Important Trends in Online Education

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Important Trends in Online Education

• Morten Flate Paulsen
• Professor of Online Education
• Slides available at
• http//home.nettskolen.com/morten/
• A presentation at Online Educa,Berlin, December
  3, 2004.

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NKI Internet College www.nettskolen.com
September 2004

• Operated by NKI Distance Education (www.nki.no)
• Online education since 1987
• Broad specter of subjects from secondary to
  master level
• Presently 6000 online students in at least 34
  countries
• 63 women
• 426 distance education courses online
• You may start whenever you like
• Individual progress plans
• Always room for more students
• Exams at local schools and embassies
• Online students get better grades

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E-book about E-learningwww.studymentor.com

• Part Four International Trends and Future
  Developments
• Part One Online Education, Teaching, and
  Learning
• Part Two Commercial and Self-developed Learning
  Management Systems
• Part Three Global E-learning in a Nordic
  Perspective

Online Education and Learning Management
Systems Global E-learning in a Scandinavian
Perspective
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15 years 1K

• Both the number of online students and the number
  of online courses have increased by a magnitude
  of 1,000.
• The bandwidth has increased by a magnitude of
  1000, from 300 bits per second to 300,000 bits
  per second(i.e. from text to video)

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About evolution

• These evolutionary developments were visible 15
  years ago and not hard to predict.
• The only really revolutionary development in
  online education was the introduction of the Web.
  This development, which nobody foresaw, had the
  largest impact on online education.

Source Online Education, Page 286
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But

• written communication, perhaps the most
  important part of online teaching and learning,
  has not changed much.
• Most communication still consists of plain text,
  and the time it takes to turn on the computer,
  receive e-mail and compose messages has not been
  reduced.

Source Online Education, Page 287
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and

• Online pedagogy has not improved much
• The quality of Internet is threatened by virus
  attacks, spam and advertising

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Important trends

• The large-scale mega trend,
• The systems integration trend,
• The market trend,
• The mobile trend,
• The broadband and multimedia trend,
• The globalization trend.

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The large-scale mega trend

• The current mega trend shows clearly that online
  education is shifting from small-scale
  experiments to large-scale operations.

The large-scale mega trend
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Towards large-scale systems

• The Web-edu project shows that this trend has
  come further in the Nordic countries than in
  other European regions.
• 2002 12 of 20 Nordic institutions offer at least
  50 online courses.
• 1999 3 of 22 Nordic institutions offered more
  than 50 online courses.

The large-scale mega trend
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The mega trend requires industrialization of
online education

• Division of labor
• Increased efficiency
• Automation
• Cost reduction

The large-scale mega trend
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In higher education

• Online education becomes mainstream education in
  Scandinavia. Before year 2000, typical
  universities piloted a few online courses with
  some pioneering students. Today, they are
  implementing online education services to all
  their students.
• a Sloan Consortium study of online learning in
  American higher education shows that 97.6 of all
  public higher education institutions in the USA
  offer online learning degree programmes and
  courses, either as fully online programmes or as
  hybrid (blended) formats .

The large-scale mega trend
Source Online Education, Page 204
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In distance education(Example from NKI Distance
Education)
The large-scale mega trend
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In schools

• A large number of Scandinavian secondary schools
  are now using LMS systems
• Even primary schools offer online services to
  many teachers, students, and parents.

The large-scale mega trend
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About nightmares

• Online education offers students excellent
  opportunities for individual communication with
  tutors.
• They can be contacted via e-mail 24 hours a day,
  365 days a year.
• Few learning environments provide such
  opportunities for individual access to teachers.
• It is the students dream, but it could soon
  become a nightmare for the tutors.

The large-scale mega trend
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The online teachers workload
The large-scale mega trend
How can we handle this in large-scale online
education?
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The systems integration trend
The systems integration trend
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About student management systems

• the Student Management System is the central,
  most important system for large-scale online
  education. Hence, all other systems that offer
  online education services should rely on the SMS
  system as the master system with which they
  exchange data.

The systems integration trend
Source Online Education, Page 30
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About collisions

• the universities will need seamless and powerful
  integration of their online learning environments
  and their student management systems. We will
  see two worlds collide in this process The world
  of the teaching staff and the world of the
  university administrations.

The systems integration trend
Source Online Education, Page 226
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The troll with three heads Learning, Management
and System
The systems integration trend
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About constraints

• it is important to understand that LMS systems
  may be built on very different pedagogical
  methods and theories and that these underlying
  constraints may influence and limit the systems
  pedagogical use.

The systems integration trend
Source Online Education, Page 32
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About straitjackets

• Straitjackets! a friend of mine hissed with
  malice in his voice, when I discussed LMS
  systems with him the other day.

The systems integration trend
Source Online Education, Page 207
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The market trend

• Increased competition will require
  cost-effectiveness.
• Broadband and multimedia provide wonderful
  opportunities, but student expectations and
  development costs will increase.
• Large, international providers may dominate the
  market.

The market trend
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Cost-effectiveness

• Cost-effectiveness becomes more important as
  institutions become large-scale providers.
• It is important to develop sustainable online
  courses.
• Development and operation costs of online courses
  are high.
• Recent price rises have made the commercial LMSs
  a costly investment. Staff time for development
  and maintenance of self-developed systems proves
  to be a costly investment too.

The market trend
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About economic success

• The CISAER analysis 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.
• So, to obtain a sound economy for large-scale
  operation, some sort of industrialization of
  online education must be considered.

The market trend
Source Online Education, Page 129
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About sustainability

• Sustainable online education is characterized by
  its ability to persist when extraordinary
  internal or external funding stops.
• Unfortunately, it seems to be a rare phenomenon.
• In most cases online education is sustainable
  when it generates an economic surplus or reduces
  costs.

The market trend
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The mobile trend

• M-learning, the new buzz-word
• Improved mobile terminals (PDA, tablet PCs,
  advanced mobile phones)
• Enormous resources are invested in broadband
  mobile telephone infrastructures (GPRS, 3G, MMS)
• Private wireless networks are affordable and
  increasingly popular in offices and private
  homes.
• Public wireless networks are available in an
  increasing number of airports, hotels,
  restaurants etc.
• E-books could replace paper based text books

The mobile trend
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The broadband trend

• The web-edu project showed that there is an
  obvious request for more bandwidth and more
  multimedia abilities.
• Several interviewees wanted to include video
  services such as streaming video,
  videoconferences, web-cameras, and moving
  pictures.
• Audio services such as voice communication and
  audio files were also requested.

The broadband and multimedia trend
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About bandwidth

• The bandwidth has increased steadily and
  significantly ever since online education was
  introduced.
• In Scandinavia, broadband is available to most
  people for a reasonable price.
• This significant increase in bandwidth will
  continue in the foreseeable future and provide
  online education with richer media content.

The broadband and multimedia trend
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About speech synthesis

• The recent development in speech synthesis has
  made it so understandable and user-friendly that
  more learners may benefit from it. These include
  blind students, dyslectic students, and students
  who for example spend much time in a car.
• It is conceivable that in the future it would be
  just as easy and inexpensive to speech a text
  as it is to print it.

The broadband and multimedia trend
Source Online Education, Page 292
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The globalization trend

• Worldwide there are more than 200,000 online
  courses we can study from home
• European harmonization of degrees, credits and
  grades makes it easier to enroll in transnational
  online courses

The globalization trend
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About export

• in Australia, the official strategy is to
  develop education to become the second largest
  export industry. In the Nordic countries,
  however, the export of education does not seem to
  be an issue for public discussion.
• In an action plan from the Commonwealth
  Government it is clearly stated that Education
  in Australia is a multi-billion dollar export
  industry of vital importance to our economy.

The globalization trend
Source Online Education, Page 20
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Thank you
The presentation is available via http//home.net
tskolen.com/morten/
More information in my book Online Education and
Learning Management Systems Global E-learning in
a Scandinavian Perspective.
www.studymentor.com