About INFOBITS
Infobits is an electronic service of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ITS Teaching and Learning's Center for Instructional Technology. Each month the CIT's Information Resources Consultant monitors and selects from a number of information and instructional technology sources that come to her attention and provides brief notes for electronic dissemination to educators.
New Book of Online Education Case Studies
Video on Copyright Issues
Combating Cheating in Online Student Assessment
Social Interaction in Online Learning
Online Courses: Costs and Caps
UNC-Chapel Hill CIT Launches Software Evaluation Publication
The Sakai Project
Recommended Reading
NEW BOOK OF ONLINE EDUCATION CASE STUDIES
Elements of Quality Online Education: Into the Mainstream, edited by John Bourne and Janet C. Moore, is the fifth and latest volume in the annual Sloan-C series of case studies on quality education online. Essays cover topics in the following areas: student satisfaction and student success, learning effectiveness, blended environments, and assessment. To order a copy of the book go to http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/books/volume5.asp. You can download a free 28-page summary of the book from http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/books/vol5summary.pdf.
The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) is a consortium of institutions and organizations committed "to help learning organizations continually improve quality, scale, and breadth of their online programs according to their own distinctive missions, so that education will become a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines." Sloan-C is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. For more information, see http://www.sloan-c.org/.
"The Copyright Court," produced by the ResearchChannel at the University of Washington, is an entertaining new video on copyright issues relevant to university faculty and staff. This 13-minute video may be useful for anyone who is interested in the issue or who needs resources for educating faculty and staff. The copyright video can be viewed by going to http://researchchannel.org/inside/participation/production.asp and scrolling to the bottom of the screen. Several streaming options are available, including Windows Media and QuickTime.
ResearchChannel is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 by a consortium of leading research universities, institutions, and corporate research centers dedicated to creating a widely accessible voice for research through video and Internet channels.
COMBATING CHEATING IN ONLINE STUDENT ASSESSMENT
In "Cheating in Online Student Assessment: Beyond Plagiarism" (Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, vol. VII, no. II, Summer 2004) Neil C. Rowe identifies "three of the most serious problems involving cheating in online assessment that have not been sufficiently considered previously" and suggests countermeasures to combat them. The problems Rowe discusses are:
-- Getting assessment answers in advance
It is hard to ensure that all students will take an online test
simultaneously, enabling students to supply questions and answers to
those who take the test later.
-- Unfair retaking of assessments
While course management system servers can be configured to prevent
taking a test multiple times, there can be ways to work around
prevention measures.
-- Unauthorized help during the assessment
It may not be possible to confirm the identity of the person actually
taking the online test.
You can read the entire article, including Rowe's suggestions to counteract the problems, at http://www.westga.edu/%7Edistance/ojdla/summer72/rowe72.html.
The Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration is a free, peer-reviewed quarterly published by the Distance and Distributed Education Center, The State University of West Georgia, 1600 Maple Street, Carrollton, GA 30118 USA; Web: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/jmain11.html.
SOCIAL INTERACTION IN ONLINE LEARNING
Among the reasons Rowe cites (in the aforementioned paper) for cheating on online tests is that "students often have less commitment to the integrity of distance-learning programs than traditional programs." This lack of commitment may be the result of the isolation inherent in distance education. In "Online Learning: Social Interaction and the Creation of a Sense of Community" (Educational Technology & Society, vol. 7, no. 3, July 2004, pp. 73-81), Joanne M. McInnerney and Tim S. Roberts, Central Queensland University, argue that an online learner's feeling a sense of isolation can affect the outcome of his or her learning experience. The authors recommend three protocols to aid social interaction and alleviate isolation among online learners:
1. The use of synchronous communication "Chat-rooms and other such forums are an excellent way for students to socialize, to assist each other with study, or to learn as part of collaborative teams."
2. The introduction of a forming stage "Discussion on almost any topics (the latest movies, sporting results, etc.) can be utilized by the educator as a prelude to the building of trust and community that is essential to any successful online experience."
3. The adherence to effective communication guidelines "Foremost among these guidelines is the need for unambiguous instructions and communications from the educator to the students involved in the course. To this end instructions regarding both course requirements and communication protocols should be placed on the course web site."
The complete article is online at http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/7_3/8.html.
Educational Technology & Society [ISSN 1436-4522] is a peer-reviewed quarterly online journal published by the International Forum of Educational Technology & Society and the IEEE Computer Society Learning Technology Task Force (LTTF). It is available in HTML and PDF formats at no cost at http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/.
The International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS) is a subgroup of the IEEE Learning Technology Task Force (LTTF). IFETS encourages discussions on the issues affecting the educational system developer (including AI) and education communities. For more information, link to http://ifets.ieee.org/.
ONLINE COURSES: COSTS AND CAPS
Two articles in the July/August 2005 issue of Syllabus address the often-asked questions on delivering online instruction: "How much will it cost?" and "How many students can we have in a class?"
In "Online Course Development: What Does It Cost?" (Syllabus, vol. 17, no. 12, July/August 2004, pp. 27-30) Judith V. Boettcher looks at where the costs of online course development have shifted in the past ten years. While the costs of course development are still significant, estimating them is not an exact science. Boettcher, however, does provide some rules of thumb that program planners can use to get more accurate estimates. The article is available online at http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=9676.
In "Online Course Caps: A Survey" (Syllabus, vol. 17, no. 12, July/August 2004, pp. 43-4) Boris Vilic reports on a survey of 101 institutions to determine their average course cap for online courses. The survey also tried to determine what influences differences in setting caps: Does the delivery method used make a difference? Are there differences if the course is taught by full-time faculty or by adjuncts? Or if given by experienced versus inexperienced providers? Or by the level (undergraduate or graduate) of the course? The article is available online at http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=9679.
Syllabus [ISSN 1089-5914] is published monthly by 101communications,
LLC, 9121 Oakdale Avenue, Suite 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311 USA; tel:
650-941-1765; fax: 650-941-1785; email: info@syllabus.com; Web:
http://www.syllabus.com/.
Annual subscriptions are free to individuals who work in colleges,
universities, and high schools in the U.S.; go to
http://subscribe.101com.com/syllabus/ for more information.
UNC-CHAPEL HILL CIT LAUNCHES SOFTWARE EVALUATION PUBLICATION
Software Spotlight is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for Instructional Technology's new publication that evaluates and compares software tools likely to be useful for faculty and staff on our campus. Faculty at other institutions may also find this publication useful. Each issue will outline features, costs, support, and applications for instructional use. Software Spotlight is available in PDF format at http://its.unc.edu/tl/softspot/.
The first issue, "Screen Capture Software," explains the process of capturing still and video footage from computer screens. Some of the programs it examines are Camtasia, SnagIt, RoboDemo, and the Windows Print Screen button. It also highlights a project by UNC-Chapel Hill Speech & Hearing Professor Celia Hooper using video footage created with Camtasia. "Screen Capture Software" is available online at http://www.unc.edu/cit/softspot/screen-capture.pdf. Future topics include plagiarism detection tools and content authoring tools for creating learning modules.
In July 2004, the Sakai Project, a consortium formed to create open-source software for higher education, released the full code of its open-source Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) software to other academic institutions around the world. The software provides course management as well as collaboration tools to support faculty research and service work. Faculty can use the software "to support cross-institution research projects, work with graduate students, and even committee work alongside the tools that support teaching and learning." The purpose for the release is to give colleges and universities a chance to test it out and to encourage them to develop enhancements to the software.
The Sakai Project was founded by The University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, the uPortal Consortium, and the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Sakai Educational Partners' Program (SEPP) extends this community source project to other academic institutions around the world, and is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and SEPP member contributions. For more information, go to http://www.sakaiproject.org/.
The Sakai Project's CLE software is open source software. What does that mean? According to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the "basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing." OSI is a non-profit corporation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition through the OSI Certified Open Source Software certification mark and program. For more information about OSI and open source software go to http://www.opensource.org/.
See also:
"Universities Offer Homegrown Course Software" by Jeffrey R. Young
The Chronicle of Higher Education
vol. 50, issue 46, July 23, 2004, p. A27
Chronicle subscribers can read this article online at
http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v50/i46/46a02701.htm.
"Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits subscribers. Send your recommendations to kotlas@email.unc.edu for possible inclusion in this column.
"Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America"
Research Division Report #46
Washington: National Endowment for the Arts, 2004; 60 pp.
In a 2002 survey, the U.S. Census Bureau, at the request of the National Endowment for the Arts, "asked more than 17,000 adults if during the previous 12 months they had read any novels, short stories, poetry or plays in their leisure time, that were not required for work or school." The data show a significant drop in literary reading when compared with data from similar surveys carried out in 1982 and 1992. The report concludes that "at the current rate of loss, literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century."
You can purchase a hard copy or download a free PDF-format copy at http://www.arts.gov:591/pub/index.html.
