Challenges within the Virtual Classroom

Barbara Bernal Thomas[1]

Abstract

Today students receive a diverse set of classroom experiences that parallel the wave of technological advances that prevail in our lives. Walls do not bind the classroom experience. The transparent accessibility of the web to all of us has enriched the communication avenues. Teaching is no longer a passive experience with the teacher delivering knowledge through one channel of communication. There are opportunities for “anytime classroom” experiences. But this push should not be another create first, forget design scenario. This paper gives insight into the challenges within the virtual classroom. Guidelines for preparing, designing, and assessing some of these new “anytime classroom” experiences are included.

Introduction

Today’s educational arena involves multiple representation of the classroom information. These representations include static, dynamic, interactivity, and multi-modal formats. Students expect their educational experience to include the use of current technology, multimedia presentations of subject content, and engaging learning interactivity. A dramatic benefit to the logistics of a course implementation can be achieved by the use of diverse tools, such as a classroom web site, email communication between all classroom participants, and other Internet-based technology. The main perspectives of these new classroom experiences are linked to the synchronous and asynchronous interaction, the convenience and flexibility of the virtual classroom, and the characteristics of an effective online learner and professor.

Traditionally, teachers relied on textbooks, lectures, and a board/overhead to convey the dense, hard-to-grasp information they are communicating, i.e. static representation. The current educational climate takes advantage of dynamic representation to benefit different types of learners. The challenge is to conduct relevant research and analysis, develop educational concepts, and create effective delivery solutions versus the re-purposing or re-directing existing curriculum content into multiple media format.

Comparing the traditional specific time slot of our classes, i.e. Monday and Wednesday 1 pm to 3 pm, versus the 24/7 availability of a proposed web classroom the dynamics of the classroom experience changes. The traditional classroom setting with the professor leading the educational experience assignsthe responsibility for a successful experience to the professor. In the web classroom, the responsibility has shifted more to the student’s shoulders with interactivity the active responsibility of all classroom participants.

There is an energy level in an online learning environment, an energy that is the collective effort expended by a group of students and professors, and results in a composite of useful resources that individuals or the class at large can extract on demand. This primarily requires commitment by students and the faculty to be highly self-motivated, organized and efficient, as well as creative to serve as resources for each other. This energy can be felt in synchronous and asynchronous forms, but in asynchronous the added benefit is its accessibility at any time and from any place. Online learning environments havehigh expectations for an interactive experience that frees learners from inconvenient time schedules and travel to campus [Dringus].

In online settings, collective effort is needed to create a sense of presence or awareness that others, while not physically present, are committed to the ongoing virtual classroom interactivity. Course information and subject content must be carefully organized and all stakeholders need to give of themselves. This has to be established first in an online course if students are going to fully benefit from the resources made available in the environment. Also essential is that the present moment in asynchronous environments always has to be felt even though stakeholders are accessing information or participating in activity at different times. Collectively, learners and professors have to help sustain a sense of presence by way of their participation in online activities.

The Anytime Classroom

If you build it, will they come? And if they come, will they do what you want them to do? The goal of any course is to change the learners' knowledge, behavior, or both. The web delivery courses are sponsored by organizationsfor reasons that are important to those organizations. These reasons include the freeing of classroom space resources, the increase in revenue, and a public assessment of joining the ranks of “state-of-art education. Many professors have experienced the dramatic increase of student’s understanding of complex information when offered in several formats versus the single format of lecture. Multiple representations of information delivered in visual, interactive, experiential, and/or participatory enables learning. Flexibility and accommodation of a wide range of learning differences is the goal. So the first thing we want to do when designing any course is think about how we can align the learners' goals with those of the teaching institution i. e. the professor.

Most learning styles can be accommodated in an online environment if there are a variety of assignments and activities that support different manners of learning. The ability to interact with others is highly warranted in online learning. Not only do learners and professors have to learn how to use chat, email, threaded discussions, and/or forums tools, they must master the new culture. Online learners and professors must learn to be productive conversationalists in this new medium. Current frequent users of chat rooms and instant messaging are creating new communication dynamics with specified jargon, expressions, and structure. Professors must study and learn how to guide and structure the users of the environment, yet provide a flexible and open environment for effective interactivity.

Part of the responsibility of the professor is to efficiently support learners in their self-discovery of learning course content. The tremendous amount of effort into preparing materials, online resources, and elaborate messages to students does not equal the student/professor dialogue of the classroom. The training to become successful online participants includes conditions for establishing a knowledge-sharing community. Emerging electronic educational communities give opportunities for collaborative learning. [Brazelton]

Professors and students spend an inordinate amount of time doing administrative tasks in the online learning environment. The Internet and collaborative software continue to fall short of our expectations. Industry gives us more functions in online course software, but we want more empowerment as communicators, not as administrators.

It is logical to presume that individual students will have unique questions of the professor. The online professor must respond clearly and quickly. Reading and responding to student e-mail becomes a daily chore if there are more than 20 students in an online class. Being on "24/7" is a good marketing scheme, but online learners and professors burn out quickly under these demands. It is simply not physically or mentally possible to be available at all times--neither is this effective educational practice.

Synchronous and Asynchronous Interaction

The open classroom can have variety of interactions by including every online learner and every online professor. Synchronous communication can be essential for certain team building and group consensus activities. But, most communications, if handled effectively, can be managed asynchronously. Even though online course activity may occur asynchronously without the benefit of "real-time" interaction, many activities and tasks are actually being done quickly and efficiently in an asynchronous way so that interaction is essentially extended towards the synchronous. For example, late breaking news in the content area may be posted for immediate review. Immediacy is the key element. Immediacy is about maintaining a continuum of activity and retaining a sense of being current in an online course, both in the moment and across the entire course term. This approach of extending the asynchronous towards the synchronous is both a matter of perceiving what "real-time" actually is and how the tools are used to support near-synchronous work.

Structure and time management are closely related. Structure sets the tone for the order and time frame by which learning outcomes are achieved. Time management facilitates the experience of organized ongoing activity. Online learners must be given the essential materials, objectives, directives and deliverables in visible and comprehensive forms so that learners can adequately prepare themselves to learn the content area. Online learners are more apt to prepare themselves for high-level discussions if they are given some directives and expectations for participation. To succeed in an asynchronous environment, learners and professors need to maintain fluid schedules for remaining current in an online course [Dringus].

Maximizing the Benefits

The convenience of the “anytime class” is the primary reason to sign-up for these classes. This perspective does not build a substantive online culture or a community of scholars. Convenience should not be the main factor for those electing online learning as a primary delivery medium. Flexible engagement affords students and professors to share a continuum of instructional productivity on demand, given that rules and policies are clearly established and that all stakeholders have consensus on what is possible and what is expected. Flexible engagement is essential to quality asynchronous learning, but it also comes at a price. All stakeholders have to understand their roles and responsibilities and be given access to the appropriate technology resources to carry them out. There has to be a common definition of flexibility so that opportunities and boundaries are equally understood.

A current common myth is to increase the total courses when they are online, thinking there will be more time to complete more courses since no classroom "seat time" is required. As a result, many of these online learners have not made steady progress in their courses because they cannot handle the assignment load. These students miscalculate the extent of flexibility given. They also misconstrue convenience for easy work.

Conversely, there is a perception that online professors have it easier than those who teach traditional campus-based classes. Those who are teaching more than two online courses per term and more than 20 students per online class are discovering the time consuming process of creating a sense of presence for their class and managing the administrative and academic chores of online course work. As it was alluded to earlier in this article, online professors with heavy course loads will not easily sustain the energy needed to effectively communicate with and advise students. Burnout and unmanaged stress seems typical of online professors with heavy course loads, thereby putting quality at risk and reducing the professor's chances to grow in the environment.

Conclusion

The success of the “open classroom” is still a mystery. No effective manual is written (yet) to guarantee our success in online learning. Our failures, when they come, are deeply felt. Professors and learners alike are learning what their roles are and what their limits are in this unique environment. All of this comes together to establish an experience. It is not perfect by any means. Some helpful strategies for on line courses are:

  • Establishing online threaded discussions that deal specifically with assignments and projects.
  • Establishing course projects that require problem finding and problem solving, not only the rote memorization of facts and information.
  • Establishing course projects that challenge everyday thinking--to address diverse perspectives on issues.
  • Establishing learning outcomes that translate to and have lasting benefit to real-world practice.
  • Create conditions for a knowledge sharing community to emerge and create as many opportunities for others to learn your infrastructure for knowledge sharing.

We need solid quantitative and qualitative studies that get to the depth of learner-centered online learning, how the tools and the online environment either help or impede effective interaction between learner and teacher, and how self-motivation and other personality characteristics influence online learning and online behavior. We also need well-grounded theory and substantial evidence to describe what methods we use to teach and learn new information in an online environment, and how learners and teachers perceive the online learning environment to be on a quality level. Online learning environments must be evaluated for the extent to which they serve as the interface between student and professor.

The current pedagogical demands the continuous improvement of online learning environments and successful ventures of educating online. We need more formative designs of online learning environments to bring to the surface the invisible tasks and activities we actually do. Hopefully, collaborative learning designs will soon advance with faster communications technology, wireless and handheld computing, and with the integration of software agents. Innovations in online learning environment interfaces and advancements in online pedagogy should evolve together, and should no longer be handled as separate directions for development.

The challenges within our novice field of Software Engineering are further compromised in the classroom because its body of knowledge is continuously evolving and maturing. A set of instructional notes from the Hardware and Software class, for instance, must be continually updated. Compared to other Engineering disciplines, Software Engineering has not reached the status of a stable well-defined science. These challenges encountered are worthwhile expositions, discussions and comparisons to members of Academia. This paper gave an exposition and analysis of the challenges involved in the web delivery via state-of-the-art technology medium. Walls do not bind the classroom experience. Providing multiple options for engaging learners with multiple representation of the subject content and enabling diverse options for expressing the knowledge acquired is a universal goal in distance learning.The transparent accessibility of the web to all of us has enriched the communication avenues and enables successful implementation of these avenues in the educational arena.

References

Brazelton, Jessica, and Gorry, Anthony G. (2003) “Creating a Knowledge-Sharing Community: If you build it, Will They Come?” Communications of the ACM, 46(2):23-25.

Dringus, L.P., and Scigliano, J.A. (2002) “From early to current developments in online learning at NovaSoutheasternUniversity: reflections on Historical milestones,” The Internet and Higher Education, Special Issue on The History of Online Learning, 3(1-2).

Henson, Aaron B., Fridley, Kenneth J., Pollock, David G., and Brahler, C. Jayne (2002) “Efficacy of Interactive Internet-Based Education in Structural Timber Design,” Journal of Engineering Education, 91(4):371-378.

Foertsch, Julie, Moses, Gregory, Strikwerda, John, and Litzkow, Mike (2002) “Reversing the Lecture/Homework Paradigm Using eTEACH Web-based Streaming Video Software,” Journal of Engineering Education, 91(3):267-274.

O’Neill, Lucinda M. (2001) “Universal Design for Learning: Making Education Accessible to all Learners,”Syllabus, 14(9):31-32.

ASEE Southeast Section Conference

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Barbara Bernal Thomas

Barbara Bernal Thomas is a full professor in the School of Computing and Software Engineering at Southern Polytechnic State University (SPSU) for the last 18 years. Her primary teaching areas are Software Engineering, User-Centered Design, and Computer Graphics & Multimedia. Barbara is directly involved in the UsabilityCenter at SPSU which accepts projects and partnerships with industry (web site: usability.spsu.edu). She is involved with computer educational support for local businesses in the Atlanta area through Software Education & Support (her consulting company). She does specialized software development and evaluation as a consultant. Professor Thomas has given numerous papers, tutorials and presentations locally and internationally on Human-Computer Interaction and Software Engineering. She is currently the ASEE Southeastern Section Proceedings Editor.

[1] Southern PolytechnicStateUniversity, School of Computing and Software Engineering, 1100 South Marietta Pkwy, Marietta, Georgia 30060, USA. Email: Voice: (770) 528-4283 Fax: (770) 528-5511.