Revolution in the field of Education due to I.T
Revolution in the field of Education due to I.T
1. INTRODUCTION
Our changed way of living as human beings and the new information society has affected the learning environment. Today people are in contact with education during their whole life in terms of school, work and spare time. This means that the school environment is no longer the only meeting place for learning and there have been developed alternatives to traditional teaching. Distance education is an alternative form that supports people to study from home.
Distance tuition has existed for over a hundred years, and means a more flexible way of studying since it is independent of time and place. This form of study is useful for students with self-discipline since the study form often means a high demand on the student to take his/her own responsibility for their studies. During the last years, a new form of education called web based teaching has been developing with the use of the new information technology. The computer is the central tool and the new learning environment. This form of education has the possibility to create a community among the students without a physical contact, since the computer environment can support communication and sharing information among the students. Web based teaching means a change of the school sector that earlier has been characterized of a teacher one classroom to decentralise responsible and new techniques. It is important to remember that knowledge is still a human process and that the technology does not replace existing ways of learning but might instead be a complement to create new and further opportunities for learning.
2 LITERATURE STUDY
There exists much literature that concerns web based teaching. We wanted to take part of earlier experience from this broad area to combine a theoretical point of view with the material from our empirical study, to discover similarities and diversities. In this occasion Greg Kearsley with his book "Online education learning and teaching in cyberspace,2000" is one central book in our theoretical part. Kearsley has over 20 years of experience and recurs often as a co-author in research articles. In this chapter, we give a brief introduction of the computer as a medium in a learning perspective. We will start with a short review of the computer in education. How this situation affects its use in this new form of studies. Followed by a description of how this medium supports communication and information online, since it is useful information for teachers when planning and structuring an online course. We end this chapter by presenting possibilities to integrate different Medias and hypertext in the computer environment. These new possibilities affect an online course with its capacity to stimulate and motivate online students.
3. COMMUNICATION
In online educations, there are limitations of physical meetings, which mean that teachers and students need to find new ways to communicate with each other. The computer environment supports different kind of opportunities to facilitate the virtual communication. Since e-mail, forum, video, and chat are the most common and useful tools in the online education we have delimited our research to focus on those. According to Collis et al (2001) it does not matter which tool is used, it is more important how it is used.
3.1 SOCIAL CONTACT
The social contact is important for online students. By letting them discuss, argue, negotiate, and reflect upon existing beliefs and knowledge it increases their motivation (Agostinho et al, 1997 cited by Vonderwell, 2002). That is why the social contacts need consideration when planning and structuring online educations. Wegegrif (1998 cited by Driver, 2001) means that the students need to get the feeling of belonging in a community otherwise; it is unlikely that they succeed in a virtual environment. Researchers have been showing that people learn in collaboration and in dialogue with others and that is why it is important as a teacher to support students to create a feeling of group affiliation. In those groups students give each other feedback and comments on exercises, which can attain the feeling of a group belonging and their motivation increases (Haake et al, 2002). When students support each other, the stress diminishes for the teacher who can spend more time to keep a high quality of the course. Kearsley (2000) explains that with help of the computer as a medium, students can with different backgrounds and experiences from all over the world communicate and send information to support each other. They can get the feeling that they are fellow students and can take advantage of each other's knowledge. Online education is often associated with limited physical contact with classmates and teachers; however, Eriksson et al (2000 cited by Driver, 2001) have discovered an advantage with this. Even if teachers and students have physical meetings, it does not mean that they have a social contact. It is common in high-level education that a course has over a hundred of registered students, which makes it impossible to have a private contact with each student. The authors mean with that, that the computer environment makes it easier to have a personal contact with the online students than with students at the campus since online students are often more active to ask questions. These two reasons together make it easier for teachers to discover if one student starts to lose motivation and the teacher is able to give this student extra attention. The disadvantage with this method is that it is time-consuming for teachers with large groups of students since it becomes difficult to satisfy everyone. Everhart et al (2000) explains that in order to have an effective learning it requires some kind of social interaction and especially for online students. They need to have an active exchange with others to enhance their performance and satisfaction. To get effective learning, students need to activate by using different methods, depending on the situation. In some elements, it is more effective to have group works and in other more useful with individual tasks. Moore and Kearsley (1996 cited by Driver, 2001) describe three types of interaction models, learner content where students work with course material, learner instructor, the interaction between a student and a teacher, and the last one is learner learner, which means the engagement between students. These interactions encourage students to be activated in both small and large groups, and to make use of others experience. It is not possible to recommend one type as more effective than the others. These models are all important to have in consideration, although in some situations it is possible to replace one type with another to save time for both students and teachers. In these three models, the teachers' role has changed. Eriksson et al (2000) explain in their book about flexible learning, that students are not dependent of the teacher as a master instead they need a tutor.
4. INFORMATION
Information sharing is one of the advantages with the computer environment. This environment has a wider range and possibilities to handle information than the traditional environment. We will try to create an understanding of how these possibilities are suitable in a learning perspective. The most important aspect is that teachers learn how to handle information in the online environment.
4.1 THE COMPUTER AS AN INFORMATION HANDLER
Before the technology was widely available, finding information was often a critical task. Today it is a smaller problem and a common way to find information is to search the Internet, which consists of large amounts of databases and other knowledge sources. Its content becomes quickly obsolete because of the high tempo of changes and wide range of new information. Everyone can be a publisher at the Internet. The web does not distinguish between documents created by Nobel laureates and fifth graders, which means that students need to learn how to learn and to learn to criticise. A student or a group of students need to be able to identify and formulate a problem in an unstructured situation, search and find information, test different alternative solutions against each other make consequent judgment and take a decision. (Eriksson et al, 2000). The advantage with the computer is its possibility to handle, sort, and organise the information, which means that the computer has the capacity to handle lectures and the administration of a course (Eriksson et al, 2000). A lecture can be published on the Internet and instead give the teacher more time for individual supervising, which is one way to increases the standard of the course. The information problem in online studies is when the information is presented both on the webpage of the university and the course platform. The university's Webpage informs the student about the plan of the course, a list of literature, schedule, contacts, and useful links, while the platform presents the main information about the course. Even though the university Webpage is more useful in the beginning of a course, it is important to update this page with new information. According to Eriksson et al (2000), it is better to delimit the number of places of information to reduce the confusions among students and teachers.
The computer does not only influence the education by having obtained information. With the availability of the Internet, the course gives in different perspectives of time. Online educations remove boundaries that have to do with where and when students learn, as well as who can be a learner (Kearsley, 2000). Some elements, school tasks, and other examinations will be done whenever it suits the student. According to Eriksson et al (2000), does the computer decrease the work for teachers but that also results in that teachers want to do a little bit more and do it better. It is important that teachers delimit their work and separate working hours and spare time, otherwise they have the possibility to always be available and contacted.
5. NEW WAYS OF STRUCTURING THE MATERIAL
The computer as a medium has the power to vary and improve the visualization of information, to facilitate the learning in online education. According to Kearsley (2000), learning is more effective when it involves multiple sensory channels, visual colour, movement, sound, voice, touch, and smell. According to Farmer (1995), a mix of media can satisfy the many types of learning preferences, that one person may embody or that a class embodies. Multimedia technology can provide certain kinds of experience of multi sensory learning. These interactions are not as rich or complete as firsthand experiences, for example no touch or smell. They are often better than traditional classroom learning activities based on "talk and chalk " (Kearsley, 2000). Each individual has different sensory preference and vary in the aptitudes for learning, the willingness to learn, and the style or preference for how to learn (Jonassen & Grabowski, 1993). Mutimedia, Hypertext and Hypermedia are terms that occur when discussing electronic documents or interactive mediums. In the electronic document, there is no actual beginning and end at the document, the computer capacity can merge section of text by using links (DeRose & Durand, 1994). A similar possibility to create an environment with use of multimedia productions is to develop an authoring system. An authoring system means an opportunity to combine different Medias that provide an interactive and learner-controlled environment.
5.1 MULTIMEDIA
Multimedia is an integration of several Medias like text, picture, sound, video, and animation (Yager, 1993). Online environment for studies have a tendency to be boring since the computer is not a spontaneous individual. As a replacement for the spontaneous element in the traditional education, can this learning environment use stimulating and interesting multimedia element to get activated and motivated students. It is important to make a use of the advantages with the computer environment, with its possibility to create interactive programs or simulations that uses as a tool for thinking. This means that the computer is a tool for augment of the mental strength unlike for example the hammer that augments the physical strength. There are still limitations of Medias that the computer cannot handle for example smell and taste senses. Today affects the vision and hearing sense, and even in some virtual reality system, it is possible with helping tools for input and output to make use of feeling and balance senses.
5.2 HYPERTEXT
In 1987, Ted Nelson coined the term hypertext and he described it as a non-sequential writing, with branches that allows choices to the reader. For readers, this navigation involves actions as selecting parts of the hypertext. Deciding which other parts they want to jump to, and displaying the document in ways that make sense to them. Within hypertext, the reader can become a co-author because the order of a non-sequential document is determined only at the time of the reading (Barker, 1993). Hypertext is the format that has the possibility to make large amount of information manageable. Although, theorist with this aim deals with navigational challenges and to easy retrieve data when more and more information puts online.
Another problem with hypertext is its coherence strategies (Foltz, 1996). There is a lack of coherence between linked nodes, it is typically assume that because two nodes are link by some common piece of information, and the reader can generate the correct inference about the link and incorporate the new information into his or her representation of the text. What also is a problem area in hypertext is the bounded space that Nielsen (1990) has been study. He used the term context-in-the-large and context-in-the-small, which means large overview, which is maps, to guide users, and small-scale overview to help users keep track of their location. Nielson expressed that a loss of small context could damage overall usability more than the added context-in-large improves it. When reading hypertext the user needs both kinds of context, not just in large but also in the small. Conklin et al (1987) warned that the loss of context is one of the great issues in the hypertext theory. The hypertext differs from linear or traditional sequence, when some of the linear or traditional sequence is disrupted, the reader has to rejoin these pieces of the puzzle to make them completely again. The text has its own context, maintained in the traditional ways and the hypertext has its own context, maintained through graphic conventions, consistent names, and so on. Navigation is an aspect of coherence so that the hyper textual structure contributes to the overall coherence of the information. Structure becomes a substitute for text, especially text that is usually devoted to transition and orientation in a traditional essay. Links, nodes, and cluster of nodes replace the conversions from traditional text to hypertext, conventions of coherence. It is not possible, in hypertext, to distinguish form from content because form is a part of the content (Conklin et al, 1987).
6. PROBLEM WITH WEB BASED TEACHING
To be able to create a useful guideline for teachers about how the computer as a medium uses in online educations, we complement our literature study with an empirical study. It is important to get an understanding about online educations from the teachers' point of view, their use of the computer for learning, how they use it, why and if there are any problems with the use of it, to be able to create a good and suitable suggestion. During our empirical study, we used qualitative interviews to get this understanding. We found it useful to work parallel with materials from our interviews and earlier research within the area. By combining these methods, our analysis's and reflections made us aware about the next step in the development process and our work during this thesis became an iterative process. In this chapter, we describe how we did the study and what we found out from the analysis of it.
6.1 GATHERING MATERIAL
We considered the interview as an important method during the whole project since our purpose was to get as close to them and their setting as possible to be able to create a support for teachers when structure and planning an online course. We wanted to get an understanding about how the computer as a medium supports communication and information from the teachers own perspectives. To find out that we decided to performed a number of qualitative interviews since we were interested in few exhaustive opinions that we could analysis and compare with earlier research in the area. The purpose was to discover similarities and patterns among the material. We adjusted the structure of the interviews to the specific situation. Garfinkel (1984) explains that methods are not templates ready to use and the use of them does not automatically reveal fantastic answers. In the beginning of the project, we used qualitative interviews with open-ended questions, this to avoid the mistakes of asking highly constrained questions before it is enough understood about the situation.
This will likely produce poor quality answers (Blomberg, 1993). Instead of asking a lot of question, we let the interviewee decide what to talk about and take the role as a leader. In this way, we did not narrow down the question before the interviewees had talked about what were most important for them. This form of interviews was suitable to get a broad picture of technical limitations, advantages, and disadvantages with the computer in online educations as it is taking place today. The form of interviews changed when we had this broad picture of the computer in online studies and had decided on a focus. We needed information to our focus rather than general information. We started to constrain the questions and structured the interview more since we knew what kind of information we were looking for.
6.1.1 How we did the study
In this empirical study, we have interviewed seven teachers, mainly women, and one interviewee represented the technical support. Since it is impossible to make a universal guideline that suits every teacher's was our attempts to create a guideline that support as many as possible. The interviews consist of teacher with different backgrounds all from healthcare to computer engineering and four of them had experience of being a student in online courses. Our intention was to get the interview group as diverse as possible to get different perspective of this new form of education.
During the interviews, one of us acted as the interviewer while the other was concentrated on taking notes. We felt that this was a useful way to have a smooth conversion without notes interruption and the interview became more a discussion between two persons. The advantage with this way of making the interviews was that it was easier to catch an overall impression. We noticed the benefit of only concentrated on taking notes to catch the whole situation on a piece of paper, that later became our reminder for further reflection. We started to use the video camera but discovered that our interviewees felt uncomfortable with it. Since it did more harm than was useful for our studies, we decided to only concentrating on taking notes. An advantage with the camera that we are missing out is the possibility goes back and catches the details that we might have missed during the interviews while taking notes. Our solution on how to catch the whole situation and a possibility to go back was to create profiles for each person that we interviewed. The profile consists of a summary of the answers and these gave us a good overview of the teachers and their different opinions. Beside the profiles, we created and worked with a mind map to see and understand the connection between the interviews. By accomplish the interviews in this way we could collect the material and then analyze it to get an insight into new possibilities, advantages, and disadvantages with the computer environment for learning and how these teachers' used the computer in online educations. In order to create a comprehensive view of this new environment for learning, we structure and organize our material in different areas to elucidate the different perspective, and the use of the computer as a medium for learning. The different perspectives were communication, feedback, information, platform, and authoring system. We divide these areas into a number of related issues, themes, and patterns.
6.3 COMMUNICATION
The interviewed teachers were quite satisfied with the possibility to communicate online and explained both the advantage and disadvantage with it. To communicate with other online students was a natural element for the teachers since they consider that people learn through discussions and conversions with others.
6.3.1 FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION
In online education, it is difficult to have physical meetings because of the physical distance, working students, etc. Many students and teachers want to have more of these meetings since the communications facilitates in face-to-face situations. Physical meetings appreciate among both online students and the teacher. These meetings with online students are different in comparison with campus students since there are few of these elements in online educations. According to teachers, the students want to utilize the meeting as much as possible and they are often more prepared for the seminaries or a workshop. Four teachers recommended at least one physical assembly in the beginning of the course. The purpose with this is to increase the group belonging and get an opportunity to have an oral conversation. Students and teachers can see each other, which often facilitate further communication through the computer.
Teachers explained that it is important to be aware of that the computer cannot replace the physical face-to-face communication. Instead, this medium has new possibilities and advantages that teachers need to concentrate on, to create as useful alternatives as possible. The interviewees' explained that there are limitations to communicate in the virtual environment since it is difficult to have an oral communication. The only possibility for a face-to-face communication is to use videoconference, which only one of the interviewee had used. She was satisfied with it but pointed out that it is not possible to use it as a replacement for physical contacts. The others explained different reasons of why they did not use it. Some of them explained that there is a general resistance against using this method in online education since the equipment is expensive and it demand a fast transmission. There is still common with modem among the students, which causes limitations to utilize the power of the computer. Another resistance is the synchronization, which is irritating and frustrating with the delayed between picture and sound that disturb the conversation.
6.3.3 VIRTUAL COMMUNICATION
Group discussion is a common element in higher education. To perform it online the interviewees used chat or forum. Even though it is impossible to view the body language and facial expression, chat sees as the nearest replacement for an oral conversation because of the way it is uses. The chat language characterize of that the grammar does not need to be correct and short words are common since the principle is to have a quick conversation. They explained that this was suitable in small groups but not in real-time large groups, which none of them had found a solution for. Instead, they used forum for large group discussions. If the element supposes to be about scientific discussion is forum a suitable and the students have time to consider the contribution, before answer it. One teacher explained that with help of the computer for communication it is possible to get a feeling of nearness by expressing one self in words. It can be difficult to convey oneself with the written language and in the end; it is all about to be a good writer. Because of this limitation of only using the written language in online education is this not a suitable alternative for all students. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get an active discussion among students. According to one eacher, it is important that teachers take the responsibility to start the discussion with the students. To that, a good example was to have compulsory elements in the beginning of the course and in this way force the students to learn and apply this tool. This teacher explained that once students start to use it and sees its advantages they use it for communication with other students. The students are mostly free to choose a communication tool that they feel comfortable with but when teachers need to take part of the discussion, the students have to use communication tool in the platform of the course like forum or chat. According to one teacher is the advantage with the virtual communication instead of a faceto- face communication that most students feel comfortable and become more personal in a virtual discussion. In a virtual communication, students interact through the computer, which give the students time to think of formulation and they can ignore other students' impression of the comments. During our interviews, all teachers explained that their relations with online students were closer and more personal then with students at the campus. They believe it depends on that it is easier to express and be personal without having to stand in front of another person. However, also since online students usually are more active to use the possibility to communicate with the teacher and other students, than campus students are.
Teachers considered chat and forum are useful communication tools in a virtual environment, but they all agree about further development to reduce its limitations. One teacher complained about that it does not support creativity because it only accepts a linear structure of the text. That results in that it is difficult to emphasize a specific word or a sentence. Another teacher explained how hard it is to be fun in online conversions since the facial expression oneself and intonation fail to attend in this situation. This teacher thinks it would be useful with more functions on letters like for example colour, font, and size.
6.4 INFORMATION
In online education is the information easily available for the students. Except its advantage there is also disadvantages because the information can be unstructured, duplicated, and lead to confusions among the students. The teachers' experience covered both sides of it but it also showed difficulties to rethink and redesign their earlier way of handling the information.
6.4.1 VISUALISATION OF THE INFORMATION
In online educations, the presentation of the information is important. The teacher was satisfied with how easily the computer environment can visualize the information, but the opposite was that it creates confusions among the students. What the teacher meant was to disseminate the information in several locations, like emails, and course production tools, which can create confusions among the students of where to find the information of the course. The visualization of information delimits to a computer screen, but it is important to limit the amount of information in a structured way. One teacher explained that her rule was to use the computer screen as a measurement, and only make a short introduction of the task. For further instruction of the introduction, it was connected links to support students with more information. The short introduction was a quotation, or a short description to attract the student's interest. According to all teachers, there is a resistance to read on the computer screen so they express their rule "keep it small and simple". In online education, the information bases on the written language, which means that teachers need to formulate the problem or question carefully. The written language with possibilities of interpretations presented from two different perspectives, its problems, and possibilities. The interpretation problem can accord to some teachers, cause double workload when the formulation of the information is too indistinct. It can sometimes be impossible to figure out what is unclear and give a new explanation of the information. Another teacher saw possibilities with the written language since it open ups the creativity. All students have the possibility to parse the information from the student's own perspective and earlier knowledge.
6.4.2 SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Even though the computer can handle information and communication, the teachers that we interviewed had not found any substitute for a lecture in this environment. They all have replaced the lecture to a short introduction of the task with belonging literature. According to a teacher, it is difficult in a class with students that have different study backgrounds, without a common literature to discuss about. Despite, that Internet is a source of information it is not common to use it as a literature. The teacher explained that it depends on that the student need knowledge for the knowledge to choose literature and material on their own.
7. FEEDBACK AND DEADLINE A LEARNING PROCESS
For students to improve their skills and to develop new knowledge it is important with feedback. In all kind of educations, the students need to get their teachers opinion and comments. All teachers that we interviewed agreed about this but explained that it takes too much time to give feedback to their students. According to some teachers, this part differs from the traditional teaching because an oral report is much more comprehensive since it includes the body language. To formulate a written feedback is more complicated, since it must give explicit instructions that can lead to improvements. The disadvantage according to our interviewee is that it is not the same opportunity for students to questioning the comments or for teacher to expound the answers.
One of the teacher, who had experience of being an online student expressed that a successful element in her course was to give feedback to other students. Among online students, to exchange criticism appreciates. In this case, the task was to write an essay that evaluate and comment another student essays. According to this teacher was this element not only useful to get feedback on their own essay it was also useful to read and learn from other students' essay. To criticize other students' reports was a learning process since the students need to learn how to analyze and reflect on a paper and express these opinions in a professional way.
Despite feedback, deadline was another important issue in online educations. Lot of smaller deadlines can create a common strain among the students that is naturally in the traditional school environment, which according to a teacher is important to reduce the number of dropouts. Already in the beginning of a course the students need to be activated, a recommendation from our interviewees were to give the students short task for handing in at an early stage. One teacher expressed that a good overview of the course element with its hand in is a necessary support for online students. As mentioned before even online students need a pressure from their surrounding, and a detailed plan can be a substitute.
8. PLATFORM
The use of a course production tool was common among the teachers that uses it to present information and makes it easy for students to communicate with each other. Teachers explained that a platform is useful in this new form of educations since it makes it possible to integrate students from all over the world, international and national with its support of several languages. The course production tool is the new school environment for online students; this means according to the teachers that this tool needs to be easy to use. The technology cannot be the obstacle to study an online course. One teacher expressed that it is not possible to get away from that the students need some computer skills but the main issue with online education is for students to learn the content of the course and not to improve their computer skills.
Luvit was the course production tool that uses, if they used one, and the reason for this was that Blekinge Institute of technology has licence for this platform in educations and offers the possibility to technical support. However, the opinions about its functionality were different between the teachers. Some thought it was too flexible with superfluous functions, while others complained about its strict structure. One teacher did not use a platform because she considered it was not stable enough and it takes too much time to sort out functions that were a useful support in class. Among some teachers, Luvit considered as unstructured; with duplicated documents and messages, that confuses the students. Several of our teachers mentioned missing functions like the possibility to confirm a submitted task and a filter function to exclude delayed tasks in Luvit. Another missing function was to integrate the visual schedule with the teachers' own calendar to reduce double bookings. This teacher also wished that the students could update their own projects but with delimit access to other students work. Another thought was to integrate SMS into this course production tool since nearly all students have their own cellular phone. A scenario according to this teacher was to send a message when cancelling a seminar.
A common opinion about Luvit was the lack of how it handles communication in large groups; it almost only supports visualization of the information and small group communication. One possibility with Luvit was to share information, even though it is not possible to apply attachments in the email function. One interviewee explained about how frustrating this was since students need to use another email program outside the platform to attach files. Without possibility to share information and document, it is not the same use of email and no reason for students to turn to the course platform for this purpose.
9 TOWARDS A FLEXIBLE GUIDELINE FOR ONLINE TEACHING
The information from the literature study, empirical study and the technical review gave a good insight into the virtual learning environment. The common perspective in theses parts was to use the computer as a medium, with its possibilities to support communication and information. An interesting result was the mismatch between the literature study and the empirical study. The literature part elucidated new opportunities and directions with the computer in education while the empirical study highlighted the difficulties with online studies in its practice. In the literature study did not the online communication be such a problematic part meanwhile this element was the most complicated part in existing courses, the information part was the opposite. The problem with the information in the empirical material elucidates only of teachers that have been online students themselves while the literature material highlighted new possibilities to handle knowledge information. This mismatch showed that to design and structure web based teaching there is no need of a new technical tools like authoring systems or a platform. The current platform and the computer technology have the functionality and technique for this purpose. What we mean is that it exist useful techniques but we must teach our broad target group how to use it. What we found out from our material was how the computer knowledge and interest differs among the teachers, and that still is a resistant against using the technology. Our idea with this guideline is to support the universal of teachers by elucidate the identified problem and limitations hopefully can break down the resistance against the technology and improve web based teaching. To make this manageable we describe the problem area and give recommendations or proposal of improvements of the technique. In the solution part, we have considered both the social and technical design to be suitable for the situation.
In this chapter, we elucidate the problems in the online environment by using a high-level pattern to structure these problems and limitations.
"A pattern is a named description of a problem and solution that can be applied to new context; ideally, it provides advice in how to apply it in varying circumstances."
We are using high-level pattern as a starting point for further development in the future and it means a possibility to complement with patterns of lower level. This structure supports different working areas despite the teachers like developer or other involved people in web based teaching, to use it as a foundation for designing their course and for further investigation. We see our collection of high-level patterns as a starting point that can or should be complemented based on teachers experiences. We begin this result chapter by describing how to structure web based teaching. Followed by how the computer as a medium can improve this form of education and we end the chapter with how it is possible to facilitate the learning by make use of different Medias that affect the human senses.
9.1 HOW TO STRUCTURE AN ONLINE EDUCATION
Depending on what type of course it is, it needs different kind of support. Each online course needs to be structured and organized to be suitable for its content, target group and the learning environment. What kind of support and how to structure is unique for each specific course although, the content is similar. With the content, we mean that student need to get knowledge and skills about the course subject and it is the content that decides the element like for example laboratory or group work. The elements in the course need to be supported in the computer environment, sometimes this environment is too limited and then our recommendations is to go pass this specific element or find another solution. The learning environment means that there must be a support for the element in the computer environment. For example, the computer environment cannot support element with a physical contact, which need consideration. In this case we recommend to arrange physical meetings even in an online course or at least complement the virtual environment with real material for students to be able to both visual and feel the material.
The target group differs depended of the type of the course. For example, when structuring a programming course the target group meant to work with this tool and the students' computer knowledge and skills is not an obstacle to take into consideration. In opposite to a humanity course, these students mainly use the computer as a tool to encounter the course subject. Then, it is important to be aware of and consider computer habits among these students when planning this form of education. Our recommendation on how to structuring and organizing web based teaching is to make a research among similar courses to collect best practical. There exists a huge amount of tips and useful element in the computer environment but since we have investigated different kinds of courses, we cannot make example on all different types of elements. Good experience can be formulating as patterns to complement the ones given below. Our purpose is to make this a starting point for further reflection when planning web based teaching.
9.2 THE COMPUTER AS A MEDIUM FOR LEARNING
The computer as a medium has the potential to support online learning by its way of handling information and communication. Even though, our results elucidates that the technology exists and today's problems and limitations are more about how to make use of it in a smart and useful way. The commercial markets are concentrating on new functionalities in the learning environment like security of document, protection against virus and external integration of artefacts. These improvements certainly affect the online education but new technology is not a solution on how to support students to aquaria knowledge. We will present the problems and limitations that were most apparent during the study. There were mismatch between be aware of possibilities with virtual communication and information and how to use it to support online students to succeed in the computer environment.
9.2.1 COMMUNICATION
One important element to aquaria knowledge is to collaborate and cooperate with other people. Several of our teachers that we interviewed expressed "learning establish in cooperation with others" and they were quite satisfied with how the computer supports communication. The material from the studies emerge that it is possible to have a social contact in a virtual environment, with a person's increased anonymity and an easy way to contact another person. The computer environment supports both real-time discussions and conversions independent of time. Another advantage with the computational power is that it can support face-to-face communication although technical limitations create disappointments among the participants in the conference. To solve this disappointment one recommendation is to use static pictures, to get the look of a person. Without useful synchronization between the talk and the body language, it is better with a static picture and instead makes use of the availability to use the spoken language. The disadvantage with the virtual communication is that it is no useful replacement to the physic al contact. We recommend at least one physical meeting since research in this area and teachers experience of physical meetings give students a group feeling and it creates a community where all students can take part. This motivates online students to work with the other students and it creates a pressure on the student to do the work during the course. Except that it is impossible to replace the physical, contact there is neither a support for large group discussion in real time. This will we elucidate further together with how to tackle that this learning environment mainly supports a strict written language. Moreover, we will also describe that although there is useful technique that support the virtual communication, there is a problem to get students to use these tools.
9.2.1.1 PROBLEM WITH THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE
In Luvit there is possible to both use chat and forum to communicate with the other students. The structure of these tools are delimited which means that it is difficult to make a word or a sentence clearer. There is no functionality to point out a specific part in a text. These missing functions also results in problems to express feelings or tell jokes, which often result in misunderstandings between the actors.
SOLUTION
To catch the students' attention on a computer screen with a lot of text would be facilitate if the important part were separate from the rest of the text. By having, functions in the course production tool that can change the font on the text can solve this. With this function, it is possible to write a word bold and in another colour like for example N.B. instead of being limited to only be able to write N.B. By changing the font of the text, it is easier to get the students attention, which reduces the risk of missing important parts. This function is useful in situations when someone wants to tell a joke and together with a chat, language makes it even clearer.
9.2.1.2 PROBLEM WITH LARGE-GROUP DISCUSSIONS IN REAL-TIME
Both chat and forum handle discussions in small groups and large group discussions independent of time, but they do not support larger group discussions in real time. It would be possible to use chat for this element but that is nothing that we recommend. This kind of discussion bases usually on quick and short messages, which makes it difficult to follow if there is too many involved. A scenario is, when a student has written an answer on a contribution three other students have already answered it. After the first student has sent the answer, the discussion is over and a new issue has started. This leads to an unstructured discussion with only a few engaged students.
SOLUTION
It is possible for students to have a large group discussion in real-time but the teacher has to think what is useful and how all student can be activated at the same time. One recommendation is to let the students discuss in small groups and choose one student to represent the group. After the discussion all representatives gathers and mediate the groups' opinions to the teacher and inform the rest of the group. The next step is that the representatives return to the original group and mediate what had said among the other representatives. In this way, students and teachers can take part of the relevant opinions in the whole class. Another solution is to have a talk show in the chat where the teacher first explains the conditions or give questions to answer. One group at the time has a time limit to deliver their opinions and when the time is up it is the next group. During this conversation, both students and teachers can take part of the discussion.
9.2.1.3 PROBLEMS TO MAKE STUDENTS COMMUNICATE BY USING EXISTING COMMUNICATION TOOLS.
A recurrent problem in online education is how to get students to start using forum and chat. The course production tool supports both discussions in real time and independent of time but many students see the advantages of using these tools. This results in that they do not use it, in situations when students could support each other they do not know how to reach each other, and instead they contact the teacher.
SOLUTION
The teacher can affect how students are going to use forum and chat in the beginning of the course. It is not enough to inform the students of their existence instead the teacher need to get the students to use them. To do that one recommendation is to have a compulsory task in the beginning of the course where the students present themselves. Another recommendation is to have a seminar where each student has to make at least five contributions during a discussion. The student has to send two messages with his/her own opinions, and make two comments on someone else's and finally respond the comments on the own contribution. In these elements, they get in contact with these communication tools and in a smooth way learn how to use it. However, if the introduction of these tools come too late, it is difficult to get acceptance among the students.
9.2.2 INFORMATION
The material from our studies elucidates different ways of how the computer handles information. The World Wide Web is an unlimited information resource, which means that it is easy to find material and information. Although, it is important to remember that all people are able to publish their work at the internet. To use www as a useful resource for information people need to get knowledge about the knowledge. Even though the World Wide Web is nothing that has come recently several Internet users are not aware about how to use search engines and when to use it. People's relation to information has changed because of the information society since there is not possible and no use for a human to catch the large amount of information. The computer can save large amount of information while the human interaction makes it worthwhile. This is important to have in consideration when planning an online course. We will describe the identified problem of how to distribute and visualize the information and we will discuss what is necessary to be aware of when presenting the information on the computer screen.
9.2.2.1 DISTRIBUTION PROBLEM
To inform online students, teachers use the existing course production tool, email, and other tools to spread information. While, there is a flexible way to inform students, it is a problem with duplication and loss of updated versions. This problem leads to confusions among the students and a possibility to miss out important information. It is also time consuming for students to look for information in several places.
SOLUTION
To make use of the availability of the information it has to be visualizing in a structured way. Despite how many tools that are used the information has to be the same. To avoid misunderstandings among the students the information always need to be presenting at a common platform of the course where the students always turn to or to always inform students by using email. The computational power in this situation has the potential to diminish the work for teachers since there are different tools easily available. The teacher can safeguard to inform all students by using more than one tool for this purpose.
9.2.2.2 THE VISUALIZATION PROBLEM
Another problem to solve is the presentation of the information for the students. The computer screen decides the amount of information but it is not useful to present information all over the computer screen. Among the students it is a resistance to read on the computer screen which results in that they prints out the text on a piece of paper.
SOLUTION
We recommend teachers to keep the information small and simple because it is possible to reduce the amount of text by using hypertext and different architectural structures. When handling hyperlinks, it is important to remember the coherence strategies. It is not possible to assume that only because two nodes linked together, they have information that match so that the student can generate the correct inference about the link and incorporate the new information into the student's representation of the text. By knowing how to handle this problem, the hypertext can be a useful support in online educations. This function can create a presentation of information in different levels, which means that students with different knowledge and skills can choose between different alternatives. In this way, there is no need for all students to go through the same information.
For a teacher to design a useful presentation of the course information with use of hypertext there is also important to think of context in large and context in small. Context in large are maps that guides the students, for example a course presentation. While a context in small can for example be the course schedule and it is important that the design of the schedule supports students to keep track of their location. The hypertext structure differs from the linear or traditional sequence since this structure is unorganized and more difficult to navigate. Navigation and to easy retrieval data are still research problems according to theorists in the area.
9.2.2.3 INTERPRETATION OF THE INFORMATION
In this form of education is the only way to inform through the written language. To formulate explicit and avoid misunderstandings is sometimes difficult. A common mistake in online courses is that teachers reuse the material from the traditional teaching without changing it. It is important to understand that a presentation with the teachers' owns notes are useful when the situation give the teacher the opportunities to explain these notes. Even though this situation cannot be supporting in the online environment, it is a common element with this type of presentations.
SOLUTION
This problem solves if teachers are aware of that they have to rethink and make the information suitable in this environment. In a situation like this is the difference between these study environments obvious. Meanwhile scrubby notes can be useful in traditional teaching it is no use for online students without further explanations. Our recommendation is to make use of the computational power by create a presentation with sounds, pictures and other details that make this presentation useful for online students. Despite technical limitations, this environment offers a wider range of Medias that can improve and design interesting presentations.
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