Education & Distance Learning Enthusiasts- Teacher Training Key To Web-based Education Initiatives 03/21/00

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Teacher Training Key To Web-based Education Initiatives 03/21/00

Newsbytes PM - March 21, 2000

WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A., 2000 MAR 21 (NB) -- Web-based education can be a powerful tool to boost student learning and access to information, but must first be understood and accepted by teachers at the secondary and collegiate level, speakers at a conference on Internet education said today.

On the final day of a conference on Web based education, Rep. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., a member of the Congressional Web-Based Education Commission - said while the so-called "digital divide" is a clear and present danger, the biggest contributor to that divide was not access to technology, but instruction by teachers who have not been sufficiently trained to use that technology.

"The biggest single impediment to delivering a digital education in the K-12 grades is professional training," Isakson said. "Those that have been teaching for less than ten years generally are computer literate. Then there are teachers who are a few years from retirement and just want to last through that time without learning how to use the damn thing."

The bipartisan Congressional Web-based Education Commission is charged with determining the role of the Internet in the classroom, and whether and how it can be harnessed to help bridge the so-called "digital divide" between technology haves and have-nots.

One of the commission's stated goals is to help initiate Senate legislative proposals to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the main avenue by which federal funds are provided to local school districts.

Last October, the House passed a bill reauthorizing Title I of ESEA, and is expected to draft bills this session on the act's remaining provisions E specifically, school technology and literacy initiatives. The Senate will try to reauthorize the act in one go, but given many of the historically divisive amendments included in ESEA such as school vouchers and block grants, that process may not be easy.

Isakson said if it were up to him, he would take all monies allocated to schools under Title III E the money set aside to purchase technology equipment for schools E and use it to train K-12 teachers that have little or no experience with computers or the Internet.

Other core recommendations the commission must make include establishing a set of accreditation standards for Internet learning, and determining which technologies - wireless or copper - should be used to wire schools years into the future. The commission is scheduled to report its findings to the president and Congress by November 2000.

The majority of the debate at this week's summit, however, centered on efforts to establish Internet curricula at the university level.

The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), in a report commissioned by the National Education Association and Blackboard Inc. - a developer of distance learning programs

- sought to determine whether a series of "benchmarks" initially developed many years ago for evaluating all types of distance learning were sufficient to determine the quality of Internet-based degree study programs.

The report - using the curriculum of six institutions thought to have the most experience in distance-learning programs - recommended a set of 24 "benchmarks" as essential to ensuring a quality Internet-based education program.

The study found three important - if somewhat obvious - benchmarks had not previously been considered. First, that the reliability of the technology delivery system should be as failsafe as possible, a recommendation with a special emphasis on security and privacy. Second, institutions should establish feedback mechanisms through which professors can adequately and realistically interact with and critique the work of their students. Lastly, the report found a greater need for mechanisms to ensure prompt communication between students and their career counselors, admissions officers and registrars.

IHEP's study also found several traditional benchmarks that did not apply in the Web-based education environment, namely, a strict course progression time and a limitation on class size.

As the number of Internet-based education programs have exploded over the past several years, colleges and universities have striven to prove that such programs are just as effective - if not more so - than traditional classroom courses. The Department of Education estimates that 78 percent of all colleges and universities offer some form of distance learning program, and that more than 1.6 million students were enrolled in distance learning courses in 1998.

In a report issued last year, "What's the Difference: A View of Contemporary Research on the Effectiveness of Distance Learning in Higher Education," IHEP studied 300 published research reports on distance learning and found that distance education research quite often focuses on individual courses rather than study degree programs and does not consider how so-called "virtual libraries" might restrict the academic reach of online courses. The report also found a high dropout rate among those that enroll in distance learning courses.

In a more general sense, the report found that the most of the studies reached conclusions that fell into either one of two camps, based on whether the sponsors of the studies were excited about the possibilities offered by the new educational medium, or vehemently opposed to it.

Officials from The American Federation of Teachers - one of the co-commissioner's of the "What's the Difference" report and a group that has been critical of the push for online education - were not immediately available for comment.

But Scott Jaschik, editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education, said traditional classroom teachers have good reason to be nervous about the development of online education.

"Lots of teachers think their jobs are on the line and that this new medium gives them less control over what they teach," and how they teach it, Jaschik said.

Jaschik said the Internet is clearly changing the landscape of higher education, affecting the admissions policies of universities, the tuition they charge, their accreditation policies. Add to those concerns the fact that many universities are creating fewer tenured faculty positions, he said, and you have a very tense development where the debate becomes "oversimplified," and educators are artificially divided into two camps, one for the technological geniuses, and one for the Luddites.

"That's why the issue of being able to measure the quality of these Internet-based programs is so important," Jaschik said.

Jamie Merisotis, IHEP president and author of both reports, said while there is still insufficient data to evaluate in a quantitative sense the value of Web-based education vis--vis traditional coursework, the most recent report goes a long way toward establishing standards for schools to reach their own conclusions.

"This report tries to provide some guideposts for decision makers to determine how to measure that quality," Merisotis said. "Because Internet-based education is so new and is growing so rapidly, there is a disconnect between knowing what the quality of that education is and how effectively the technology is being used."

Blackboard Inc., CEO Lou Pugliese said he envisions a hybrid higher educational system whereby students relate to faculty, coursework, and one another on both a face-to-face and some digital interactive method, like the products his company builds.

"In the end, teachers who have defined their art have nothing to fear from this development," he said.

The IHEP's site can be found at http://www.ihep.com .

Blackboard's site is at http://www.blackboard.com .

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com

(20000321/WIRES ONLINE, BUSINESS/)

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