MDDE 663: Emerging Issues In Distance Education Technologies

Delivery mode: Grouped study with Internet component

Credits: 3 - Elective

Prerequisites: Prospective students should have completed at least 3 of the 5 MDDE core courses, and at least one of the following technology courses (610, 615, 620, or 621). Students not meeting these criteria may be permitted to register in the course, space permitting, with consent of the instructor.

Instructor (Winter 2009): Terry Anderson

Overview

The course covers four major areas of interest to distance educators related to new developments in educational technologies. The resulting products of the course will be four “mini portals” that are designed for MDDE students to explore and learn about these particular developments. The four interest areas being addressed are:

1. Wikis in Education: A Wiki is a collaborative web space that allows multiple versions to add to, edit, and delete content in multimedia formats. Although not a really new tool, Wikis have become popular as the products built upon them have matured. In particular WikiPedia stands out as the world's largest collaborative project, in many languages and increasing reputation for its accuracy, thoroughness, and timeliness. WikiPedia has spawned a host of derivative products including WikiHow, WikiBooks and Wikiversity. Wiki's also are being used in campus, blended and distance education for a variety of tasks that require multiple authors. They are particularly easy to use, yet many contain tools to ensure protection from vandalism and other unsociable activity. This topic explores ways that WIKIs are being used in formal and informal learning and the particular affordances they offer to educators.
   
   
2. Pedagogies of the Net: Marshall McLuhan first noted the tendency to use new technologies in the model of the old. We have seen early examples (especially with remote classrooms) of teaching and learning that has hardly changed despite the investment of large sums of money and effort in new technology. Perhaps what is missing is new pedagogy that drives the development of new learning and assessment activities. In this topic we explore connectivism, heutagogy, e-Learning 2.0, and other ideas about formal and informal learning in the net-infused era.
   
   
3. Role Playing and Immersive Environments: Since earliest Internet days, text-based gaming, entertainment, and education environments have flourished. Recently, these have added graphic and customization features to appear as fully immersive virtual spaces and communities (see 2ndSpace). Although attracting many gamers, it is yet unclear if holding formal education activities in such contexts is of pedagogical value. Indeed, the stimulation of the immersive context may actually imbed the types and content of learning associated with formal education. Alternatively, the capacity to immerse oneself may create a sense of realism and experience of different contexts that propels and enhances learning. This section deals with both the practical, the experience, and the theory of presence in online environments.
   
   
4. RSS and Syndication: Syndication protocols were developed by publishers to alert readers of new publications. This application has morphed into hundreds of applications whereby XML code is used to notify either humans or agents of some sort of activity occurring on the Net. This provides a level of automacy that can significantly reduce the amount of information overload that threatens active Web users. The specification of syndication format and the amount of information contained within the messages has changed and evolved over the years with each new version of RSS and later ATOM. This has led to considerable infighting amongst proponents of various standards and lack of common standards. This topic begins with the most common use of syndication for blogs and moves into many new education and information processing applications. In many ways syndication is the glue that holds most of the distributed Web 2.0 applications together.

Course Objectives

• To develop an informed and critical perspective towards new developments educational technologies.
  
  
• To evaluate the cost and benefits of application of each technology to current and projected future design and delivery of distance education programming.
  
  
• To gain experience creating and working in a supportive collaborative learning and production environment.
  
  
• To acquire web based skills necessary to create portions of a web based learning environment.
  
  
• To tag these environments and list them in at least two national or international learning object repositories.
  
  
• To design and build assessment and engagement activities designed to help other learners understand issues relevant to the educational use of the emerging technology.
  
  
• To critically review and assess the learning resources sites developed by peer groups.
  
  
• To improve search and annotation capability and to organize and systematically evaluate a variety of electronic and paper resources.
  
  
• To develop synchronous and asynchronous presentation and communication skills.
  
  
• To develop meta-cognitive skills through reflecting on one’s own learning in distributed context.
  

 

Archives of Past Courses

Most of the portals from the 2003 and 2004 version of MDDE663 are available for your learning pleasure. In a survey we conducted last year with Athabasca undergraduates we found that the greatest resource they currently looked for was the capacity to look at products of previous students. This seems a natural goal of any educational system, to learn from the learning experience of others. But until recently the tools of archive, display, distribution have not permitted such application. A site that I maintain on the CIDER site at http://cider.athabascau.ca/Members/terrya/mde663portals points to the topics and the portals of past projects.

The instructional design model used in MDDE 663 as well as the perceptions of students in the 2003 session have been published. The articles Anderson, T. & Wark, N. (2004). Why do teachers get to learn the most? A case study of a course based on student creation of learning objects. Retrieved May 2005 from http://www.usq.edu.au/electpub/e-
jist/docs/Vol7_no2/FullPapers/WhyDoTeachers.htm

The design hasn’t changed much since this description of the 2003 course. So do read the description and get to know the educational context that you are dropping into!!!

Course Outline

This seminar course will feature a synchronous, netbased-audiographic session almost every week. The first session will introduce the innovative structure of the course and will stimulate discussion on team building, collaborative work organization and tools to support collaborative work and web dissemination. CMC asynchronous dialogue and project development will take place on an ongoing basis throughout the course. Each of the major topics will be introduced in subsequent weeks by a two hour, instructor led orientation to the topic. Subsequently teams of four to six students each will be created and charged with developing an extensive online site designed to create a learning environment for students or distance education practitioners wishing to learn more about the subject. Students will complete a questionnaire detailing their expertise and interest in both topic and the relevant skills (technical, instructional design, project management, content creation; project management etc.) The instructor will use these survey results to create the portal development teams. The portal site created by each team will contain the following components:

• An organization framework, map or metaphor
  
  
• Annotated links to information sources related to the topic
  
  
• Overview of the major issues related to the topic with links to examples
  
  
• An asynchronous discussion conference, primed by team members
  
  
• A variety of self quizzes, games and learning activities for students to test and develop their understanding of the topic
  
  
• Guided tours and paths for exploration of the content by students

Technology

The software to be used for the class sessions will be V-class from Elluminate.com. This tool provides real time audio, Powerpoint displays, application sharing and web tours. A course site has been established using the Open Source, Moodle Learning Management System.

The real time weekly sessions will be held from 6:00 to 8:00 PM Mountain time on most Tuesday evenings of the course. Important components of the course will be covered during these classes and it is expected that students will attend and participate in these sessions on a regular basis. Students who are unable to participate in real time are able to listen to recordings of the session and perhaps contact a peer to insure they have not missed any critical information. It is also expected that students will logon to the conference discussion board at least two or three times per week and contribute regularly to team activities.

Student projects sites may be constructed using a wide variety of web site tools or learning management systems. Student teams may choose to build their site within the Bazaar environment . Alternatively, they may wish to create a standalone web site using tools such as DreamWeaver or FrontPage. Others may use open source management environments such as PLONE (available through Athabasca) or a BLOG (http://www.blogger.com) or a wicki. Interactive exercises may be created using conferencing systems, quiz or simulations programs such as those at Half-baked Software (http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked/index.htm). Teams will likely locate, annotate and incorporate other web sites and learning objects into the learning environment that they create. Teams will insure that there all content stored in the portal has appropriate copyright clearances. At the end of the course, the content should be packaged and sent to the instructor, with copyright clearance from all student creators, for long-term access on Athabasca servers. The portals will also be tagged as learning objects and the metadata uploaded to a variety of learning object repositories.

It is assumed that student teams will want to make use of collaborative project tools such as Groove (http://www.groove.net), the VClass system, Swicki (http://pbl.cc.gatech.edu/myswiki) or instant messenger < http://messenger.yahoo.com/ >systems to facilitate group communication and work.

It is also expected that students will have a fairly sophisticated level of networking skill and “internet self-efficacy”. Eastmin and LaRose (2000) ( Link unavailable) have devised a scale from eight questions that perspective students in this course might find useful in assessing their preparedness for a course of this type. If you find your self assessments are considerably and consistently lower than the averages from this sample, you may find the technical expectations for this course too challenging. Having said this, the course is not designed for technical programmers or professional networking experts alone. All of the tools utilized are being used by distance education students and teachers today – thus for the technically curious, the course will provide a very stimulating learning environment.

Hardware and Software Requirements

For a Windows Machine:

• Pentium II 266 MHz processor or faster

• Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/NT

• 64 megabytes of RAM

• 20 Megabytes of available disk space on your hard drive

• Soundcard with speakers and microphones or headset

• 28.8 kbps or higher internet connection

• Internet Explorer 4.0 (or higher) or Netscape 4.7 (or higher)

 

For a MAC:

• Mac OS 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, Mac OS X 10.1 or later

• G3 233 or better

• 64 Megabytes for OS 9, 128 megabytes for OS X and above

• 20 megabytes of available disk space on your hard drive

• Stuffit Expander

• Soundcard with speakers and microphone or headset

• 28.8 kbps or higher internet connection

• Internet Explorer 4.0 (or higher)

 

Students wishing to test their equipment may wish to participate in a live session using Elluminate at http://www.elluminate.com

Student Evaluation

• Instructor evaluation of the portal site (team mark).

Overall Design	10%
Content	20%
Interaction	10%
Total:	40%

 

• Instructor evaluation of reviews and evidence of participation on the other three sites (20%).
  
  
• Instructor evaluation of three, 600 word essay answers to “big questions” demonstrating understanding of issues presented in other team portals (30%).
  
  
• Instructor evaluation of 1000 word reflection on the team process and self grade of contribution to the team work. This work should also reflect on individual learning and discuss autonomy, team, collaboration issues and assessment of learning efficacy of this type of learning design (10%).
  

Course Materials

Course materials will be found on the web and linked from the course web site. There is no compulsory text book for the course, but a list of readings and resources for each topic will be provided as an initial references and readings. An article or resource will be assigned as initial pre-reading of each topic.