0.8%). Even though the researchers have a better knowledge of Europe, North America, and Australia than they have of the rest of the world, the survey testifies that these continents overwhelmingly dominate web-based education. North America dominates the world of online education. Some of the reasons for this dominance are the well developed Internet infrastructure, the economic strength of the educational providers, the international dominance of the English language, the well developed university systems, and the famous brand-name universities. The linguistic diversity in Europe is problematic for global competitiveness. Hence, UK providers seem to have a more international approach than providers in other European countries. Different national systems of degrees, certificates, and grades also make it more difficult to compete globally. A European harmonization of these systems will increase the competitiveness. Further, unlike North America, higher education in Europe is largely state funded, and this could resist change and become a barrier to competitiveness. The most obvious example is that national regulations in countries such as Sweden and Germany prevent institutions from charging tuition fees. The Australian institutions are among the largest and most advanced in this analysis. Since the courses also are provided in English, Australian institutions should be very competitive in the emerging global market.

Chapter 4. Institutional Issues in Online Education This chapter discusses the number of online courses and subject areas offered by the institutions and the number of online students they have. Finally, various categories of institutions that offer online education are presented and discussed. Number of Online Courses Per Institution Table 5 shows that a large number of the institutions offer quite few courses. As many as 30 (23.1%) institutions report to have only one web-course, and 60 (46.2%) institutions report to offer less than 5 courses. From this, one can infer that much of the activities are experimental and not pivotal for the institutions. Table 5. Distribution of institutions per number of courses Number of courses 1 2-4 5-15 16-99 100No answer Sum

Number of institutions 30 30 28 28 4 10 130

Percent 23.1 23.1 21.5 21.5 3.1 7.7 100.0

Only four institutions reported to have 100 courses or more. These were The Open University of the Netherlands [54] with 360 courses, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid [83] with 200 course, New York Institute of Technology On-Line Campus [124] with 105 courses, and Maricopa Community Colleges [123] with 100 courses. The Open University of the Netherlands [54] (Case Study 4) (http://www.ou.nl) claims to have 360 courses and 2500 students. All courses have general web-services, some more (fully online). Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (CEPADE) [83] (http://www.cepade.es) reports to have 200 courses and 1600 students. CEPADE is the Business School from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (U.P.M.) and it is responsible for Master and Specialization courses on Enterprises Administration at distance, using the Internet. As support of the CEPADE Virtual Campus the FirstClass application is used, and virtual classrooms and study rooms are created for each course enabling the collaborative learning. The certification of CEPADE is provided by U.P.M and the center has been working on distance learning environments since 1972. Maricopa Community Colleges [123] (http://www.rio.maricopa.edu) in the U.S. reports to have approximately 100 courses. Course material is provided on the web. Instruction, assignments and some of the examinations are conducted online using the FirstClass system which can be accessed via a web browser. The above site also has a 'Visitor's Center' which gives access to sample lessons. The FAQ on online courses also provides background information for potential applicants.

Case Study 9: Institution with many courses. The New York Institute of Technology

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Robin Mason. The New York Institute of Technology On-Line Campus [124] (http://www.nyit.edu/olc) states that it has 105 courses. All courses are conducted through the Caucus computer conferencing software. Caucus is a fully-integrated web-application allowing text, graphics, audio and multimedia activities. Participants will require TCP/IP connection and a web browser to enroll in any of the courses. Participants do not need prior computer conferencing experience. A prerequisite to all online undergraduate courses is an introductory course entitled "English 1006, Introduction to Computer Conferencing". In 1985, NYIT introduced the On-Line Campus Program in order to provide all students, regardless of location or time constraints, an opportunity to complete an undergraduate degree. These courses used set text books, print material and a computer conferencing system for interaction between the tutor and student. Recently, NYIT expanded its online program into the graduate division with the introduction of 8 MBA courses as the first step towards a fully integrated Web-based MBA. The On-Line MBA program provides an opportunity for students to interact and exchange ideas among themselves and with an experienced, professional faculty who bring reality and real-world applications to each class. Up to 100 other courses are offered which make some use of the Web, for example: Behavioral Science, Business, Interdisciplinary Studies; Telecommunications, and Hospitality Management. One course, Introduction to computer conferencing is offered four times a year. The primary use of the web in the Online Campus program is for computer conferencing.

Some courses are beginning to provide tailor-made Web pages for the existing â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;onlineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; courses. The web site offers easy ordering and paying for set books, through an associated book store. Interestingly, the web site also has a place for perspective online teachers to register interest in tutoring for NYIT. Students are assigned a tutor who interacts and marks assignments. Most courses are available for credit and it is possible to obtain an undergraduate degree through NYIT Online Campus. Graduate degrees are also being added to the offerings: M.Sc. and M.BA. for example. The cost of courses is as follows: $50 application fee $345 per credit for undergraduate courses $413 per credit for graduate courses Start and finish dates are fixed, but some courses have several starts each year.

Number of Online Students Per Institution There were 49 (37.7%) institutions that not reported their student numbers. Some answered that the number was not applicable as the courses are on an open web site. Others were in the process of recruiting students for the courses. As shown in Table 6, 38 (29.3%) of the institutions report that they have 100 or fewer students. As discussed in the paragraph about the number of courses the institutions offer, the relatively low enrolment numbers also indicate that web-based instruction is not pivotal to these institutions. Table 6. Distribution of institutions per number of students Number of students 1-30 31-100 101-999 1000No answer Sum

Number of institutions 21 17 26 17 49 130

Percent 16.2 13.1 20.0 13.1 37.7 100.1

The four institutions that reported to have more than 5000 students were the University of South Australia [5] with 8000 individual subject enrolments, the Edith Cowan University [12] with an enrolment of 8000 students, The UK Open University [108] with 7000 students in three courses, and the Lund Virtual University [89] that claims to have 6000 students. The UK Open University [108] (http://www.open.ac.uk) reports to have 7000 students in three courses. The Open University is a dedicated distance teaching institution with students across Europe and in some cases even worldwide. It uses the Internet in a range of ways depending on the nature and level of the course. Nearly 40,000 students use computer conferencing on courses across most disciplines in the University for tutorial support, self help groups, and general networking. Rather fewer courses use the web and those which do (e.g. a large introductory computing course, another introductory Information Technology course, and several courses in the Open Business School) use it as an additional course resource, rather than the primary content delivery medium. One course - the second year of the Masters in 53

Open and Distance Education Program uses the web extensively. Combined with a web conferencing system, this course is based on collaborative activities, online assignments and web resources. The Institute of Educational Technology which runs the course also provides short online train-the-trainer courses, using the web as the primary delivery medium for subjects such as the educational use of multimedia, the web and computer conferencing. Further details are available at www-iet.open.ac.uk. Edith Cowan University [12] <12> (Case Study 3) (http://www.cowan.edu.au) is a university in Perth, Western Australia. The university's virtual campus for web-based training has an enrolment of 8000 students in over 120 units in more than 30 courses. 15.000 of the university's 20.000 students have access to the web for library and other services. As of August 1998, 5 courses are completely web-based. Focus is on interactive learning environments which are supported with chat rooms, discussion boards and listervs. Course notes are provided online in a variety of formats including html and pdf. Many units contain media enhancements such as video, animation and sound. Access to other academic resources such as library and study skills support are provided. Administrative services such as enrolment, timetables and access to personal records of progress are also available. The Lund Virtual University [89] (http://lvu.lu.se) claims to have 6000 students and 80 courses. The Virtual University is under construction as a common project for distance education at The Lund University in Sweden. Case Study 10: Institution with many students. The University of South Australia This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Desmond Keegan. University of South Australia [5] <5> (http://www.unisa.edu.au) had 8000 individual subject enrolments on the web in 1998. They have plans to increase the figure dramatically in 1999, as potentially every student in the university will be able to do some subjects on the web. Web-based provision will be available in practically any area of the university's curriculum. They report to have over 70 courses at may '98. The courses include a range of web offerings from simple text delivery with teacher-student communication, to complete delivery of interaction with enhanced graphic capability.

This web provision is from the Division of Education, Art and Social Sciences of the University of South Australia. 60 students enrolled. 20 to 30 of these are Ph.D. candidates from Canada and the rest are in Australia studying for the university's Bachelor of Education

(InService). The web is used for teaching and tutorials. They don't place materials on the web but use threaded web pages for chat pages and web conferences in real time with the students typing in their contributions - the only delay is the typing as it comes up on the ICQ system. The web is used together with other media: audio, text-based, and teleconferencing. The web is used for interactivity. No video clips, but central university facility will assist in this. They use Netscape and our IT people produce our own database system from that. The web is used for one-online, one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many communication with threaded web pages for student communication and Internet resources for student research. They are developing tutoring systems and using hyperlinks to other web sites and between students, captioned 'have you seen this?'. There are no web-based assignments. All by projects which are print-based. They don't like assessment on the web and are conscious of security issues. Continuous assessment is preferred to examinations. The Ph.D. is almost totally on the web. The B Ed (In-service) is available on the web in some subjects. The B Ed has a fixed start and a fixed finish. The Ph.D. is flexible throughout. Same costs as any other higher education degree in Australia. Basically $50 per point for a 36 point degree is $1800. From what the interviewee has seen, there are a lot who want to use the web, both students and staff. He has just done two evaluations and it works. The trouble is that staff are not getting the training and staff have real problems teaching on the web without the necessary training. This is seen in the context of further rationalization in Australian higher education in which most universities have lost a lot of staff. Students have serious problems of access and staff do not know how to use the web.

Subject Areas In the CISAER fill in form, the question about the curriculum areas of courses using web was open ended. Consequently, the answers were interpreted and coded by the researcher, and it was not always obvious which category the reported curriculum areas belonged to. The courses were categorized according to the subject areas provided in the specialties list of National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates July 1, 1997, to June 30, 1998. The same categories were used by Paulsen (1998, 139) in a survey of 150 online teachers and the courses they taught online. As shown in Table 7, the courses in the survey are dominated by courses in Computer and information sciences or Mathematics (56 institutions), Professional fields (45 institutions), Humanities (36 institutions), and Education (34 institutions). The professional fields cover a number of areas including Business Management, Communications, Law. Similarly, the humanities cover a wide range of subjects including courses in museumology, language 55

courses, history, music, art and social sciences. However, the field of education is much more limited in scope. Table 7. Distribution of institutions per subject area Subject area Computer and information sciences or Mathematics Prof. fields: Business Mgmt., Communications, Law Humanities Education Health sciences Physical sciences Engineering Psychology and social sciences No answer Biological sciences Agricultural sciences Too general to categorize Sum

CISAER CISAER Paulsen Occurrences Percent Percent N=130 N=130 N=150 56 43.1 30.0 45 34.6 16.0 36 27.7 12.7 34 26.2 24.0 16 12.3 6.0 12 9.2 2.7 9 6.9 2.0 8 6.2 3.3 7 5.4 0.7 3 2.3 2.0 2 1.5 0.7 7 5.4 235 180.8 100.1

Many of the institutions in the CISAER catalogue offer courses in several subject areas, so the sum of occurrences are higher than the number of institutions listed in the catalogue. This is also the reason why the sum of the CISAER-percentages is higher than 100. Among the courses categorized as courses in computer and information sciences or mathematics, only 11 institutions reported to have courses about mathematics. Primarily, the mathematics courses were offered in addition to other courses about computers and information technology. These eleven institutions were: The African Virtual University [4] (Case Study 1), Helsinki University [32], Verkmenntaskolinn a Akureyri [41], Bergen College of Education [60], UNED [81], Brigham University [112], Heritage Online [120], Marcicopa Community Colleges [123], New York Institute of Technology [124], University of Maryland University College [128], and Virtual Online University [130]. Agricultural sciences (2 institutions) and Biological sciences (3 institutions) were the subject areas with fewest reported web offerings. However, there is a very broad range of subjects offered in online courses as shown in Table 8.

Table 8. Examples that show the broad range of courses offered online Accounting [115] Administration, Geography, Psychology, Sociology, Management [26] Animal Health, Arts, Music [38] Anthropology, Food and Nutrition [123] Aquaculture, Religion [66] Astronomy [20] Biology [93] Chemistry [32] Community Education [113] Drug Addiction Counseling [98] Effective Written Communication [121] Electrical Engineering [18] Elementary Statistics [85] Environment, Political Sciences [19] Ergonomics [17] European Studies [33] Greek [29] Journalism [65] Law, Human Resource Management [31] Local History, Immunology [110] Media and communication [30] Nursing [22] Ophthalmology [126] Scottish Literature, Popular Physics [97] Social Behavior, Childcare, Museumology [16] Spectrum Management [1] Speech [124] Welding supervision [7] From this, one may conclude that there is a dominance of web-courses in the fields of computer and information sciences and by courses in education. In addition to these two fields, web courses cover a very broad range of subjects. The same conclusions were made in a survey of 150 online teachers (Paulsen 1998, 139). Institutions that Offer a Broad Range of Subjects The number of subject areas that was offered varied considerably between the institutions. Nearly half of the institutions (56) offer courses in only one category and only five offered courses in five or more categories. These five were: Verkmenntaskolinn a Akureyri [41], NKI Nettskolen [58], Maricopa Community Colleges [123], New York Institute of Technology On-Line Campus [124], and University of California Berkley Extension [127]. In addition, a few institutions presented general answers in which the subject areas was not possible to categorize. Examples of such answers are: "most areas offered" [5, 10, and 89] and "all courses" [67, 82, and 87]. Verkmenntaskolinn a Akureyri [41] (http://hyrna.ismennt.is/) in northern Iceland reports to have many courses in 36 subjects. In many of these courses the web is used quite extensively.

In all of them, web-based work is in progress to a different extent. Various material pertaining to the teaching touching on all these courses has been placed on the web. All the courses are at the high school to college level. More courses will be added in the coming semesters. NKI Nettskolen [58] (http://www.nettskolen.com) in Norway reports to have 60 courses and 1000 students. The undergraduate level courses are: Information technology (15 courses), Business administration (13 courses), Teacher training (6 courses), Philosophy (4 courses), Psychology (8 courses), and a number of other courses. The secondary level courses are: Language and science (7 courses). NKI has offered online distance education courses since 1987. NKI Nettskolen is designed so that distance students can do all their communication online. The philosophy of NKI Nettskolen has always been to offer programs that are independent of time and space through a system that facilitates flexible communication for administrative, social, and teaching purposes. Pedagogisk Senter [67] (http://www.karmoyped.no/transpro) in Norway reports to have 30-40 students in 5-6 courses that cover all subject areas as cross curricular projects in primary and lower secondary schools. The initiative is characterized by: 1. Disseminate experience and develop strategies in using the project method as a way of learning. 2. Implement the project method in transnational projects 3. Disseminate experience and develop strategies for using ICT in transnational teleprojects. 4. Design and plan involvement in future transnational teleprojects. 5. Educational application of Internet with students, peers and course organizers. After the initial in-service course, participants will be given an online course on the educational use of the Internet. This course is a collaborative course involving the Royal Danish School of Education in Denmark, the Highland Council in Scotland, Charles University in Tsjekkia, and Pedagogisk Senter in Norway. A good example of a transnational project involving schools in scarcely-populated areas can be found at http://home.sol.no/~feoey/islands.htm. UNED â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Departamento de Ingenieria Electrica, Electronica y de Controlo [82] (http://www.uned.es/proyectos/ing/demos.htm) focuses on design and development of a distributed educational environment for distance teaching scenarios. The DEMOS project seeks to increase the number, and quality, of all the possibilities to provide administrative and academic support to UNEDÂ´s students. The professors responsible for the project have pinned down three possible potential DEMO users: based-students, based-students with better means, and center-based students. Generally, the DEMO project will function in the following way: It will have an information and administration office. The users will find in this office an access authorization, general information about DEMOS and a detailed reference of the services available. Having gone through the information and administration office, the student can access several sections within the UNED, for example: Virtual Library, Virtual Bookstore, and Distributed Virtual Classroom. In the latter section the student is connected online through computer terminals. This allows the student to share applications, tools and material (text, programs, images, audio, and video). The student may also make multi-point videoconferences. The teacher's virtual office is also important because of the tele-tutoring student/teacher service. At last, the student can access the Coffee Room where contacts with other students can be done developing discussion groups, newsgroups via e-mail. 58

Case Study 11: Institution with a broad range of subjects. The Macquarie University

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Desmond Keegan. The Macquarie University [10] (http://www.mq.edu.au/) in Australia claims to have 4000 students and 50 courses in most areas offered. The University reports a wide variety of provision characteristics. At the first level, it involves administrative information about the course, some course content, links to other resources, e-mail contact to staff for more information, etc. At the second level, there is compulsory usage of the web by all students, generally with a wider variety of content, learning resources and interaction, the latter often including virtual tutorials and discussion forums (either synchronous or asynchronous). At the third level, the course is essentially managed via the web, with a substantial proportion of content, learning resources, and interaction provided this way. Macquarie University is in Sydney. The web courses are offered through the Flexible Learning Plan. More details can be found at e.learning@ macquarie. 60 courses are offered on the web with 4.000 enrolled.

The web is used for presentation, communication, administration, and teaching with uses increasing all the time. Level 1 involves administrative information about the course, some course content , links to other resources and e-mail contact to staff for more information. At Level 2 there is compulsory use of the web by all students, with a wider variety of content, learning resources and interaction, including virtual tutorials and discussion forums (either synchronous or asynchronous). At Level 3 the course is essentially managed via the web, with substantial content, resources and interaction on the web. The media emphasis is on www plus paper or all on the web. The ideal is the optimum use of the various media available and this generally means paper plus the web. The web is used for content, interactivity, sound, and video. There is some Java. There is a heavy emphasis on audio. They are converting our whole library of audiocassettes from the distance learning courses to the web. Real Audio is being use as an interim system but we are developing our own audio system for the web and will not be buying anything off the shelf. The web is used for one-online, one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many communication. We are using WebCT and this meets most of our interim needs. Macquarie has a very big computerized administration system but this needs upgrading and because there is no easy solution, we are maintaining our own wbt administrative system and this will eventually be integrated into the new university computerized administration system. The web is used for human tutoring, machine tutoring, and group tutoring in accordance with the course requirements. They do not support peer assessment. TMAs and CMAs and examinations are all used extensively. The university's degrees are offered over the www with some post graduate diplomas. Undergraduates pay the same Federal Government fees as on campus students. Postgraduate students courses are fee paying in accordance with Australian university structures and the market. Enrolment is characterized by fixed start and fixed finish. The web is an area of very rapid growth. At the moment we are carrying out a university wide inventory to find out the full scale of what is being offered. This is a mature and stable provision of university degrees via the www with considerable experimentation. We are breaking down any distinction between on campus students and distance education. Irrespective of student location, the student can get the same course with the same level of support for the same degree, and can study on the web whether on campus or not.

Categories of Institutions that Offer Online Courses The intention with this section of the report is to study if the various categories of institutions have different approaches to web-based education. Table 9 shows that none of the institutions were classified as virtual or online universities. Further, 78 (60.0%) of the 130 institutions belong to the university and college sector. There are 13 institutions (10.0%) that belong to the traditional open university and distance 60

education sector. There were only 12 institutions (9.2%) classified as companies or corporations. None of the institutions seem to provide enough online courses and support services that this analysis would characterize them as virtual or online universities. Table 9. Distribution of institutions per category Type of institution Virtual and Online University University University Department or Center College Open and Distance Teaching University Distance Education Institution Consortium Company or corporation Secondary education Organization or Association Undefined Sum

# Institutions 0 9 55 14 10 3 7 12 2 12 6 130

Percent 0 6.9 42.3 10.8 7.7 2.3 5.4 9.2 1.5 9.2 4.6 99.9

In the following paragraphs, the characteristics of provision for each of the types of institution is discussed based on a qualitative text analysis of the information received from the openended question in the fill-in form. Virtual and Online Universities Aoki and Pogroszewski have developed a virtual university reference model in which they state: "The term, virtual university, has been overused without paying due attention to its meaning. Many have used the term referring to online courses, i.e., courses offered through the Internet at a distance. Some have used the term referring to online course catalogs, i.e., electronic databases of online courses. Here, the term, virtual university, is defined to be the infrastructure for providing students with a learning experience and related support services to complete a degree program partially or totally online and for providing faculty members with resources for teaching and doing research effectively online." (Aoki and Pogroszewski, 1998) In addition, one may argue that a virtual university must have a substantial number of online students and a broad range of online courses. A number of institutions used the term virtual or online university as a part of their name. Among these were The African Virtual University [4] (http://www.avu.org/), The Virtual University [16] (http://www.ibase.org.br/~ined/), Universidade Virtual [19] (www.universidadevirtual.br), The Virtual Online University [130] (http://www.vousi.com/intro/), The Virtual Open University [32] (http://avoin.helsinki.fi/), and The Lund Virtual University [89] (http://lvu.lu.se).

In all these institutions, the terms virtual or online university seems to be used to introduce an ambition rather than to describe the reality. None of these institutions seem to provide enough online courses and support services that this analysis would characterize them as virtual or online universities. These and other institutions that have ambitions to become virtual universities may study Massey and Curry's (1999, viii) ten critical success factors in building a virtual university: 1. Clearly define the mission of the Virtual University. If it is part of an existing university, ensure that the Virtual University fits and supports the institution's overall mission (for example, does it support faculty renewal, an institution's commitment to access? Revenue goals?). 2. Provide adequate capital to finance start-up and growth. 3. Define the institution's competitive advantage (price, quality, identifying a niche program, client service, convenience?) 4. Identify the primary client groups and the complete programs that meet their needs. 5. Invest in top quality offerings by employing first-rate faculty, first-rate learning technology and approaches and by continually monitoring quality. 6. Use a learner (client) centered pedagogical model. 7. Develop sound marketing strategies for growth (International markets? Offerings of new programs? Developing a new client base?) 8. Create a common learning delivery approach through faculty training and institution-wide platforms. 9. Provide comprehensive administrative resources for students and instructors. 10. Implement centralized service standards to ensure responsiveness.

Universities The institutions categorized as universities offer web-courses from a number of institutes or departments. From the catalogue entries and the interviews, it is hard to find universities that have succeeded in carrying out a broad strategy or policy to offer web-based courses. This is supported by Massey and Curry (1999, ii) in their competitive analysis of key institutional providers of post-secondary education: The biggest surprise in studying this group of providers, particularly pronounced in the single institution providers, was the lack of an institutional strategy for online learning initiatives. Institutional strengths and market research did not appear to play a role in decisions on what programs to launch online. Very few providers have set aside capital to finance an online strategy and most were bootstrapping online initiatives from foundation grants and online program revenues.

Among the institutions characterized as universities were The Middle East Technical University [93], The Brigham University [112], and The University of California (UC), Berkeley Extension [127]. The Middle East Technical University [93] (http://www.ii.metu.edu.tr/metuonline) reports to have 1000 students and 13 courses in the subject areas: MIS, Physics, Computer science, Biology, Environment science, and history. Additional courses are also being developed. The courses are in English. The University, especially the President supports the online courses to the full extent. The Brigham University [112] (http://coned.byu.edu/is/index.html) has 26 courses in: Accounting, Arts, Literature, Management, Humanities, Political Science, Religion, Mathematics, and Social Sciences. One personal enrichment, 7 high school, and 18 university courses are offered. All courses are web-based. Once registered, participants also receive a CD-ROM with multimedia resources for the particular course, the course instructor also guides the participants to other course-related web-sites and there is a bulletin board for discussion. All assignments (except the exam) can be completed online and participants have access to BYU's Independent Study's Grade Check system which allows participants to check their grades and progress. The University of California (UC), Berkeley Extension [127] (http://www.unex.berkeley.edu:4243/) has 800 students and 47 courses in: Arts and Humanities, Business, Library and Information Science, Computer Science, Education, Natural and Health Sciences. UC Extension Online is a collaboration between University of California Berkeley Extension and the Center for Media and Independent Learning (CMIL). Online courses involve one-to-one interaction with the instructor, group interaction with other students and instructor and sometimes online group activities. Features of an online course include a course message board, chat room, online syllabus and links to online resources. In addition there are lecture notes which may be online or in print. Students will require access to the Internet and a web browser together with an ichat plug-in. Other recommended plug-ins are: Real Video/Audio Player, Macromedia ShockWave, and Acrobat Reader. Case Study 12: University. The University of Exeter This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Robin Mason. The University of Exeter is a large, established research university and one of its specialties is teacher training. A wide range of Web courses is currently offered: Business Studies courses, ICT courses, Library and Teacher Education courses. The most impressive offering is the Virtual Study Centre, a consortium with Finland, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal and the UK. Some courses are entirely Web based, such as the Librarians course; others use paper and CDROMs, such as the Teacher Education courses. Across the range of courses offered, all aspects of the Web are exploited: sound, video, Java and all kinds of interactivity. Similarly, all types of communication are supported: student-student, student to institution, and studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; individual work online. Furthermore, external examiners, researchers and policy makers also have appropriate access. All forms of tutoring are supported: human, machine and group tutoring. A number of courses use peer tutoring.

Courses use tutor marked assignments and have examinations. Degrees such as BPhil and MEd are offered as well as a Certificate in Advanced Professional Studies. A few courses offer a statement of course completion. Specific examples include the European Computer Driving License and various NVQ qualifications. The cost of courses varies tremendously according to the nature of the accreditation and length of the course. On the whole, full student costs are not charged. The courses have fixed start and finish dates.

University Departments or Centers A large number of the institutions were categorized as a university department or center. The entries in this category seem to be dominated by a range of creative projects and experiments to learn more about web-based education. The projects seem to be more experimental than strategic. Among the institutions characterized as university departments or centers were Pontif铆cia Universidade Cat贸lica do Rio de Janeiro [18] and The Acadia University [20]. Pontif铆cia Universidade Cat贸lica do Rio de Janeiro [18] (http://www.maxwell.lambda.ele.pucrio.br/) is a Brazilian university with 110 students and 6 courses in electrical engineering. The Maxwell project is under development by the Electrical Engineering Department. The site has been used as a support to regular undergraduate and graduate courses which are taught on campus. External users have access to the site. Next semester the number of courses is expected to be 12 and the number of students to be over 200. The Acadia University [20] (http://webster.acadiau.ca/conted/courses) in Canada offers 2 courses in astronomy. The primary resources for both courses are textbooks. For some parts of the courses an 'observing handbook' will be required. A shareware 'sky program' (available by ftp on the Internet) will be used for planning observation session and for simulating the sky configuration of planets and comets. Links will be made to web resources which provide recent information and images. Students questions and assignments will be dealt with through e-mail, and a newsgroup for each course is available for discussion between students and the instructor. A special web page will be maintained for course information and Internet links to interesting current happenings.

Case Study 13. University Departments or Centers. Birkbeck College

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Robin Mason. Birkbeck College is one of the many institutions, which make up the University of London. It specializes in adult education, though not primarily at a distance. The most outstanding course offered by the College on the Web is Principles of Protein Structure. It claims to be the first (at least in the UK) to be offered totally online for a global student body. The first pilot (free) version ran in 1994. Now it has been refined and made part of the fee paying, accredited course structure of Birkbeck. It was innovative and news worthy in its first instantiation and continues to be so. In 1997, it won the UCISA Web Award. The course is totally Web-delivered: presentation, communication, administration and teaching are all carried out on the Web. Students are referred to textbooks and papers, but a considerable amount of course content has been designed and produced specially for the Web. The course contains outstanding graphics, simulations and interactive teaching modules appropriate to the subject. When this course was first launched, it used a MOO for real time interaction. It still does. Consultants (experts in the field) are used in addition to tutors to engage in discussions and activities with students. As a global postgraduate course, the inputs of students form part of the tutoring/teaching of the course. However, each student is also assigned to a Birkbeck tutor. Assessment is by means of tutor-marked assignments and a final written examination. This must be taken under proctored conditions for students outside London. The course leads to the award of a University of London Advanced Certificate. The cost of the course is as follows: Students from the EU pay ÂŁ312

Overseas students pay £624 Industrial sponsored students pay £970. This is a nine month postgraduate course following the traditional British academic year (Oct - July). The start and finish dates are fixed.

Colleges The institutions categorized as colleges are in many ways similar to the category of university department or center. They are however more independent entities. Among the colleges were The Central Michigan University, College of Extended Learning [117], The Tromsø College, Faculty of Education [59], and Bellevue Community College <111>. The Central Michigan University, College of Extended Learning [117] (http://www.cel.cmich.edu/faq/home.htm) offers 18 courses in: Accounting, Astronomy, Business, Finance, Health, Journalism, Management, and Religion. Lecture materials, handouts, study guides and assignments are all online. Interaction with the instructor and other participants occurs through web-based bulletin boards, web-based chat sessions, web-based messaging and e-mail. The Tromsø College, Faculty of Education [59] (http://www.hitos.no/lutd/) in Norway has 70 students and 3 courses in computer science and environmental physics. The web is used as a medium for distribution of course materials and communication in a combination with students meeting at campus 3-8 times a year. It is primarily used for the distance learning students. They started the first experiments with Internet-based courses in 1992.

Case Study 14: College. Bellevue Community College

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Robin Mason. Bellevue is a community college in the State of Washington, specializing in evening and weekend courses as well as distance education programs. Bellevue College represents a typical extension of adult (evening) provision to distance taught courses on the Web. Currently most of their students on the Internet courses live locally, but they can cater for a global student body and expect this area to grow. The Web is used to carry the content of the courses as well as the discussions between students and tutors. The administration of the courses is also available on the Web. Most courses supplement the Web-based course content with set books or recommended readings. Students are expected to purchase these through Amazon.com or borrow from local libraries. One of the nice Web features used by Bellevue is a self guided test called â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Is Distance Learning for you?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; If the prospective student scores over a certain percentage, they can assume they will be successful as a distance learner. The Web pages make use of sound and video. Discussion forums are used for group interactivity and private e-mail to the tutor. Students are assigned to tutors who animate the discussions and mark assignments. Each course also has a final examination. As yet, this is

not Web-based. These Web courses provide credits which are transferable and can eventually lead to an undergraduate degree. The costs are as follows: â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

$20 in addition to the normal cost per credit hour ($250) to take a distance taught course. Non-credit program courses cost about $90.

The dates of the for-credit courses are in line with the traditional semesters. Students taking the non-credit program must still participate in set cohorts, but the dates are more flexible.

Open and Distance Teaching Universities The open and distance teaching universities are established to serve distance education students with their special needs. In many ways, the web is just another technology to serve the students. Hence, the web is not as revolutionary for open and distance teaching universities as it is for other universities. It is worth while to note that Massey and Corry (1999, ii) state that few providers [of online post-secondary education] developed an online strategy that contributed to an overall institutional mission. However, the exceptions were the open and distance universities. Among the open and distance teaching universities in the CISAER analysis were The Athabasca University [22], Open Learning Agency [26], the Open University of Hong Kong [28], Indira Gandhi National Open University [42], the Open University of the Netherlands [54], Universidade Aberta [71], UNED [80-82], and the UK Open University [108]. The Athabasca University [22] (http://www.athabascau.ca/html/courses/online.htm) in Canada offers 40 courses in: Information Science, Nursing, Social Sciences, Computer Information Systems, and Psychology. The course on 'Accessing Information' is print-based but it requires students to have access to a computer with modem. One of the units in the course deals with accessing information over the Internet including the web. Course work on nursing courses includes participation in e-mail, computer conferencing, and exploration of web-sites. An electronic reference shelf of web research and document sites is provided for the social science courses. Computing and psychology courses are developed for delivery using the web and computer-mediated communication. Athabasca University students have a choice of either studying courses as home study or as ViTAL (Virtual Teaching and Learning). A course package in ViTAL includes the software, Lotus Notes, and some print materials, i.e. textbooks. Depending on the course, students will download course materials from the ViTAL server or the electronic course materials will be included in the course package.

Case Study 15: Open university. The Open University of Hong Kong

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Desmond Keegan. The Open University of Hong Kong (HKOU) [28] (http://www.ouhk.edu.hk) reports to have 630 students in 4 courses on business information systems, Internet, and telecommunications. The Open University is at its experimental stage in using the Internet to deliver its courses. In addition to a print version of the course, Advanced Business Systems offers an electronic version, in which students can get access to the course materials stored in a server housed at the university, or through the Internet. Submission of assignments, return of marked assignments, discussion among tutors and students, e-mail facilities, online evaluation of the course, and a number of other administrative functions can be done through electronic means. As for the course Introduction to Internet, most of the course is in print form, although there is regular reference to and activities carried out on the Internet. There is one online study unit in which students study through logging on the Internet. Discussion groups and e-mail facilities are also provided for tutors and students of the course. The two CT courses are on telecommunications, and a lot of references for the courses are accessed through the Internet. Under the one country, two systems dispensation the university enjoys the same academic liberty as heretofore. The university has a center of excellence for Adult and Continuing Education which organizes its distance education program and has a range of distance education projects with other parts of China. The Open University is at an experimental stage

in using the web to deliver its courses and has 7 courses with an enrolment of 630. The web is used for presentation, communication and administration, but not all courses use all of these at the same time. Only some elements are on the web; it is not necessary to have all on the web. Hong Kong is a small city and it is not necessary to have all the material on the web. They use e-mail, bulletin boards and conferencing packages for communication. They use a client/server architecture using modems but not ISPs. They have some interactive components with a little synchronous activity. They use some sound and video, but not a lot. HKOU is a center of excellence for distance learning research and for distance learning course development. They have some Java and use Lotus Notes for our system. For the administration they have used Lotus Notes Net Learning Space and they do their own programming. They find that Lotus Notes cannot be modified and are now looking at WebCT. They make their own html pages. With regard to tutoring, the basis structure is lecturers doing the tutoring but they have some responses that are machine checked and the results electronically communicated to the students. HKOU does not have peer assessment. They have TMAs and CMAs marked by the computer and face-to-face examinations supervised in the examination hall. The courses are one subject courses in a degree program. They count for the award of the degree. The price is the same as other face-to-face universities. There is no extra fee for the internet. There are 120 credits in a degree and 10 credits cost $HK 9.000. For the courses on the internet they give the students the Open University distance learning materials as well. Enrollment is characterized by fixed start and fixed finish. One subject is a prerequisite of the next. In Hong Kong, the web is used for commerce. For education students still want print and not a computer monitor. Submission of assignments via the web is of growing importance. The web is very important for geographic extension of the courses to China. It is very convenient to deliver the materials via the web rather than shipping them.

Distance Education Institutions The distance education institutions are in many ways similar to the open and distance teaching universities. However, they do not have status as universities. Many of these institutions are originally correspondence schools that gradually have introduced other technologies as they became applicable to their distance education courses. Among the distance education institutions were the Center of Distance Learning [31], NKI [58], and the NKS Distance Education [65]. The Center of Distance Learning [31] in Denmark claims to have 5000 students in 41 courses within Information technology, Administration, Economics, Environmental studies, Law, and HRM. Center for FjernUndervisning (Center of Distance Learning) was established in 1997. It is a faculty within Randers Business College and is situated in the mid-eastern part of Jutland, Denmark. The faculty is managed by a group of 30 people that only operate within Distance Learning. They are currently among the largest providers of distance learning in Denmark. 70

Center for FjernUndervisning aim to help and educate people. Distance learning allows students, who work or who are geographically challenged, to achieve education at their own pace. The faculty believes that education should be available to everyone and nobody should be disadvantaged, due to their own particular circumstances. The major mission is to heighten the educational level and competence of the Danish population. All communication is done by e-mail (support also through telephone) and teachers are available 24 hours a day. Additionally the students have access to "StudyNet". StudyNet is an online education webbased training system where the students may test themselves and carry out self-assessment within the course syllabus. Furthermore there is a chat site, where other students can be contacted. The NKS Distance Education [65] (http://www.nks.no/nks) in Norway has 200 students and 10 courses in Web-design, Law, Journalism, Norwegian, History of Art, History of Ideas, Management. NKS Distance Education has been designing web-based courses since 1997, based on their experience with CMC-based courses over the past ten years. The web-based courses fall into three different categories: 1) Fully web-based courses, 2) Virtual classes, with a fixed starting and finishing point, 3) Partially web-based courses, where student interaction with tutor is web-based - as a minimum. Case Study 16: Distance education institution. NKI Department of Distance Education

This case study is a transcript of an interview with this author written by Torstein Rekkedal. Nettskolen is the brand name for courses on the Internet offered by the NKI Department of Distance Education. NKI is a private educational organization comprising: The NKI Department of Distance Education has about 12,000 students and 250 distance education programs and courses The Polytechnic College offers full-time and part-time undergraduate programs in Information Technology at four campus in Norway NĂŚringsAkademiet offers short courses and one-year-programs with emphasis on Information technology at about 20 local study centers throughout Norway. A standard structure for web courses is developed. WWW is used for distribution of static material that should be printed by students and for presentation of interactive course material. E-mail addresses to teachers and students are presented as links on web-based class rosters. WWW is used to present archives of class conferences. A web-based student administration system is developed to handle student registration, password management, inclusion in class rosters and class conferences etc. Simple use of multiple choice assignments, animation, and video is also included on the web. NKI Nettskolen offers nearly 60 web-based courses within the following programs: Information technology (15 courses) Information technology for teachers (6 courses) Business administration (12 courses) Psychology (8 courses) Philosophy (4 courses) High-school courses (7 courses) Miscellaneous (5 courses). NKI Nettskolen is powered by Netscape's servers. In addition we apply Listserv distribution lists and Mhonarcâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a program that reads listserv archives and displays them on the web. We have further developed a student registration system named SESAM. At the moment, we are developing services based on the Oracle database management system and a RealMedia server is recently installed for audio- and video applications. The use of media does not vary much between courses. Study guides, links, communication services etc. are provided via the web. Typically the courses include standard textbooks that are distributed via land-mail. Some courses require use of commercial software packages that students must purchase or free software that they could download via the web. The courses do not usually include any face-to-face sessions. NKI Nettskolen adhere to a model in which elements of tutoring are build into the web-based study guide. This means that detailed explanation, many examples, self-tests, model answers etc. are included in the study guides. In addition, communication with a personal tutor and access to peer-students are important elements of student tutoring. One-online techniques are not yet an important feature of our courses. They are mainly used by including links to external web-resources, by providing links to search engines, and by 72

asking students to search for information not provided in the course material. One-to-one techniques are pivotal in our courses. NKI has a long tradition with correspondence courses and individual communication between individual students and their tutor. This tradition and our pedagogical experiences as course designers, and administrative systems favor the use of one-to-one techniques. Hence, personal e-mail communication between individual students and their tutor is essential in our courses. One-to-many techniques are used by teachers who would like to give some information or feedback to all the students in the course conference. At NKI Nettskolen, the teachers do not give online lectures, since the course material is designed by a team of course designers before a course is introduced. Many-to-many techniques are applied in student presentations, project groups, etc. However, NKI Nettskolen has chosen to provide courses with individual start-up and progression. This model limits the opportunities for application of many-to-many techniques. All courses emphasize mandatory, mostly individual, assignments that are tutor-assessed. All courses also include self-tests. In addition, some courses include some use of computer assessed multiple-choice assignments and group assignments. In some courses, we apply some form of peer assessment through answers to assignments submitted to the class conference as a basis for feedback and discussion among students. There are formal exams in all courses. For final grading only the formal exams count. Most of the programs are developed as collaborative projects between NKI and a public university or college. This means that the accreditation is provided by the university or the college and that the net-based design and operation is handled by NKI. Most courses are undergraduate courses in which the course grade is based exclusively on the final examination. The examinations are typically four- or five-hour written exams that could be arranged at a local high school at candidate's request. A student who completes a course, but does not sit the exam receives a â&#x20AC;&#x153;statement of completionâ&#x20AC;?. In Norway, one year full-time study equals 20 credits. At NKI Nettskolen, the student fees are typically 150 euros per credit. These fees are meant to cover the actual costs of course development, administration, and teaching. This means that NKI Nettskolen emphasizes cost effective course design, administration, and teaching. With a few exceptions, all our courses are offered with flexible enrollment, the students can enroll at any time of the year. We also allow free progression, so that the students may have their individual progression schedule. NKI Nettskolen offers nearly 60 online courses. At the end of 1998, the college will have about 1,000 students. Together the students enrolled in more than 2,000 courses during 1998. The enrollment numbers have doubled every year for three years and we expect major increases in 1999 as well. The plans involve development of more courses and better administrative systems. This entails a broader range of subject areas and additional categories of students. We expect to increase collaboration with other institutions, especially in Norway, but also in Scandinavia, Europe, and North America.

Consortia The Internet has made it easier for educational institutions to collaborate and to form consortia. In addition, a number of national and international grants have initiated collaborative projects between institutions. However, many of these projects will probably cease to exist when the external funding stops. Massey and Curry's (1999) analysis of key institutional providers of online post-secondary education provides interesting case studies of the Western Governors University and California Virtual University (CVU). CVU has now ceased operation since the partners refused to provide the operating costs. Among the consortia in the CISAER catalogue were Nordisk NetthĂ¸gskole [3], The African Virtual University [4], a DIFF project [36], For. Com Consorzio Interuniversitario [49], CAFE MONDIAL [38], NITOL - Norway-net with IT for Open Learning [63], and the University of Stirling and Glasgow Caledonian University [109]. CAFE MONDIAL [38] (http://www.cafe-mondial.de) reports to have 900 students and 20 courses in: Information Technology, Multimedia, Web-Design, Health Care, Animal Health, Languages, Arts, and Music. CAFE MONDIAL is a European Consortium of universities, colleges, and private institutions providing professional training via web and Intranet systems. The consortium emerged from the EU telematics Applications Project CAFE MONDIAL UR1003. The students register via the web, and then receive a resource package containing literature, CD-ROM, CDs, and/or other media. They are then moderated by experts/tutors who stimulate the interaction, involve them in project activities, and provide additional support materials. One of the global objectives of each course is that moderators/experts help students and trainers to learn and work creatively, critically, and efficiently using web, Intranet systems, and other IT tools. Case Study 17: Consortium. NITOL

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Torstein Rekkedal. NITOL - Norway-net with IT for Open Learning [63] (http://www.idb.hist.no/nitol/) has 1300 students and 80 courses in several subject areas within engineering, teacher education, and information technology. Four independent institutions: Norwegian University of Science and Technology (courses in IT and Informatics), Stord/Haugesund College (courses in teacher training, information science, engineering, and nautics), Agder College (courses in engineering, IT, telematics, etc.), and Sør-Trøndelag College (courses in engineering, IT, business administration, etc.). The partners collaborate on course development as well as on practical arrangements. NITOL is a consortium of 4 Norwegian universities/university colleges for the purpose of providing open and distributed learning through Internet. Each institution remains independent. For all of the NITOL courses, web is used for distribution, presentation, communication, administration, teaching, and for creating an electronic learning environment. WWW is the backbone for all the NITOL courses, both for distribution of own material and for linking up to other existing material on the web. Standard textbooks supplement the material provided through the network. Netbased material includes graphics, simulations, animations, sound and video for some of the courses. Normally the courses are based on webbased material, developed for the particular course, supplemented by ordinary, printed textbooks as in the on-campus courses. Some courses may include video and audio materials that are distributed through Internet. Tutors give feedback on all questions and comments on e-mail and comments in “discussions groups” on the listserv. Assignments for submission are commented and corrected by a tutors. We do not use synchronous communication, because it damages the flexibility of the system. The types of communication applied are: one-online (single student using web material and information), one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many. All kinds of communication ICT based are involved. Most courses are assessed through tutor marked assignments during the course. Marking is for process evaluation and feedback. There are formal, written exams in all courses. For final grading only the formal exams count as they do for ordinary, on-campus students taking the same courses. The courses areas accredited as the ordinary university examinations and the equivalent courses on campus. Students who complete but do not sit the exam may receive a “statement of completion”. The course fee is the same for all NITOL students, fixed at 1 200 NKr/credit, i.e. for two semesters half-time=one semester full time (10 credits) the total fee paid by the student is 12 000 NKr, around 1 500 ecu. Normal enrolment at start of each term, i.e. January 15 or August 15. Additional enrolments are allowed during the terms, but exams are only arranged at end of terms, i.e. in December 75

and June. In total the 96 courses offered as web based courses enroll approximately 2 500 students this term, Autumn 1998, i.e. a total of 4-5000 course enrolments each year. Out of this approximately 60-70% are external (off-campus) students. (Some students are enrolled for 2-3 courses; the number corresponds to 800 - 1000 full time students.) The plans involve developing more courses and stick to asynchronous communication. However, there are no plans of changing to flexible enrolment dates and free progression. This is due to the emphasis on group communication and discussion as part of the learning process. We will look at possibilities of including more video, animations etc. as part of instructional material, and increasing the quality of discussion forums on the web.

Companies or Corporations The evolution of the web has made it easier for individuals and institutions to offer courses commercially on the Internet. Such initiatives were, however, not especially pronounced in the catalogue. This is probably due to the catalogue criterion stating that courses must not be private in-company training. Among the entries in this category were Management Training and Executive Development [15] in Belgium, Digito Formação [73], CyberCorp Inc. [116], DigitalThink [119], LR Communication Systems, Inc. [121], MBA International Institute [122], and The Virtual Online University [130]. Digito Formação [73] (http://www.digito.pt/formacao) in Portugal has 100 students in 3 computer systems courses. It is a private company that offers commercially courses in computer systems throughout Internet. Digito Formação is part of the enterprise Produções Digitais Online Ldª and it initiated the training activities in May 1998. DigitalThink [119] (http://www.digitalthink.com) offers 80 information technology courses on: C and C++ Programming, Database Concepts, Design & Publishing, Desktop, IT/Management, Internet Literacy, Java Programming, Microsoft Certification, Object Programming, Web Programming, and Windows Programming. DigitalThink contracts with best-selling authors and topic experts to create original content for web-based courses. In addition to the role played by the instructors, tutors answer e-mail messages and engage in threaded discussions and chat sessions with the students. DigitalThink sells Web-based courses directly from its web site and to corporate training departments. Course prices currently range from $125 to $450 per student. DigitalThink's training courses are offered for Continuing Education Units (CEUs) which are convertible to college credit under an arrangement that the company has with the University of Phoenix. The Virtual Online University [130] (http://www.vousi.com/intro/) offers 50 courses in History, Languages, Math, Science, Computers, MBA. Current course offerings are: Bachelor of Arts in History, Bachelor of Arts in English, Foreign Languages, Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Bachelor of Arts in Computer Aesthetics, and Master of Business Administration. The Virtual Online University Services International, Inc. (VOUSI) is a Virtual Corporation operating as a Corporate University. VOUSI encompasses three distinct 76

entities: VOUSI: the corporation - VOUSI offers training and consulting services for corporations and non-profit agencies globewide, with an emphasis on distributed complex systems management. VOUSI also sponsors Athena University and Athena Academy. Athena University - AU is a non-profit institution offering undergraduate and graduate programs in a fully online, fully interactive environment. Athena Academy - AA offers K-12 and home schooling services through a student-centered, constructivist learning community. Athena University electronic campus is built on a system called a Virtual Education. There are three main tools which currently make up the VEE: 1. The MOO (Multi-user Object Oriented) system enables participants to have meetings, discussions, and other real-time interactions in a virtual environment which is primarily text but which can also incorporate images, sound, and other media from the web. 2. The web enables Athena University to publish and access documents and multimedia materials - text, images, sound, video, applications, and more. The web gives access to a wide variety of information including academic papers, art, music, and news. It can also provide access to curriculum, schedules, administrative information, student assignments, and other internal materials. 3. E-mail is best used as a form of correspondence information exchange that cannot wait to be viewed on a web page. For instance, if a student wanted to send a note to someone asking them to meet on the MOO at a particular time, e-mail would be the way to do it. Or if an instructor wants the class to review some materials on the web before the next meeting on the MOO, e-mail can be used to notify the class and give them the webaddress for the materials. Case Study 18: Company. The MBA International Institute

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Robin Mason. The MBA International Institute has all the appearance of a diploma mill. An address is given in Cambridge, Mass. but no phone number or signs of being anything more than a one or two person organization. All indications are that this is typical of the kind of exploitation the Web has spawned. The basic offering of MBAII is free Web courses. In fact, these are a clear promotional platform for various authors to increase sales of their management books. Three complete Web courses are available on the site: Managing People, Managing for the Long Run and Accounting Principles. The ‘courses’ are in fact more like teaching clips, being no more than the equivalent of 10 pages of material. Recommended texts are promoted extensively as well as discounts on purchase of the books. Following the course content is a Web-based self assessment test with model answers provided. In short, the program seems to be a vehicle for selling books, through capturing the readers’ interest and making it easy to buy the books. The courses are absolutely free - there is no need even to register. No tutoring is provided, although there is provision for sending in comments about the courses to MBAII. There is no accreditation offered. As the courses are on an open Web site, it is possible to work through the materials anytime.

Secondary Education Institutions There were only two institutions that were categorized as secondary education institutions. These were the Pinelands High School [78] in South Africa and the National Institute for Distance Education [87] in Sweden. However, other institutions such as distance education institutions do offer secondary education courses as part of their course portfolio. The National Institute for Distance Education [87] (http://www.norrk.ssv.se), in Sweden reports to have 1000 students and 30 courses in all secondary level subjects. The institute has focused on the need of fast communication in distance education and therefore they are using conference systems in all courses. Moreover they are producing web-based study guides, so far in two subjects.

Case Study 19: Secondary education. The Swedish National Institute of Distance Education

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Torstein Rekkedal. The National Institute of Distance Education consists of two schools, one in Härnösand (started 1962) and one in Norrköping (started 1956). Most courses are on secondary level, complemented with other forms of distance education on demand from various customers. This case study is focused on the school in Norrköping. We are offering an flexible enrolment and examination based on individual progression schedule. Depending on the local possibility students may work in facilities in their neighborhood ”Studyshops”, governed by the local community in co-operation with us. From our experience we have chosen to focus on the interaction process in using ICT (information and communication technology). This means that we are mainly distributing static material by ordinary post in order to present a good structured material concerning layout and form. WWW as one form of using the Internet is used for communication and producing an interactive process, student - preproduced material and student - tutor. The main part of our courses is based on First Class, since the interaction is easily performed there. All courses are supported by First Class, apart from that we have produced some courses during the years in plain HTML supported by java-scripts. Recently we have decided to build our interactions on a web- platform, LEKTOR, produced by Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, Stockholm. The actual work on the course material will be done in a database, which is necessary in order to make it possible for the course-producers to continuously update the material. Concerning the student registration and administration we have during the two last years developed a system named SSVN 2000. Normally our courses are based on ordinary printed textbooks. We develop study guides on

the web, which are mainly text based. Some courses may include video and audio materials that are distributed on cassettes. Tutors give feedback on all questions and comments by using the communication system that the student prefers, which can be e-mail, normal post or comments in “discussions groups”. Videoconferences are important for discussion but also much used for examination. Assignments for submission commented and corrected by a tutor are central in tutoring. One-online are mainly used by including links to external web-resources, by providing links to search engines, and by asking students to search for information not provided in the course material. SSVN has a long tradition with correspondence courses and individual communication between individual students and their tutor. This tradition and our pedagogical experiences as course designers favor the use of one-to-one techniques. Hence, personal email communication between individual students and their tutor is essential in our courses. One-to-many techniques are sparsely used by teachers who would like to give some information to all the students in the course conference. Some tutors have tried to give online lectures, but the interest has been very limited, probably due to a less flexibility. Many-to-many techniques are also sparsely applied for example in student presentations, project groups, etc. However, SSVN has chosen to provide courses with individual start-up and progression. This model limits the opportunities for application of many-to-many techniques. All courses are assessed through tutor marked assignments during the whole course. Marking is for process evaluation and feedback. There are formal exams in all courses. For final grading the formal exams counts for the main part, but during the course students are assessed by various methods as ”home-experiments”. In some courses we apply some form of project, where the student is assessed by this work and not by a final grading. The typical examinations are four- or five-hour written exams that could be arranged at a local school at the student’s request, quite often combined with a discussion with the tutor by video-conference. The student receives a grade in exactly the same way as at a local held course. In the courses that are given as collaborative projects between SSVN and a community school, the local school sometimes does the examination on there own. If ”Studyshops” are used SSVN does the examination. No fees for the public, the same conditions are provided by the government as when a person is studying at a local school. With a few exceptions, all our courses are offered with flexible enrolment, the students can enroll at any time of the year. We also allow free progression, so that the students may have their individual progression schedule. Total number of students is approximately 12 000, where about 10% is studying by ITC. Working with development of distance-education or flexible learning shows a need for an open attitude in course-developers and tutors concerning the thinking about the meaning of learning and knowledge. This also goes for the school-system in general. Therefore we think it 80

is necessary to give opportunities for discussion and work with pedagogical subjects to establish the base for flexible learning. We have started to give seminars in these areas in will try to develop this further. During 1999 we will have all courses on web, based on LEKTOR still the focus will be interaction and not transport of information. The reason for using WWW is that we see an increase in the number of students using local ”Studyshops” and also an increasing interest from the market in using this method, for example has some factories made ”Studyshops” for their employed. We also see a need for collaboration on various levels within the educational system, both in Sweden and international.

Organizations and Associations The institutions characterized as organizations and associations represented a broad range of initiatives. Among them were International Telecommunication Union [1], the Community Learning Network [23], The Government of Cyprus [29], and the Pacific University College of Optometry <126>. The Government of Cyprus [29] (http://www.kypros.org/Greek) offers a course in learning Greek at an open web site. Kypros-Net, in conjunction with the Cyprus Broadcast Corporation, offers the possibility to learn Greek on the Internet. The course consists of 105 lessons contained in audio files plus a web board for student interaction. There is an English/Greek dictionary, spell checker, and downloadable Greek fonts. The Community Learning Network (CLN) [23] (http://www.cln.org/coop1/courses/online.html) in Canada offers 5 courses in telecommunications and teacher education at an open web site. CLN is designed to help K-12 teachers integrate technology into their classrooms. It offers annotated links to educational web-sites and develops its own resources. Several online courses on telecommunications topics of interest are included. Each of these courses is available on the CLN web-site for teachers to take at the leisure. Typically, each online course consists of 8 lessons. Each lesson will consist of explanatory and practical activities.

Case Study 20: Organization. The Pacific University College of Optometry

This case study is a transcript of an interview written by Robin Mason. Pacific University College of Optometry offers a series of continuing education courses for eyecare professionals. They are offered in conjunction with Optometry Today, a professional organization. The model of these courses is closer to professional resources and self-teaching than to a supported and tutored course. The Web is used for presentation and for teaching. There is no interaction or communication provided as part of the course. However, the courses are entirely self-contained on the Web. Sound and video clips are used as part of the teaching materials. Interactivity is offered in machine form, as feedback on multiple choice tests. No direct tutoring is offered. However, the Web site has a glorified email system for queries and comments about the courses entitled â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Step up to the Podiumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. There are no assignments, but each course has a multiple choice test of 20 questions. A passing grade is required to receive credit for the course. Accreditation is pending, Meantime credit is available after taking the multiple choice tests. Pacific University is negotiating with the State Boards throughout the US and Canada for accreditation for these online courses. The cost of each course is $50 for 3 credits. Obviously the start and finish dates are completely flexible. Undefined Category of Institutions The institutions that are listed as undefined are: LEB [2], The Irish Centre for Distance Education Research and Applications [47], NTI-Skolan [88], Abacus Learning Systems [94], Eloquence [95], and the California Distance Learning Project, Lifelong Learning Online [113].

Eloquence [95] (http://www.elok.com) provides French language training using distance learning methods. La Connexion Franรงaise is a French language course made up of 24 lessons and takes place entirely on the web. Over 6,000 sound clips, 500 color photographs, and searchable dictionary of over 4,000 commonly used words and phrases are available to students. The technology allows Eloquence to remain in constant contact with its students. One to one support is provided based upon an individual student's requirements and level of understanding. Students may enroll at anytime. California Distance Learning Project, Lifelong Learning Online [113] (http://www.otan.dni.us/cdlp/lllo/home.html) offers 28 community education courses on an open web site. These are web-based courses aimed at the general public. The courses range from Children and Alcohol Abuse, Crime, to Welfare to Work. All courses include multiple choice questions/activities and answers.

Chapter 5. Administrative Issues in Online Education It is easy to provide course material on the web and claim that it is online education. However, it is a far more demanding challenge to develop and administrate online colleges. An administrative system should be able to handle students, teachers, courses, and course material. An online college may have to handle thousands of students, hundreds of teachers, and a large number of courses with password restricted web pages, discussion forums, distribution lists, class rosters, and student presentations. It may also have to provide administrative systems for the dispatch of textbooks, handling of tuition and examination fees, and organization of local examinations. These services constitute a major challenge for many traditional institutions. A very simple example of administrative tasks that could be handled on the web is presented below: <12> Administrative use includes enrolment and students contacting the administration to find out their examination results. Institutions that plan to offer large scale and professional online education need an administrative system which is integrated with the web. To accomplish this, institutions may follow several strategies. The simplest strategy is probably to collaborate with an institution that already has a functional administrative system. Another solution, which requires more technical competence, is to develop an in-house system based on common Internet services. The third option is to purchase a standard system for online education. These standard systems are continuously being improved, but they may still need much local adaptation. They may only meet some of the administrative needs, and they could place some pedagogical limitations on the courses. No Web-based Administration A discouraging, but important observation is that a number of institutions do not use the web for administrative purposes: • • •

The internet is used for presentation and communication only <13>. All except administration. Administration will be developed in 1999 <5>. The primary use is communication with students; we do not use the web for administration <57>.

More elaborate statements also confirm a lack of web-based administrative systems: •

•

<35> We use the web for course administration, but this still causes quite some problems. We have decided not to use commercially or otherwise available software tools, e.g. Top Class and others. It is very difficult to find a good compromise between administration software and course software. Thus, for the time being not much have been done to develop an administrative system. <44> The www is used for all of the above except administration. The presentations on to the web are a valuable tool for a faculty who's objective is to teach the technologies used for this. Students can observe and try a number of very cutting edge technologies on the www presentations.

•

<78> The web is used for all the above except for administration. This is logical given the position of the web training courses in the high school. At this early stage in the project the emphasis has been encouraging these young students to use e-mail for exercises and communications. The materials are presented on the web but this environment must not be too sophisticated as students are of high school age. In this context much attention is given to encouraging a more or less linear progression through materials. This is done by minimizing links and frequent updating of materials. An initial function of the web based materials was to teach the students how to use their PCs and prepare them for web training by this means. <59> The students get a number of “lectures” on the web. These lectures are in text form with pictures (and graphics), no audio or video. Most of the subject matter is, for reasons of competition, hidden behind a password. There is also competition between state colleges, and it is experienced that it is too easy to copy if the learning material is open for everyone to see. I addition there is a “questions and answers” mailbox, open forum, manyto-many communication. Also assignment answers by students are sent to the open forum. Also IRC is used to some extent. Some subjects have “chat” facilities at a certain time every week. The web is not used for study administration. The system for student administration is on an older software platform. <62> SEU offers courses mainly to teachers in the ordinary school system, but this is changing. Presently there are mainly 2 courses making extensive use of the web….The course in sciences makes the most use of the web, where information, assignments, submissions and guidance, and also discussion groups are organized on the web. I. e. the web is used for presentation, communication and teaching, but not for administration (except that the administrative functions are using e-mail). At present no web based administrative system is applied. There are plans also to organize administrative functions on the web as a development project during the next year.

Collaboration or Outsourcing Outsourcing is an option that does not seem to be much used by the analyzed institutions. Only one instance was identified: •

Online Learning.net <125> is the umbrella provider of online courses for the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). The decision was taken to ‘outsource’ the hosting of these courses. The product chosen is Embanet, produced and run by a small Toronto based firm using FirstClass conferencing at the back end.

However, there are several examples of institutions that offer such services. Among them are eCollege.com (http://www.ecollege.com). In-house Development Many of the institutions have developed in-house administrative solutions in combinations with standard Internet software: •

<5> The courses use a combination of www plus paper plus face-to-face. The web provision ranges from simple text delivery with teacher-student communication, to complete delivery of interaction on the web. The university is using a corporate approach of developing its own system by using its very highly skilled technical staff. We will not be buying a proprietary kernel because it is too expensive when student numbers get high and because we would not pay a company for the use of the university's own intellectual 85

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• •

property. We will own our own servers and write code around an Oracle database. We have a low level base system with no sound or video, most materials are text based and we use Java Active server pages and Java for authoring and editing. <54> A large mixture. The actual StudieNet environment can be viewed as a static set of webs that build upon information that are stored and maintained in separate databases (student information, course database, ) with a base set of electronic provisions for all the 411 courses: mail, ftp (downloading software), discussion groups, descriptive information (comparable to course catalogue), news, etc. At the content level there still a lot of referring to the still predominant set of printed materials, videos, tapes, CD-ROM and CDaudio. Depending on specific course requirements, we add groupware (BCWS, real audio/video, audio graphics, etc. The introduction of StudieNet in all OUNL-courses builds upon materials that have been designed in line with the second generation paradigm of distance education in mind. This implies that most materials are still based on printbased sets of materials with extra media resources such as audio, video, CD-ROM, etc. The use of the StudieNet therefore focuses especially on coping with exploitation issues, such as, news, discussion groups and tutoring. But while revising, updating and making new courses, the StudieNet provision becomes the core of the course design and production. A good example is the course Visual Programming with Java that consists of a working book, a CD ROM and a complete web where students can find an online introduction, discussion groups, examples of Java-work, etc. <58> NKI Nettskolen is powered by Netscape's servers. In addition we apply Listserv distribution lists and Mhonarc—a program that reads listserv archives and displays them on the web. We have further developed a student registration system named SESAM. At the moment, we are developing services based on the Oracle database management system and a RealMedia server is recently installed for audio- and video applications. The use of media does not vary much between courses. Study guides, links, communication services etc. are provided via the web. Typically the courses include standard textbooks that are distributed via land-mail. Some courses require use of commercial software packages that students must purchase or free software that they could download via the web. The courses do not usually include any face-to-face sessions. <86> We have a Microsoft WindowsNT workstation as server platform, Microsoft FrontPage for designing our web-sites and the free software programs MS NetMeeting and Iparty (downloaded via the web) for communications. For two courses multimedia programs in Visual Basic are produced by us. All courses are based on ordinary printed textbooks as in on-campus courses. In some courses the text also is online and including multimedia programs. Each course is given once a year under a period of 8-10 weeks. In all courses two face-to-face sessions are included. In one course practical work face-toface or on distance are included. Study guides, links, communications services et cetera are provided via the web. <8> WWW plus other media: audio, text-based and teleconferencing. WWW for interactivity. No video clips but central university facility will assist in this. We use Netscape and our IT people produce our own database system from that. <12> The www plus other media. This could range from the www plus lecturing oncampus to the www plus CD ROM plus you name it for distance education. The www is used predominantly for content and for interaction between people. The student has a web page and initiates the CD ROM and or video clip through it. Basically ours is a homegrown system because we began teaching on the internet in 1992 and there was nothing available. We added Graphical User Interfaces in 1995. Our system is UNIX based and we use various bits of public domain software available on the internet. We have looked at the 86

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commercially available kernels but do not believe that they are better than our system. We do not believe that a system the size of ours, or what ours will shortly be, can be comfortably accommodated on a commercial kernel. Some of our academics use WebCT or Top Class for their own courses and we will provide student links to these, but the university Virtual Campus will remain our own development. <7> WWW plus CD ROM or WWW plus paper is the basic structure. Courses usually consist of a text based framework of information or textbooks, with the web used for synchronous or asynchronous communication. We use Microsoft products and Macromedia DreamWeaver. The Virtual Campus is written centrally by staff contracted by the Victorian Government. We don't believe that audio or video on the web are suitable for our type of student.

Standard Administrative Systems There are a number of standard systems for administration and development of online courses. Some of them are listed below: • • • • • • • • •

FirstClass (http://www.softarc.com) Lotus Learning Space (http://www.lotus.com) Next Generation Learning (http://www.sybase.com) TopClass (http://www.wbtsystems.com) Virtual U (http://www.vlei.com) WebCT (http://homebrew.cs.ubc.ca/webct) LUVIT (http://www.luvit.com) Web Course in a box (http://www.wcbinfo.com/) DisCo (http://www.udd.htu.se/dl/)

Further information on these and other systems is available online. It is not the role of this analysis to recommend any standard system. There are many analyses of them on the Internet. For instance, University of Minnesota Digital Media Center provides a 40-page analysis of four systems in the Web-based Authoring Tools Comparison Report (http://www1.umn.edu/dmc/portfolio/comparison/index.shtml). The analysis compares the systems with regard to: • • • • • •

information publishing, interaction tools, assessment tools, access to centralized resources for teaching and learning, ease of use, technical features.

However, the standard administrative systems that were mentioned in the interviews were FirstClass, WebCT, and Lotus Notes. The following statements included comments about FirstClass: •

<38> The web is used for presentation, communication, and administration. The virtual classroom is located in FirstClass Intranet-Servers integrated into the Web-environment. Youandi GmbH delivers approximately 12 types of web-based courses. Further courses 87

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(approx.30) are delivered by CAFE MONDIAL partners. Courses provided by Youandi GmbH and CAFÉ MONDIAL franchisees and members are presented on web. Students can automatically register and receive an ID and password to enter the virtual classroom located on FirstClass Intranet servers linked to WWW. <34> Mostly, the web is used for presentation of content, i.e. information to the students. Materials for the course like texts and research reports to be used in the seminars. Most of the courses have also built in discussion forums. In the actual course the assignments are on the web pages, and the participants are encouraged to talk to each other by e-mail, but mainly in the discussion forums. Commercial administrative system software, e.g. like FirstClass, is considered to be unsuitable and is not used. Software for web based communication is used. <87> From our experience we have chosen to focus on the interaction process in using ICT (information and communication technology). This means that we are mainly distributing static material by ordinary post in order to present a good structured material concerning layout and form. WWW as one form of using the Internet is used for communication and producing an interactive process, student - preproduced material and student - tutor. The main part of our courses is based on First Class, since the interaction is easily performed there. <75> The course is experimental and involves 50 students. The tools available generate dynamic HTML. The distance learning is based on First Class. This powerful tool for learning provides an environment characterized by discussion groups, conference rooms, e-mail and other facilities. WWW is used for presentation and communication. <106> The Web is only one of many online technologies used on the programs. Various groupware systems are used for synchronous and asynchronous interaction. Some are Web-based and others are not. Because the department does not have large resources to draw upon, systems such as FirstClass have been ruled out as too expensive. Some of the courses in the program make little or even no use of the Web; others use it for teaching and course presentation. <109> The Web is used for presentation, communication and teaching. Each student is assigned an Adviser whom they can contact by telephone or e-mail. The course content consists of Web pages plus key texts. A residential weekend at the beginning of the course is optional. The courses uses First Class computer conferencing through a Web browser, for student and tutor interaction. The tutor provides personalized online feedback on students’ work. Peer support is also encouraged. One innovatory aspect of this course is the use of an Answer Garden, as a form of machine tutoring in addition to the personal tutoring. An Answer Garden encourages student-student interaction. Frequently-askedquestions remain in the ‘Garden’ as a resource. Staff prune out the less useful interactions from one presentation of the course to the next. <125> The Web front end to FirstClass provides administrative facilities, course content pages as well of course as conferencing. The Web is also used for pre-course self assessment tests, course information and registration. Other media are also used: in fact most online courses require the student to buy an accompanying text book. New students are obliged to follow a one week orientation program to become familiar with the course software. The courses support student-student interaction as well as tutor and administrative interactions, all through First Class conferences and e-mail.

The following statements included comments about WebCT: •

•

<33> The web is used for all those four but mostly for communications and interactions. We use WebCT mostly as a learning environment but we are testing the other environments too. We combine so-called 'traditional' course materials with the communication in WWW-environment. We have used web-learning environments about two years, first in professional training courses and now also in the Virtual Open University Courses. <107> The course began in 1997/8 as a low tech, primarily print based course. However, WebCT is their new online teaching tool which allows students to read course material, and to communicate through online discussions, bulletin boards and e-mail. Glossaries, indexes and bibliographies can be created by students or staff and assessments are set and can be automatically marked. An example module from the course is available on the Web site and the quality of material and presentation is very high. <11> The web is used for all four of these. The web provides an online learning environment including database and administration, We use WebCT. We had made very considerable development by ourselves before we bought WebCT. Internet database construction is not our core business and we were not willing to proceed and to maintain what we had developed, so we chose WebCT. We find it very economic and have now worked closely with Murray Goldberg at WebCT for over 12 months. <11> Online materials must be given piecemeal to prevent students this age of racing ahead and around the materials. The design is kept simple but we start with the web and we work back from there. This means we offer a consortium of online teaching from all content online to no content online. The decision depends on the nature of the content and whether we are developing from new or adapting ran existing course to the web. We find that the internet is a cheaper way to update course content, especially in subjects where we change content annually like: Taxation, accounting and legal studies. We use CD ROM for heavy audio and video content. We have limited clips of audio and video on the web but heavy audio and graphics are called up from a CD ROM. Some of the activity is Java based but. We try to avoid Java because it is too costly. The chart system in WebCT is Java based. Assignments we submitted as attachments to a bulletin board.

The following statements included comments about Lotus Notes: •

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<28> Only some elements are on the web; it is not necessary to have all on the web. This is a small city and we don't need to have all of the materials on the web. We use e-mail, bulletin boards and conferencing packages for communication. We use a client/server architecture using modems but not ISPs. We have some interactive components with a little synchronous activity. We use some sound and video but not a lot. We are a center of excellence for distance learning research and for distance learning course development. We have some Java and use Lotus Notes for our system….For the administration we have used Lotus Notes Net Learning Space and we do our own programming. We find that Lotus Notes cannot be modified and are now looking at WebCT. We make our own html pages. <66> The web is used for all of these except for administration. We will however try to include database and administration in a new web-based course in JAVA programming, which starts next autumn. We also plan to collect data in a Internet-database from a field course which is a part of a distance education course called Evolution and Environment. The web provides an online learning environment. The use of Web in our courses is 89

relatively new, and we are still in a "trying out" period. We have partly developed our own web pages, but are now also trying out Lotus Notes/Learning space. In all our courses that utilizes web, the homepages contains at least a discussion group, a news board for administrative use and hyperlinks to other important sites. These are the three most essential uses of the Internet in our courses. We also have existing courses without Internet pages, but where we plan to use it in the future. In addition we have several courses yet to come that will use WEB, for instance JAVA programming, Physics etc.

Chapter 6. Advertising and Financial Issues In this chapter, advertising on the web, tuition fees for online courses and programs, external funding, and other financial issues are discussed. Advertising It is implicit in many of the interviews that advertising of programs and courses is an important function of the web-services. This can be implied from statements like these: <37> 1) Advertising: The web is used to inform our customers about courses and activities of the Tele-Akademie. 2) Teaching/Learning: All courses of the Tele-Akademie are based on the web. There is an open area with free web-based courses and a restricted area with courses customers have to pay for. For these courses we developed a web-based learning environment where learners find their learning materials and opportunities to communicate and collaborate. 3) Communication: Most courses include the opportunity to communicate with a tutor (email) and with other learners, both in small groups (learning groups, project groups) and plenaries (newsgroups, CSCW-system). <43> â&#x20AC;Ś one is encouraged to register online, interaction between student/tutor and student/student is also encouraged and facilitated. All materials are available online. <71> On their web site we can find, free access, presentation of courses and time schedules together with other relevant information for potential students. <83> CEPADE uses www for presentation, communication and teaching (training) in their courses. On their web site we can find, free access, presentation of courses and time schedules together with other relevant information for potential students. <17> The LED uses the www for presentation, communication, administration and teaching in their courses. Web site overview: 1) common area with information, curricula, working teams, statistics, etc 2) restricted area for students - online distance learning environment containing learning activities. <132> WWW is used for presentation, communication and teaching. In the CNED web site we can find an online catalogue with search facilities. There is a communication service between the participant and the tutor. <76> WWW is used: for information presentation ( texts in HTML format); for communication between trainers and trainees and between trainees among themselves (via e-mail and via e-mail lists); for teaching/training through electronic spaces for text and debate/discussion of ideas (electronic conferences) and for presentation of discussion synthesis ; www and internet are also used as an external provider of relevant information for course purposes The www is rarely used for administrative purposes 91

WWW is also used for course advertisement. Distance learning is organized in modules as follows: 1) 2) 3) 4)

texts available on web pages ( with the possibility to download the texts in word format); the trainee can read the texts and send comments to an electronic forum (also via www); debate/discussion of the different contributions by the trainee at forum level: trainers/trainers must develop a syntheses of the module together with some trainee chosen by the trainer (those documents are to be done individually and should integrate the discussions in the forums). All those steps are fully web based. External Funding Many institutions seem to have full or partial external funding for the courses and one may ask how many of these initiatives that will continue when the external funding ceases: • • •

"…all the courses are financed by National or European funds" <50>. "The courses are financed by international institutions" <74>. "All courses are funded by ”Statens lærerkurs” (funds for further education for teachers). There is no costs for the students, even travels and per diem are covered by the state" <62>. • "The cost of the course per trainee is close to 100 EUROs, including all the costs of the course. At the moment the course is being supported by the ESF and by The Portuguese Government" <76>. • "The courses are 90% financed by the European Social Fund. The average cost per student for a course of 100 hours is 100 EURO <69>. • "The fee is NZ$ 2300 which represents 20% of the total costs. The government pays 80%. In addition the student pays online costs of NZ$ 5-10 per week" <57>. "50% of costs are supported by the student. The Distance Learning had 1500 students last year. 80% of the students that enroll in these courses remain until the end of the course. On average a 60h course can cost the student 500 EUROs" <84>. Tuition Fees The tuition fees of web-courses seem to vary considerably among institutions and courses. Some courses are free and open to everyone, and others seem to have full or partial external funding. The institutions that operate with tuition fees seem to have fees that are the same or not very different from fees in traditional courses. The analysis has revealed few, if any, examples of institutions with substantial income from student fees. Likewise, there seem to be few institutions that can claim that provision of web-based courses has been an economic success, if they disregard external research and development grants. Massey and Curry's (1999, v) analysis of key institutional providers of online post-secondary education shows that none of the providers emphasize price as a competitive advantage. At Phoenix Online, online tuition is more expensive than in-class tuition, but the overall cost is less since the students does not have to commute.

Open and Free Courses Institutions have different economic strategies with regard to web-courses, and both the catalogue entries and the interviews indicate that many institutions offer courses for free or at an open web site. Among the institutions that offer free courses are: • •

•

The Virtual University – Supported by the Einstein College from São Paulo [16] (http://www.ibase.org.br/~ined/) was founded with the intention of providing free distance education courses to an open market. Management Training and Executive Development [15] (http://www.mce.be/wbt.htm) in Belgium offers 5 free management courses at an open web site. Currently these free courses act as a 'taster' for what the company can offer. In addition, they provide a means of bringing employees up to speed before classroom training, which MCE also offer. TecMinho - Associação Universidade - Empresa para o Desenvolvimento [70] (http://www.eng.uminho.pt/tecminho) in Portugal has 50 students in the course: Electronic Information Services. The course is offered free of charge via the web. It is an independent learning course based on an Internet site. All course content is on the web. The tutoring is mainly computer-based, but it is possible to have human tutoring if required. Universidade Aberta [71] (http://www.infodesketop.com/eetp) in Portugal has 12 students in the course: Heath and Safety at the Work Place. The course is offered free of charge via the web. The content is web-based, the communication is based on private e-mail, and the tutoring is available via thematic conferences. MBA International Institute [122] (http://www.mbaii.org) has 300 students in a business administration course. The free web-based course is open to all persons interested in Business Administration. It is intended to be useful for future managers and also providing update information to acting managers. This is supported by the in-depth interview that reveals that the courses are absolutely free - there is no need even to register <122>.

Among the institutions that offer courses on an open web-site are Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro [18] in Brazil, Community Learning Network [23] in Canada, and the Government of Cyprus [29]. Other examples are: • •

The in-depth interview about the California Distance Learning Project [113] explains that all the materials are free and open. There is no need to register <113>. The Pacific University/Optometry Today [126] (http://www.pacificu.edu/oce/past.html) offers 12 courses in ophthalmology at an open web site. All the courses are lectures on the web by guest lecturers which participants can take at their leisure. The lectures can either be viewed on the web or downloaded and printed. Participants do not necessarily have to register to study the courses, however, to receive course credit participants do need to register. Participants can e-mail questions to and receive feedback from the guest lecturer. However, the in-depth interviews explains that the cost of each course is $50 for 3 credits <126>.

Some institutions offer courses free of charge as they are treated as pilot projects. These include the Australian National Training Authority <11> and Pinelands High School <78> in South Africa.

As pointed out by the University of South Australia <5>, free courses are not always completely free: "The only cost for students is their own access time. Student access on campus is free. The university has a preferential discounted student rate from the ISP." The University of Munich <34> and Saarland's University <35> state that the German law prohibits the universities to charge fees. "There are no course fees….German universities do not charge fees" <34>. "According to German law one is not allowed to charge fees, even for foreign participants. The regulations of not charging course fees are seen as a great difficulty. The efforts for developing are enormous and also running the course takes a lot of resources. Thus, we do not know how to continue with this kind of service" <35>. Swedish institutions are neither allowed to charge individual students. However, the courses do generate some income from the government. The National Institute for Distance Education <87> states: "No fees for the public, the same conditions are provided by the government as when a person is studying at a local school". Similarly, the department of Food Engineering at Lund Institute of Technology <86> informs that: "The courses are free for the students. The courses are given as part-time courses, e.g. the students are supposed to follow four courses a year. In Sweden, one year full-time study equals to 40 credits. Each credit generates 100-150 Euros from the Institute of Technology to Food Engineering for covering course design, administration and teaching". Both Free Courses and Tuition Courses Some institutions offer both free courses and tuition courses. At the Tele-Academy of the Technical University of Furtwangen <37> in Germany, open courses and tele-lectures are free (except costs for transmission). Courses that last one semester costs from 100 up to 400 DM, and one further education program lasting two semester costs 2950 DM. There are reduced prices for students and unemployed. At universidade Virtual <19> in Brazil, there are several types of course provision and the tuition varies: courses supported by the government (free for the participant) tutorials – short courses, html, download documents, no tutoring, free packages for enterprises 60h – 30 EURO (with tutor) teachers personal offer. Same Price as Traditional Courses At number of institutions charge the same fees for web-courses as they do for traditional courses: •

• •

"The course fee is the same for all students at the Open University or similar open courses at other universities, 2400 DKr for two semesters part-time=one semester full time. They also pay two times 700 DKr for learning material and communication costs for video conferencing. In total the cost is around 450 Euros" <30>. "Undergraduates pay the same Federal Government fees as on campus students. Postgraduate students courses are fee paying in accordance with Australian university structures and the market" <10>. "The price is the same as other face-to-face universities. There is no extra fee for the internet. There are 120 credits in a degree and 10 credits cost $HK 9.000. For the courses 94

•

• • •

on the internet we give the students the Open University distance learning materials as well" <28>. "Our costs are a little higher than conventional government universities, which are very low. The private universities are three times higher than our www degrees at 16.000 rupees per year and we charge one third of the price of the self-financing courses of the traditional universities. The cost of a masters degree on the www is 4.500 rupees per year (120 euros)" <42>. "The costs of enrolment are comparable to face-to-face, instructor led training and to distance learning. There are a number of issues that need to be resolved as there is a tendency to shift the cost of access to training to the student in the move to the web" <7>. "Exactly the same prices as traditional face-to-face courses <12>. "Same costs as any other higher education degree in Australia. Basically $50 per point for a 36 point degree is $1800" <8>.

It is also worth to notice that some institutions subsidize the courses: •

"The cost of courses varies tremendously according to the nature of the accreditation and length of the course. On the whole, full student costs are not charged" <96>.

Variable Prices and Discounts A few institutions indicate that the prices are variable: • • •

"Prices vary with the amount of the course purchased and the number of hours of tutorial support requested. Individual prices and group prices are available on request" <95>. "The costs are calculated by groups of students and negotiated with the client which can be an institution, a university or an enterprise. On average, a 2 years Master course will cost the client 157 120 EUROS for a group of 20 students" <17>. "The cost of the course is as follows: Students from the EU pay £312. Overseas students pay £624. Industrial sponsored students pay £970" <103>.

Other institutions offer special discount schemes: • •

•

"A typical course involving 40 hours of tutoring costs ECU 200with 50% reduction for CAFÉ MONDIAL members" <38>. "The calculation of the fees for the distance education courses offered by Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri is based on the number of points taken by each individual student. The starting price for a point is about 63 US$. As the points taken grow in number the price pr. point gets gradually lower. The maximum number of points hitherto taken by a student in one semester is 25, at which stage the price pr. point has gone down to about 50 US$" <41>. "Each course has the duration of 4 months (corresponding to 40h in a traditional system) and costs the student 299 EUROS - 4 credits. There is a 10% discount for students that apply for 9 courses (36 credits – a specialization course)" <83>.

Tuition Fees per Credit In some of the interviews <58, 63, 117, 120, 124, and 125> it is possible to identify the price per credit. The graduate credits are somewhat more expensive than the undergraduate credits. For example, the Central Michigan University <117> reports that the costs of courses varies,

but that undergraduate courses typically cost $158 per credit and that graduate courses typically costs $187 per credit. At NKI Nettskolen <58> in Norway, the student fees are typically 150 euros per credit. These fees are meant to cover the actual costs of course development, administration, and teaching. NKI Nettskolen emphasizes cost effective course design, administration, and teaching. With reservations that credits from various countries are not comparable, the institutions charge from 70 Euros to 500 Euros per credit. Among the less expensive is Heritage Online <120>. The cost of their courses are $200 per 3 credits for upper division courses and $215 per 3 credits for graduate courses. In addition there is a $185 audit tuition. Among the more expensive institutions is OnlineLearning.net <125>. The cost of their courses is $500 per credit. Tuition Fees per Course In some of the interviews <77, 75, 73, 80, 13, 43, 97, 99, 101, 103, 107, 111 and 27> the prices were given per course. These courses are not easily comparable with regard to level, duration, or scope. The prices typically range from 100 Euro to 1000 Euro per courses. Some of the inexpensive courses are offered by the Porto Industrial Association <77> in Portugal. Their courses are experimental. The student pays a residual value of 40 EURO and an additional 15 EURO per course. Some of the more expensive courses are offered by the University of British Colombia <27>. The tuition fee per course is $695 (Canadian), however the complete cost with text books, delivery and taxes is between $850 and $900 (Canadian), depending on location. UNED <80> in Spain charges approximately 1000 EUROS per course. Tuition Fees per Semester In some of the interviews the fees per semester were provided. The tuition fees for one semester (part-time or full-time) varies from about 500 Euros to 2000 Euros. • • • •

"The course fee varies from about 500 to 1000 Euro for one semester half time study costs" <66>. "The course costs 15.000 NKr for 10 credits=half year full time (course offered part time during one year), i.e. 1.800 Euro plus 250 euro for textbooks (if the buy all). Then also costs for travel to 2 seminars come on the top" <60>. "The course fee is the same for all students For two semesters part-time=one semester full time (30 ECTS credits) the total fee paid by the student is around 1400 Euros"<64>. "The students pay 10.000 NKr for a program equaling one semester full time (10 credits)= 1.250 Euros plus the costs of textbooks" <59>.

Tuition Fees per Degree or Certificate The students that would like to pursue a degree or certificate online must be prepared to pay several thousand Euros. At the University of the Sunshine Cost <6> in Australia the prices are A$3,000 for a Graduate Certificate in Business Administration, A$6,000 for a Graduate Diploma in Business Administration, and A$9,000 for a Master of Business Administration. 96

The Centre for Labour Market Studies at the University of Leicester <102> runs an international MSc program. The courses include human resource management, performance management and training and development. The costs of courses vary according to the location of the student. Where courses are handled by agents, MSc fees are between £4100 and £5500 for the two years. Diploma fees are between £1650 and £1800 for one year. The Institute of Education <104>, one of the many institutions making up the University of London, offers two Web courses. One is a professional development course about online teaching, very similar to that offered by the University of Lancaster. The other is a Masters course on second language teaching. The cost of the Masters is £4500. The cost of their professional development course is £590. The Centre for English Language Studies in Education at the University of Manchester <106> offers two Masters programs for students “from Australia to Zimbabwe”. CELSE is part of the School of Education and runs these programs - supporting the technology, designing the courses and tutoring the 150 or so students - from their own resources. The cost of the Masters is £3,500 for both European and overseas students. A Masters of Lifelong Learning is offered jointly by the University of Stirling and Glasgow Caledonian University <109>. The program aims to stimulate critical reflection and to support learners in linking key perspectives in lifelong learning to their own experiences. 60 credit points lead to a certificate, 120 credit points lead to a diploma, and 180 credit points lead to a masters. The full Masters includes an independent research project which may be work-based. The cost of taking the full Masters is £4000; the diploma is £3000; the certificate is £1500. The cost of residential weekends is additional. Other Financial Issues A number of institutions were concerned about other financial issues: • • •

• •

<86> The plans involve development of more cost effective courses. <73> The www is an excellent tool for globalization, reducing costs, … <41> It seems to us that in spite of temporary setbacks due to financial straits, the Distance Education Program of the Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri has been firmly established within college education in the country. Inquiries are very numerous and applications from people wanting to enroll are about 100% more than can be admitted at present. <13> At this moment there are surveys investigating the possibilities of online delivery of Vocational Education and Training in Australia. These are being funded by the national government. <43> The aim is that the DeLLTTi should support itself with in two years.

Chapter 7. Pedagogical Issues in Online Education This chapter discusses pedagogical issues related to course design, tutoring, accreditation and assessment. Finally, it presents an analysis of enrollment progress and flexibility. Course Design and Development Some institutions have course development teams, others use the tutor as the sole designer of a course as indicated in the statement below. The different models probably have implications for both quality control and development time. •

<73> Human tutoring provided by the tutor. The tutor is responsible for the content development.

Additional statements that elucidate course design are listed below: •

•

• • 1). 2). 3). 4).

<58> NKI Nettskolen adhere to a model in which elements of tutoring are build into the web-based study guide. This means that detailed explanation, many examples, self-tests, model answers etc. are included in the study guides. In addition, communication with a personal tutor and access to peer-students are important elements of student tutoring. <57> We have worked closely with the university staff in designing the system. The basic principle is that what you can do on campus you can do on the web. There are lecturers for each unit who organize the students both as a class by bulletin board and also in small clusters for projects. There are a range of CMC debates and role plays and other activities. The e-mail list groups the whole class of 50. <8> We are developing tutoring systems and using hyperlinks to other web sites and between students, captioned 'have you seen this?'. <37> Beside the open courses all courses have different kinds of tutoring. Course materials include assignments. Learners send their results to a tutor and receive individual feedback. In some courses chats with tutors or experts are offered. Course materials also include tasks for small learner groups (private newsgroups up to 8 learners). These learner groups are moderated by a tutor. Learners send the results of their group work in a plenary (newsgroup) where it is discussed with other learners. Some courses include a project-task with up to 8 learners working together in a project group. For this kind of collaboration a CSCW-platform (BSCW) is offered.

Online Tutoring The CISAER-interviews included a question about the type of student tutoring. From the answers, this chapter indicates who the tutors are and what they do. It also elucidate the use of machine tutoring, individual tutoring, and group tutoring. Who Are the Tutors? The tutors seem to be both part-time teachers that are engaged just for the online courses and full-time teachers that also teach some online courses. It is also interesting to observe that distributed experts and students could take part in the tutoring.

• •

• • • •

<120> Heritage provides adjunct faculty to tutor the courses. These are experienced K-12 teachers. However, the primary interaction is through the listservs amongst the course participants. <6> Tutoring is by lecturing staff. An undertaken is given that lecturers will reply to one's learning activities rapidly. The overwhelming emphasis is on technological and electronic support. Tutoring takes place in groups at residentials held on the university campus though these are optional and provision is made to attend these tutorials electronically. <38> Tutors and distributed experts play a central role in our training approach. Tutors structure the courses, provide inputs via different media, moderate discussions, facilitate learning processes, and organize group work and interaction. <103> Consultants (experts in the field) are used in addition to tutors to engage in discussions and activities with students. <106> Each course has a coordinator and a year tutor. Students are also assigned personal tutors who mark their assignments. <99> The tutors are all members of the CSALT group at Lancaster. However, in addition to tutor feedback, group tutoring by the other students is designed into the course.

What Do the Tutors Do? This author (1998, 102) distinguished between four categories of teaching functions: organizational, social, intellectual, and assessment functions. An analysis of the interviews indicates that the tutors at least conduct the following functions which are extracted from the statements below: • • • •

Further information about teaching functions is presented below: •

•

<54> Depending on the level of involvement of tutors in the courses, they are responsible for structuring the open and closed discussion in the discussion groups (threaded discussions). They give answers to questions, monitor groups, give feedback to elaborations of task assignments, and put forward initiatives. There are specific courses where the tutoring also focuses on pacing the work of students (keeping track of their work, start date, end date, etc.). E-mail is not the favorite medium, we prefer the discussion groups to prevent work overload of tutors in their mail box. For certain courses where BCWS was implemented as groupware, the tutor (next to the content experts) takes a different role and responsibility. <66> Tutors give feedback on all questions and comments on e-mail and comments in discussions groups. Assignments for submission commented and corrected by a tutor are central in tutoring. Most of the courses also have two ore more gatherings during the study period. We plan to try out the use of machine tutoring in some selected courses in the future. We also think that videoconferences will be important for discussion on academic matters in the future. <62> The tutor is guiding students on the Internet, human tutoring. All students may ask questions to the tutor and get answers back. Assignments for submission corrected and commented by the tutor are central parts of the course. There are no group tutoring or

•

group assignments on the web. The conferences applies simple technology with listserv or other software dependent on the tutor’s choice. <87> Tutors give feedback on all questions and comments by using the communication system that the student prefers, which can be e-mail, normal post or comments in “discussions groups”. Videoconferences are important for discussion but also much used for examination. Assignments for submission commented and corrected by a tutor are central in tutoring. <64> Tutors give feedback on all questions and comments on e-mail and comments in “discussions groups” on the listserv. Assignments for submission commented and corrected by a tutor are central in tutoring. We do not use machine tutoring, unless you mean FAQs (frequently asked questions).

Human Tutoring vs. Machine Tutoring Human tutoring seems to be much more common than machine tutoring, but some institutions include machine tutoring in addition to human tutoring. The following institutions focus on human tutoring: • • • • •

<76> Human tutoring (peer tutoring and teacher tutoring). <75> Tutoring is always human tutoring provided by the tutor. The group tasks are carried out at distance by the participants. <50> Human tutoring is always provided. <132> Human tutoring. <7> Human tutoring.

In addition some institutions state that they do not use machine tutoring: •

• • • • •

<34> No forms of automatic tutoring is used – not even thought to be possible. It is not at all part of the concept, as interaction between students and with the teacher is considered to be central to the learning process. There are mainly two parts, before the seminar, it is preparation of assignments and making the structure of the whole course. When the students start, they apply the web material and they know what to do through every learning step. During the interaction part the students do the assignments and send the results into the discussion forums. There are no individual assignments to be submitted to the tutor. An important part of the concept is also that students can ask questions - either in the FAQ forum, where the questions can also be replied by other participants and not only by the teacher, or they can ask questions directly to the teacher. <44> Tutoring is by lecturing staff. Machine tutoring is not used. Tutoring takes place in groups. <12> The system is based on tutors not machines. <80> The teachers provide the course tutoring. Machine tutoring is not used. The training is provided to a student or to a group of students. There is a debate FORUM where the students are encouraged to participate. <83> Responsible teachers for content provide the course training. Machine training is not used. The training is provided to a student or to a group of students. <17> Responsible teachers for the content provide the courses tutoring. Machine tutoring is not used. The tutoring is provided to a student or to a group of students. Answers to students queries are dealt with in a maximum of 24h.

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The following institutions reveal that they combine human tutoring with machine tutoring: •

• • • • •

• •

•

<51> Depending on the course, human tutoring can be provided in the following ways: a) help desk – problems and counseling using the system, b) expert tutoring via e-mail. In the self-learning courses some levels of machine tutoring are provided, there are questionnaires embedded inside. Additionally, human feedback and automatic feedback is provided. <28> The basis structure is lecturers doing the tutoring but we have some responses that are machine checked and the results electronically communicated to the students. <45> There is human tutoring, machine and group tutoring. <96> All forms of tutoring are supported: human, machine and group tutoring. A number of courses use peer tutoring. <101> Human tutoring is usually via e-mail, but machine tutoring in the form of online tests with JavaScript feedback is also used. <95> The Web is also used to send questions to the tutors. Machine tutoring is provided in the form of automatic correction. Personal tutoring is available through e-mail queries. This French course is essentially self taught with support from a tutor for individual student queries. <71> Tutoring is mainly provided by the tutor. Machine tutoring is also used. <19> Human tutoring supported by course databases. The e-mail is used frequently. Chats are also used in scheduled moments. The databases are built with the information related with Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs. The idea is to promote the access to the FAQs before asking the tutor, and to promote a culture of autonomy in the students. The information contained in the databases are periodically tested by the tutors, under the supervision of the course coordinator. <84> All types of tutoring. The training is digital. There are e-mail, forums, news, time schedule, curriculum and confidential messages. It is an intelligent system that goes from the CD-ROM to the web. The system allows that when there are questions they are answered and registered in the web and the web will provide you with extra information. The tutor is the animator that puts rhythm to the course.

Individual and Group Tutoring Most institutions seem to combine individual tutoring with group tutoring. The focus between the two could however vary. Here are some statements that indicate a focus on individual tutoring: •

• • •

<125> Students are grouped in small classes of no more than 20 students. Online Learning assigns a course manager to oversee the day to day operation of each online course. The manager is available by e-mail, phone or fax to offer personalized attention to students with queries. “Many say they’re the secret to our success”. <104> Students are assigned to individual tutors, who are primarily staff of the Institute. <124> Students are assigned a tutor who interacts and marks assignments. <107> Each student is assigned an individual tutor who marks work and interacts online. In addition, the course also provides student support in the form of monthly seminars. These seminars review study guides; they are not compulsory but are offered to aid understanding of study guides or to discuss issues encountered while studying the course materials.

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<109> The tutor provides personalized online feedback on students’ work. Peer support is also encouraged. One innovatory aspect of this course is the use of an Answer Garden, as a form of machine tutoring in addition to the personal tutoring. An Answer Garden encourages student-student interaction. Frequently-asked-questions remain in the ‘Garden’ as a resource. Staff prune out the less useful interactions from one presentation of the course to the next. <41> Tutoring operates in the main in two fields. The first one is through instructional letters sent to the students. In these they are told what to read in textbooks, in handouts, in documents sent in e-mail, in attachments or on web pages. Directions are given on points of emphasis and on other aspects of the learning material in such details as the teacher deems necessary. Also assignments are discussed and indications given as need be as to the working of these including examples of work so as to make it as clear to the student as possible what is expected of him. The second main field of tutoring in the Distance Education Program of Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri is through the tutor’s work on the assignment of the student’s work when it has been sent to him. The teacher not only corrects mistakes, but also discusses them, gives directions for further reading, examples of how the work should have been done, if need be and so on. This second phase is thought to be the more important of the two. A third field also exists involving answering inquiries from students. The bulk of the work discussed here is done through the use of email.

On the other hand, the following statements indicate a focus on group tutoring: •

• • • •

<60> Project work is central to the course. There is some help to get started. A pre-project is submitted to be accepted including a practice report. The final project documentation is submitted at the end of the course (and counting 50%) of the final grade. Again all tutoring are towards the group as the unit. <111> Discussion forums are used for group interactivity and private e-mail to the tutor. Students are assigned to tutors who animate the discussions and mark assignments. <97> Tutoring is provided on the courses and students are allocated to small tutorial groups. Tutor marked assignments are used, although essay assignments are optional. <74> Human tutoring provided by the tutor. Group tutoring is also provided. <86> Most of the courses are PBL-based, with group meetings via computers with a teacher as tutor. Tutors give feedback on all questions and comments to each student via e-mail or via FAQ on the web site. Assignments for submission commented and corrected by a tutor are central in tutoring.

Online and Offline Tutoring Online teaching is in many courses supplemented with face-to-face meetings, video- or audioconferences, or telephone contact as indicated in the following statements: • •

<5> Tutors and audio conferencing and electronic threaded discussions. <78> The tutoring is conducted by e-mail, by telephone or face-to-face. There is no group tutoring for the online courses, though other courses in the High School do provide this. Much emphasis is placed on telephone tutoring as it can alleviate the problems encountered with the materials in addition to technical problems which young students may encounter. There is also self-scoring tests which are simple Java script programs.

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• •

•

<13> The tutoring is conducted by e-mail, by telephone or face-to-face. For distance education students, interaction is encouraged through study schools, tele-conferences and visits by lecturing staff <43> The tutoring is conducted by e-mail, by telephone or face-to-face. The difficulty with encouraging and emphasizing flexibility is that the impression may be one of working alone. This is overcome by organizing assignments, multiple choice questionnaires and discussion groups. <47> The tutoring is conducted by e-mail, by telephone or face-to-face individually and in groups. The students are involved in SMEs in the border areas between Ireland and Northern Ireland so tutoring has had to be carried out at times, which suit self, employed people. In this regard e-mail was most successful as a preliminary step before face-to-face meetings. <59> As mentioned there is some direct tutoring face-to-face and tutoring on the web through assignments sent in by e-mail to be commented on by the tutor. Communication also takes place in the conferences for all participants. There is no organized tutoring on sub-group (or sub-class) level. <69> Tutoring is mainly provided by the tutor. Please note that the course provision has a mixed meaning - that 60% of the course is provided on a face to face basis and only 40% of the course is based on distance learning. The students are encouraged to develop group tasks and group tutoring is provided. <30> Tutors give feedback on all questions and comments on e-mail and comments in “discussions groups on the listserv. The videoconferences are important for discussion on academic matters read on the web between sessions. Communication during the videoconferences is a central part of the didactic structure of the course. The videoconferences are not mandatory, however, the majority of the students take part in these conferences. Assignments in the course are discussed and commented during the videoconferences. The students also receive written individual comments on their submitted work – normally via e-mail. There are no automatic correction and feedback by computers.

Asyncronous Tutoring Some of the interviewees had an outspoken preference for asynchronous tutoring. Similar preferences for synchronous tutoring was not found. •

• •

<63> Tutors give feedback on all questions and comments on e-mail and comments in “discussions groups” on the listserv. Assignments for submission are commented and corrected by a tutors. We do not use synchronous communication, because it damages the flexibility of the system. <11> Tutoring is by lecturing staff. We don’t use machine tutoring, unless you mean FAQs. We don't like synchronous communication because it damages the flexibility of our system but have some group tutoring to classes of 24. <33> We have online tutors both for content and technical matters. They are supporting the students with all possible ways. The students have detailed study-guides online too but they can ask more details from their tutors. Every tutor has small groups and can give their support better way. We prefer asynchronous communication, it gives more flexibility for the students. We also have a special course for learning online where the students can practice the ways of communication and interaction online.

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Accreditation of Online Courses The interview analysis implies that accreditation of online courses and programs is very similar to the institutions' traditional accreditation schemes. Degrees, diplomas, certificates, and statements of completions are all widely used. The accreditation seem to be the same independent on whether the course or program is offered online or not. Many institutions basically state that the accreditation is the same as for campus courses. Among them are <30>, <33>, <66>, <60>, <63>, <64>, <62>, <59>, <86>, and <12>. Among the institutions that offer diplomas and certificates are: <17>, <19>, <83>, <80>, and <84>. At the following institutions: <38>, <76>, <69>, <75>, <74>, <50>, <132>, <10>, <28>, and <57>, students who complete the courses receive a certificate. Here are a few examples that illustrate the use of accreditation, degrees, diplomas, and certificates: •

•

<41> All accreditation is as far as possible in line with the corresponding practice in the day-time classes of Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri. Exams taken are of the same line, composed in co-operation with the heads of the department head in question and hence are to be of the same strength as exams taken in the daytime classes. Marks gained in other schools are assessed and entered into the registers of Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri and thus form a part of each student’s entry in the school’s books. At any time students can get a print-out of their status and at the end of their studies certificates of completion are issued in the same manner as in the day-time classes of the school. <54> Course accreditation is a procedural activity based on the scores that result form the assessment approach described above. Students receive a certificate for each course completed. A set of certificates leads to a diploma when all courses have been taken successfully. Whether a course is taken on the internet does not affect the value of the certificate. <87> The typical examinations are four- or five-hour written exams that could be arranged at a local school at the student’s request, quite often combined with a discussion with the tutor by video-conference. The student receives a grade in exactly the same way as at a local held course. In the courses that are given as collaborative projects between SSVN and a community school, the local school sometimes does the examination on there own. If ”Studyshops” are used SSVN does the examination.

Accreditation could be an important competitive advantage and several strategies could be followed to achieve the necessary accreditation. Collaboration with institutions in other countries could result in bilateral accreditation. Here are some examples of accreditation strategies: •

•

<58> Most of the programs are developed as collaborative projects between NKI and a public university or college. This means that the accreditation is provided by the university or the college and that the net-based design and operation is handled by NKI. Most courses are undergraduate courses in which the course grade is based exclusively on the final examination. The examinations are typically four- or five-hour written exams that could be arranged at a local high school at candidate's request. A student who completes a course, but does not sit the exam receives a “statement of completion”. <126> There are no assignments, but each course has a multiple choice test of 20 questions. A passing grade is required to receive credit for the course. Accreditation is

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pending, in the meantime credit is available after taking the multiple choice tests. Pacific University is negotiating with the State Boards throughout the US and Canada for accreditation for these online courses. <125> Students are grouped in small classes of no more than 20 students. Some online courses provide assessment and a final grade and others do not. Undergraduate and post graduate degrees are not available online, but some of the online courses do offer credit which can be transferred to another institution. <35> The course is formally accredited by the German State. For the German students it is a very important certificate. The value for foreign students is not known.

Several courses have one or more options for accreditation that testify the institutions willingness to be flexible and adapt to the students' needs: • •

•

<37> Learners who completed all obligatory tasks receive a certificate of the Technical University of Furtwangen. All others receive a “statement of participation”. <27> There are two main streams of enrolment in these courses, one for certificate-credit and one destined for graduate credit. Participants have a choice of fully participating as a regular student or as an audit student in both streams of enrollment. Participants who earn a minimum final grade of 60% in each of the five courses will be awarded a UBC graduate "Certificate in Technology-based Distributed Learning." However, participants may also enroll in a single course without the intention of completing all five. Following academic approval from the Faculty of Education, participants who qualify for entry as a graduate student for UBC's Faculty of Education may also apply credit from these courses towards the Faculty's Masters in Education. <120> Tutor marked assignments are available on the courses, and these written assignments are required for credit. However, those who want to take a course without credit (called auditing) can submit a self-reflection paper and receive a certificate of course completion.

Assessment Assessment could be used both as a tool for measurement of student performance and as a tool for helping students to learn. The Production Handbook for Open University Courses and Packs (http://wbweb4.worldbank.org/DistEd/management/teaching/ex-02.html) provides the following definitions: Assessment is the general term used for measuring students' performance on a course against the aims and objectives of that course. Assessment may be formative or summative. Formative assessment is assessment as part of teaching: questions and assignments set to help the student learn effectively, but not used to determine the student's course results. Summative assessment is assessment to determine a student's overall level of performance on the course: questions and assignments, the grades or scores of which are used in determining the student's course result.

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Summative Assessment Summative assessment is assessment to determine a student's overall level of performance on the course: questions and assignments, the grades or scores of which are used in determining the student's course result. The interviews included a number of statements about this: • •

• •

• • •

•

• • •

<132> The assessment is done by official examinations provided by the Universities involved. It is a question of administration and French Law. <30> The course ends by an extensive written assignment, which constitutes the formal exam and final assessment. This assignment is assessed by external censors and graded according to the ordinal grade scales at the university. Process evaluation is normally done in the form of discussions and feedback during the videoconferences, both as system/course evaluation and feedback on student achievements. <34> The students have to write papers to be evaluated after the courses. These papers are written in groups of 3-4 students, and after course completion they submit the papers in order to get the credit for the course. These papers are evaluated. <62> There is a 6 hours written exam, which must be taken in Trondheim – no decentralized solutions. (The NITOL courses organize to some extent decentralized exams). It might differ, e.g. the last course included an oral exam. The student must also complete mandatory project work. Exam results plus project work counts in the final grade. <64> All courses are assessed through tutor marked assignments during the whole course. Marking is for process evaluation and feedback. There are formal exams in all courses. For final grading only the formal exams count. <86> All courses are assessed through tutor marked assignments during the whole course. Marking is for process evaluation and feedback. There are formal exams in all courses. For final grading both the assignments and the formal exams count. <87> All courses are assessed through tutor marked assignments during the whole course. Marking is for process evaluation and feedback. There are formal exams in all courses. For final grading the formal exams counts for the main part, but during the course students are assessed by various methods as ”home-experiments”. In some courses we apply some form of project, where the student is assessed by this work and not by a final grading. <83> CEPADE students are assessed by self-control texts, by trainers (TMA) and local examinations. The examinations are in person, meaning that the student must go to the nearest associated center or embassy and in the presence of the evaluators give a seminar or do a examination or present a paper. <80> The assessment is made by examinations which are in person, meaning that the student must go to the nearest associated center or embassy and in the presence of the evaluators do an examination. <111> Students are assigned to tutors who animate the discussions and mark assignments. Each course also has a final examination. As yet, this is not Web-based. <13> Assessments are largely based on the traditional examinations keeping in mind the tutorials, frequent SAQs and visits by lecturers.

Formative Assessment Formative assessment is assessment as part of teaching: questions and assignments set to help the student learn effectively, but not used to determine the student's course results. While summative assessment of online courses seem to be very traditional and often has a face-to-

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face component, formative assessment is more experimental and tend to based more on online activities: â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

â&#x20AC;˘

<5>Assessment is formative only with continuous assessment. <60> During the course, there is more reflection than assessment. Only the project work is assessed. The project counts 50% and the examination counts 50%. The exam can be taken at one of the other colleges. It is possible to sit a local examination, but this will, if offered, be charged specifically. <59> There is no grading during the studies, but the students have to complete some exercises to show progression during their studies. Exams are the only formal evaluation. Assignments are commented. All students who have submitted the defined number of assignments are allowed to sit exams. There is no computer marked assignments.

Assessment Methods Assessment could be done in several ways. According to Thorpe (1987, 11) the Open University, UK used in-text questions (ITQs) for self-assessment, computer-marked assignments (CMAs), and tutor-marked assignments (TMAs). Here, peer assessment is included as a fourth category of assessment. ITQs are developed for self-assessment. For example, they could include questions which ask the students to review, revise, or summarize what they have learned from the course material. As a guide to self-assessment, the course material could also include suggested solutions and comments. CMAs utilize computer assessment. They are typically multiple-choice questions, and Thorpe (1987, 15) stated that over 90 percent of the CMA question sets at the Open University have been of the multiple-choice type. CMAs are well suited for CMC since both technologies are based on computers. TMAs are made for tutor assessment. These could take the form of an essay or a solution to a problem. Thorpe (1987, 16) wrote that the TMAs were the most important elements of the continuous assessment part of all undergraduate courses at the Open University. Obviously, TMAs are a major contribution to the teacher workload, and should therefore be carefully designed with regard to teacher workload. Example: Write an essay in which you discuss tutor assessment from both the learner's and the tutor's point of view. Post the essay as an e-mail to your tutor. Peer assessment is included as a fourth category of assessment because online education provides more opportunities for peer communication than the traditional distance education setting at the Open University as described by Thorpe (1987). Peer assessment could be both informal comments among students collaborating on an assignment and a more formal feedback on individual assignments. Example: Write an essay in which you discuss peer assessment from both the learners' and the tutor's point of view. Find a peer student who would like to collaborate with you, and exchange essays for mutual peer assessment.

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All four assessment categories could be used for both formative and summative assessment. Teachers and course designers may benefit from using the matrix presented below to plan an assessment scheme. Table 10. Assessment matrix Formative assessment

Summative assessment

Tutor assessment Self-assessment Computer assessment Peer assessment This author's assignment analyses (Paulsen 1998, 181) of 23 online courses revealed 14 instances of tutor assessment, 11 of self-assessment, 6 of peer assessment, and 5 of computer assessment. This indicates that tutor assessment and self-assessment are more common than peer assessment and computer assessment. Further, no course was found that applied all four assessment functions. In this study, the author did not distinguish between formative and summative assessment. Combinations of Assessment Methods Most of the institutions apply several assessments methods in a course or program. This is illustrated with the following examples: •

• •

<51> The assessment depends on the customers (Enterprises, Universities, simple users). The assessment can be made automatically, by tests and questionnaires or using a tracking tool. In the case of the University of Buenos Aires (one of TRAINET’s clients) the assessment is made face to face in order to receive a University certification. <4> Various forms of assessment are used depending on the originating university. <58> All courses emphasize mandatory, mostly individual, assignments that are tutorassessed. All courses also include self-tests. In addition, some courses include some use of computer assessed multiple-choice assignments and group assignments. In some courses, we apply some form of peer assessment through answers to assignments submitted to the class conference as a basis for feedback and discussion among students. There are formal exams in all courses. For final grading only the formal exams count. <103> Assessment is by means of tutor-marked assignments and a final written examination. This must be taken under proctored conditions for students outside London. <54> Now assessment is still a separate activity that by law is organized in study centers in controlled environments. A number of advanced courses build upon the elaboration of tasks that together form a dossier that is the base for the final evaluation, next to eventually a restricted summative test that checks basic knowledge. In the oncoming innovative competency-based design (ELO) we expect that student task resolution is the actual base for assessment and there is no direct need to organize an extra assessment session in a study center. At the political/strategic level this direction is yet to be approved and backed with a number of procedural arrangements to be able to say that such assessment approaches conform to the legal regulations.

Tutor Assessment Tutor assessment is the most common form of assessment found in the interviews. It is the only form of assessment mentioned by <38>, <69>, <71>, <75>, <74>, <84>, <6>, <109>,

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<124>, and <102>. In addition, the following examples indicate an emphasis on tutor assessment: •

• • •

•

• •

• • •

<33> There are several ways for assessments. Typical way in Open University courses is to write essays about given or self-chosen topics. The essays will be left on the wwwcourse area where the teachers can find and comment them. In the professional development courses the students are creating their own development projects instead of essays. <37> We make little use of self-tests, computer marked assignments and peer assessment. During the course progress of learning is assessed by tutors. Our learners appreciate individual commentaries to their work very much. <66> Most courses are assessed through tutor marked assignments during the whole course. Marking is for process evaluation and feedback. There are formal exams in all courses, except in the open learning courses. <63> Most courses are assessed through tutor marked assignments during the course. Marking is for process evaluation and feedback. There are formal, written exams in all courses. For final grading only the formal exams count as they do for ordinary, on-campus students taking the same courses. <104> Students are assigned to individual tutors, who are primarily staff of the Institute. The language course requires termly assignments. The accreditation offered is a Masters degree. <117> Tutors mark assignments and examinations, which students must take under proctored conditions. <77> There are several moments of assessment. The first evaluation is done in the face to face session at the beginning. The on-going assessment is done by the tutor and is a functional part of the course. For each course there is a group of individual exercises. At the end of the course there is a final assessment. <76> The assessment is made by the teacher/trainer and it’s based on the documents produced by the trainee and its participation in the discussion forums. According to the nature of the course and of the target group there is no quantitative evaluation. Please note that the course aims to promote the professional development of teachers and allows them to progress in their career. <7> The use of SAQs varies from course to course. There is little use of CMAs and the focus is on the tutor and tutor marking of assignments. Assessment is a workplace supervised competency-based system. <107> Each student is assigned an individual tutor who marks work and interacts online. In addition, the course also provides student support in the form of monthly seminars. These seminars review study guides; they are not compulsory but are offered to aid understanding of study guides or to discuss issues encountered while studying the course materials. <96> Courses use tutor marked assignments and have examinations. Degrees such as BPhil and MEd are offered as well as a Certificate in Advanced Professional Studies. A few courses offer a statement of course completion. <97> Tutoring is provided on the courses and students are allocated to small tutorial groups. Tutor marked assignments are used, although essay assignments are optional. Currently only one course has an examination. <101> All courses are contract based; that is, participants start with a Key Page to provide Web access to course elements and other resources. Assignments are marked by Leeds

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Metropolitan tutors. All courses generate a reflective report. This is the basis of formal assessment for the Advanced Professional Diploma. <106> Each course has a coordinator and a year tutor. Students are also assigned personal tutors who mark their assignments. There are no formal examinations, but rather dissertations.

Self-assessment The CISAER interviews reveal many examples of self-assessment. Here are some: • •

•

<113> Obviously there is no accreditation or assessment, apart from the self-tests. One of the aims is that teachers and anyone interested can use these materials perhaps in their own teaching or learning. <19> The courses are built keeping in mind the main idea of creating in the students the sense of autonomy and responsibility in their learning. Thus, the students are encouraged to use the available tools for self – evaluation. There are moments when the student can stop and reflect about the acquired knowledge. They check their knowledge with the databases first, and then, if necessary they can promote a discussion with their tutor. In fact this is a great change in the educational system, thus, in traditional universities the evaluation is not discussed. There are always several explanations for learning performances that are not so good, institutional difficulties, lack of money, labs not well equipped, tools are not good.…Now, with the virtual university, we have a mirror of the university behaviors and the evaluation is mainly a process of self-evaluation, it is like having a camera in the classroom. The web is then a filmmaker of learning styles. <47> There are compulsory assignments and questionnaires, though there is a certain amount of flexibility as to deadlines and dates. Self-assessment forms an important part of the distance education manual timed to coincide with residential seminars. This allows the student to do the self-assessments at a time when they can check any problems with the tutors and teachers at the seminars. This has worked very well and has allowed a smooth progression through the materials at the face-to-face gatherings.

Computer Assessment The interview analysis imply that computer assessment is relatively scarce. However there are several examples of online quizzes, multiple choice tests, and some examples of interactive exercises: •

•

<11> There is no emphasis on SAQs. We use TMAs a lot and they are marked by our lecturing staff. CMAs are used a little: quizzes with a database behind them. Assessment is formative rather than summative and there are no examinations. There is no peer assessment, but occasional joint projects. <35> The students are in contact with the course directors “more than every day” and also in the weekends. Assessment in the form of evaluation is done during the course, there are also interviews with students and in the end they have to fill in online questionnaires (course evaluations). There are two exams, one after two months and one final. The examinations are done online by multiple choice questions, and they also have to produce materials. Cheating is not considered to be a problem. <41> The interactive exercises that are worked on the web are in fact to a great extent self tests, where the student is competing with himself while working the exercise. At the same time these exercises are computer-marked as the teacher has no hand in the marking. The student sends his work to a computer located in Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri where the 110

computer gives a grade and also information on what items in the exercise the student has to work again. When the student has completed the exercise, the computer sends a message to the teacher of the course informing him that the exercise has been completed satisfactorily. Peer assessment is used in some courses where the students discuss each others’ work and comment on it. The mainstay in assessing and marking assignments still is in the hands of the tutors, who mark their students’ work, comment on it and give indications on further work, reading or ask for the assignment in question to be worked again. This teacher assessment and marking is considered to be very important an great emphasis is put on this part of the teachers’ work being done conscientiously and as quickly as possible, the general rule being that the teacher return the student’s work within 24 hours from receiving it if this is at all possible. Peer Assessment The interview analysis imply that peer assessment is relatively scarce. The references to peer assessment are listed below: • • •

•

<10> We do not support peer assessment. TMAs and CMAs and examinations are all used extensively. <28> We do not have peer assessment. We have TMAs and CMAs marked by the computer and face-to-face examinations supervised in the examination hall. <45> There are compulsory assignments and questionnaires and many interviews throughout the course. Peer assessment forms part of the courses though it is not the main basis for assessment. Much emphasis is placed on the interviews between student and tutor. <50> The assessment is based on the tutor. In some courses there is also some peer assessment.

No Assessment The CISAER interviews indicate that some courses have no assessment simply because they are self-study courses with no tutors: • •

<95> This French course is essentially self taught with support from a tutor for individual student queries. No accreditation is offered. <122> The courses are absolutely free - there is no need even to register. No tutoring is provided, although there is provision for sending in comments about the courses to MBAII. There is no accreditation offered. As the courses are on an open Web site, it is possible to work through the materials anytime.

Enrollment and Progress Flexibility Both enrollment and progress can be more or less flexible. However, the two main models found in the interviews are group enrollment and progress and individual enrollment and progress. These models represent two different strategies that have important consequences for marketing strategies, administrative systems, and pedagogical approaches. The interviews testify that group based enrollment and progression is far more used than individual enrollment and progression. The analysis identified 46 institutions that used the group model and 12 that followed the individual model. In addition, 11 institutions offered both models.

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The preponderance of the group model could come from conventional thinking that sustain the semester and term system in traditional educational systems. Another possible reason is that the institutions have a well-considered perception that team work and collaborative learning is hard to achieve with individual enrollment and progress. One can however argue that many students will prefer individual flexibility and that the institutions many institutions lack systems, structures, and competence on individual enrollment and progression. If so, one may hypothesize that open universities and distance teaching institutions should be more disposed of individual flexibility than traditional universities and colleges. However, the analysis has not found evidence to support this hypothesis. Group Enrollment and Progress OnlineLearning.net <125> in the US is one example of an institution that has chosen a model with little individual flexibility. Their courses have fixed start and finish dates. In addition, they have due dates for each assignment. Many other institutions offer courses in which the start and finish dates are fixed. Some examples among them are categorized as universities <17>, <10>, <96>, university departments or centers, <30>, <76>, <69>, <97>, <99>, <103>, <104>, <62>, <84>, <27>, colleges, <60>, open and distance teaching universities, <71>, <80-82>, consortia, <109>, <38>, companies or corporations, <74>, <73>, and organizations and associations <77>, <75>. Several other institutions that offer courses in which the start and finish dates are fixed seem to be restricted by or to prefer the traditional semester or term system: • •

• • • • •

In most of the courses at the French National Center for Distance Education (CNED) <132>, enrolment is not flexible. It begins and ends on fixed dates, depending on the academic calendar. The College of Education at Massey University <57> in New Zealand has fixed enrolment. The 50 students are selected from five times as many applicants. They start at the beginning of the academic year in January and work through the program in two semesters per year. At Griffith University <13> in Australia, the courses have all a fixed start time and a fixed finish time in line with the normal university semester. The Magee College at the University of Ulster <44> states that enrolment is conducted by the university system and follows the academic year. At the Napier University <107> in the UK, there are fixed start and finish dates in line with normal university terms. At the Bellevue Community College <111> in the US, the dates of the for-credit courses are in line with the traditional semesters. Students taking the non-credit program must still participate in set cohorts, but the dates are more flexible. At the Pinelands High School <78> in South Africa, the courses have all a fixed start time and a fixed finish time which is the same as the normal high school term.

In addition, some institutions have fixed enrollment dates, but there is some flexibility as students can enroll two or more times a year: •

At the Institute für Rechtsinformatik <35> in Germany, the course is organized with a fixed enrolment date and fixed progression and takes approximately 3 months to complete. The course has been offered twice a year.

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• • • •

• • •

•

NITOL <63> in Norway normally has enrolment at start of each term, i.e. January 15 or August 15. Additional enrolments are allowed during the terms, but exams are only arranged at end of terms, i.e. in December and June. At the Agder College <64> in Norway, the students normally enroll in spring and fall. They allow free progression to a certain degree, so that the students may have their individual progression schedule. At the Food Engineering division at the Lund Institute of Technology <86> in Sweden, the courses are fixed in time. The students can apply four times a year. At the Centre for Labour Market Studies at the University of Leicester <102> in the UK, the courses have fixed start dates, but there are two intakes per year. There is some flexibility as to finish dates. Students are allowed up to four years to complete the MSc and two years to complete the diploma. At the New York Institute of Technology On-Line Campus <124>, start and finish dates are fixed, but some courses have several starts each year. At the Centre for English Language Studies in Education, University of Manchester <106> in the UK, the start dates are fixed although two cohorts begin each year. The finish dates are nominally fixed, but dissertations have been known to run overtime. In all cases at the Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri <41> in Iceland, enrolment is fixed in time, concerning the beginning and length of semesters, within the same time limits as the day-time school. Hence enrolment for the distance education program is twice a year; in August for the autumn semester and in January for the spring semester. The University of Munich, Institute for Educational Research <34> in Germany has fixed enrolment. The course is arranged every semester, and the students enroll at the beginning of the semester. During the general introduction phase of the course, they may “go in and out as they wish”. After that period, 4 weeks, group work is started and the students have to take part or not take part.

At the Tromsø College, Faculty of Education <59> in Norway, all courses are organized with fixed enrolment dates and fixed progression. This is also a matter of didactic policies of organizing the face-to-face seminars and group communication via the web. A short course with no formal credit in the Cultural History of Mathematics allows students to start at any time and follow an individual progression schedule. At the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid <83>, enrolment is not flexible. It begins and ends on fixed dates. However, a student can enroll in several courses at the same time. The Open University of Hong Kong <28> operates with fixed start and fixed finish. One subject is a prerequisite of the next. At The African Virtual University <4>, the course schedules depend on the satellite lecture programs. Both the Adult Education Office at the University College Dublin in Ireland <43> and the Irish Centre for Distance Education Research and Applications <47> offer courses that have a fixed start time, but after that there is a large degree of flexibility. At the Universidade Virtual <19> in Brazil, the tendency is to open the courses. The students use the system in the time and place they like. They have 4 months tutoring available. Enrolment is not flexible. It begins and ends on fixed dates. The flexibility available is on the 113

student’s side. Thus, a student can begin later and recover with pre-recorded chat and videoconference sessions. The time flexibility is very important: asynchronous is better then synchronous block the access to the disciplines -> drop out danger. One Institution, Two Models A few institutions offers both models, but state that most courses are not flexible: • • • • •

At TRAINET <51> in Italy, enrolment can be flexible – in the case of on the desk courses, any time during 2 years (basic training on telecommunications). In most courses enrolment is not flexible. It begins and ends on fixed dates. At the Central Michigan University, College of Extended Learning <117> in the US, most courses have fixed start and finish dates, but students registering through the Independent Study route can start and finish at their convenience. At the University of South Australia <5>, most courses have fixed start, and fixed finish for 2 semesters per year. In most of the courses at Istituto Tecnologie Didattiche <50> in Italy, enrolment is not flexible. It begins and ends on fixed dates. At the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Bergen <66> in Norway, most of the courses have fixed progression.

A few institutions seem to offer both models at more equal terms: • • • •

The Centre for Extension Studies at the Turku university <33> in Finland offers courses, which have exact starting time of the year, but also courses, that have flexible starting times. At the Tele-Akademie der FH-Furtwangen <37> in Germany, some open courses are offered with flexible enrolment. However, they have fixed progression for all other courses in order to enable communication and co-operation between our learners. At the Wodonga Institute of TAFE <7> in Australia, both models are possible. Self paced courses can begin at any time; others have to wait until a group forms. At the University of South Australia, Division of Education, Art and Social Sciences <8>, the B.Ed has a fixed start and a fixed finish. The Ph.D. is flexible throughout.

The Open University of the Netherlands <54> try to break down the complete openness of the system by offering pre-structured trajectories that bring together students, a number of courses and resources. The subscription menu shows the degree of autonomy that is still allowed, but at the expense of a higher price to be paid by students. Indira Gandhi National Open University <42> in India uses fixed start and finish at the moment, but they are moving to provide both types. Individual Enrollment and Progress Relatively few institutions are committed to offer flexible enrollment and progression. NKI Nettskolen <58> states: "With a few exceptions, all our courses are offered with flexible enrollment, the students can enroll at any time of the year. We also allow free progression, so that the students may have their individual progression schedule." Similar statements are

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given by the National Institute for Distance Education <87> in Sweden, the Leeds Metropolitan University <101> in the UK, Eloquence <95> in the UK, and Heritage OnLine <120> in the US. • • • •

The Edith Cowan University <12> in Australia is moving towards flexible start and flexible finish, but they have a lot of students from many Asian countries and need to proceed prudently. At Flexible Learning Cork <45> in Ireland, the courses normally have a flexible start and a flexible finish. One may progress to higher levels to the qualification of diploma. At TAFE SA Online <11> in Australia, enrolment is flexible but in some courses students have to wait until a class of 10 is accumulated. They have 2,500 enrolments in 15 subjects, with 50 more in development. At the Sunshine Coast University College <6> in Australia, generally students will need to have completed an undergraduate degree and have relevant work experience in management. The Dean of Business has discretion to approve admission if students do not meet these requirements but have other qualifications and experience that show that they would benefit from the chosen course and be likely to complete it successfully.

A few institutions offer courses that are available at an open web-site. These courses are very flexible as they are available to everyone all the time. However, these courses seem to relate more to self-study courses than to courses that provide access to human tutors. • • •

At the California Distance Learning Project <113> in the US, all the web materials are free and open. There is no need to register. As the courses at the MBA International Institute <122> are on an open Web site, it is possible to work through the materials anytime. The model of the Optometry Today courses at the Pacific University <126> is closer to professional resources and self-teaching than to a supported and tutored course. Obviously the start and finish dates are completely flexible.

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Chapter 8. The Future of Online Education This chapter shows that the interviewees foresaw a future with more web-courses, additional online services, better quality of the courses, enhanced focus on teacher training, further collaborations with other institutions, and additional organizational consequences. Massey and Curry's (1999, vi) analysis of key institutional providers of online post-secondary education shows that the primary expansion strategies are more and diverse programs, international students, and new and niche markets such as corporate training. An interesting example of expansion is showed in Case Study 21. Case Study 21: Institution with substantial expansion. NKS Distance Education

The next paragraph is compiled from the CISAER catalogue and the last paragraph is compiled from the later additions to the CISAER catalogue: In 1998 the NKS Distance Education [65] (http://www.nks.no/nks) in Norway reported to have 200 students and 10 courses in Web-design, Law, Journalism, Norwegian, History of Art, History of Ideas, Management. NKS Distance Education has been designing web-based courses since 1997, based on their experience with CMC-based courses over the past ten years. The web-based courses fall into three different categories: 1) Fully web-based courses, 2) Virtual classes, with a fixed starting and finishing point, 3) Partially web-based courses, where student interaction with tutor is web-based - as a minimum. In the spring of 1999 NKS reported to have 500 courses and 70 courses in Secondary school subjects, Journalism, Social Sciences, Pedagogics, Law, Norwegian, History of Art, Various ICT courses, Web-design, Marketing, Business Administration and Management , Project Management, and Information Management. NKS further stated that the institution is being transformed from a traditional distance education institution to a modern web-based learning space. From autumn 99 they are expanding the range of web-based courses dramatically under 116

the name of NKS Nettstudier (Netstudies). They aim at putting all their traditional correspondence courses on the web within May 2000, and they are continually developing new curriculum areas for web-based teaching and learning. They have adopted the Swedish course tool LUVIT as their platform for web-based course development, and are active as partners in the LUVIT corporation. The CISAER interviews included conclusions and information on a number of additional future plans. In the following paragraphs, the most pronounced opinions are discussed. More Web-courses Many of the institutions pronounce plans to develop more web-courses. Among them are <66>, <63>, and <64>. Other institutions elaborate like this: • • • • • • • • • •

<58> The plans involve development of more courses and better administrative systems. This entails a broader range of subject areas and additional categories of students. <30> The plans involve developing more courses. <33> The amount of courses will grow fast at 1999 and following years. <34> It is assumed that some more online courses will be developed. <35> Other courses are offered using the web; e.g. the Faculty of Economics and Computer Science is highly esteemed in Germany, and they have courses funded by private enterprises. <37> Just now we are developing another 16 courses (technology of media, designing media, media in education etc.) to be used in university teaching and further education. <41> Also there are plans for further courses both within the scope of college education and also in connection and co-operation with parties outside the sphere of traditional education <62> There are plans to make more and more of the distance education courses web based. <59> The institution wishes to develop courses also within some more “soft subjects” (that do not require technical competence). One in Special Education is presently developed. <86> The plans involve development of more courses

Additional Services Several institutions state that they plan to include additional, better, and more advanced online services in the future: • • • •

<58> The plans involve development of better administrative systems. <66> The plans involve development of better administrative systems. In addition we will use video conferencing more frequently. We will also further develop the use of Internet and try to make it more interactive. <34> Also extension of media use is considered, e.g. web based videoconferences and more use of other media too. <33> We will use all kind of ways to communicate depending on subject. We will continue using asynchronous communication but also developing ways to use new technical ways for communication. We will test and make research about different webenvironments to find the suitable ones for our courses and write reports about the results.

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<41> Plans for future work include further and more extensive use of the web such things as computerized testing, interactive exercises, additional learning material, presentation of assignments, the use of discussion forms on the web and so on, still always keeping development within the range of the supposed technical ability of the students. <63> We will look at possibilities of including more video, animations etc. as part of instructional material. <44> The plan is to expand the www part of the course. <6> More and more services are coming online. Already one can contact a helpdesk if you are having technical difficulties accessing your study materials. Students can undertake much of the research online by accessing the university's online catalogue and databases provided by the library. And if they have difficulty managing their studies, they have full access to student counselors in student services via -e-mail with fellow students in cyberspace.

Better Quality A few institutions focused on enhancing the quality of web-courses: • •

•

<30> and <63> We will look at possibilities increasing the quality of discussion forums on the web. Developing high quality web materials for learning is a heavy process. <37> The web facilitates updating course materials and providing our learners with most recent materials. However, in our opinion the educational potential of WWW is more to involve learners in joint learning activities and less to use it as a more or less comfortable bookstore. <41> The lines along which the Distance Education Program of Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri operates are basically simple ones and easily adapted to a wide variety of courses. Also it has been shown that teachers as well as students in general find it easy to work within the system used. Further development will make work in the Distance Education Program more user-friendly and efficient than it already is. In our eyes, therefore, the future prospects of our Distance Education Program are bright and filled with promise of better and more efficient learning surroundings, more offerings and better service to our students.

Training of Teachers Several institutions emphasized the need for teacher training: • • •

•

<38> In the future we will put more emphasis on training the trainers in skills to efficiently moderate, facilitate, and coach courses. <30> It seems more difficult that originally believed to spread the ideas on new teaching forms and new media for teaching among the academics in the university. <59> Generally, the developments are dependent on the interest of the individual academics. There are not many that really are active and interested in developing courses and programs on the web for the time being. In fact, there are quite many academics that are not very active users of computers and WWW. <74> The www is a powerful tool but it implies new pedagogical strategies. People must change but the tutors and the content forms must change also. The course participants are not used to think during the learning moments. The whole learning system must be reevaluated and re-adjusted because a new knowledge metaphor is arising. The way we

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acquire information and knowledge will be maintained but the way we process the same information will change. <8> From what I've seen there are a lot who want to use the web, both students and staff. I have just done two evaluations and it works. The trouble is that staff are not getting the training and staff have real problems teaching on the web without the necessary training. This is seen in the context of further rationalization in Australian higher education in which most universities have lost a lot of staff. Students have serious problems of access and staff do not know how to use the web. <37> As a prerequisite we develop a web-based qualification program for online-tutors.

Collaboration Several institutions stated intentions to collaborate with other international and national institutions: • • • •

•

• •

<58> We expect to increase collaboration with other institutions, especially in Norway, but also in Scandinavia, Europe, and North America. <87> We also see a need for collaboration on various levels within the educational system, both in Sweden and international. <132> The future is in the collaboration, in the exchange of contents, technology and pedagogical methods. The key is in networking. <38>As communication costs will decrease we will use WWW more to deliver multimedia training materials, which support the learning process. We also intend to cooperate with publishers supplying high quality multimedia (web-based training materials). <60> Concerning ODEL network (dependent on project support), one plans to integrate other continuing courses as part of the network. These plans include offering a web service for students who are not able to follow local part time studies. This service will distribute learning some learning materials and services to distance students registered at one of the four co-operating colleges. This service is planned administered by Bergen College. One will also co-operate on arranging face-to-face seminars. Thus, some part of the courses will be organized in a common web service in the consortium. The consortium will probably be extended to include Health subjects and Technology subjects in time. <62> We also plan to establish in co-operation with the University of Oslo and Agder College the so-called “Realfagsuniversitetet” (The Natural Sciences and Mathematics University), with a web based infrastructure with integrated administrative functions. <74> The promotion of strategic networks will constitute, in the near future, a key for success.

Policy and Organization Web-based education may have policy and organizational consequences for the institutions. Some of the institutions raised these issues: •

<54> ELO is the future way to go. Next to the systems design we also develop new organizational and procedural structures to implement the innovation and to support the transition phase. At this moment the use of StudieNet could be called a perfect solution for the transition of a second generation towards a third generation approach towards distance education. Especially the educational changes implied with the ELO-system (competencybased education) put forward the biggest problems and challenges.

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<62> We are in a time of reorganization. There will be one integrated unit within the university responsible for further and continuing training, including distance learning. Then, there will be a more comprehensive and united organization of these activities. However, still, the faculties will decide which courses to offer. <50> Online education is a very new method, interesting and actually changing roles of teachers and students. It is difficult to know if it will take over the Italian Schools. Schools should be organized in a different way to make this approach feasible. In any case, there is a need for tutors to be located anywhere in Europe. Schools and face to face must change. The technology evolves so fast that educational experts do not have time to explore them properly – the human upgrade is slower then the machines. There is a need to push educationalists and force them to take into account the new technologies available. <10> The web is an area of very rapid growth. At the moment we are carrying out a university wide inventory to find out the full scale of what is being offered. This is a mature and stable provision of university degrees via the www with considerable experimentation. We are breaking down any distinction between on campus students and distance education. Irrespective of student location, the student can get the same course with the same level of support for the same degree, and can study on the web whether on campus or not. <87> Working with development of distance-education or flexible learning shows a need for an open attitude in course-developers and tutors concerning the thinking about the meaning of learning and knowledge. This also goes for the school-system in general. Therefore we think it is necessary to give opportunities for discussion and work with pedagogical subjects to establish the base for flexible learning. We have started to give seminars in these areas in will try to develop this further. During 1999 we will have all courses on WWW, based on LEKTOR - still the focus will be interaction and not transport of information. The reason for using WWW is that we see an increase in the number of students using local ”Studyshops” and also an increasing interest from the market in using this method, for example has some factories made ”Studyshops” for their employed.

Miscellaneous • <30> We will look at possibilities of reducing the dependence on video conferencing…. and possibly change to asynchronous communication. However, there are no plans of changing to flexible enrolment dates and free progression. This is due to the emphasis on group communication and discussion as part of the learning process. • <38> Asynchronous computer-mediated communication to facilitate learning has proved successful • <63> …and stick to asynchronous communication. However, there are no plans of changing to flexible enrolment dates and free progression. This is due to the emphasis on group communication and discussion as part of the learning process. • <64> …and possibly change to asynchronous communication. • <77> The potential is enormous. The training systems must complement each other. The comprehension of the training sector must include the dynamics compromised by the distance learning facilities. The limitations are related with the adjustments to be made in the training process and in language availability. • <7> We see great potentiality in training on the web. We believe it will work as a training medium, especially for highly individualistic students and very proactive students. Most of our students do not have internet access and we do not use it for on campus students. Issues arising are the sole college operating on its own or the Virtual Campus of corporate

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TAFE in Victoria and issues of the validity of audio, video and computer marking in training courses on the www. <12> The www is being used and will be used very widely for teaching in Australia. We run external courses both at a distance and on the web in which students never come to Western Australia, let alone to the university. People move a lot nowadays and the norm will be that they are able to study for their degrees anytime, anywhere. <4> The African Virtual University, led by a team including Etienne Boranschabang, Shola Aboderin and Richard Uku at the World Bank in Washington DC, and a growing number of universities in North America and Europe is fast establishing itself as a major innovation and a successful contributor to African education. The model, piloted and perfected in English-speaking African countries, is now being developed in Frenchspeaking African countries and being commenced in Portuguese-speaking countries. There is a growing use of the web in student interaction and course delivery. <47> This course was a great success and the distance web and face-to-face components of the course have complimented each other to provide a formidable training/earning tool for the future. <11 and 42> There are some open modules on our site and information pages, To see a course, contact the course manager by e-mail and ask for access. This is a pilot project and did not receive any direct state or public funding. The designers see the price of internet calls (on an upward trend) as a major problem for the development of these type of courses. The designers of the course feel that the state is not approaching the development of web training as seriously as it might. They are not aware of any state sponsored studies or projects in this area.

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Chapter 9. Barriers to Successful Online Education There are a number of barriers that must be overcome before online education can become an large scale success. Among them are financial barriers, resistance to change, bandwidth limitations, access limitations, insufficient search facilities, copyright issues, and barriers to online assessment. Financial Barriers The financial barriers are important. The analysis showed that few institutions had substantial income from student fees. At the same time, the cost of development and maintenance could be high: •

•

<5> Economic factors will be the main determinants in the development of education on the web. Many universities are unplanned and there will be a shake-out. The costs of maintenance of large scale systems will cause problems. We are not going to go for bells and whistles. We are going to control our own servers and control our own system. <78> This is a pilot project and did not receive any direct state or public funding. The designers see the price of internet calls (on an upward trend) as a major problem for the development of these type of courses. The designers of the course feel that the state is not approaching the development of web training as seriously as it might. They are not aware of any state sponsored studies or projects in this area. <45> Though Flexible learning feels that the www is not used very much in Ireland they feel that future of web is bright. However some basic problems still persist for the expansion of the medium. A considerable investment is required to get the equipment necessary to do a web course.

In addition, national regulations in some countries, for example Sweden and Germany, denies institutions the opportunity to charge tuition fees. This is pointed out by two Swedish institutions <86, 87> and perceived as a problem at the University of Munich <34> and Saarland's University <35> in Germany. A third German institution elaborates on the issue: •

<35> Concerning the future, there is a big question mark. If the German State and the University wish to realize more distance education programs and web based learning environments they have to find answers and regulations on how to offer these kinds of courses. At present there is no real legal bases for this kind of courses, and as we are not allowed to take money, even from foreign students, and second there is difficulty in getting official accreditation for students of other departments. These kinds of courses may take more than six times as much resources than on-campus courses. The main problem lies in resources for development, although also moderating the courses takes a lot of time.

Resistance to Change Some interviewees reflected on the our intrinsic resistance to chance: •

<69> The future will be promoted by the convergence of different means. There are several limitations to point out, namely: 1) resistance to change and to innovation - mainly in what concerns the training offer – to change the process of training is to change

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mentalities and to change the procedures of the trainers; 2) digital contents – again the trainers must have a new role and face changes; 3) technological limitations – access and band. <75> The tendency is to grow. How fast we do not know. The internet has continuously surprised us, but there is still the cultural difficulties and the resistance to change. Other difficulties are related with technological and economic barriers.

Bandwidth Limitations Others referred to bandwidth limitations: • • •

•

<83> The future depends on communication lines. The capacity and speed of the lines limit the use of the web for training purposes. <84> Depending on the course, the type of media combination to be used is decided upon. WWW is used for its contents, for interactivity. There is some experience with sound and video (very slow). <57> Massey University has a policy committee for online teaching. Massey is a large New Zealand distance education provider. We find WebCT acceptable and it has its ups and downs. Our major priority is to copy audio and video to CD ROMs and to get the CD ROMs onto WebCT. There are three reasons for this: the students do not have machines for web audio or video; 90% do, however, have CD ROM drives; New Zealand does not today have the bandwidth. One has to remember that there are massive copyright problems in New Zealand: you cannot reproduce anything electronically on the web. <37> We use different kinds of media to deliver content in our web-based courses: HTML-sites with Java scripts, streaming audio/video, PDF-files for download. Beside the web-based courses we offer lectures using a videoconferencing system. Many of our customers work at home connected to the web via modem or ISDN. Due to the low bandwidth of this connection voluminous materials like CBT’s are delivered on CDROMs.

Access Limitations Limited access to the Internet is an obvious barrier: • • • •

<84> The introduction to the use of the internet is very slow. There is a need for dissemination actions. <42> One has to realize that access to the internet in India is very, very difficult. Internet access was impossible a few years ago. Now we have 2.000 of the university's 300.000 students on the web. <71> Some questions: info-exclusion, large gap between rich and poor, democracy. It is a generation problem, the Primary Schools will take 30 years, the collaborative work will be promoted, the teacher will have another role. <35> Communication is very important, and there are moderators facilitating all the discussions, which take place in small groups, and there are tutoring which is done by the professional academics, professors at the university, and also by former course participants. Also optional videoconferencing (web based) facilities are used. However, among 180 participants only 8 have had the necessary equipment for doing that.

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Insufficient Search Facilities and Copyright Issues Insufficient search facilities and copyright issues were also mentioned as barriers: •

•

<80> The problems raised are related with the extent of information available. That is, the web is like a labyrinth, and we can lose ourselves more then in a library. If we think of virtual class, for instance, it is necessary that the users manipulate very well the search systems, they can search by logical words or by relevant information. That is, there will be added value services that will make it easier for the user the access all information. <57> WWW plus paper is the model. There are very severe copyright restrictions on electronic reproduction in New Zealand and thus we are forced to use paper. This is also a form of transferal of costs to the student. The basic structure is WebCT, plus private mail, plus the chat function which is widely used by the students. Graphics are taken from an image archive and from external links.

Barriers to Online Assessment The interviews testify that there are a number of barriers to effective use of online assessment: Among them are public and institutional regulations, traditions for physical attendance, technical limitations, student identification, and detection of plagiarized digital material. Some statements that support this are listed below: • •

• •

•

• •

<8> No assignments. All by projects which are print-based. We don't like assessment on the web and are conscious of security issues. Continuous assessment is preferred to examinations. <54> Now assessment is still a separate activity that by law is organized in study centers in controlled environments. A number of advanced courses build upon the elaboration of tasks that together form a dossier that is the base for the final evaluation, next to eventually a restricted summative test that checks basic knowledge. In the oncoming innovative competency-based design (ELO) we expect that student task resolution is the actual base for assessment and there is no direct need to organize an extra assessment session in a study center. At the political/strategic level this direction is yet to be approved and backed with a number of procedural arrangements to be able to say that such assessment approaches conform to the legal regulations. <57> No SAQs, no CMAs. There is no electronic submission of assignments because the university does not encourage electronic submission of assignments. All are hard copy to the lecturers. <12> Students may submit electronically but there is no electronic marking or return of corrected assignments. No official examinations are on the web. The 20 year history of our distance education provision continues: students go to schools, libraries, colleges etc to do their examinations. <78> Assessment has proved to be the biggest problem for this project. The self-scoring java tests are useful but the age profile of the student means that they may not take them as seriously as they should. It has meant a stretch on the personnel involved in the project. It has proved straightforward to assess the theoretical parts of the courses but the practical elements have given rise to problems. This has not yet been solved. <44> Assessment is carried by the lecturing staff in the way that face-to-face parts of the courses are assessed. <73> There is no assessment. There is no legal framework to allow an electronic certificate. At this moment DIGITO FORMAÇÂO promotes courses on the internet to

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â&#x20AC;˘

university students and professionals and they do not provide people with a certificate in the end. The enterprise is studying a better way to provide their clients with a digital certificate. <34> Same as campus course. The accreditation is equivalent to other courses at the university. The students enrolled in the University get credits for completed course with passed results. With a few exceptions the participants are ordinary full time students. External students (with or without a student exam) can be accepted after individual judgement of necessary background knowledge. These students are few and will not receive credits (the university cannot give credit to students that do not belong to the university), but they may receive a paper of completion.

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Chapter 10. Strategic Recommendations to Online Educators and Policy Makers This chapter presents a number of strategic recommendations to politicians, administrators of educational institutions, and online educators. The recommendations, which are based on the research and information presented in this report, are discussed throughout the chapter and listed below: 1. Promote national and international harmonization of degrees, certificates, credits, and grades to facilitate online mobility of students 2. Oppose national regulations that inhibits institutions from charging tuition fees 3. Focus on cost effective online education 4. Develop better systems for administration of online education 5. Support initiatives for training of online teachers, administrators, and instructional designers 6. Oppose regulations and attitudes that inhibits online assessment 7. Support further research on online pedagogy and didactics 8. Develop and implement strategies to reduce teacher workload Promote national and international harmonization of degrees, certificates, credits, and grades to facilitate online mobility of students There is a steady growth of institutions that offer online courses to students in other countries, and the analysis presents many examples of international collaboration and thinking. However, most of the global initiatives seem to be experiments and ambitions rather than main priorities. One important barrier is the problems with acceptance of foreign degrees, certificates, credits, and grades as an integral part of education and professional development. International collaboration will benefit from an harmonization on these important issues. North American universities may have a competitive advantage compared with Europe since North American universities have a relatively long tradition of credit transfer. Accreditation could be an important competitive advantage and several strategies could be followed to achieve the necessary accreditation. Collaboration with institutions in other countries could result in bilateral accreditation. Oppose national regulations that inhibits institutions from charging tuition fees A country should allow its universities and colleges to charge tuition fees for web-based course. Countries that doesn't can hardly be competitive in the emerging global educational marketplace. Tuition fees can stimulate change, facilitate collaboration between institutions, and be an incentive for export of courses. Examples from both Germany and Sweden show that these countries restrictions is perceived as a barrier for online education. Focus on cost effective online education The analysis indicates that there are few institutions that can claim that provision of webbased courses has been an economic success, if they disregard external research and development grants. At the same time, most of the web-courses have relatively low enrolment. The cost of development and maintenance could be high, and there are many examples of expensive pilot projects that experiment with high-cost, state-of-the art technology. All this

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imply that it is necessary to focus much more on how online education could become more cost effective. This include a focus on how online courses could handle larger enrolment and prioritizing cost effective technology and development schemes. Develop better systems for administration of online education Institutions that plan to offer large scale and professional online education need an administrative system which is integrated with the web. A discouraging, but important observation is that a number of institutions do not use the web for administrative purposes. Many of the administrative solutions are primitive, and much could be done to improve most of the existing systems. The standard, commercial systems are continuously being improved, but they may still need much local adaptation. They may only meet some of the administrative needs, and they could place some pedagogical limitations on the courses. Support initiatives for training of online teachers, administrators, and instructional designers Online education is a new field with little research and practical experience. Practitioners need more knowledge and experience. Initiatives to disseminate existing research, examples of good practice, and training should be supported. Oppose regulations and attitudes that inhibits online assessment Assessment systems are strong indicators of how seriously course providers value their aims. One could argue that summative assessment is such an important issue for students, teachers, and course providers that experimentation with online assessment functions is risky and hard to find support for. Two obvious challenges for online assessment are authentication of student identification and detection of plagiarized digital material. Other barriers are public and institutional regulations, traditions for physical attendance, and technical limitations. These barriers to online assessment counteract the development of online education since they support face-to-face attendance and preserve traditional education. While summative assessment of online courses seem to be very traditional and often has a face-to-face component, formative assessment is more experimental and based on online activities. However, there are some strategies that could improve online assessment. This author (Paulsen, 1998) has previously suggested that course providers should consider the following five strategies to organize and improve online assessment: 1. Consider testing the learners' ability to find and apply information, rather than to memorize and reproduce it. One possible approach to online assessment could be to focus more on the students' knowledge management abilities and less on their knowledge of the course content as Mason discussed in her book on global education: ...content-based methods of assessment are still being applied to conditions which demand a skills-based approach. This is undoubtedly because it is easier to design reliable assessment systems which test content rather than process. We have much less experience in assessing students' knowledge management abilities, the ways in which the course has transformed their thinking, and developed their skills in communicating and working with colleagues in the domain of the course content (Mason 1998, 42).

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2. Consider applying assessment that does not require face-to-face sessions. It is noteworthy to observe that online assessment is not necessarily viewed as an important part of courses. But, if online courses rely on assessment in face-to-face sessions, flexibility for the students is substantially limited. For example, centralized, face-to-face examinations are not convenient for students who live far from the examination site. In comparison, assessment based on project reports and term papers are much more flexible with regard to time and space. 3. Consider including computer assessment. Computer assessment would suit online courses very well since course providers and learners have computers at their disposal. Such assessment could include simple multiple-choice assignments or more complex tutorials that monitor the students' progress. Further, computer assessment could provide immediate feedback and reduce teacher workload. 4. Consider including peer assessment. CMC could be very well suited for peer assessment because students easily can share and comment on contributions. After all, most CMC systems are developed to facilitate such collaboration. Further, by requiring peer students to take part in the process, assessment could become an integral part of their learning experience. 5. Consider using group assignments. Assessment of group assignments is likely to require less teacher workload than assessment of similar assignments prepared by individual students. Further, collaboration among online students could increase learning and result in a product of higher quality. Support further research on online pedagogy and didactics There are several distinct features that characterize online teaching techniques: • • • • • • •

They can conveniently utilize an overwhelming amount of online resources. They can facilitate collaborative learning independent of time and space. They can provide time to prepare and reflect on comments and contributions. They can facilitate on-demand access to learning activities that continue for an extended time period. They can provide unique opportunities to utilize discourse transcripts for analytical and reflective assignments. They can conveniently utilize computer-aided instruction. They can offer multimedia elements in presentations and demonstrations. However for interaction among people, they still primarily rely on written communication with the inherent keyboard limitations.

These features provide teaching opportunities that can rarely be achieved in other educational environments. They could probably add a new dimension to familiar teaching techniques and also contribute to the development of a number of new, innovative teaching techniques. Develop and implement strategies to reduce teacher workload The major concern arising from this authors thesis research (Paulsen 1998, 186) was how to keep teacher workload at an acceptable level. Hence, I suggested the following eight strategies to reduce the workload per student associated with large-scale enrollment. 1. Form a group of experienced and well-trained teachers. The survey shows that the teachers have relatively little experience in CMC teaching, and one may assume that the workload may be reduced as teachers are trained and gain more experience. Courses about CMC teaching

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and teacher training programs should be developed and made available for the teachers. The survey revealed that a number of such courses exist, but as additional research and experience on CMC teaching become available, more and better courses should be developed. Further, the literature review and the interviews indicate that the workload is especially high the first time one teaches a CMC course, and that material developed for one course could be used again in other courses. A group of teachers could possibly also benefit from collaboration and exchange of experience and course material. To facilitate teacher collaboration, the organization could organize face-to-face seminars and online faculty lounges for their teachers. 2. Establish a system for technical and administrative support. Some of the teachers suggested that support staff or the supporting organization should handle some functions for the teachers. For example, technical questions could probably be handled better by the technical support staff, and administrative requests could probably be answered better and more efficiently by the administrative staff. Even senior students could be engaged to support new students in order to relieve teachers from trivial support work. 3. Shift attention from spontaneous interactive teaching to deliberate course design. Moore (1990, 348) argued that "...preactive teaching is deliberative, a highly rationale process, interactive teaching is more spontaneous and to some extent controlled by students' questions, requests, and reactions." Moore's argument entails that the interactive workload depends more on the number of enrolled students than the preactive workload does. Similarly, the interviewees' advice on how teachers could handle more than 100 students indicates that the interactive workload could be decreased through careful preactive design and preparation. The course designers should also carefully consider which teaching techniques are suitable for the course. So, one possible way to handle high enrollment is to adapt the large-scale model with more emphasis on course design. 4. Pay special attention to the assessment workload per student when you design course assignments. The number and form of course assignments are especially important for the teacher workload. So, the course designers should pay especial attention to the teacher workload generated by the assignments. The teachers' assessment workload could be reduced considerably by substituting teacher assessment with peer-, computer-, or self-assessment. Further, group assignments could entail less teacher assessment than individual assignments do. 5. Restrict teacher interaction with individual students and small groups of students. Since the interactive workloads seem to be high in one-to-one techniques and in many-to-many techniques with high teacher involvement, high enrollment courses may have to use less of these interactive techniques even though they are perceived to have high learner outcome. These results support Bates (1991, 13) when he stated that the technology does not bring economies of scale unless the opportunities for interaction for individual students are dramatically curtailed. 6. Encourage and facilitate interaction among students. Students should be regarded as a resource for mutual learning. Services, teaching techniques, and assignments could be designed to encourage and facilitate interaction among students. Former students could become active alumni and be encouraged to participate in some interaction.

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7. Automate responses. The teacher could develop a response library of often used comments and even present this on a bulletin board for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Further, automatic responses could be designed into a course, for example as automatic e-mail responses or self-correcting quizzes. 8. Develop a scheme to handle the demand for expedient responses. Several teachers comment that the time flexibility and the expected response time influence the nature of their workload. Therefore, one may argue that relaxing the requirements for expedient responses and allowing more flexible working hours could ease some teachers' perception of workload. However, students want expedient feedback, so co-teaching, shift work, and the use of teaching assistants may be considered as schemes to share a continuous and increasing workload among several individual teachers. All teachers should also inform the students about their online work schedule, so that the students know which days of the week and what time of the day responses from the teachers could be expected.

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References Aoki, K. and D. Pogroszewski. 1998. Virtual University Reference Model: A Guide to Delivering Education and Support Services to the Distance Learner. (http://www.westga.edu/~distance/aoki13.html) Bates, T. 1997. Technology, distance education and national development. (http://bates.cstudies.ubc.ca/icde/icde.html) Berge, Z. and M. P. Collins. 1995. Computer Mediated Communication and the Online Classroom. Volume III: Distance Education, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Boshier, R., M. Mohapi, G. Moulton, A. Qayyum, L. Sadownik & M. Wilson, 1997. Best and worst dressed web courses: Strutting into the 21st century in comfort and style. Distance Education - An International Journal. Volume 18, Number 2, 1997. Brooks, D. W. 1997. Web-Teaching. A Guide to Design Interactive Teaching for the World Wide Web (Innovations in Science Education and Technology). New York, NY: Plenum Press. Driscoll, M. and L. Alexander. 1998. Web-based Training: Using Technology to Design Adult Learning Experiences. San Fransisco, CA: The Jossey-Bass Publishers. Gayol, Y. And F. M. Schied. Cultural imperialism in the virtual classroom: critical pedagogy in transnational distance education. (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/9260/culture.html) Hall, B. 1997. Web-Based Training Cookbook. Everything you need to know for online training. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Harasim, L. M. 1990. Online Education: Perspectives on a New Environment. New York: Praeger. Harasim, L., S. R. Hiltz, L. Teles, and M. Turroff. 1995. Learning Networks. A Field Guide to Teaching and Learning Online. Cambridge, Ma: The MIT Press. Kahn, B. H. Ed. 1997. Web-based Instruction. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Educational Technology Publications. McCormack, C. and D. Jones. 1998. Building a Web-based Education System. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Mason, R. 1998. Globalising Education. Trends and applications. New York, NY: Routledge. Mason, R. 1994. Distance Education Across National Borders. In Mary Thorpe and David Grugeon, eds., Open Learning in the Mainstream. Harlow, Essex: Longman Group Limited, pp. 297â&#x20AC;&#x201C;308. (http://wbweb4.worldbank.org/DistEd/Policy/Global/coll03.html)

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Mason, R. D. and A. Kaye. 1989. Mindweave: Communications, Computers, and Distance Education. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Massey, C. And J. Curry. 1999. Online Post-Secondary Education: A Competitive Analysis. TeleLearning Inc. (http://www.telelearn.ca/g_access/news/comp_analysis.pdf) Open University. Assessment. In, Production Handbook for Open University Courses and Packs. (http://wbweb4.worldbank.org/DistEd/management/teaching/ex-02.html) Palloff, R. M. and K. Pratt. 1999. Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom. San Fransisco, CA: The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series. Paulsen, M. F. 1998. Teaching Techniques for Computer-mediated Communication. Ann Arbor, Mi: UMI Dissertation Services. Porter, L. R. 1997. Creating the Virtual Classroom: Distance Learning with the Internet. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Schank, R. C. 1997. Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to Building a High Skilled Workforce. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Thorpe, M. 1987. Student activities. Epistolodidactica, the European journal of distance education 1987(2). Waggoner, M. D. 1992. Empowering Networks: Computer Conferencing in Education. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Educational Technology Publications. Wilson, M., A. Qayyum and R. Boshier, 1998. World wide America?. Think globally, click locally. Distance Education - An International Journal. Volume 19, Number 1, 1998.

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Trans Trans Trans Trans Au Au Au Au

Au Au Au Au Au At

Be Br

Br Br Ca Ca Ca Ca Ca Ca Ca

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

[9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]

[15] [16]

[17]

[18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26]

Case Study 6

Case Study 3

Case Study 11

Case Study 1 Case Study 10

6 2 2 1 40 5 10 1 6

5 7

110 Udepartment 38 Udepartment Udepartment College Open U Organization College College Open U

500 University

Company 350 Udepartment

3 200 Udepartment 50 4000 University 20 1000 College 30 8000 University 36 15 Udepartment 1 Organization

200 Organization ? Consortium Consortium 70 8000 Udepartment 3 85 Udepartment College 2 60 Udepartment

3 2

Management Training and Executive Development (MCE) Virtual University - Supported by the Einstein College from São Paulo Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina - Laboratory of Distance Education - LED Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro Universidade Virtual Acadia University Assiniboine Community College Athabasca University Community Learning Network (CLN) Dalhousie University/Henson College Mount Royal College Open Learning Agency

International Telecommunication Union LEB Nordisk Netthøgskole The African Virtual University University of South Australia Sunshine Coast University College Wodonga Institute of TAFE University of South Australia Division of Education, Art and Social Sciences The University of Melbourne Macquarie University TAFE SA Online Edith Cowan University Griffith University ICE - Internet Center for Education, Vienna

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http://www.maxwell.lambda.ele.puc-rio.br/ www.universidadevirtual.br http://webster.acadiau.ca/conted/courses http://www.assiniboinec.mb.ca/cae/welcome1.htm http://www.athabascau.ca/html/courses/online.htm http://www.cln.org/coop1/courses/online.html http://www.dal.ca/henson/demsm/overview.html http://wwwacad.mtroyal.ab.ca/adc/accn/index.htm http://www.ola.bc.ca/ou/courses/web.html

http://www.led.ufsc.br

http://www.unimelb.edu.au/ http://www.mq.edu.au/ http://www.tafe.sa.edu.au/top/ www.cowan.edu.au http://www.gu.edu.au http://www.schulen.wien.at/ice/ice_online_kurse/in2/i ndex.html http://www.mce.be/wbt.htm http://www.ibase.org.br/~ined/

http://www.itu.int/VTC www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/9648/Index.html http://www.nnhs.com http://www.avu.org/ http://www.unisa.edu.au http://www.scuc.edu.au/mba www.wodonga.tafe.edu.eu www.unisa.edu.au

The bracket numbers in this list refer to the entries in the CISAER catalogue (http://www.nettskolen.com/alle/in_english/cisaer/catalogue.html), and the bracket numbers are used as references throughout this report. Shaded entries testify that both catalogue entries and interviews are available. Column 4 lists the number of web-courses offered by the institution, and column 5 lists the number of online students.

Appendix 1. List of Institutions and Web-addresses

Ca Ch Cy Dk Dk Fi Fi De

De De De

De De De Is In Ie

Ie Ie Ie Ie

Ie It It It It Jp Nl Nl Nl

[27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34]

[35] [36] [37]

[38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43]

[44] [45] [46] [47]

[48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56]

[57]

Case Study 4

Case Study 2

Case Study 7 Case Study 15

900 Consortium Organization 40 Udepartment College Open U Udepartment

120 Udepartment Consortium 65 Udepartment

Udepartment

1 10 College 3 145 Consortium 5 150 Organization 8 149 Corporation 1 20 Udepartment 8 500 Organization 360 2500 Open U 2 300 Udepartment 45 120 Udepartment

Udepartment 12 Corporation 1 1200 Organization 1 12 ?

2 8

20 28 2

5 Udepartment 4 630 Open U 1 Organization 1 50 Udepartment 41 5000 Disted. Inst 10 160 Udepartment 6 220 Udepartment 1 30 Udepartment

Massey University - College of Education, Palmerston North

Institut f체r Rechtsinformatik DIFF Tele-Akademie der FH-Furtwangen (Univ. of Applied Science) CAFE MONDIAL Academy of European Law - Cyberversity Zentrum fuer Fernstudien und Universit채re Weiterbildung Verkmenntaskolinn a Akureyri Indira Gandhi National Open University DeLLTTi Project (Delivering Lifelong Learning Through Telematics), Adult Education Office, University College Dublin The University Of Ulster Magee Flexible Learning Cork The Marketing Institute of Ireland Irish Centre for Distance Education Research and Applications Gordon College of Education For. Com Consorzio Interuniversitario Istituto Tecnologie Didattiche - C.N.R. TRAINET Lab of Computational Medicine (LCM) WIDE Project, School of Internet Open University of the Netherlands University of Amsterdam, communication science University of Twente/Faculty of Educational Technology

University of British Columbia The Open University of Hong Kong Government of Cyprus Aarhus University/Jutland Open University Center of Distance Learning Helsinki university Turku university/The Centre for Extension Studies University of Munich, Institute for Educational Research

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http://www.macam98.ac.il/chtml/ish http://www.forcom.unito.it:8000/ http://www.itd.ge.cnr.it/ http://eetp.trainet.it http://www.unina.it/medicina/LCM/index.htm http://www.sfc.wide.ad.jp/soi http://www.ou.nl http://www.pscw.uva.nl/commkaart/ http://teletop.edte.utwente.nl and http://www.edte.utwente.nl www.massey.ac.nz (Massey University);

http://comm.infm.ulst.ac.uk/ URL not available http://www.mii.ie http://comm.infm.ulst.ac.uk/

http://www.cafe-mondial.de http://www.aer-academy.de http://www.zfuw.uni-kl.de/seminare.htm http://hyrna.ismennt.is/ http://www.ignou.edu http://www.ucd.ie/~delltti

http://itesm.cstudies.ubc.ca/info/ http://www.ouhk.edu.hk http://www.kypros.org/Greek http://imv.aau.dk/jaau/ http://www.cfu.dk/International/International.html http://avoin.helsinki.fi http://avoin.utu.fi Http://infix.emp.paed.unimuenchen.de/nic/seminar.html http://www.jura.uni-sb.de/seminar/ http://www.diff.uni-tuebingen.de.cefes/ http://www.tele-ak.fh-furtwangen.de

No No No No No No No No No

No Pt Pt Pt

Pt Pt

Pt Pt Pt Pt Pt Za Es Es Es

Es Es Se Se

[58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [63] [64] [65] [66]

[67] [68] [69] [70]

[71] [72]

[73] [74] [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] [81]

[82]

[83] [84] [85] [86]

[87]

Case Study 19

Case Study 21

Case Study 17

Case Study 16

Open U

Company Company Organization Udepartment Organization High School Organization 12 Open U Open U

100 12 47 20 12 70

12 Open U 50 Udepartment

30 College Corporation 400 Udepartment 50 Udepartment

30 1000 High School

200 1600 Udepartment 30 1500 Udepartment 1 30 Udepartment 1 15 Udepartment

3 4 1 1 1 1 4 3

1 3

5 26 8 1

60 1000 Disted. Inst 3 70 College 1 250 College 1 20 Udepartment 7 Udepartment 80 1300 Consortium 18 600 College 10 200 Disted. Inst 10 300 Udepartment

UNED - Departamento de Ingenieria Electrica, Electronica y de Controlo CEPADE - Universidad Politecnica de Madrid ICT - Instituto Català de Tecnologia Dpt of Informatics, Mid Sweden Univ. Food Engineering, Lund Institute of Technology, LU, SWEDEN National Institute for Distance Education, Norrköping

NKI Nettskolen Tromsø College, Faculty of Education Bergen College of education. ODEL network University of Oslo NTNU NITOL - Norway-net with IT for Open Learning Agder College NKS Distance Education (SEVU - Senter for etter- og videreutdanning) Centre for continuing education University of Bergen Pedagogisk Senter, Karmøy Formedia Universidade Católica Portuguesa - Programme Dislogo TecMinho - Associação Universidade - Empresa para o Desenvolvimento Universidade Aberta AESBUC - Associação da Escola Superior de Biotecnologia da Universidade Católica Portuguesa Digito Formação TDC-Tecnologia das Comunicações, Lda IFB - Instituto de Formação Bancaria Universidade do Minho Associação Industrial do Minho Pinelands High School CECENET - Instituto de Técnicas Educativas UNED - Psychology Faculty -project Foteumidis UNED - Escuela Universitária de Informática - Infuned

http://www.norrk.ssv.se

http://www.cepade.es http://www.ictnet.es http://www.itk.mh.se/statistik http://anka.livstek.lth.se

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http://www.digito.pt/formacao www.tdc.pt http://www.ifb.pt http://www.iep.uminho.pt/mjoao/foco98 http://www.aiportuense.pt/pme/ http://www.wcape.school.za/subject/CS/PHS/main.htm http://www.cece.es http://www.uned.es/proyectos/ing/Telementos.htm http://www.uned.es/proyectos/ing/Telematictraining.ht m http://www.uned.es/proyectos/ing/demos.htm

http://www.infodesketop.com/eetp http://www2.esb.ucp.pt/twt

http://www.karmoyped.no/transpro http://www.iefeg.formedia.pt/index.htm http://www.dislogo.ucp.pt http://www.eng.uminho.pt/tecminho

www.massey.ac.nz/~muce (College of Education) http://www.nettskolen.com http://www.hitos.no/lutd/ http://www.hib.no http://www.uio.no http://www.ntnu.no/ http://www.idb.hist.no/nitol/ http://www.hia.no http://www.nks.no/nks http://www.uib.no/sevu/index.html

Us Us Us Us Us Us

[107] Uk [108] Uk [109] Uk [110] Uk [111] Us [112] Us [113] Us

[114] [115] [116] [117] [118] [119]

1 50 Udepartment 3 7000 Open U 1 30 Consortium 3 100 Udepartment 9 100 College 26 University 28 ?

Uk Uk Uk Uk Uk Uk

[101] [102] [103] [104] [105] [106]

Case Study 5

Case Study 14

12 8 Udepartment 6 1000 Udepartment 1 Udepartment 4 25 Udepartment 4 25 Udepartment 1 50 Udepartment

13 1 9 18 16 80

University Udepartment Company Udepartment College Company

30 Udepartment

Udepartment 25 Udepartment

[100]

4 1

Uk Uk

[98] [99]

Case Study 12

? 80 6000 Udepartment 4 300 Udepartment 2 130 Company 8 161 Udepartment 13 1000 University 4 ? 1 ? 4 50 University 3 30 Udepartment

Se Se Se Se Tr Tr Uk Uk Uk Uk

[88] [89] [90] [91] [92] [93] [94] [95] [96] [97]

Leeds Metropolitan University Centre for Labour Market Studies, University of Leicester Birkbeck College, University of London Institute of Education, University of London Institute of Education, University of London Centre for English Language Studies in Education (CELSE), University of Manchester Napier University The UK Open University University of Stirling and Glasgow Caledonian University University of Oxford - Department for Continuing Education Bellevue Community College Brigham University California Distance Learning Project, Lifelong Learning Online California State University at Dominguez Hills California State University, Northridge CyberCorp Inc. Central Michigan University, College of Extended Learning Concord University School of Law DigitalThink

NTI-Skolan Lund Virtual University Ume책 Universitet, LITU Huddinge Agora Virtual Campus of Middle East Technical University Middle East Technical University Abacus Learning Systems Eloquence University of Exeter Department of Adult and Continuing Education, University of Glasgow University of Hull Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technologies, Lancaster University Lancaster University

136

http://www.csudh.edu/dominguezonline/donet.htm http://www.csun.edu/~vca ct00g/acct.html http://www.cybercorp.net/gymv/ http://www.cel.cmich.edu/faq/home.htm http://www.concord.kaplan.edu/ http://www.digitalthink.com

http://caxton.pmpc.napier.ac.uk http://www.open.ac.uk http://annick.stir.ac.uk/mll/ http://www.conted.ox.ac.uk http://distance-ed.bcc.ctc.edu/ http://coned.byu.edu/is/index.html http://www.otan.dni.us/cdlp/lllo/home.html

http://www.hull.ac.uk/merlin/ http://ww w.lancs.ac.uk/users/edres/courses/NOL/NOL.htm http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/edres/Courses/Postgradu ate/altprog/altpro1.htm http://www.lmu.ac.uk/lss/staffsup/eds.htm http://www.clms.le.ac.uk/ http://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/PPS/index.html http://www.ioe.ac.uk/lie/course1.htm http://www.ioe.ac.uk/lie/course5.htm http://www.man.ac.uk/CELSE

http://www.nti.se http://lvu.lu.se http://www.lh.umu.se/~litu Http://www.huddinge.agora.se Http://idea.metu.edu.tr Http://www.ii.metu.edu.tr/metuonline http://www.abacus-uk.co.uk http://www.elok.com http://www.ex.ac.uk/tnp/ http://www.ad ultedu.gla.ac.uk/public/overview.html

Us Us Us Us Us Us Us Us Us Us Us

Case Study 20

Case Study 9

Case Study 18

21 Udepartment 1 Company 1 300 Company 100 College 105 Udepartment 90 Udepartment 12 Organization 47 800 University 40 Udepartment 10 4300 University 50 Company

Heritage OnLine LR Communications Systems, Inc. MBA International Institute Maricopa Community Colleges - Rio Salado College New York Institute of Technology On-Line Campus OnlineLearning.net Pacific University/Optometry Today University of California Berkeley Extension University of Maryland University College University of Phoenix Virtual Online University

Interviews only <131> GECSA - Gestion del Conocimiento s.a., URL not available <132> CNED, The French National Center for Distance Education, http://www.cned.fr <133> Case Study 8. The Virtual University of the technological system of Monterey, URL not available

[120] [121] [122] [123] [124] [125] [126] [127] [128] [129] [130]

http://www.hol.edu/default.htm http://www.LRcom.com http://www.mbaii.org http://www.rio.maricopa.edu/ http://www.nyit.edu/olc/index.html http://www.OnlineLearning.net/ http://www.pacificu.edu/oce/past.html http://www.unex.berkeley.edu:4243/ http://www.umuc.edu/distance/ http://www.uophx.edu/ http://www.vousi.com/intro/

137