Transcript The Hidden Curriculum of Distance Education

The Open University
May, 2003
The Hidden Curriculum of
Online Learning
Terry Anderson, Ph.D.
Canada Research Chair
Athabasca University
[email protected]
Presentation Outline
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Defining hidden curriculum
Defining curriculum
Context of online learning
4 dimensions of the hidden curriculum
Globalization
Hidden curriculum of campus based education
Your Questions and Comments
Context – Athabasca University,
Alberta, Canada
Context – Athabasca University,
Alberta, Canada
Largest Open University in Canada
Fastest growing University in Canada
50,000 enrollments
*
Athabasca University
Largely Individualized, Un-paced and
Open instruction
Largest MBA and MDE programs
in Canada
Moving to fully web based
Defining the
Hidden Curriculum:
• “an apposite metaphor to describe the
shadowy, ill-defined and amorphous
nature of that which is implicit and
embedded in contrast with the formal
statements about curricula and the
surface features of educational
interaction”.
– Sambell and McDowell (1998)
Types of Curriculum
1. overt curriculum - - - what the program
says we want to teach
2. the null curriculum - - - what we leave out
of the overt; and
3. the hidden curriculum - - - what we
unintentionally teach in our programs
–
Miller and Seller (1990). Curriculum:
Perspectives and Practices,
What is the REAL
Hidden Curriculum of
Online- Learning?
????
Common conceptions: Online
Learning is…
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
All about Money $$$$
Conspiracy to inculcate self-interest by a commercial, political
or religious group
The unstated rules necessary to succeed in formal education
delivered online
The unofficial task of professional education to teach students
to act like professionals
the use by the state of education to perpetuate the dominant
class structure
A plot by high tech capitalists to sell computers and
communications technology
A means to destroy teacher’s jobs and traditional institutions?
A plot to acclimatize us to virtual life spaces in order to contain
SARS
Others???
Hidden Curriculum as a
Research Program –
3 Paradigms
1. Empirical – what happens, when,
why ?
2. Interpretative – Why do humans
make the choices and interpret
reality as they do?
3. Critical – Who gains, how is power
shared and utilized?
Why Study the Hidden
Curriculum?
• to reveal and make manifest these
undisclosed agenda of formal education.
• once revealed the hidden curriculum
– becomes negotiable
– visible
– allows for remediation, change, defense,
improvement
– or at least informed dialogue
Defining Online Education
• Getting beyond the buzz words of E-Learning, virtual
learning, online courses, e-learning, web based instruction,
distributed education etc. etc. etc.
• .. the process of teachers and students, engaged in a formal
education process that is mediated by the Net, though they
are separated by geographic or temporal space for all or
most of the instructional interaction
• However variations in technology and design make precise
descriptions mandatory
Defining curriculum
(Foshay,2000 curriculum matrix)
• Intellectual:
Much evidence of this from
computer conference based courses
• Emotional: Flaming, humor, pathologically polite
• Social: People do build social relationships online
• Physical: Very different experience of “reality”
• Aesthetic: How well the form, style and
expression of the school culture fit together
• Transcendent: “The experience of transcendence,
or the sense of one’s self as a part of a vastly
larger whole” (Foshay, 2000)
Warning: “the importance of context, scale and the
‘virtuality’ of knowledge... Knowledge exists only in
the contexts of particular locales and in relation to
defined purposes”. (Shields, 2002)
Do Different Types of Online
Learning Have Different
Hidden Curriculum?
• Big and Little Distance Education
– (Garrison and Anderson, 2000)
• Scalability and extent of human and
especially student-teacher interaction
• The challenges of jointly conceptualizing
synchronous and asynchronous modes and
paced and un-paced systems of online
education
Growth of Online Education
• 94% of all US colleges and universities are either
currently (63%) or planning to be (31%) engaged
in distance and distributed learning
• Carole Cotton, of CCA Consulting 1999
• According to IDC, the global corporate e-learning
market will reach $23.1 billion in 2004. The
forecast represents a 70% compound rate of
growth from a 1999 base of $1.78 billion.
• Univ. of Phoenix online profit of $26.5 million
first half of 2002, over 50,000 online students
The Cyberfication of Distance
Education
– Vast information storage including learning objects
repositories
– Educational semantic web - ‘Intelligent content’
– Home of legions of bots or autonomous agents
– Communication channel of choice for both humans
and agents on the Semantic Web
– Place of business, play and education
– Itself an intelligent entity and part of Gia
Four Dimensions of the
Hidden Curriculum
1.
2.
3.
4.
Learning to Learn
Learning the Profession
Learning to Be Expert
Learning the Game
–
Sakari Ahola
http://www.utu.fi/RUSE/projektit/piilopro.htm
1. Learning to Learn
• All forms of DE are mediated, thus implying
access and proficiency with technology
• Must Open Universities always work to the
lowest common technology denominator?
• Gender gap closing, but economic still large
• “Digital divide” in access and skill levels
• Disenfranchisement of the technologically
adverse
• Need for “internet efficacy”
1.Learning to Learn
• Do non-adaptive technologies (books, blackboards)
prejudice the handicapped?
• What special skills are needed to learn outside of a
paced and structured classroom context?
• Need to learn without the close support of fellow
students
• The pro western independent and cultural bias of
much content – how does it work in a global context?
– Language, pedagogy, copyright
• How much should an online course cost?
2. Learning the Profession
• Professional education includes providing
opportunities for interaction with and acquisition of
the attitudes, norms and “expert thinking” that
defines professional practice
• Advantaged in that many on-line students are active
within their profession already
• Easier to bring guest speakers from the professions
to class
• Allows for greater sharing of professional expertise
2. Learning the Profession
• Disadvantaged in that may be harder to join
“old boys club”
• Disadvantaged in that coop placements may
be more difficult and/or responsibility of
student
• Traditionally integration into the academic
discipline begins “at the centre”
• All professions becoming “networked”
3.Learning to Be Expert
• ‘university bluff’ - learning to act like an expert, even in
the absence of any genuine expertise!
• More difficult (thankfully) in DE
• Lack of external status clues may strengthen honest
evaluation
• Trend to use less ethereal “talk” and more enduring text
forces more reflective and responsible communication
• More ‘visible’ than F2F and thus more accountable
3. Learning to Be Expert
One of the characteristics of a democratic society opened
up by technology is that arguing from authority only
works when and to the extent that it is based on triedand-tested expertise. Henk de Wolf, 2001
4. Learning the Game
• ...it seems that a good deal of student learning is
not in fact about understanding biology or political
science or engineering, but about adapting to the
requirements of teachers. It is as if two different
worlds existed - a manifest one, defined by the
staff and the written curriculum, and a latent one
defined by the students perceptions.
- Paul Ramsden (ITL University of Sydney)
4. Learning the Game
• Snyder (1970) argued that this hidden curriculum
“determines, to a significant degree, what becomes the basis
for all participants’ sense of self worth and self-esteem”
(p.xii).
• Usually the same game – on campus or at a distance
• Higher drop-out rate may be related to fewer opportunities
to learn the rules of the game
• Lack of informal peer group in many forms of online
learning makes game playing more difficult
• What effect does the absence of extra curricular activities,
student societies etc. have on online learning culture?
• Need for explicit and social ways to learn the online game
The Hidden Curriculum and
Educational Organization
• Emphasis on systems models, value chain, profit centres
(Prestera and Moller, 2001)
• Athabasca Call Centre example
• "space and time are natural barriers that promote
deliberation and reflection" (Jackson and McDowell, 2002
p. 321)
• Can you produce learning programs at lower cost without
reducing quality?
– Are learning objects the answer?
– Substituting student-content and student-student interaction for
expensive teacher-student interaction?
“The University Made Concrete
• “the implementation of ICT initiatives … seems to
consistently generate demands for a more concrete
institutional context characterized by tighter policy
implementation and tighter policy definition” p. 315
• Very alarming in traditional institutions who define
themselves by their collegial inefficiencies
• But apparent even in the Open University
• Electronic tutor marked assignments provide opportunity
to measure and standardize “the amount and format of
tutor’s comments” p. 310 (James. Cornford, 2002)
Hidden CurriculumLearning to be a Continuous Learner
• Is life long learning learning a life long
sentence to unpaid labour?
• Who should pay for continuous learning?
• What other aspects of community life must
be decreased to increase opportunities for
formal lifelong learning?
Network Technology as
Disruptive Technology
• Use of Net technology on and off campus
– three-quarters (73%) of US college students say they
use the Internet more than the library, (Pew –The Internet
Goes to College: 2002)
• There is a parallel education system evolving
• Who will be the major players?
– Public institutions
– Private sector
– Consortia, self organizing learner cooperatives?
See Archer, Garrison and Anderson (1999)
Adopting disruptive technologies in traditional universities:
Continuing Education as an incubator for innovation - online
Online Learning and
Globalization
• 32,000 Goggle hits on e-learning and globalization
• “e-Learning offers the advantages of global control and
reduced costs” Brown Global.com, 2003
• Most online curriculum is based on Western values and
economics
• “mass education, provided through distance learning is
fast becoming a major vehicle through which a global
technological civilization is being formed.” Armstrong
and Namsoo, 2000
Online Learning as Progress
• “Globalization, the integration of national markets
through international trade and investment, offers
infinite possibilities, greater freedom and new
hope for the world's poor.
Since globalization emerged in the 1970s,
world infant mortality rates have fallen by almost
half, adult literacy has increased by more than a
third, primary school enrollment has risen and the
average life span has shot up 11 years.”
John Manzella, 2001
http://www.aworldconnected.org/article.php/231.html
Globalization as exploitation
“Let us remember that
globalization at heart is
nothing but the expansion
of Western models of
behavior of socialization,
organization, exchange in
the market and elsewhere
to other parts of the world.
LOUAY M. SAFI –
Muslim Scholar
• “providers of educational opportunity across
national and geographical boundaries have a
responsibility to consider how their materials
and practices can help to promote cross culturalunderstanding” Robin Goodfellow et. al, 2001
Researching the Hidden
Curriculum
• Focuses on the experience of participants
• Typical distance education survey, cost and
completion rate research of little value
• Focuses on in-depth interviewing,
participant observation and ethnography
Hidden Curriculum of
Campus-based education
• Tremendous physical constraints to participants
• Cost implications of campus based learning
• Is their a ‘hidden curriculum’ to support the
supposed superiority of campus based education
despite the lack of evidence?
• Is campus based education more about meeting the
“right” people than about education?
• Ageist implications – is the campus ready for mass
education? life-long learning?
Conclusion
• The pervasive restriction of physical and temporal
access associated with campus-based learning, has
been transformed to technological restrictions in
online learning
• All forms of education have hidden curricula
• Those who are ideologically married to any single
form (campus or online) will only obfuscate
critical decision making processes
Your Comments and
questions ????
• [email protected]