Volume 1, Number 2/3 1995

Emerging Perspectives on Distance Learning Special Issue

Preface: Emerging Perspectives on Distance Learning

Tak-Wai Chan

Articles

Mediating the Mechanisms Which Make Collaborative Learning Sometimes Effective

Pierre Dillenbourg and Daniel Schneider

Social Presence Theory and Implications for Interaction and Collaborative Learning in Computer Conferences

Charlotte N. Gunawardena

The Potential for Mindful Teaching at a Distance: A Dual Challenge in Educationg Teachers

Karen L. Murphy

Teaching in a Virtual ClassroomTM

Starr Roxanne Hiltz

Distance Education with Telematics for Distance Educators

Niki Davis

Distance Education for Developing Teacher Competence in the Use of Information Technology

Jan Wibe

National Research and Education Network (NREN), National Information Infrastructure (NII), and a Global Information Infrastructure

Chih Wang

Designing a Virtual ClassroomTM

Murray Turoff

Artificial Agents in Distance Learning

Tak-Wai Chan

Intelligent Computer Assisted Instruction in a Distant Cooperative Learning Environment

I-Fee Tsai, Dong-Liang Wan

Hypermedia Browsing Pattern Analysis

Chuen-Tsai Sun and Yu-Tai Ching

Supporting Network Based Learning Environments: Performance Monitoring by Causal Modeling

Chaochang Chiu, Hueyching Janice Jih, and Chi-I Hsu

Educational Telecommunications Abstracts

edited by Susan Tucker

Emerging Perspectives on Distance Learning

Tak-wai chan

Institute for Computer Science and Information Engineering

Chung-Li, Taiwan 32054, Republic of China

As computers increasingly pervade our everyday lives, distance learning will assume a pivotal role in the educational area. Indeed, the requirements for education in the next century will be substantial, not just appreciable, as in this century. To cope with the rapidly changing environment, not only do individuals have to become learning individuals, organizations have to become learning organizations, and society has to become a learning society. It is getting clearer that the impact of network technology on education will not be less than that of multimedia or artificial intelligence. How to effectively use and incorporate these technologies to form open and receptive learning environments will certainly be a challenge to researchers in the information era.

The collection of papers in this issue fall into four groups, which I will introduce briefly. The authors attempt to provide insight into the distance learning environments of the future, from theory to experiment, from system architecture design to technique development. The papers are based on invited lectures of the Fourth International Conference on Computer Assisted Instruction held in March, 1995, at the National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan. The main theme of the conference was distance learning. It was sponsored by the Ministry of Education, the National Science Council of Taiwan, and the Asia-Pacific Chapter of AACE. Some invited speakers are members of the editorial review board.

Special Issue Preface
LEARNING IN DISTANCE

The first paper is an overview of collaborative learning theories. Dillenbourg and Schneider review the empirical work concerning mechanisms of collaborative learning and conditions for effective collaborative learning. These findings are obtained from situations where two or more individuals work together to solve problems. Similar results are not expected from simple use of Internet information and communication tools where students talk to each other without strong intention to achieve a learning task. The authors suggest that more effort should be put into computer supported cooperative work tools for communication and information software so that individuals can engage in a convergent attempt at problem-solving.

Failures in distance learning tend to occur at the social level far more than at the technological level. In the second paper, Gunawardena discusses social presence theory and its implications. Social presence is the degree to which a person is perceived as a "real person" in computer mediated communication and involves associated concepts such as intimacy and immediacy. Gunawardena's study illustrates some notable findings. For example, in a text-based medium that is low in non-verbal cues, participants can create or cultivate social presence by projecting their identities and building on-line communities. Conferences start as task oriented and become more social; but impetus falls upon the moderators of the conferences to promote interaction and collaborative learning.

Murphy introduces an interesting concept, mindlessness and mindfulness, and the implications for distance education. Mindlessness refers to the behavior of people who blindly follow routines or unwittingly carry out senseless orders with potential grave consequences. Conversely, mindfulness possesses three characteristics: Creation of new categories, welcoming new information, and openness to new different points of views. Murphy describes the negative effects of mindlessness in both traditional and distance education. She suggests how to teach mindfully in distance education as well as teach teachers how to teach mindfully at a distance.

EXPERIENCE IN DISTANCE EDUCATION

Hiltz's report on the results of comparing distance collaborative learning involving different modes and traditional face-to-face classroom teaching are encouraging. When distance learning is incorporated with video or supplemented by one or two face-to-face meetings, students have positive subjective evaluations of the course and their perceived difficulty of the course is lessened. Hiltz points out that just as there is no single recipe for successful teaching in the traditional classroom, there are diverse techniques that can be employed in computer-mediated environments. Four principles for successful teaching and strategies for collaborative learning are discussed.

Davis overviews the range of telecommunications use, from information retrieval to information provision, in various sectors of education in different countries. She discusses the current pragmatics and the policies of using such technology as well as the issues of using it successfully for education. She warns that while the potential of using such technology for education has never been higher, there is some anxiety that it will fade away because most people mistakenly assumed that telecommunications are "good for" education without close examination of what they are "good for" and the issues they raise. She points out the most important issue is integration of the new forms of communication into education.

Wibe provides examples of distance learning course planning in Norway. Norway is a country with a sparse population and the country's upper secondary education is undergoing reform. They develop new curriculum and stress the use of information technology as an integrated part of education. Wibe presents the organization of a particular distance learning course and the experience the developers gained.

DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS

Computer networking among different countries has existed for many years. The first paper in this group by Wang presents an overview on the National Research and Educational Network, its potential developments and human concern. He surveys the historical background, motivation, goals, concepts, planning, and funding of the global information infrastructure as well as the implications for future libraries. As Wang puts it, many miracles of high-capacity computers, high-speed telecommunications, and the world-wide networks have already arrived, but the wide gaps between information "haves" and "have-nots" becomes wider due to the emergence and convergence of new technologies.

Turoff, based on his past work, reviews the software functionality of distance learning that has evolved over the last two decades. He illustrates activities of distance learning that are clearly dramatic improvements over traditional face-to-face classes. A simple example is the question-answer activity which is usually dominated by the same small percentage of students in a traditional class. Distance learning, however, forces equal participation and each student has to do independent thinking about the issue. The current development objectives, multimedia and hypertext requirements, instructor's courseware server, simulation, and gaming are also discussed. As pointed out by Turoff, the key challenge is integration of most of the functionality into a single interface that is easy to learn.

Chan explores the idea of artificial agents in distance learning from different avenues of research. Artificial agents are a possible idea to further advanced software development for distance learning in the next decade. The notion emphasizes humanizing technological development from the inside out and the primary concern is to engage and help end users. There are basically two types of artificial agents in distance learning: Participant agents that assume roles in participating protocols of learning activities, and assistant agents that serve as personal assistants, cognitive tools, or surrogates on behalf of the end users in their absence. Chan identifies some of their uses and problems in distance learning.

Tsai and his colleagues discuss a prototype system that supports distant hypermedia cooperative learning. They regard learning in a hypermedia system environment as building knowledge nodes and linking them to the existing knowledge. The system provides a community of users with a single logical database, physically distributed across multiple workstations and file servers on a network. The system consists of two core parts: The hypermedia document subsystem and the monitoring and controlling subsystem.

MONITORING AND ANALYZING DISTANCE LEARNERS

Sun and his colleagues develop a quantitative model for hypermedia browsing pattern analysis. Navigation behavior analysis has been addressed in the past since it may answer questions about how students use the courseware in terms of routes and methods of navigation and sheds light on substantive theoretical and pragmatic issues. Most current methods rely on human expertise to divide patterns into several categories subjectively. Their attempt is to use fuzzy clustering and neuro-fuzzy classification models which emphasize quantitative aspects. They intend to incorporate such techniques to enhance the performance of the CD Title best seller in Taiwan, Studio Classroom, a series of computer assisted English learning programs.

Chiu and his colleagues study performance monitoring using causal modeling. The system consists of four different kinds of reasoning components: Event analysis, pattern recognition, chronicle analysis, and performance evaluation. Like the previous paper, this work is a quantitative reasoning mechanism that employs fuzzy logic technique. In principle, both works can be applied to stand alone and distributed systems to serve as a part of functionality of the student model, a component that tries to understand students.

Mediating the Mechanisms Which Make Collaborative Learning Sometimes Effective

Pierre Dillenbourg and Daniel Schneider

TECFA (Unit of Educational Technology),

University of Geneva, Switzerland

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) renewed the interest for collaborative learning. Empirical findings show that collaborative learning is efficient, but only under some conditions. These conditions are not guaranteed by the use of CMC tools. It would be an over-generalisation to expect any type of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) to be efficient. It is also difficult to translate the conditions identified in face-to-face collaboration into conditions for success of distance collaboration, because too many other factors separate face-to-face from distance interactions. However, the analysis of these conditions reveals some mechanisms which explain the effects of collaborative learning. This contribution reviews the mechanisms which have been proposed and considers to which extent these mechanisms could be present in CSCL.
Social Presence Theory and Implications for Interaction and Collaborative Learning in Computer Conferences

Charlotte N. Gunawardena

Training and Learning Technologies Program

Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA.

This paper examines research on social presence theory and the implications for analyzing interaction, communication, collaborative learning, and the social context of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Two studies that examined whether social presence is largely an attribute of the communication medium or users' perception of the medium are discussed. It can be concluded from the results that even though CMC is considered to be a medium that is low in social context cues, it can be perceived as interactive, active, interesting, and stimulating by conference participants. However, it is the kind of interactions that take place between the participants, and the sense of community that is created during the conference, that will impact participants' perceptions of CMC as a "social" medium. Therefore, the impetus falls upon the moderators of computer conferences to create a sense of online community in order to promote interaction and collaborative learning.

The Potential for Mindful Teaching at a Distance: A Dual Challenge in Educating Teachers

Karen L. Murphy

Department of Educational Curriculum and Instruction

Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4232, USA

The concepts of mindlessness and mindfulness have important implications for distance education, particularly for instructors who are new to teaching at a distance. This article begins with examples of mindlessness and mindfulness in everyday life, and it proceeds to describe the negative effects of mindlessness in both traditional and distance education. Mindfulness in distance education is then described in terms of a dual challenge for teachers: how to teach at a distance and how to teach teachers to teach at a distance.

Teaching in a Virtual ClassroomTM

Starr Roxanne Hiltz

Department of Computer and Information Science

New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102, USA

The Virtual ClassroomTM is a teaching and learning environment constructed in software, which supports collaborative learning among students who participate at times and places of their choosing, through computer networks. This paper describes experiences and results of utilizing Computer Mediated Communications structured to create a Virtual Classroom (VC). Emphasis is placed on guidelines for using the technology successfully by incorporating "collaborative learning" activities.

Distance Education with Telematics for

Distance Educators

Niki Davis

School of Education, University of Exeter

Exeter, Devon EX1 2LU, UK

This paper reviews a range of applications in which telecommunications have been used for professional development of teachers: From those which retrieve information, to those which provide it, with the most exciting group collaborations in the middle. What could be more appropriate for the professional development of distance educators themselves? Older text based systems have recently been complimented with Multimedia resources but many common themes remain. Cases are discussed to uncover their strengths and the issues involved. Training for teachers using the tool of Telematics to answer real needs is advocated.

Distance Education for Developing Teacher Competence in the Use of Information Technology

Jan Wibe

Centre for Continuing Education, ALLFORSK, University of Trondheim

N-7055 Dragvoll, Norway

Norwegian Upper secondary education is going through a great reform starting with the school-year 1994/95. The name of the reform is "Reform 94." New curriculum is developed for all subjects and the use of Information Technology (IT) will be an integrated part of the education. Many teachers have great experiences using IT in their daily teaching but most of them do not have the necessary skills. Because of this, teacher education in the use of IT is in great demand.

At the University of Trondheim, we are now running three courses in the use of IT in Education. The subject areas are Sciences and Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Languages. The course in Sciences and Mathematics will be presented in this paper. The course started with two weeks of ordinary education in the summer of 1994 followed by one week in January 1995 and one week in the summer of 1995 concluding with an exam. Between the weeks of ordinary education, Distance Education will be implemented. Data communication will be used for communication between students and the faculty, in addition to "information hunting" in the INTERNET world.

National Research and Education Network (NREN), National Information Infrastructure (NII), and a Global Information Infrastructure

Chih Wang

Learning Resources Department

University of Guam, Mangilao, Guam 96923, USA

Envisioned as the "information superhighway," the National Research and Education Network (NREN) will be a giant network that will upgrade, expand, and link existing national and regional information networks. As an extended vision, the National Information Infrastructure (NII) will create virtual communities, in which people located anywhere on the planet can share interests or information. This article presents an overview on the historical background, goals, concept, and management of the advanced networking visions. It discusses their implications for library and information services and proposes to apply the NREN and the NII as models for developing a global information infrastructure (GII). It also presents issues and solutions in the implementation of the visions.
Designing a Virtual ClassroomTM

Murray Turoff

Department of Computer and Information Science

New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102, USA

This paper reviews the software functionality that has evolved over the past two decades of research in Computer Mediated Communications at NJIT to create a Virtual ClassroomTM to support distance education. Based upon many years of evaluating the effectiveness of this approach to remote education we also summarize our views about the software functionality needed for further improvement of this approach to distance education.

Artificial Agents in Distance Learning

Tak-Wai Chan

Institute of Computer Science and Information Engineering

Chung-Li, Taiwan 32054, R. O. C.

Consider the graphical user interface of a distance learning system, the user could click on an icon of a personal assistant to find out if appropriate human peers are available on-line to form a collaborative team, or the user could choose to click on the icon of an artificial tutor or artificial learning companion to set forth learning in a simulated learning club. Agents emerged from diverse views but converge at seeking and building software programs that engage and help the end users. There are basically two types of artificial agents in distance learning: Participant agents that assume roles in participating protocols of learning activities and assistant agents that serve as personal assistants, intelligent tools, or surrogates on behalf of the end users in their absence. This paper attempts to introduce the idea of artificial agents, explore their potential uses in distance learning, and identify some of their problems.
Intelligent Computer Assisted Instruction in a Distant Cooperative Learning Environment

I-Fei Tsai, Dong-Liang Wang, Shyang-Ming Yuan, and Rong-Hong Jan

Department of Information and Computer Science

National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30043, Taiwan, R.O.C.

As computer technologies have advanced rapidly, a new model that differs from traditional educational methods, computer assisted instruction (CAI), has been promoted extensively in recent years. Among CAI researchers, there is growing consensus that CAI systems in networked cooperative learning environments are likely to be more flexible and also much more efficient. In this paper, we propose a solid framework for a hypermedia CAI system in a distant cooperative learning environment. Essentials for the whole system are well defined and put into operation. A prototype of a hypermedia-based computer aided learning system is presented. A simple network monitoring protocol is also implemented to supervise and control the learning environment. Numerous experiments have shown that teachers and students alike benefit greatly from using our system.

Hypermedia Browsing Pattern Analysis

Chuen-Tsai Sun and Yu-Tai Ching

Department of Computer and Information Science

National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan 30050

Hypermedia course-on-demand has become a focus of distance education through computer networks. In this paper we propose a quantitative approach for hypermedia browsing pattern analysis. Although the importance of navigation behavior analysis has long been addressed, only a few researchers have discussed how to classify patterns based on objective, quantitative data recorded during a learning session.We show in this paper how to define measures based on graph theory and how to associate navigation information with other student learning activities in a hypermedia environment.

We first introduce a distant cooperative learning group project in Taiwan and the role of this study in it. We then define measurement indices for a hypermedia tutoring system. A quantitative approach to determining the similarity between navigation patterns is introduced based on the Longest Common Subsequence of two browsing paths. This partial resemblance, which, together with other metric measures, provides a sound basis for similarity analysis. A model for association, called a neuro-fuzzy classifier, is then described to complete this quantitative model. Preliminary experiment results are discussed. We believe that the proposed measures and models suggest an effective approach to student modeling in hypermedia-based distance education.

Supporting Network Based Learning Environments: Performance Monitoring by Causal Modeling

Chaochang Chiu

Department of Information Management

Chungli, Taiwan 320, R.O.C.

Hueyching Janice Jih

Department of Educational Media and Library Sciences

Tam-Si, Taipei, Taiwan R.O.C.

Chi-I Hsu

Department of Information Management

Chungli, Taiwan 320, R.O.C.

This paper describes how to dynamically monitor each student's learning performance using causal modeling approach in computer networked learning environments. Although using the computer network technology to deliver instruction has become possible and has resulted in many advantages, most of the current implementation seems ineffective in gaining a better understanding about each learner's detailed interaction behavior. Only when each learner's performance can be more accurately captured, can the instruction system better adapt a subsequent pedagogical strategy for the learners. In order to promote an effective distributed learning environment, a system must discern each learner's dialog behavior pattern as well as more accurately determine the learner's performance level. Other considerations include a system's automatic verification of requests for human assistance and prioritizing the sequence of help when situations require.

This paper investigates the nature of the dialog interaction especially in the network based environments and proposes an appropriate methodology that can concurrently capture all learners' performance along the interactive session.