Trends and Future Developments in Online Education

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Trends and Future Developments in Online Education

• Morten Flate Paulsen
• http//home.nettskolen.com/morten/
• Presentation at an ICDE seminarOslo, December 8,
  2003.

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Online education surpassing Old Traditional
University?
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E-book about E-learningwww.studymentor.com

• 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
• Part Four International Trends and Future
  Developments

Online Education and Learning Management
Systems Global E-learning in a Scandinavian
Perspective
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Is this a Book?

• 350 pages printed text
• Available as e-book in pdf and Microsoft Reader
  format. These have colorful design, navigation
  tools, active links to numerous web-sites, and
  several search and annotation opportunities.
• A beta version of the book was discussed in a
  four-week, international online conference.
• The web-site (www.studymentor.com) provides
  experimental multimedia services
• Some content is available as synthetic speech.

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Online education is characterized by

• the separation of teachers and learners which
  distinguishes it from face-to-face education,
• the influence of an educational organization
  which distinguishes it from self-study and
  private tutoring,
• the use of a computer network to present and
  distribute some educational content,
• the provision of two-way communication via a
  computer network so that students may benefit
  from communication with each other, teachers, and
  staff.

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Theory of Cooperative Freedom
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Six recommendations from the Web-edu project

• Focus on improved integration of support systems
• Require sustainability
• Increase focus on cost-effectiveness
• Understand the consequences of e-learning
  standards
• Support local LMS-providers
• Support virtual mobility of online students

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15 years 1K

• The number of online students has increased by a
  magnitude of 1,000.
• The number of online courses has 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

• All are evolutionary developments that were
  visible 15 years ago and not really hard to
  predict.
• The only really revolutionary development in
  online education during this period was the
  introduction of the Web. This technological
  development, which nobody foresaw, emerged as the
  development with the largest impact on 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. (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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Seven Important Trends

• The large-scale mega trend,
• The systems integration trend,
• The standardization 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-project shows that 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 Only 3 of 22 surveyed Nordic institutions
  offered more than 50 online courses three years
  ago.

The large-scale mega trend
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The Mega Trend Requires Industrialization of
Online Education
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, many
  institutions 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 . (Nipper, Page 204)

The large-scale mega trend
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In distance education
The large-scale mega trend
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In schools

• A large number of 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 spread of e-learning

• Evidence of the worldwide spread of e-learning is
  easy to obtain.
• In April 2003, no fewer than 66,000 fully online
  courses and 1,200 complete online programs were
  listed on the TeleCampus portal(Page 140)

The large-scale mega trend
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Statistics from Telecampushttp//courses.telecamp
us.edu

• March, 2002
• 66107 courses
• 47233 USA
• 12620 Canada
• 2242 Australia
• 1202 UK
• 2810 Other (NO 5, DK 0)
• 1952 institutions
• 36 countries
• 17 languages

• August, 2001
• 50221 courses
• 34796 USA
• 10229 Canada
• 2007 Australia
• 1135 UK
• 1170 Other (NO 1, DK 0)
• 1481 institutions
• 33 countries
• 16 languages

The large-scale mega trend
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The online teachers workload
The large-scale mega trend
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About nightmares

• Online education offers students excellent
  opportunities for individual communication with
  their 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 obvious that
  online students appreciate always having a
  personal tutor available. 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 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. For historical, legal, and financial
  reasons, the SMS system is the most important
  system for an educational institution. Hence, all
  other systems that offer online education
  services should rely on the SMS system as the
  master system with which they exchange data.
  (Page 30)

The systems integration trend
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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. (Page 32)

The systems integration trend
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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. (Page 207)

The systems integration trend
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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
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E-learning Standards
SCORM AICC IMS XML

• Where are the European interestsrepresented?
• Where are the educational professionalsinterests
  represented?
• The web-edu interviewees are aware of the
  e-learning standards, and several claim that
  their systems follow the standards.
• Few state that the standards are important to
  their institution, and e-learning standards do
  not seem to have had much impact on online
  education in Europe.

The standardization trend
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About e-learning Standards

• Is your lecture today SCORM compliant, Professor?
  (Page 206)

The standardization trend
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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. (Page 129)
• So, to obtain a sound economy for large-scale
  operation, some sort of industrialization of
  online education must be considered.

The market trend
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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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About mice

• campus-based students are increasingly voting
  with their mouse and taking significant parts of
  their undergraduate degrees online from other
  institutions. (Page 303)

The market trend
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About service industries

• the concept of online learning as a service
  industry may well be the most important lesson
  that Nordic providers of online education could
  take from their Canadian counterparts. (Page 303)

The market trend
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Communication costs

• Less dependent on
• Distance
• Duration

• More dependent on
• Bandwidth
• Medium

The market trend

• This implies
• We will be always online
• Increased global competition
• Distinct differences between m-learning and
  e-learning

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The Mobile Trend

• M-learning, the new buzz-word
• Telecommunication companies have invested
  enormous resources in a broadband mobile
  telephone infrastructure (GPRS, 3G, MMS)
• Improved mobile terminals (PDA, tablet PCs,
  advanced mobile phones)
• 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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The Broadband and Multimedia Trend

• The bandwidth has increased steadily and
  significantly ever since online education was
  introduced.
• The modem I bought in 1985, had 300 bits per
  second, now I have wireless Internet access
  providing 300,000 bits per second.
• 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 bandwidth

• Broadband is available to most people for a
  reasonable price, but the interest is not
  especially high
• So far, little content and few services make
  broadband attractive
• Teenagers want to download music and video files.
  Much of this is not legal.
• Broadband is lacking killer applications

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. (Page 292)

The broadband and multimedia trend
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Digital speech

• Human narration is expensive
• Speech synthesis is less expensive, but is the
  quality acceptable?
• MP3.files can be distributed via Internet and
  played by PC, PDA, minidisk, and new CD and DVD
  players.

The broadband and multimedia trend
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The Globalization Trend

• Worldwide there are more than 200,000 online
  courses we can study from home

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. (Page 20)
• 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
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About imperialism

• In the US, online educators tend to perceive the
  Internet as their home market. In the Nordic
  countries, educators regard it as an opportunity
  to study online courses from the United States.
  If these countries do not change their attitudes,
  they may soon experience a disturbing form of,
  American instructional imperialism. The Nordic
  countries are in several ways ahead of the US
  with regard to online education. Still, it is
  quite possible that American online tutors will
  dominate online education in the Nordic
  countries, just as American textbooks already
  dominate Nordic higher education.

The globalization trend
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American educational imperialism?
The globalization trend
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Education is Not Like Soft Drinks

• In the preface to her book Global Education,
  Robin Mason (1998) stated
• 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 "people skills" rather than technical skills.

The globalization trend
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Why will Online Educationbecome more global?

• The ongoing European harmonization of degrees,
  certificates, credits, and grades encourages
  global mobility for online students.
• The commercialization of education and the
  growing acceptance of tuition fees make it
  interesting to increase income by targeting
  foreign students.
• The proliferation of a few, predominantly North
  American, learning management systems such as
  WebCT and BlackBoard and the growing acceptance
  of e-learning standards makes it easier to use
  foreign content and to collaborate with foreign
  institutions.

The globalization trend
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Strategic Recommendations from the Web-edu Project

• Promote national and international harmonization
  of degrees, certificates, credits, and grades to
  facilitate online mobility of students.
• Oppose national regulations that inhibit
  institutions from charging tuition fees.
• Focus on cost-effective online education.
• Develop better systems for administration of
  online education.
• http//www.nettskolen.com/in_english/webedusite/in
  dex.html

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Strategic Recommendations from the Web-edu Project

• Support initiatives for training of online
  teachers, administrators, and instructional
  designers.
• Oppose regulations and attitudes that inhibit
  online assessment.
• Support further research on online pedagogy and
  didactics.
• Develop and implement strategies to reduce
  teacher workload.
• http//www.nettskolen.com/in_english/webedusite/in
  dex.html