Important Trends in Online Education

Morten Flate PaulsenProfessor of Online Education

Slides available at:http://home.nettskolen.com/

~morten/

A presentation at Online Educa,Berlin, December 3, 2004.

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NKI Internet College: www.nettskolen.com

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

September 2004

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E-book about E-learningwww.studymentor.com

• Part Four: International Trends and Future Developments

• Part One: Online Education, Teaching, and Learning

• Part Two: Commercial and Self-developed Learning Management Systems

• Part Three: Global E-learning in a Nordic Perspective

Online Education and Learning Management Systems

Global E-learning in a Scandinavian Perspective

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15 years – 1K

• Both the number of online students and the number of online courses have increased by a magnitude of 1,000.

• The bandwidth has increased by a magnitude of 1000, from 300 bits per second to 300,000 bits per second(i.e. from text to video)

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About evolution

These evolutionary developments were visible 15 years ago and not hard to predict.

The only really revolutionary development in online education was the introduction of the Web. This development, which nobody foresaw, had the largest impact on online education.

Source: Online Education, Page 286

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But…

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

Source: Online Education, Page 287

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…and…

• Online pedagogy has not improved much

• The quality of Internet is threatened by virus attacks, spam and advertising…

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Important trends

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

trend,• The globalization trend.

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The large-scale mega trend

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

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Towards large-scale systems

• The Web-edu project shows that this trend has come further in the Nordic countries than in other European regions.

• 2002: 12 of 20 Nordic institutions offer at least 50 online courses.

• 1999: 3 of 22 Nordic institutions offered more than 50 online courses.

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The mega trend requires industrialization of online education

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• Division of labor

• Increased efficiency

• Automation

• Cost reduction

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In higher education…

Online education becomes mainstream education in Scandinavia. Before year 2000, typical universities piloted a few online courses with some pioneering students. Today, they are implementing online education services to all their students.

…a Sloan Consortium study of online learning in American higher education shows that 97.6% of all public higher education institutions in the USA offer online learning degree programmes and courses, either as fully online programmes or as hybrid (blended) formats .

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Source: Online Education, Page 204

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In distance education(Example from NKI Distance Education)

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In schools

• A large number of Scandinavian secondary schools are now using LMS systems

• Even primary schools offer online services to many teachers, students, and parents.T

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About nightmares

•Online education offers students excellent opportunities for individual communication with tutors.

•They can be contacted via e-mail 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

•Few learning environments provide such opportunities for individual access to teachers.

•It is the students’ dream, but it could soon become a nightmare for the tutors.

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The online teacher’s workload

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How can we handle this in large-scale online education?

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The systems integration trend

Accounting System

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LearningManagement System

ContentCreationTools

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CRMSystem

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Online Education Systems that should work together

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About student management systems

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

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Source: Online Education, Page 30

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About collisions

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

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Source: Online Education, Page 226

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The troll with three heads: Learning, Management and System

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About constraints

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

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Source: Online Education, Page 32

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About straitjackets

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

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Source: Online Education, Page 207

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The market trend

• Increased competition will require cost-effectiveness.

• Broadband and multimedia provide wonderful opportunities, but student expectations and development costs will increase.

• Large, international providers may dominate the market.

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Cost-effectiveness

• Cost-effectiveness becomes more important as institutions become large-scale providers.

• It is important to develop sustainable online courses.

• Development and operation costs of online courses are high.

• Recent price rises have made the commercial LMSs a costly investment. Staff time for development and maintenance of self-developed systems proves to be a costly investment too.

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About economic success

• The CISAER analysis revealed few, if any, examples of institutions with substantial income from student fees.

• Likewise, there seem to be few institutions that can claim that provision of Web-based courses has been an economic success, if they disregard external research and development grants.

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

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Source: Online Education, Page 129

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About sustainability

•Sustainable online education is characterized by its ability to persist when extraordinary internal or external funding stops.

•Unfortunately, it seems to be a rare phenomenon.

•In most cases online education is sustainable when it generates an economic surplus or reduces costs.

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The mobile trend

• M-learning, the new ”buzz-word”• Improved mobile terminals (PDA, tablet PCs,

advanced mobile phones)• Enormous resources are invested in broadband

mobile telephone infrastructures (GPRS, 3G, MMS)• Private wireless networks are affordable and

increasingly popular in offices and private homes.• Public wireless networks are available in an

increasing number of airports, hotels, restaurants etc.

• E-books could replace paper based text books

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The broadband trend• The web-edu project showed that there is

an obvious request for more bandwidth and more multimedia abilities.

• Several interviewees wanted to include video services such as streaming video, videoconferences, web-cameras, and moving pictures.

• Audio services such as voice communication and audio files were also requested.

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About bandwidth• The bandwidth has increased

steadily and significantly ever since online education was introduced.

• In Scandinavia, broadband is available to most people for a reasonable price.

• This significant increase in bandwidth will continue in the foreseeable future and provide online education with richer media content.

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About speech synthesis

• The recent development in speech synthesis has made it so understandable and user-friendly that more learners may benefit from it. These include blind students, dyslectic students, and students who for example spend much time in a car.

• It is conceivable that in the future it would be just as easy and inexpensive to “speech” a text as it is to print it.

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Source: Online Education, Page 292

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The globalization trend

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

• European harmonization of degrees, credits and grades makes it easier to enroll in transnational online courses

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About export

…in Australia, the official strategy is to develop education to become the second largest export industry. In the Nordic countries, however, the export of education does not seem to be an issue for public discussion.

– In an action plan from the Commonwealth Government it is clearly stated that: “Education in Australia is a multi-billion dollar export industry of vital importance to our economy”.

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Source: Online Education, Page 20

www.studymentor.com

Thank you

More information in my book:

Online Education and Learning Management Systems: Global E-

learning in a Scandinavian Perspective.

The presentation is available via:

http://home.nettskolen.com/~morten/