LEARNING THROUGH THE INTERNET: A REVIEW OF
NETWORKED LEARNING
Presented to
European Commission
DGXXII
NetD@ys Evaluation Group
Lipponen, L, Lakkala, M., Hakkarainen, K., Syri, J., Lallimo, J.,
Ilomäki, L., Muukkonen, H. & Rahikainen, M.
University of Helsinki
November 1999
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CONTENT
1. INTRODUCTION 4
1.1 What is the Internet? 5
1.2 What is networked learning? 6
1.3 Tools for networked learning 8
1.4 Can the use of the Internet restructure educational practices? 11
2. SOCIO-ECONOMICAL ASPECTS OF THE INTERNET IN EDUCATION 11
2.1 Under what conditions does the Internet make learning more accessible? 13
2.2 Can the Internet facilitate equality in education? 17
2.3 Can the Internet help contain costs of education? 21
2.4 Can the Internet facilitate information literacy?
3. THE POTENTIAL OF THE INTERNET IN PROMOTING IMPROVED LEARNING 24
3.1 Can the Internet promote students' motivation for learning? 24
3.2 Can the Internet facilitate authentic problem solving 25
3.3 Can the Internet support genuine collaboration? 26
3.4 Can the Internet facilitate publishing students' works? 30
3.5 What is teacher's role in networked learning 31
4. EXAMPLES OF GOOD NETWORKED LEARNING PROJECTS 35
4.1 Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) 37
4.2 Kids as Global Scientist (KGS) 38
4.3 Learning Through Collaborative Visualization (CoVis) 39
5. CONCLUSIONS 41
REFERENCES 44
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ABSTRACT
Technology, in this century, develops very quickly. It affords entirely new
tools and possibilities for advancing teaching and learning practices. From the
educators' point of view, the greatest expectations concerning educational technology
are focused on the Internet. The Internet and its' resources can be used to support a
large scale of learning activities such as accessing and sharing information, local and
global collaboration among students and experts, and facilitation of inquiry learning.
The Internet can free teaching from the physical boundaries of schools and the time
constrains of class schedules.
Despite positive results and visions of networked learning we should also take
into consideration the challenges of Internet and its' resources. The flood of randomly
accessed information does not necessarily aid the construction of knowledge and the
processes of creating values, or achieving mutual understanding appear to be very
hard in the network environments.
The aim of the present report is to critically examine the potentials and pitfalls of the
Internet in education by reviewing international publications and research articles on
current conceptions and issues of networked learning. Based on the review guide-lines
for an advanced networked learning in education for the K-12 sector is recommended.
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INTRODUCTION
Technology, in this century, develops very quickly. It affords entirely new
tools and possibilities for advancing teaching and learning practices. But, as Salomon
(1997, p, 17-18) aptly points out, "perhaps for the first time in human history,
education has its disposal novel and very tempting tools and engines without, in many
cases, having instructional rationales and psychological underpinnings to justify their
employment" (p. 17-18).
From the educators' point of view, not entirely shared among researchers, the
greatest expectations concerning educational technology are focused on the Internet
and especially on the World Wide Web (WWW). In many cases the Internet is
causing educators from all levels to think about the nature of teaching, learning, and
in a broader sense the whole of education. It may be that in the long run the use of
new technology will lead to a profound change in the students' and teachers'
conceptions of what teaching, learning and knowledge are all about.
There is evidence that the mere introduction of information and
communication technology (ICT) in education often leads to improved learning
results changes in practices. According to a recent meta-analysis of the educational
impact of ICT based on hundreds of international studies, the use of ICT enhances
learning outcomes (see Lehtinen, 1999). These studies indicate that the use of ICT as
such, or the accompanying changes in practices of learning and instruction, has a
positive effect on learning, although the results are not unambiguous. Introduction of
ICT is likely to develop skills of using information technology and of basic
knowledge acquisition, to change structures of classroom activities, to increase
students' control over their own learning, and to enhance motivation.
According to Windschitl (1998), much of the published work concerning the
use of the Internet (especially WWW) has been anecdotal descriptions of the activities
done. Few data are available concerning critical questions such as, Are these
practices helping students and teachers, and if so, how? or, Is the introduction of this
technology changing pedagogical and cognitive ractices? Many capabilities of the
Web are simply extensions of existing software capabilities. Windschitl (1998)
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claims that to investigate the Web's true instructional potential, we must sort out the
Web's unique characteristics regarding its use in the learning environment.
The present report is part of Netd@ys Europe 99 project. Netd@ys Europe 99
is a European Commission initiative. The aim of Netd@ys is to raise awareness of
the educational use of Information Communications Technology (ICT) and the
Internet through partnerships between public and private organisations throughout
Europe. In 1998 more than 35,000 educational organisations participated in over
5,000 projects and events. Partners now include organisations from the USA, Canada,
Japan, Australia, Africa, Eastern and Central Europe.
The NetD@ys 1998 experience was evaluated from a pedagogical viewpoint
by analysing the nature of its events and projects (Hakkarainen, Laine, Syri, Keltanen,
Muukkonen, Lipponen, Rahikainen, Ilomki, Lakkala, Vosniadou, Kollias & Mol,
1999). The aim of the present report is to critically examine the potentials and pitfalls
of the Internet in education by reviewing international publications and research
articles on current conceptions and issues of networked learning.
1.1 What is the Internet?
The Internet originated in the late 1960s as a U. S. Department of Defense
project conducted in a handful of universities to provide secure, attack-proof
communication. Actually, it is a by-product of the Cold War and was not designed
for the masses. However, it slowly grew to link many universities and a few
corporations worldwide, incorporating the basic features of electronic mail and file
transfer protocol (Descy, 1997; Galbreath, 1997; Starr, 1997; Tapscott, 1996).
At the physical level the Internet is a combination of computers, a collection
of networks, cables, telephone lines, satellite links; simplistically, the Internet can be
defined as a network of networks with a universal addressing scheme allowing real-
time, computer-to-computer, location-independent communication and information
exchange (Galbreath, 1997; Starr & Milheim, 1996; Trentin, 1999).
For users, the more important aspect is the kinds of services the Internet
offers; basic services of the Internet for communication: for example, e-mail and
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computer conferencing, newsgroups, and facilities for accessing and sharing
information such as World Wide Web (WWW). To use these services, a person
requires a client program (browser, e-mail,) operating in a computer to access a server
on the Internet service provider's computer. Two major uses of the Internet are as
communication and a means to mine the vast number of databases. To most users the
Internet appears as email and World Wide Web (Descy, 1997; Galbreath, 1997; Starr,
1997; Tapscott, 1996).
1.2 What is Networked Learning?
New phenomena require new concepts. Concepts such as Networked
Learning, Web-based-instruction, and online resources and tools have emerged in
educational discussions recently. In this chapter we give definitions for some of these
new concepts.
According to Haughey and Andersson (1998) "Networked Learning happens
when learners and instructors use computers to exchange information and access
resources as part of a learning endeavor" (p. 3). They state that the three most popular
ways in which Networked Learning is being used are; for e-mail private conversations
and educational exchanges; for e-mail and computer conferencing among a group of
people; for access to the Web as a a learning resource.
Haughey and Andersson (1998) give also some suggestions concerning how
and when networked learning is appropriate: "Networked learning is appropriate for
school-based learners who are gathered in one place but who are working on
individual projects best suited to their learning needs. Networked Learning can also
support a classroom-based learning group as the learners gather data or engage in
discussions or other learning activities with other groups located in the same building
or around the globe. It is appropriate for learning situations where the participants
cannot gather in a classroom because they are dispersed geographically or have tight
schedules, but would benefit from learning together. Networked Learning can also be
used to allow learners to enter and exit courses at varied times or to complete a course
in a long or short period of time. Alternatively, Networked learning activities can be
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designed to accent immediacy or support learner pacing by occurring at specific times
of the day." (p. 8)
Khan (1997) uses the term Web-Based Instruction (WBI) and defines it as "an
innovative approach for delivering instruction to a remoteaudience, using the Web as
a medium" (p. 5). His definition concentrates mainly on the ideas of using the Web as
a tool for Distance Learning. Khan divides features of Web-Based Instruction into two
categories: key features and additional features. Key features are inherent to the Web
(e.g., interactive, multimedial, globally accessible). Additional features are dependent
on the quality and sophistication of additional WBI design (e.g., ease of use,
collaborative learning, virtual cultures).
By Online resources and tools are meant the information and communication
technologies applied to teaching and learning. These tools and resources are intended
to provide flexible delivery of educational material (technology for the instructor); to
furnish guidance and facilitation of the student's experiences (technology for the
learner); and to support communities of learners (collaborative learning). "These
technologies make it possible to provide access to world-wide resources; facilitate the
accumulation and presentation of data; and enable communication, interaction, and
collaboration among students and instructors to improve the practice of teaching and
the experience of learning." (National Science Foundation (NSF), 1998, p. V).
Effective use of online resources and tools is understood to encompass those
pedagogies that take advantage of "applications that engage students with the
material, illustrate complex systems or relationships, and encourage interaction with
other individuals or teams. Ultimately, the technology tools should become
transparent as they integrate the user in the process, enabling immersion in the
learning level, and that, on an individual or community basis." (NSF, 1998, p. V)"
The concept Telelearning refers to the use of networked multimedia computers
that are networked for learning purposes, at school or at home. Learners using
networked computers may for example communicate from one site to the other, using
a variety of information sources (Bracewell, Breuleux, Laferrière, Benoit & Abdous,
1998). Further, Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been defined by Kaye
(1991) as: "The use of computers and computer networks as communication tools by
people who are collaborating with each other to achieve a shared goal, which do not
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require the physical presence or co-location of participants, and which can provide a
forum for continuous communication free of time constraints" (p. 5).
Following Khan (1997), we can divide the network-based learning into two
categories according to the tools used; using basic Internet tools and applications as
such in teaching and learning; designing special applications for learning which are
based on the Internet technology but have additional content, programmed features
and tools. Typical school projects participating in Netd@ys Europe, utilized the basic
Internet services (WWW, e-mail) in a classroom context or between different schools
and organizations to support ICT skills or subject-matter learning (Hakkarainen,
Laine, Syri, Keltanen, Muukkonen, Lipponen, Rahikainen, Ilomki, Lakkala,
Vosniadou, Kollias & Mol, 1999).
Web-Based Instruction (WBI) or networked learning, is to some degree,
structured. For example, Sherry and Wilson (1997) define levels of structure in Web-
Based Instruction: unstructured, very loosely structured, mostly structured and
structured based on the activities students conduct. An example of less structured
WBI is building home pages, and participating e-mail conferences. As an example of
more structured WBI they offer case- based instruction in teams and combining fixed
tasks of students. According to their experiences, in unstructured learning there were
erratic differences in learning outcomes; in loosely structured situations expertise was
still irregularly distributed but groups had common knowledge base. In more
structured learning situations there emerged shared expertise of the entire group and
each individual member attained much of it. In the most structured activities, the
Web became a new medium, but the activity was not radically new or interactive.
1.3 Tools for networked learning
Roschelle and Pea (1999) point out that most of the Internet tools available are
not robust and simple enough for use in average classrooms, or translatable to the
classroom setting (e.g., video conferencing tools not practical for 20-30, sometimes
40 pupil-classes). Further, they propose that typical Internet chat or bulletin board
systems or e-mail do not organize conversations well for learning.
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E-mail has been a communication tool in universities and also in many schools
for several years. In teaching, a common form of utilizing e-mail is for exchange of
messages between distant schools, cross-school research projects, and 'ask the expert'
arrangements with adult volunteers. E-mail has also been a practical medium for
teacher to deliver information to students or to give personal supervision. Basically e-
mail was designed for dyadic communication, but with the help of mailing lists, a
larger group of users can exploit e-mail in sharing joint documents and in
commenting on each other's work (Haughey & Andersson, 1998; Lehtinen,
Hakkarainen, Lipponen, Rahikainen & Muukkonen, 1999). Despite of these
"collaborative" features, e-mail does not organize discussion well and does not
scaffold learning in any pedagogically meaningful way.
Many interactive Internet and www-based conferencing applications can be
used for communication. In his Web pages (updated May 5, 1998), Woolley listed
about 150 conferencing systems available in the Internet. Only a few of them like
Virtual-U (Harasim, 1994; Harasim, Hiltz, Teles & Turoff, 1995), WebCT (Goldberg,
& Salari, 1997) and Interactive Learning Network (http://courses.lightlink.
com/web/index.htm) have originally been created for educational purposes. However,
many systems developed for computer conferencing in general, such as COW
(http://thecity.sfsu.edu/COW2/), have been successfully applied in education
(Lehtinen et al., 1999).
There exist also several www-based systems especially developed for
educational purposes; Web-SMILE (Puntambekar et al. 1997), Future Learning
Environment (Muukkonen, Hakkarainen & Lakkala, in press; Muukkonen,
Hakkarainen, Lipponen & Leinonen, 1999), Knowledge Forum (Scardamalia &
Bereiter, http://csile.oise.on.ca/intro.html). A common feature of advanced network
applications designed for educational purposes is that they support users' cognitive
activities by providing advanced socio-cognitive scaffolding and by offering many
different ways to structure discussion. "These tools all scaffold learning by
prestructuring the kinds of contributions learners can make, supporting meaningful
relationships among those contributions, and guiding students' browsing on the basis
of socio-cognitive principle (Pea, Tinker, Linn, Means, Brandsford, Roschelle, Hsi,
Brophy & Songer 1999, p. 33).
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In the following paragraphs two pedagogically advanced, networked learning
applications are presented: Future Learning Environment (FLE) and Knowledge
Forum (KF). The applications described were originally developed for pedagogical
purposes and are based on careful theoretical analyses and empirical research.
The Future Learning Environment is a groupware system developed by the
Media Laboratory, University of Art and Design, Helsinki, and the Department of
Psychology, University of Helsinki. It is designed to support collaborative knowledge
building and progressive inquiry. The users are able to access it from any Internet-
linked computer and can make postings of knowledge productions to FLE-Tools
database using their standard office applications and productivity tools producing
documents in various formats, such as text, graphics or video (Muukkonen, et al., in
press; http://www.mlab.uiah.fi/fle/index.html).
The FLE environment consists of several modules that are designed to
facilitate collaborative knowledge building in university education. The environment
provides each user a "Virtual Working Space" for building his or her knowledge
objects. The working space has direct links to those of the other members of the
study group, enabling all to share their process of inquiry. The "Knowledge Building
Module" facilitates between-user interaction and provides tools for navigating through
topics. The "Jam Session" module encourages free flow of ideas and experimentation
with different ways of representing knowledge and provides graphic representations
of the dynamic development of a project. The "Library" allows the user to share
documents in various formats: text, graphics, audio, video, multimedia or WWW
links. An important aspect of the Library is "Deep Principles"; an environment for
representing the conceptual foundations of each domain of knowledge.
In the design of FLE, special emphasis has been given to developing
metacognitive tools for structuring users' activity in knowledge building interaction.
Participation in progressive inquiry is facilitated by asking a user who is preparing a
discussion message to categorize the message by choosing a "category of inquiry
scaffold" (e.g., Problem, Working theory, Summary). These scaffolds are designed to
encourage students to engage in expert-like processing of knowledge; they help to
move beyond simple question-answer discussion and elicit practices of progressive
inquiry (Muukkonen et al., in press; Muukkonen et al., 1999).
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Knowledge Forum, designed by Scardamalia and Bereiter,
http://csile.oise.on.ca/intro.html) is a software package in which students build and
refine a class-owned database of notes. Knowledge Forum can best be described as a
student-generated, knowledge building environment, operated either on a local area
network or over the Internet, whose construction is collaborative and whose content is
continually evolving. A central element of KF is a note. A note is a passage and/or
picture relating to some aspect of the students' own learning. Notes are public within
the school database and can be retrieved from the Knowledge Forum database and
examined by any member of the class.
In Knowledge Forum there are 'Notes' that represent students' ideas and
questions. In this environment, students 'build on' to notes, 'reference' others' work,
make solicited 'contributions', 'rise-above' previous notes to create new syntheses, or
make 'collections' of related notes. 'Scaffolds' are built in and provide support in areas
such as text analysis, theory building, and debating. The notes in Knowledge Forum
are represented in a 'view'. A view is a visual organization of the ideas represented in
the notes. It provides dynamic structuring facilities that extend well beyond typical
list structures.
1.4 Can the use of the Internet restructure educational practices?
As stated in the introduction, the use of the Internet has the potential to change
and restructure educational practices. Several features of the Internet makes it
promising from the educational point of view.
Comparing the Web to earlier educational media, the Web appears distinctive
at least in the following respects: 1) It offers economical access to people and
multiformat information in ways unmatched by any other combinations of media. 2)
Much of the content of the Web cannot be found in any other format. 3) The Web
permits the work of individuals to be shared with the world. 4) It is a powerful,
flexible resource, in some ways unlike any others, that students are likely to encounter
and rely on in the workplace. 5) Students approach the Web with eager anticipation,
knowing that it is at the cutting edge of technology used by their most progressive
peers and by successful adults (Hackbarth, 1997).
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Owston (1997) proposed three advantages offered by the Web to promote improved
learning: First, the Web appears {to} students as a learning mode. At the present time
the computer is an integral part of childrens' world. As stated by Tapscott (1996, p.
17), "...technology is technology only for those who are born before it was invented."
Tapscott (1998) argued that armed with the most powerful tools in history, the
children representing the network generation are learning to communicate play, learn,
work, and think with the new media. He argued that the time spent in the Internet
teaches children most of all to learn and regulate their own cognitive activity. The
time spent on the Internet is not “passive time, it is active time. It’s reading time. It’s
investigation time. It’s skill development and problem-solving time. It’s time
analyzing, evaluating. It’s composing your thoughts time. It’s writing time”
(Tapscott, 1998, 8). He argued, further, that for the first time in history, the children
are taking control of critical elements of the revolution of information and
communication technologies being much more proficient in new media than their
parents.
Second, the Web provides flexible learning. It breaks down the time and place
barriers of education. It helps students gain an education without being on campus.
Web-based study projects have a possibility to be self-paced, time/place independent
environments for learning. Students are able to reflect on their responses to questions
and discussion topics before "publishing" them. In K-12 education many teachers
report that they have shifted their style of teaching from "a didactic to a more
problem-based approach" offering students greater autonomy in their learning. Third,
the Web enables new kinds of learning. In the hands of an innovative teacher, the
Web can play a prominent role in developing skills such as critical thinking, problem-
solving, written communication, and the ability to work collaboratively.
Haughey and Andersson (1998) classify the advantages of Networked
Learning as follows:
- Communication and interaction: Networked Learning is based on an interactive
learning model between teacher and learner, learner and learner, among groups of
learners, or from learners to the outside experts.
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- Immediacy: In Networked Learning "just-in-time" -learning is possible, where
learning is applied at the correct time to real and authentic problems. Collaborative
tools support social learning yet allow individuals to learn when and where they want.
- Permanence: Networked Learning activities and experiences are easily captured to
be studied, evaluated or re-used as needed. Such learning does not reduce the value of
face-to-face interaction, but can enhance the teaching and learning process in
remarkable way.
- Diffusion: Networked Learning diffuses learning so that access to libraries,
laboratories and expertise in available from nearly anywhere.
- Excitement: Interest in using computer networks is increasing all the time. The
Internet has created a huge potential market to provide education and training.
However, all the enumerated advantages of the Web and networked learning
(Hackbarth, 1997; Owston, 1997; Haughey and Andersson, 1998) should perhaps be
taken as possibilities. The Internet, or any other media, does not, of itself, cause
profound changes in educational practices.
2 SOCIO-ECONOMICAL ASPECTS OF THE INTERNET IN EDUCATION
In this section we shall focus on some socio-economic aspects of the Internet,
such as access to learning, access to information, equality, costs of education, and
information literacy. Let us consider the question, Under what conditions does the
Internet make learning more accessible?
2.1 Under what conditions does the Internet make learning more accessible?
It seems clear that, for many people, the Internet has, in fact, made learning
more accessible, or is beginning to do so. As Khan (1997) states, through the Internet
students and teachers can explore places or things to which they would otherwise not
have access. The two main dimensions of access offered by the Internet are new
possibilities to participate in educational activities, and access to a variety of
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information resources. Through the Internet it is possible to make education more
attainable for more people, i.e., provide educational opportunities for those unable to
attend school or college because of cultural, economic or social barriers; in effect, to
further democratize the educational system.
According to Owston (1997) access to higher education via the Web is
growing in the form of the virtual university, which provides universal access to on-
line courses and degrees. A virtual university has no physical campus, all interaction
occurs on-line; in most cases using the Web, e-mail and computer conferencing. At
the public school level (K-12 education), the increased access facilitated by the Web
can be seen in areas such as home schooling (e.g., parents educating children at home
because of geographic isolation, or political views), alternative schooling (where
students often lack access to quality learning materials), and extension courses for
students in high-school and adults seeking to complete their schooling through home
study (Owston, 1997). In connected classrooms (whether this connection is local or
remote), new interaction patterns are born. Resources for learning expand beyond the
teacher and textbook. Learners acquire broader audiences for their constructions and
outputs. The capability of presenting and manipulating outputs facilitates
collaboration with other learners.
The Internet, insofar as it is well and skillfully accessed, breaks down the
physical and temporal barriers of schooling. It offers a valuable resource for locating
up-to-date, authentic, primary information, and educational material whose potential
for supporting students' research extends far beyond the capabilities of a typical
school library. The learning resources of school can be augmented, through the
Internet, by resources of the world (Owston, 1997; Starr & Milheim, 1996; Trentin,
1999; Ward & Tiessen, 1997a; Ward & Tiessen, 1997b).
Yet despite the positive visions of access offered by the Internet it is a
different matter how these possibilities are actualized. One must also take into
consideration the challenges of increased access. Simultaneously with possibilities,
the Internet creates new barriers for students and teachers. Roschelle and Pea (1999)
have pointed out several limitations to increased accessibility to K-12 education.
According to them, distance and time are not the primary impediments to access to
appropriate learning resources in K-12 education; even if bare access to university
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courses is provided, young students, for example the sixth-graders, can hardly
understand the information when it is offered for university students. On-line access
is not enough: the information must be suitably presented for different audiences.
A related problem is that interactive communication on today's Internet is
overly based on text. Students of lower grade levels are not necessarily fluent readers
and are unlikely to be able to learn by participating in forums that require them to
express their thoughts as text (Roschelle & Pea, 1999; Lipponen, in press; Lipponen,
Hakkarainen & Järvelä, 1999).
According to Roschelle and Pea (1999), the problems of too much access exist
in three dimensions: 1) access that is dangerous; that does not take into account
students' need for a secure, private and safe place to learn, with filtered resources; 2)
heavy exposure to advertising; 3) access to too much information; information
overload without a good match to the students' learning tasks and inquiry projects.
Managing of information resources and finding useful information on the
Internet is a genuine problem. For example, Salomon (1997) has commented on the
opportunities afforded by the Internet: "At first glance it appears to afford everything
a constructivist approach would wish to have: Multiple sources of information to draw
from, a whole information world to explore, and an invitation to become an active,
fully participating member of the larger, virtual, and diverse information society. The
problem, though, is that it is too much of a good thing. Too many sources, too much
information, too many communication links, and too much excitement relative to the
meager pedagogical rationale to justify the process of surfing this abundance for the
purposes of learning." (pp. 17-18)
The following example, which has been transcribed in one of our Finnish
research schools as a part of their ordinary school curriculum (lhde pitisi keksi), sheds
light on some of the problems involved in this type of educational use of the Internet.
In the course of a research project on Finnish forest as a living environment for wild
animals, a three-girl group, through the Internet, is collecting information about bears.
The teacher is attempting to help the students. The following interaction has been
translated from Finnish (Jennifer and Linda are the children):
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Teacher: OK. This is a Finnish search engine [for the Internet], [the one] I always use it at home. I learn by doing this kind of search. But I just got a connection at home, and haven't had time to do this [particular] search. So now I'll learn many new sites. {originally, hard to follow}
Jennifer: Fine! Let's start playing!
Teacher: Here is where the information should be. I've written the instructions over there.
Jennifer: We are not looking for rabbits (yawning).
Teacher: No, and here [it is], the Inet search, the Inet search.
Jennifer: And if you find the animal, then take it.
Teacher: OK. Let's see. I haven't got any idea what could be
coming.
Jennifer: Blaah blaah blaah society, spare time, sports, again the
Inet search? I'll see what comes up.
Teacher: It went back in the Inet. Why didn't we get there?
Linda [reading] : 'Spare[time] sports.'
Teacher: Now there is the Inet search.
Jennifer: Is it there? Hi!
Teacher: Wait a minute. [Click click.] We should get a text saying
"Inet point fi{ve}". I don't think it [the engine] was going there
until now. Now.
Jennifer: (laughing) Show [me] the result of the search. What is
the date of the search [material]?
Teacher: OK, what area should the information be about? Finland I
guess?
Jennifer: In Finland, here. Teacher: And there you put the animal
you want to search.
Jennifer: The bear.
Teacher: It is coming. See the engine is only sleeping. [We should
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have taken] Some short cuts. Or you didn't put it right.
Jennifer: No.
Teacher: Now you have to do it, the cursor's blinking. Go on.
Jennifer: How on earth?
Teacher: Oh boy, you got 9000 pages. 9000, 9000 stories on bears.
Jennifer: Oh God.
Bare ("raw") accessibility of knowledge is much improved in K-12 education,
through the Internet. Yet, with respect to educational goals, the situation can be
problematic, as the example indicates. Much is required from the teacher: he or she
must, for example, ensure that the students access a manageable number of resources,
and that these are understandable to the them. The task of the learners is not any
easier. They also have to keep in mind the kind of knowledge they are seeking; learn
and put to use new skills.
2.2 Can the Internet facilitate equality in education?
The recent review by Woodward and Rieth (1997) of the use of technological
support for special education students made no mention of online technologies.
However, current work with these technologies includes support for deaf students
(Johnson, 1997; Luft, 1997; Weber, 1997), for blind students (Kapperman, 1997), for
students with learning disabilities (Delzell and Hamill, 1996; Fargen, 1996), for
intellectually gifted students (Bulls and Riley, 1997), and for students experiencing
social difficulties at school (Diggs, 1997; Kinney, 1997). The Netdays Europe project
(see Hakkarainen et.al., 1999) demonstrated that it is possible to use the Internet to
facilitate equality in education through
- Supporting equal participation of female and male students in ICT related activities
by designing special projects (e.g., GirlsNet) than encourage female students’
participation.
- Helping students from socio-economically-disadvantaged homes to get access to
ICT by providing economically and socially excluded young people an opportunity to
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learn to use the Internet.
- Facilitating learning of disabled or hospitalized students by providing ICT training
and helping them to network with each other and delivering text and audio-visual
information.
The development of the Internet promise to break many traditional boundaries
between socially, culturally or physically disadvantaged persons and the rest of the
population, provide new perspectives for economically disadvantaged areas, and truly
democratise access to resources for intellectual growth. NetD@ys activities appeared
to foster equality in education through offering young students from all of Europe an
access to the new information and communication technology as well as engaging
them in many kinds of activities that fostered not only development of ICT skills but
also their own understanding of subject-matter knowledge.
There is a large scale of work on the issue of gender and computer use. The
focus of these studies has been on topics like computer anxiety, attitudes toward
computer use, working in single gender and gender-mixed pairs. A large part of the
discussion has focused on girls participation and access in computer work. But as
Hoyles and Forman (1995) pointed out maybe too little attention is still paid to topics
like friendship, class, culture, and gender in computer supported learning.
Many studies show that boys find computers more attractive and they also feel
more positively towards computer use than girls. Girls seemed to have less motivation
to work with computers. This may due to gender differences in computer experiences
girls having them less both at home and in school. In addition, boys tended to see
computers more usefull (Durndell, 1991; Hoyles 1988). Crook (1994) points out the
danger of this development concluding that girls attitude towards information
technology may become increasingly negative proceed through school.
Communication, collaboration, use of language and interactivity are
traditionally said to be female domains of expertise. Indeed, some research indicated
that females are more familiar wtih communication-related technologies while males
focused on control devices and entertainment technologies. Boys also seemed to
dominate the input device when the computer work was organized in mixed gender
pairs (Littleton, Light, Joiner & Barnes, 1992).
19
It seems, that the functions computers serve and organization of learning
setting and tasks may play important role in girls participation on computer work.
Girls attitude to computer use may increase if the environment and work with
computers is organized collaboratively and if they have equal access to the
technology.
An excellent example of facilitaing female students’ participation in the use of
the Internet as well as networking between schools and research communities is
NetScience 98 project initiated by Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of
Vienna. Through NetD@ys activities the project aimed to bridge the traditional gap
which separates girls from physics and technology. Online chats, video-conferencing
and distance learning were used to bring together female scientists and students,
discussing themes in physics and technology. Activities undertaken included
- A chat-line for discussing the role of female scientists;
- Videoconferencing that allowed a virtual visit to a research laboratory;
- A pilot project on distance learning that connects schools and universities;
- A presentation of students' achievements through a competition organised by the
Austrian Physical Society.
- A one-day workshop to explore the possibilities of using the Internet in science
teaching.
The NetScience 98 project appears to improve the quality of science teaching;
it addressed equality in education through encouraging female students' to participate
in studying science and to engage in ICT-related activities; it helped to build a basis
for genuine student-scientist partnership. In order to facilitate female students’
participation in the use of the Internet, we have to initiate new Internet projects that
are subsumed under pedagogical goals, address female students’ special needs, and
rely on collaborative learning.
Despite of the large scale of work with gender and computers, only a few
cognitively oriented studies focused on gender differences in computer supported
collaborative learning are carried out. Healey, Pozzi & Hoyles (1995) examined
20
factors assosiated with learning mathematics in mixed gender groups (3 girls and 3
boys in each, aged 9-12 years) with computers. They found no differences in positive
learning outcomes across gender. In a study carried out by Littleton and others (1992)
was examined a computer based problem solving (the task to be solved was in
adventure game format) in pairs of same-sexpairs and mixed-sex. The results suggest
that girls might benefit relatively more from collaborative modes of working than
boys but no significant differences was found. Other studies revealed that mixed
groups are ineffective (Underwood, McCaffrey & Underwood, 1990) and that girls
actually do better in mixed groups and constitution of pairs makes very little in
learning outcomes on idividual level (Barbierri and Light 1992). So these empirical
studies offer quite contradictory conclusions about the impact of gender in computer
supported learning.
Palonen and Hakkarainen (1999) conducted an intensive case study of
computer-supported collaborative learning by applying qualitative analysis of content
and social network analysis. The participants were grade 5-6 students from a
Canadian inner-city public school. The study indicated that female students
participated much more intensively in a collaborative process of inquiry than male
students although these were considerable within-group differences in participation.
Further, the analysis revealed that average- and high-achieving female students
dominated discourse interaction within the class, and carried the main responsibility
for all students’ collaborative building of knowledge. An important characteristic of
the students' culture of interaction was that female and male students interacted
mainly within their respective gender groups. However, within the groups a
significant amount of communication took place between students representing
different achievement levels. Further, the male students did not appear to be willing to
share their intuitive conceptions and ideas-under-development as readily as did the
female students. Because males generally preferred to post authoritative statements of
scientific knowledge to the database, their postings did not appear to provide as
fruitful a starting point for lively discussion as female students' postings that often
represented their own intuitive theories and conceptions. Thus the females'
engagement in this kind of intensive interaction appeared to help them make
considerable conceptual advancement in their inquiry (Hakkarainen, 1998a).
21
2.3 Can the Internet help contain costs of education?
According to Owston (1997) three main areas of technology costs in higher
education are the following: 1) Hardware and software. For example campus
networks may have to be significantly upgraded, high-capacity servers purchased, and
modems installed. 2) Course development. Much more time is spent in developing
the courses; not only the academic content but also the web resources associated. 3)
Ongoing maintenance of courses (e.g., posting materials, verifying links).
In the area of national educational policy, the most immediately effective
strategy for minimizing the costs is to concentrate efforts on the courses that generate
the greatest enrolment. In K-12 education, with a relatively small investment, a
significant value can be added to a school's resources: opportunities to consult people
(e.g., scientists, access to specialized high-school courses, classroom materials (e.g.,
maps, magazines) and teacher materials. All these documents are generally available
at no charge (Owston, 1997).
To develop and support critical-thinking skills is a more complex undertaking;
small-group learning methodologies have traditionally been favoured; however, they
have always been relatively expensive (Romiszowski, 1997). According to
Romiszowski (1997), "the paradoxical situation, therefore, is that in the changing
technological and economical climates as we move into the 21st century, we may get
less and less of what we need more and more" (p. xx). He suggests that we educators
should solve the problem with the same technology that has caused the problem:
computer mediated conversations may be as effective as small-group discussions.
Yet there exist several challenges in reducing technology costs in all levels of
education. Many technology businesses serve the educational (especially K-12)
market are failing. Time and effort are needed in order to identify relevant resources
on the Web. Identifying relevant resources is too demanding for already over
burdened teachers to undertake. Data about valuable and useful sites and material is
required (Roschelle & Pea, 1999).
22
Efforts to reduce software production costs and new channels for delivering
products are needed. A good example is the Educational Object Economy (EOE, see
http://www.eoe.org), a complementary online community of developers based around
the creation, sharing, distributing, and use of teaching and learning resources that
incorporate Java 'applets' for web-based learning. Java applets are small, easy-to-use
programs written in Sun Microsystem's Java programming language. An Educational
Object is an information package related to a certain issue, and it usually consists of a
software component and background information. With any computer equipped with
a standard web browser which is able to handle Java, hundreds of teaching and
curriculum development tools can be accessed for use in the classroom, for research,
or other educational endeavors. In the United States public funds are currently being
used to support the project. The project fosters participation in a learning community
which promotes education in settings and situations beyond the walls of the traditional
classroom. It also encourages educators to share and reuse objects and to build
communities that collaborate and cooperate in the development and distribution of
teaching and learning tools.
2.4 Can the Internet facilitate information literacy?
One of the basic requirements for education in the future is to prepare learners
for participation in a networked, information society in which knowledge will be the
most critical resource for social and economic development. The revolution of new
information and communication technology is dramatically changing our ways of
working, studying, and collaborating. Work in organizations is increasingly
becoming centered on collaboration in groups. Successful collaborative processes are
linked with high motivation to face new challenges, personal cognitive competencies
including regulation one's own cognitive activity, and skills of searching, managing,
and producing knowledge. Educational institutions are forced to find better
pedagogical methods and practices to cope with these new challenges. In this
development the Internet and its resources can be expected to play an important role.
23
In one respect, the path to development of the use of the Internet in education
is clear. Most parents and educators are convinced that working with information and
communication technology will prepare learners with skills needed in information
society. However, very often the Internet skills are understood perhaps too narrowly,
as only involving learning skills of using information technology (computer literacy
skills) and skills of basic knowledge acquisition. This issue is addressed nicely by
Bereiter (1999); he argues that the new technology is not yet widely used for
meaningful educational purposes; in many cases, it mainly reproduces the activities
that, in an earlier day, were carried out using scissors, old magazines, and library
paste. Computerized cut-and-paste work does not teach students skills that will
ensure their futures in the 21st century:
"Adults are predictably overimpressed when children can do something they cannot.
For instance, the things that can be done with photo image processing software these
days look like magic, and when adults who have never encountered it before walk into
a classroom and find 11-year-olds morphing images, changing coloration, and taking
a figure from one image and planting it in another, they are likely to echo the words of
a superintendent who exclaimed, 'I think I have just seen the 21st century!'. What
they have seen, impressive as it may be, is however something that can be learned in
two or three hours. More sophisticated educators recognize that there is a conflict and
try to resolve it" (Bereiter, 1999).
According to Bereiter (1999) the new technology is often merely used to
produce visually impressive presentations; he refers to the use, in schools of the
resources available on the Internet and on CD-ROMs, the scanners and multimedia
presentation software that permit the incorporation of video, sound, and graphics.
However the focus of the projects supported by new technology should not, he argues,
merely be on making an impressive presentation, but on creating new knowledge. It
is not enough that a student's project looks nice. What students actually learn from
producing a multimedia document depends on how information they process in
assembling the document. Students should not be passive consumers of technology
and information but active producers of knowledge. They should be aware that they
have possibility and capacity of adding intellectual value to information (knowledge)
through the Internet.
24
3 THE POTENTIAL OF THE INTERNET IN PROMOTING IMPROVED
LEARNING
As reviewed in introduction, many expectations of the Internet's possibilities
in restructuring educational practices exist. The Internet and its' resources can be used
to support a large scale of learning activities such as local and global collaboration
among students and experts, facilitation of problem-based and inquiry learning and in-
depth learning in science by modelling and visualization. The Internet and it resources
provides a means for student to publish their work. Students can reach audience that is
intrested in their efforts, and can provide feedback and value students' productions.
The Internet can free teaching form the physical boundaries of schools and the time
constrains of class schedules.
3.1 Can the Internet promote students' motivation for learning?
In general, students are very motivated to work with the new information and
communication technology. One of the most consistent results of placing information
technologies in classrooms and ensuring that students have access to them has been
that students' interest in, and satisfaction with, schooling increases. Technology
apparently makes the classroom a more interesting environment that appeals to a
wider range of students (Bulls and Riley, 1997; McDonald and Ingvarson, 1997;
Murphy, 1997; US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 1995, pp. 65-66).
For example, as reported by Schofield et al. (1997), almost all of the 28 elementary
and secondary teachers participating in the Common Knowledge Internet project
reported greater student interest and participation in classroom activities. A recent
large survey study (Hakkarainen, Ilomäki, Lipponen, Muukkonen, Rahikainen,
Tuominen, Lehtinen, 1999), in Finnish high schools analyzed what students actually
know about ICT, how they use ICT, and what they think about it. The investigators
found that Finnish students have positive attitudes towards ICT and using ICT tools.
Several aspects of new technology seem to increase motivation. According to
Duncastel (1997), the World Wide Web is thought of, by students, as inherently
25
interesting and very motivational for learning. Positive attitudes and interest
concerning ICT may be related to the novelty of it, the sense of control, the richness
of information, the interaction possibilities, multimedia attractiveness and so on.
Further, Duchastel (1997) writes: " As we consider the technology of the Web and
what it makes possible, we see two strong motivational aspects: The first is a factor
that deals with the effort-to-interest relationship evident in our dealing with
information search activities. The other is the communicative aspect of the Web,
whereby interchange is enhanced in support ofcollaborative learning" (p. 182).
High motivation, however, does not automatically produce improvements in
learning outcomes. The other potential problem is that the Internet and its resources
are often used in education solely as motivational tools for students. Students might
only use the technology for the passive downloading of information or for "bouncing"
from one link to another without any specific learning goal.
3.2 Can the Internet support authentic problem solving?
Managing complex and ill-defined problems and dealing with rapid change are
becoming more and more important in "survival" strategies for the future. Citizens, at
present, are exposed to a vastly increasing amount of information. Thus the traditional
practices of learning and instruction, based on routines and absorption of transmitted
information, have become more and more problematic. Traditional schools that focus
on well-defined and partitioned problems do not appear to be able to provide students
the higher-level cognitive skills needed. Optimally, the Internet will help students
participate in solving authentic, complex "real-life" problems. Students find such
problems and activities both intriguing and meaningful.
Solving "real-world" problems with the help of teacher or adult experts,
students can develop flexible mental processes, improve their ability to deal with
uncertainty, and learn to adopt practices of expert-like working with knowledge (see,
for example, Vosniadou, 1997; Scardamalia, Bereiter, & Lamon, 1994). Through the
Internet, the problems addressed at school may be better "anchored" to the
meaningful, complex problems outside school (Cognition and Technology Group at
Vanderbilt, 1997), including those certainly to be encountered in a future workplace.
26
From cognitive research on educational practices have arisen various forms of
student-expert partnership for building connections between schools and varied kinds
of expert cultures and communities. This kind of partnership is critical because
higher-level cognitive competencies are developing in a close interaction with expert
cultures and through participating in "communities of practice" (Lave & Wanger,
1991). A connection with an expert culture may help to understand the experts' ways
of solving problems and to approach tasks in their domain, adopt their tacit
knowledge, and, generally, learn to understand how experts think. Information
networks and networked learning environments allow one to bring various kinds of
authentic expert knowledge to schools as well as mediate direct student-expert
communication. For example, such networks open classrooms to many kinds of
extended sources of information in databases. Creating virtual communities of
distributed expertise (students-experts, teachers-experts, students-teachers-parents)
enables multiple forms of engagement within projects. A promising approach is to
facilitate local community building, i.e., break the common place boundaries of
school through involving parents, local organisations, and associations into an
extended learning community.
Examples of authentic problem solving and the Internet, are given in chapter
"Good Examples of Networked Learning".
3.3 Can the Internet Support Genuine Collaboration?
The Internet promises to facilitate meaningful interaction between students
and teachers within and across school. Computer Supported Collaborative Learning
(CSCL) is one of the most promising innovations to improve teaching and learning
with the help of modern information and communication technology (Lehtinen et al.,
1999). The idea of collaborative learning has become so popular that, as Roschelle &
Pea (1998) pointed out, almost any web facilities are labeled as collaborative tools.
However, peer interaction or cooperation through the Internet does not always
facilitate in-depth learning. In this regard, it is important to make a distinction
between cooperation and collaboration (Dillenbourg, Baker, Blaye, & O'Malley,
1996). The distinction is based on different ideas of the role and participation of
27
individual members in the activity. Cooperative learning is accomplished by the
division of labor among the participants. It is an activity where each person is
responsible for a portion of the problem solving, whereas collaboration involves “the
mutual engagement of participants in a coordinated effort to solve the problem
together" (Roschelle & Teasley, 1995). In order to facilitate in-depth learning, it is
important to go beyond a simple division of labor towards using the Internet as a tools
of shared problem solving and inquiry learning.
According to Romiszowski (1997), the computer-mediated communication is
an area that mostly needs research and development in educational contexts. He
writes: "computer networks is merely a technological device to link together human
beings into collaborative conversational networks, where they can exchange ideas and
share materials, often stored and presented as hypertexts or hypermedia information
networks. But the object of the whole exercise is ultimately to help individuals to
build their own (and to enable them to help others build their own) conceptual
netwroks of interrelated ideas, strategies and theories" (p. 34).
There is a wealth of descriptive evidence on the beneficial effects of online
collaboration with other students and with experts and other resources beyond the
classroom, evidence which began to be collected in the 1980's when students started
to gain access to wide area computer networks. Recent additions to that evidence
include Cohen (1997) and Bruce, Carragher, Damon, Dawson, Eurell, JGregory,
Lauterbur, Marjanovic, Mason-Fossum, Morris, Potter and Thakkar (1997) on science
education, Schofield, Davidson, Stocks and Futoran (1997) on second language
learning and Keisler (1997) on a range of educational uses of the Internet.
From a series of studies, Bonk and King (1995) concluded that networks can
1) change the way students and instructors interact; 2) enhance collaborative learning
opportunities; 3) facilitate class discussion, and 4) move writing from solitary to more
active, social learning. They also presented a taxonomy of different networks tools for
learning environments from simple e-mail systems to rich collaborative hypermedia
networks. Also Coleman (1999) examined evolution of collaborative technology
during the last ten years, and describe revolutionary technological advancement from
electronic messaging, electronic meeting systems and computer conferences, desktop
videoconferencing, group document handling to real groupware environments that
28
allow the users to solve problems and produce knowledge together. The latest trend is
collaborative internet-based applications and products that are platform independent,
able to handle dynamic and interactive representations as well as provide
sophisticated support for interaction and collaboration. The latest technology-based
environments designed to support collaborative learning, such as the Future Learning
Environment, are utilizing this advanced Internet technology, and promise to facilitate
genuine and in-depth collaboration between students and teachers in the Internet.
Follansbee, Hughes, Pisha & Stahl (1997) examined how online
communications improves student performance. Their controlled study demonstrated
that students perform better on measurements of information management,
communication, and presentation of ideas, comparing 500 students in fourth-grade
and sixth grade classes in 7 urban school districts in the U.S (see
http://www.cast.org/publications/stsstudy/).
By summarizing results of research on educational potential of the Internet
(Owston, 1997; Starr & Milheim, 1996; Trentin, 1999; Ward & Tiessen, 1997a; Ward
& Tiessen, 1997b), we may distinguish several levels or forms of collaborating
through the Internet.
- At the first level the Internet is used only for purposes of social correspondence
and exchange. Characteristic of this kind of correspondence is that interaction
through the Internet is not intentionally focused on learning. This kind of interaction
(for example, students sent emails to each other) may, of course, be educationally
valuable and help students to network and learn to know each others.
- The second possibility is to share knowledge by using the Internet. The Internet is
a shared information space that contains an incredible amount of information in the
form of books, articles, journals, news and so on. This shared space supports the
creation and sharing of students’ own knowledge in various formats. Pedagogically it
is very valuable that the Internet provides a possibility for students to see others’
work, and, thereby, make their thinking and problem-solving processes visible.
- A the third level the Internet provides a medium in which collaborative projects
can be conducted jointly within or between groups of students who share the same
learning goals, regardless of their physical locations. This kind of advanced level of
29
collaboration is supported through various computer-supported collaborative
learning environments, as mentioned before.
While interaction takes place through computer networks it opens new
possibilities to facilitate communication and collaboration. However, simultaneously
it also causes some problems that do not exist in face-to-face communication.
Distance and asynchronous communications trough networks are new features of
interaction, which challenge our pedagogical thinking (Lehtinen & al., 1999).
Interactive communication on today´s Internet is overly based on text.
However, student of lower grade levels are not necessarily fluent readers and are
unlikely to be able to learn by participating in forums that require expressing their
thoughts as text (Roschelle & Pea, 1999; Lipponen, in press; Lipponen, Hakkarainen
& Järvelä, 1999). Young children may not be very capable of expressing their ideas or
making their thinking visible by writing and are not necessarily fluent readers. Studies
of communications in e-mail and in CSCL environments, for instance, suggest
interesting differences in comparison with printed forms of communication: these
communications are less structured, less constrained by social conventions, and more
spontaneous (Lipponen, in press; Lipponen, et al., 1999; Windschitl, 1998).
The nature of network mediated discourse differs also from the face-to-face
communication. In written communication, which is the main medium of
communication in the Internet, the referential relations of text should be explicated
and the context created. In face-to-face communication, in contrast, these are usually
known by participants or are easily checked. However, in many cases students do not
explicate such referential relations in network discussions. In this respect, their written
activity resembles oral discourse (Lipponen & Hakkarainen, 1997; Lipponen, in
press).
Roschelle and Pea (1999) argued that several factors constrain the Internet’s
ability to promote improved learning. Today's Internet is not sufficiently integrated
with the structure of K-12 education. Very few web resources support, for example,
the curriculum of elementary and secondary education or represent European or
American national educational standards. Further, the processes of creating values,
30
forming shared beliefs or achieving mutual understanding appear to be very hard to
replicate in the network environments.
However, revolutionary technological advancement promises to create
radically new tools for collaborative learning (Eisenstadt & Vincent, 1999; Baek, et.
al., 1999). Collaborative agents and other entities based on artificial intelligence are
emerging and going to provide significant support for collaborative use of the
Internet. The intelligent agents collaborate with other agent and humans (exchanging
information and services) in order to complete tasks assigned to then – thereby,
helping to solve problems that cannot be solved alone. These intelligent agents may,
for instance, use information of user profiles to help students working on same kind of
projects to network with each other and search for and screen information that other
students with the same background have found interesting and useful. Educational use
of this kind of intelligent tools are probably going to help to go beyond many current
limitations of the Internet, such as management of huge amount of available
heterogeneous information.
3.4 Can the Internet facilitate publishing sudents' works?
The Internet and especially World Wide Web, as a shared information space,
provides a medium for students to publish and share they work and documents with
their fellow students and diffrent communities all over the world. As students become
publishers, their own contribution to the Internet, to the shared knowldge capital, can
become useful resources for the work of their own and others. Producing of
knowledge for a real audience is often also a very motivating and rewarding
experience. Publishing of one's production on the Internet may push a student to carry
out deeper investigations and achieve better results through forcing one to consider
his or her productions from the viewpoint of the possible audience. Further, while
producing knowledge for publishing students learn to view knowledge as socially
constructed (Hakkarainen, et al., 1999; Owston, 1997; Starr & Milheim, 1996;
Trentin, 1999; Ward & Tiessen, 1997a; Ward & Tiessen, 1997).
Publishing in the Internet means sharing knowledge among students but also a
possibility for students to see others work. A good example of a project that has
31
published in Internet is the ELETA (European Legends and Tales) project of the
Laukaa Comprehensive School, Finland. Pupils wrote articles about the tales and
traditions in Finland aiming to exchange collected and translated tales with other
countries so that pupils could consider the differences and similarities in the folklore.
Studenst productions were published in their web magazine ELETA. Other examples
of publishing in the Web are the projects CyberFair and Community Share. In these
projects schools share resources, establish partnerships, and students work together to
publish information about their communities (Solomon & Andres, 1998).
For most of the projects conducted in schools publishing means preparing web
pages describing, for instance, school projects. However, there exist also projects that
provide technical education for assisting students and teachers in publishing of their
work, such as learning to make a web page. Some other projects are focused more on
creating tools that would make it easier to publish one's productions on the Internet
(Hakkarainen et al., 1999).
While encouraging studenst to publish in the Internet, educators should make
them aware of the critical difference between the content and the form of the
publications. Bereiter (1999) argued that pedagogy should deal with knowledge rather
than with the containers of knowledge. He stated that typical school "projects" involve
producing a visible object, such as an illustrated report or a web page. However, the
focus of the projects supported by new technology should not be on publishing
visually impressive presentations but creating new knowledge.
3.5 What is teacher's role in networked learning
The revolution of information and communication technology is a major
challenge to teachers' professional development. Teachers have to learn technical
skills to use ICT productively, and to instruct and guide the students to use ICT in a
meaningful way. Teachers need to become familiar with ICT and also to acquire
pedagogical expertise needed to work productively with new information and
communication technology. New pedagogical practices have to be explored and
developed in order to facilitate higher-level knowledge-acquisition skills that learners
need to constructively adapt to the knowledge society.
32
Currently, teachers' lack of technical expertise in ICT appears significantly to
constrain possibilities of developing new and innovative ICT-supported pedagogical
practices. For example, a large survey made in Finland (Hakkarainen et al., 1998)
revealed that only a small percentage of teachers had adequate skills of information
technology although a majority of them had access to computers either in their homes
or at school. Further, the study found that only 9 % of these teachers, in their actual
teaching, used computers daily; only 27 % used computers weekly. A big challenge
for teachers is to develop new pedagogical practices and put them to use.
As Vosniadou (1997) argues, teachers have to change their instructional
practices significantly and become facilitators and co-learners of students' learning
activities rather than dispensers of information. This means facilitating collaboration
between students, encouraging them to monitor their understanding (without directly
giving them information), communicating with them and carefully examining the
discourse of the students. Students generally should not be left to conduct unguided
discovery learning with the Internet. Without actively participating in students'
inquiry, the teacher can neither help the students to advance their learning process, nor
recognize significant contributions, nor generalize emerging progressive practices of
using the Internet and its resources.
In order to utilise the new possibilities of ICT pedagogically, the teachers need
to know how to guide students' active learning and how to take advantage of new
technology and the Internet. Yet it is unlikely that an individual teacher can make
much progress in pedagogical practice without the support of the whole
pedagogicalcommunity of school as well as national and European authorities
(Lipponen & Hakkarainen, 1997).
Shotsberger (1997) discussed teacher's role in WBI and proposed three key
issues: First, to what extent must instructors formalize and/or tailor the use of WBI
interactive tools and methods in order to ensure learner involvement? Research
findings indicate, that if the use of options for investigation and experimentation
depends on user initiative, it is likely that tools will not be employed. Second, what is
the appropriate blend of synchronous and asynchronous contact required for
supporting WBI learners? Third, what is the role of the instructor in fostering a sense
33
of community among learners in a virtual WBI classroom? Shotsberger (1997) offers
some recommendations for teachers in Web-Based Instruction: Publish preliminary
materials that stress the frequency of learner's involvement, to heighten interactivity;
post asynchronous messages specifically intended to promote conversation;
communicate one-on-one with learners to encourage interaction or ask about
difficulties; assign varying soles to learners, such as presenter, discussant or
discussion moderator; use smaller work groups to accomplish tasks, avoiding sole
reliance on large group format for meetings and discussion.
Collins (1996) proposes that the same enthusiasm and the same expectations
that were aroused by computers in schools in late 70s are now, in many ways, focused
on the Internet and its resources. Keeping this in mind, we should take our earlier
experiences with information and communication technology very seriously.
According to Collins (1996) the major lessons to be learned are as follows: Begin
with educational needs for technology--do not begin with thetechnology; start with
issues that are important for teachers and students; do not put computers in only one
room; support the enthusiasts.
Lamon et al. (1996) wrote about difficulties in implementing three learning
models with technology to schools: The CSILE Project, Jasper{'}s Woodbury
Problem Solving Series, and the Fostering a Community of Learners program.
According to their evidence and experience, a great deal of structure is necessary in
order to make the environments work optimally in student learning. Teachers had
problems with combining theoretical innovations and usage of the applications in
classrooms; the researchers started, much more, to appreciate the challenges faced by
teachers who were trying to implement the programs to classroom learning. Teachers
in the project had extra resources, such as computer technology and content experts,
who could help teachers and students acquire complex subject-matter knowledge.
This is not possible in every school and every classroom. The issue of "scaling up
while ensuring quality" is an issue for any attempt to restructure education (Lamon et
al., 1996). What seems to be needed is good models for helping teachers to
collaborate with each other and with experts in order to get assistance and support in
pedagogical questions. The model should be cost-effective, so that it is possible to
distribute the ideas and practices to large numbers of teachers and schools.
34
Implementation of new pedagogical innovations in schools often fails even if
the ideas are theoretically well-grounded and accepted. According to Windschilt
(1998) educators, in their pedagogy, do not differentiate among kinds of research
information: (in the case of WWW) reports in scientific journals are not differentiated
from those in non-professional publications, such as newspapers and magazines.
Lamon, Reeve and Caswell (1999) point out that many educational reformers
think that the most important component in effective reform is highly skilled teachers.
Several development projects have shown, however, that it is difficult for even very
experienced teachers to adopt and apply new advanced pedagogical methods (e.g.
Rich, 1993; Lamon et al. 1996). Teachers need guiding models and support to help
them to integrate theoretical knowledge about learning and their practical professional
knowledge (Leinhardt, Young & Merriman, 1995).These difficulties might also be
related to the novelty of the ideas of networked learning in schools, but they also
indicate that the theoretical and practical principles of networked learning are still too
recently articulated to be widely recognized and readily applied in practical
educational reforms.
Soloway (1996) further stated, "The technology is the proximal cause; but
quite frankly, the real issue is the teacher permitting and then encouraging students to
work, to talk, to produce genuine artifacts, and to feel good about themselves and
what they are doing in school." (p. 14) Proper support including peer coaching, visits
to classrooms using ICT, walk-in clinics, and reflective activities must be provided in
the school environment for teachers to integrate ICTs into their classroom activities.
To summarize: In order to fully utilise new pedagogical possibilities offered
by ICT, profound changes in teachers' conceptions of learning and knowledge are
required. Technical expertise alone is not sufficient to exploit new pedagogical
possibilities provided by ICT; insofar as ICT is used in the educational system as a
purely technical innovation, significant pedagogical progress will not likely be
achieved.
Thus a very critical aspect of facilitating pedagogically meaningful use of
Internet applications and progress is the training of teachers. In order to implement
new technology and pedagogical practices the teachers need a great deal of
35
pedagogical and epistemological support from researchers, in the form of project
designs and good examples. Besides theoretical knowledge about new technology,
they need practical knowledge of good approaches.
4 EXAMPLES OF GOOD NETWORKED LEARNING PROJECTS
Many researchers have concluded that no medium — be it television or
Internet or any other — by itself improves teaching and learning (e.g., Owston, 1997;
Roschelle and Pea, 1999; Salomon, 1997). As stated by Owston (1997), after more
than 50 years of research on instructional media, no consistent significant effects from
any medium on learning have been demonstrated.
The rationale of 'because it is there' is not adequate in the long run. Simply
because students are able to access the Internet and use high-tech equipment is
insufficient reason to justify the involvement in such activities, from an educator's
standpoint. By itself, neither the Internet nor any other educational technology
necessarily does much to facilitate learning and higher-order thinking (Salomon &
Perkins, 1996; Salomon, 1997). Educators and researchers should ask what kinds of
help can be reasonably expected from information processing technology and the
Internet in education, for, as Sarason (1984) has pointed out, not everything
technologically possible, wondrous as it might be, needs to automatically also become
instructionally desirable. It is crucial to determine how effectively such a medium is
exploited in the teaching and learning situation. For the researcher, one advantageous
feature of the Web is that it allows every thought to be captured for future
examination, elaboration and extension.
Learning depends critically on the exact character of the activities the learners
engage in with the Internet, the kind of tasks and problem solving situations they
address. It also deepens the kinds of intellectual and social activity students become
involved in, when they interact through the Internet. The starting point for
investigating the possible benefits of a technology should be an understanding of the
nature of and conditions for effective learning and higher order thinking, not merely
an idea of what the technology can do. The technology itself does not do the work of
teaching--or learning.
36
In advanced pedagogical practices, the use of the Internet becomes an
integrated part of the whole learning environment and the culture of learning. Hence,
it is used for building up social structures that encourage learning, for supporting
reflective discourse and for helping students and teachers build knowledge and deepen
their understanding of subject domains (Lipponen, in press). In a large review report,
Lehtinen and others (1999) concluded that computer supported collaborative learning
(CSCL) combined with problem-based inquiry appears to be a promising way to
improve the quality of learning with information and communication technology.
Roschelle and Pea (1999) have set out three aims for networked learning;
specifically, the development of
1) collaborative representations (advanced visualization, simulation and modeling
tools; "messages that participants can construct need to be richer, with easy capacity
for creating, editing, linking and displaying graphs" (p. 24); richer interchange of
graphical and verbal representations (as in face-to-face communication);
2) advanced socio-cognitive scaffolding (typical Internet chat or BB-systems do not
organize conversations well for learning; tools like CSILE or CoVis that promote
learning could be related into more widely available products); and
3) tools that foster self-improving communities (e.g., tools that facilitate rapid
accumulation of a community's capabilities such as recommender systems).
In the following section, three innovative projects that utilize the Internet and
its resources in multiple ways are introduced; Global Learning and Observations to
Benefit the Environment (GLOBE), Kids as Global Scientists (KGS), and The
Learning Through Collaborative Visualization (CoVis).
37
4.1 The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment project
(GLOBE)
The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment project
(GLOBE; http://www.globe.gov/) aims at involving K-12 students in significant data
collection and analysis, the results of which are entered into a widely accessible
World Wide Web site for use by other students, teachers, and researchers. "The
students participating in GLOBE make measurements of selected atmospheric,
hydrologic, and biologic parameters, following protocols developed by the research
community, which, in turn, uses these student collected data sets in their own
research" (Rock, Blacwell, Miller & Hardison, 1997, p 17). See also descriptions of
the project in Finarelli (1998), Means (1998) and Murphy & Coppola (1997).
The project provides an invaluable base for developing a better understanding
of the global environment. The goals of the program are to enhance the environmental
awareness of individuals around the world; to contribute to the scientific
understanding of the earth; and to help all students reach higher levels of achievement
in science and mathematics, and to increase the environmental awareness of all
individuals while increasing the scientific understanding of the earth.
GLOBE is worldwide network of students, teachers, and scientists working
together to study and understand the global environment. Students and teachers from
over 7,000 schools in more than 80 countries are working with research scientists to
learn more about our planet. It engages students and scientists in collecting and
analyzing data and represents a true partnership between the science and education
communities. The nature of this partnership is reflected in the various research
protocols and learning activities used at each grade level. The science processes used
by researchers reflect the inquiry process used at the K-12 or equivalent level.
The GLOBE curriculum is divided into investigation areas on atmosphere,
hydrology, biology/land cover, soil and the global positioning system. GLOBE
students make environmental observations at or near their schools and report their
data through the Internet. Scientists use GLOBE data in their research and provide
feedback to the students to enrich their science education. Global images based on
38
GLOBE student data are displayed on the World Wide Web, enabling students and
other visitors to visualize the students' environmental observations.
4.2 Kids as Global Scientists (KGS)
The Kids as Global Scientists Program (KGS;
http://www.onesky.umich.edu/kgs/htdocs/home1.html) is an Internet enhanced
curriculum designed to encourage middle school student inquiry and research (see
Songer, 1996). Students use visualization and telecommunication technologies to
learn about science both locally and through interactions with peers and resources
worldwide. One of the main goals of the project is to create 'learning potentials' (the
expression refers to students' knowledge development as it progress from less
articulate and less integrated understanding to increasingly complex and explanatory
forms). In order to create learning potentials, the KGS project seeks to integrate
technical infrastructure, access to telecomunication tools, teacher training, and
curriculum development.
With the Internet and its resources the project aims to introduce more
authentic learning, to increase collaborative activities and to encourage greater
dialogue among students and between students and experts. An example of authentic
learning involves students in observing satellite pictures and current weather maps.
Students work in the project as reporters, participants and providers of
information and data. The central role in students' inquiry is to generate their own
research questions and explanations, to relate the data they collect to that collected by
others, and to encourage to work with multiple perspectives on the entire data set.
The teachers' role is to be a facilitator of students' research. Further, one important
aspect of the project is to create and implement a model of learning community based
on the idea of distributed expertise. The role of the community is to utilize
communication and to conduct data comparisons in order to motivate deeper science
learning. It is also important to analyze what new roles are developed during the
project, and how can these can be understood and built upon.
39
The project includes teacher training and support, classroom support and
mentors. Mentor-student, student-student, teacher-student, teacher-teacher
collaborations and various support materials were created. The investigators of the
project recognize that it is necessary to examine how new technology can be utilized
to foster learning, that the new features of technology must be tested, and research
must be conducted.
4.3 The Learning Through Collaborative Visualization (CoVis)
The Learning Through Collaborative Visualization Project (CoVis;
http://www.covis.nwu.edu/) is an example of an advanced project that utilizes the
Internet and its resources for pedagogical purposes. The work of the CoVis Project
was launched in 1992 and completed in 1998. The goal of the project was to promote
an instructional strategy for science education, which makes use of collaborative
inquiry as the main method. Participating students study atmospheric and
environmental sciences through inquiry-based activities. Descriptions and
experiences of the project has been reported in many publications (Edelson, 1997;
Edelson, Pea & Gomez, 1996; Edelson & O'Neill, 1994; Pea, 1994; Pea, Edelson &
Gomez, 1994; Pea, Gomez, Edelson, Fishman, Gordin & O'Neill, 1997). Thousands
of students, over a hundred teachers (about fifty schools participated in the project),
and dozens of researchers and scientists participated in CoVis, working to improve
science education in middle and high schools. Improvements occurred because the
learning of science was approached in a similar manner to the doing of science;
students employed a broad range of communication and collaboration technologies.
The project focused on three areas: (1) promoting project-enhanced science
teaching and learning; (2) developing communities of practice; and (3) providing a
facilitative technological infrastructure as a means for transforming science education.
The notion of inventing CoVis arose from the recognition that the practice of science
takes place mostly in communities, and relies increasingly on collaborations that span
widely distributed institutions through the use of networking technologies to form
"collaboratories".
40
In developing collaborative learning environments, the CoVis project used
technologies developed primarily to support collaboration in industrial and research
settings and adapted them to schools. With these advanced networking technologies
(the first-ever educational use of wideband ISDN networks), students were enable to
join with other students at remote locations in collaborative work groups. Through
these networks, students also communicated with university researchers and other
scientific experts. Through the use of advanced technologies, the CoVis Project
attempted to transform science learning to better resemble the open-ended, inquiry-
based approach of science practice. Traditionally, K-12 science education has
involved teaching well-established facts. That approach, however, bears little
resemblance to the question-centered, collaborative practice of real scientists.
There were two kinds of tools implemented in the CoVis network. Scientific
visualisation tools used graphics, images, colour and motion to present large
quantities of data in a manner that allows the user to observe patterns in a large data
set in the form of visual patterns in an image. The same tools are used by professional
scientists and were implemented in the CoVis environment as learning tools for
students (Gomez, Gordin, Carlson, 1995; McGee & Pea, 1994). The software for
collaboration was designed to support students as they conduct scientific inquiries as
members of a community.
Students working in the CoVis environment used standard Internet tools
(electronic mail, Usenet newsgroups, www, desktop video teleconferencing) for
information seeking and for communication with university researchers and other
scientific experts (Pea, Edelson & Comez, 1994). For mutual communication and for
remote, real-time collaboration, students used a collaborative application called CoVis
Collaboratory Notebook (Edelson & O'Neil, 1994; Edelson, 1997). The
Collaboratory Notebook is a groupware application especially planned for students'
collaboration in science projects. It provides a place for students to record their
activities, observations, and hypotheses as they perform scientific inquiry. By using
the Notebook, teachers and students can plan and track the progress of a project
together. Students working in the environment can share and comment upon each
other's work.
41
Characteristic of the CoVis environment is that the collaboration tool and the
visualisation software were tightly integrated. All the visualisation tools automatically
generate a log of the whole experimenting process. A student can take a copy of the
log and put it into the Collaboratory Notebook. Once the log is there, the student can
annotate the log with comments and thus use it as a tool for reflection and
collaboration. Perhaps the most important outcome of CoVis was the construction of
distributed electronic communities dedicated to science learning.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The aim of this report was to analyze the educational use of Internet. In
conclusion, it may be useful to discuss the educational use of the Internet by
distinguishing between first-order and second- order effects of educational technology.
It seems that the introduction of the Internet applications itself affects the nature of the
educational. These effects, which we call "first-order" effects of educational
technology, refer to learning skills of using information technology, developing skills
of basic knowledge acquisition, generally increased motivation, and accessing
extended sources of information. First-order effects also involve changes in structures
of classroom activities and changed division of cognitive labor between the teacher
and the students. Students are working in a more self-regulated way; they are doing
tasks more on they own and directing their own projects instead of following detailed
assignments of the teachers. It seems that the first-order effects are normal
consequences of engagement with the Internet applications. However, they do not, as
such, facilitate social construction of knowledge and advancement of the students'
deeper, principled and conceptual understanding. The first-order effects, of course,
may be pedagogically very valuable achievements and represent a significant
improvement over traditional practices of learning and instruction.
However, bringing the Internet applications and the Internet resources into the
classroom does not automatically lead to what we call second-order effects of
educational technology. The second-order effects involve engaging students in a
sustained question- and explanation-driven inquiry, knowledge building, and
progressive discourse analogous to scientific practice. The second-order effects may
42
lead to a profound change in the students' conceptions of what learning and knowledge
are all about, and they need strong pedagogical support from the teacher. The second-
order effects appear, further, to require deep change in studens' and teachers'
conceptions of knowledge and in the pedagogical practices of school generally.
To obtain the first and second order effects of ICT certain basis conditions
should be met. It is necessary that teachers and students have access to the new
technology; the schools have an adequate network infrastructure and connections to
the wide-area networks; teachers and students have necessary technical skills to use
ICT; and there is available suitable educational software.
Moreover, technology should be an integrated part of the whole learning
environment. Yet a phenomenon we call "The problem of two curricula" appears to be
very common in classes that are implementing or using new technology. The two
curricula seem to co-exist side by side, often unnoticed. The first curriculum is the
traditional information-transmission curriculum focused on making sure that each
student "carried out the assigned tasks". The teacher assumes responsibility for the
higher-level cognitive activities such as generating questions and explaining and took
charge of metacognitive activities like planning, monitoring and evaluating. In the
second curriculum, which we call "collaborative inquiry with computer networking
and support", students are encouraged to take more responsibility for their own and
their fellow students' learning. If these two curricula are not integrated or supportive of
each other, it is very difficult to achieve the pedagogical goals of either of them or to
bring about the second-order effects of educational technology. In addition, if we
admit that curriculum very strongly guides what teachers and students are doing in the
classrooms, then we might ask, what is the role of technology or collaborative work in
the curriculum? How much space and time is given for students to work with the
Internet applications and and how is it organized? The time that is used to work with
Inernet aplications is closely related at least to the problem of two curricula and on the
other hand to the technical such as location and access of the Internet applications.
The Internet and other online technologies can be used as an agent or driving
force of pedagogical change and educational reform. Based on the review we can
43
recommend the following guide-lines for an advanced networked learning in education
for the K-12 sector:
1. Internet and its resources are utilized for pedagogical and cognitive goals
(ideas are always anchored in a clear theoretical backround).
2. Opportunities for authentic problem-solving situations and real-world
problems are offered and rich real-time resources are utilized.
3. Virtual communities of distributed expertise and community building is
facilitated (for example students-expert-partnership).
4. Students and teacher are engaged in collaborative inquiry.
5. Tools for collaborative representations are available (simulation and
modeling tools).
6. Curriculum develoment is included
7. Support and training for teachers and students are offered
8. Students' motivation for learning is facilitated through using extended
knowledge resources embedded in the Internet.
In order to facilitate pedagogically meaningful use of the Internet applications
in elementary-level education, a substantial change in pedagogical practices and in the
wider culture of schooling is needed in all continuums. Nevertheless, the culture of
school learning cannot be expected to change immediately but presupposes a long
process of exploring and testing different cognitive and pedagogical practices, such
process necessarily involving educational personnel. The change also demands the
educational policy to seek and foster these changes. The challenges arise from the fact
that we are, simultaneously, trying to promote educational use of the new information
and communication technology and implement new pedagogical and cognitive
practices of learning and instruction. Although the new technology and pedagogical
ideas support each other, the change demands the utmost of both teachers and
students.
44
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