Transcript Education and the Web: Soulmates… or Strangers Trapped in

Education and the Web:
Soul mates…
or
Strangers Trapped in an Elevator?
Andy Gavrin, Dept. of Physics
IUPUI
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WAPT, Lacrosse, WI
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Overview
An elevator is the wrong metaphor
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Introducing the couple
How close is the relationship?
The good times, and the bad
The future
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Exercise
Have any of you ever…
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Used email to communicate with a student?
Emailed your child’s teacher?
Posted course information online?
Looked up something for a student online?
Used the web for your children’s education?
Used the web to find info for your course?
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The first meeting?
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WWW released 1991
First WWW conference, Geneva, 1994
Before Netscape, Explorer, Java, Google
1 talk “Interactive Education:
Transitioning CD-ROM’s to the WWW”
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Internet access in K-12 schools
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Student use of the internet
Homework
Email
Games
Shopping
Ne ws
Gov't info
He alth info
Job search
Finance
Online courses
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Sloan Consortium Survey, 2002
• Fall 2002: Over 1.6 million students in
online courses
• 1/3 of these taking all courses online
• 11% of all college students have taken one
• 81% of institutions offer one
• 34% offer full online degree programs
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A few uses of the Web
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Online syllabi, etc.
Homework servers (WebAssign, UTHS)
Course management systems (WebCT, Blackboard)
Distance education
Library catalogs
Registrar
Financial aid
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A few more uses …
Math homework help lines, Reference data (periodic table,
integrals,… phase diagrams), Projects Bartleby and
Gutenberg, Reference books (encyclopedias, dictionaries,
thesauruses, handbooks), k-12 curricula, Human anatomy,
Planetarium programs, Demonstration videos, Audio
analysis, Online instruments (microscopes,
observatories…), Online scripts for drama, Edutainment,
Online data sets (census, environmental, meteorological…),
Civics via gov’t sites, Textbook sales, State boards of
Education, Grant applications, Professional societies,
Online Universities, Online High schools, advising tools,
course bulletin boards, chat and email, general and special
calculators, image libraries, museums, NASA, NIH, NSF,…
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Preliminary conclusions
• Whatever the relationship is, it is
“intimate”
• Like many intimate relationships, there are
“offspring”
• The parties are growing closer together
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More questions…
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Are the partners getting along?
Are there any signs of abuse?
How about the families?
Where is the relationship going?
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Some of the “good times”
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Physlets
Online homework (e.g., WebAssign, UTHS)
Student-faculty email
Course bulletin boards/chat
Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT)
Online media (movies, animations, sound)
Inverted classrooms?
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What makes the relationship
work?
A. Astin, What Matters in College: Four
Critical Years Revisited
• Student-student interaction
• Student-faculty interaction
• Time on task
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Another view
Learning technologies should be designed to
increase, and not to reduce, the amount of
personal contact between students and
faculty on intellectual issues.
- National Institute of Education, Study
group on the conditions of excellence in
American higher education, 1984
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What about distance education?
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Major improvement vs. no education
Forces students to do far more writing
For many, more total interaction
Done well, more authentic applications
Target audiences: professional degrees,
certificate programs, continuing education
• Worst case: the traditional bachelors
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More conclusions…
• Family harmony so long as the parties
communicate
• Distance sometimes makes the heart grow
fonder
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The dark side… abuse?
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Online term paper services
Blurring of intellectual property (napster…)
Poor S/N ratio
Attempts to “process” students
Academic “get rich quick” schemes
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Bad finances strain any
relationship…
• Administration needs cost savings
• New technologies can look like silver bullets
• Recriminations follow disappointments
• There are savings to be had:
Classroom space, reduced attrition, parking,
campus services… be creative!
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What about the families?
• Groom’s side:
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$ conscious administrators
Students want to have their (wedding) cake…
Faculty are quite comfy, thank you
Staff!!? You need staff to produce videos of
your lecture?
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The other family
• The Bride’s side
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Your IT department just wants to have fun
Online universities are here, and growing
Bill Gates wants your credit card and SS #’s
I have $25 million in a bank in Nigeria, and…
THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE IS
UNTENABLE
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More conclusions
• There have been abuses of each side by the
other
• Financial pressures complicate the
relationship
• Both sides have “family baggage”
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Where is this relationship going?
More Sloan Survey results
• A majority of academic leaders (57 percent) already
believe that the learning outcomes for online
education are equal to or superior to those of face-toface instruction
• Two-thirds of all schools believe that online learning
is critical to their long term strategy
• Enrollment for the Fall of 2003 is expected to exceed
1.9 million students
• A one-year enrollment growth rate of close to 20%
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Where else?
• NSF’s National SMET Digital Libraries
(MERLOT, JiTT, AAPT…)
• Faster, more realistic simulations and
visualizations
• Richer communications tools (iChat AV,
whiteboard…)
• Ubiquitous wireless networks
• Students and Faculty with better access to
information and each other
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Conclusions?
• Education and the Web mostly get along
• Communication is important in any
relationship
• There are lots of kids, and many seem happy
• Some of the kids do have behavior problems
• There is a lot of financial pressure
• The families often interfere
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What do you think?
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