Soul mates… or
Strangers Trapped in an Elevator ?
Andy Gavrin, Dept. of Physics
IUPUI
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11/1/03
Overview
An elevator is the wrong metaphor
• Introducing the couple
• How close is the relationship?
• The good times, and the bad
• The future
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Exercise
Have any of you ever…
• Used email to communicate with a student?
• Emailed your child’s teacher?
• Posted course information online?
• Looked up something for a student online?
• Used the web for your children’s education?
• Used the web to find info for your course?
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The first meeting?
• WWW released 1991
• First WWW conference, Geneva, 1994
• Before Netscape, Explorer, Java, Google
• 1 talk “Interactive Education:
Transitioning CD-ROM’s to the WWW”
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Internet access in K-12 schools
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Student use of the internet
Homework
Email
Games
Shopping
News
Gov't info
Health info
Job search
Finance
Online courses
0
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10 20 30
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40 50 60 70
6
80

Sloan Consortium Survey, 2002
• Fall 2002: Over 1.6 million students in online courses
• 1/3 of these taking all courses online
• 11% of all college students have taken one
• 81% of institutions offer one
• 34% offer full online degree programs
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A few uses of the Web
• Online syllabi, etc.
• Homework servers (WebAssign, UTHS)
• Course management systems (WebCT, Blackboard)
• Distance education
• Library catalogs
• Registrar
• Financial aid
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A few more uses …
Math homework help lines, Reference data (periodic table, integrals,… phase diagrams), Projects Bartleby and
Gutenberg, Reference books (encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauruses, handbooks), k-12 curricula, Human anatomy,
Planetarium programs, Demonstration videos, Audio analysis, Online instruments (microscopes, observatories…), Online scripts for drama, Edutainment,
Online data sets (census, environmental, meteorological…),
Civics via gov’t sites, Textbook sales, State boards of
Education, Grant applications, Professional societies,
Online Universities, Online High schools, advising tools, course bulletin boards, chat and email, general and special calculators, image libraries, museums, NASA, NIH, NSF,…
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Preliminary conclusions
• Whatever the relationship is, it is
“intimate”
• Like many intimate relationships, there are
“offspring”
• The parties are growing closer together
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More questions…
• Are the partners getting along?
• Are there any signs of abuse?
• How about the families?
• Where is the relationship going?
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Some of the “good times”
• Physlets
• Online homework (e.g., WebAssign, UTHS)
• Student-faculty email
• Course bulletin boards/chat
• Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT)
• Online media (movies, animations, sound)
• Inverted classrooms?
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What makes the relationship work?
A. Astin, What Matters in College: Four
Critical Years Revisited
• Student-student interaction
• Student-faculty interaction
• Time on task
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Another view
Learning technologies should be designed to increase, and not to reduce, the amount of personal contact between students and faculty on intellectual issues.
National Institute of Education, Study group on the conditions of excellence in
American higher education, 1984
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What about distance education?
• Major improvement vs. no education
• Forces students to do far more writing
• For many, more total interaction
• Done well, more authentic applications
•
Target audiences : professional degrees, certificate programs, continuing education
•
Worst case : the traditional bachelors
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More conclusions…
• Family harmony so long as the parties communicate
• Distance sometimes makes the heart grow fonder
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The dark side… abuse?
• Online term paper services
• Blurring of intellectual property (napster…)
• Poor S/N ratio
• Attempts to “process” students
• Academic “get rich quick” schemes
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Bad finances strain any relationship…
• Administration needs cost savings
• New technologies can look like silver bullets
• Recriminations follow disappointments
• There are savings to be had:
Classroom space, reduced attrition, parking, campus services… be creative!
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What about the families?
• Groom’s side:
– $ conscious administrators
– Students want to have their (wedding) cake…
– Faculty are quite comfy, thank you
– Staff!!? You need staff to produce videos of your lecture?
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The other family
• The Bride’s side
– Your IT department just wants to have fun
– Online universities are here, and growing
– Bill Gates wants your credit card and SS #’s
– I have $25 million in a bank in Nigeria, and…
– THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE IS
UNTENABLE
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More conclusions
• There have been abuses of each side by the other
• Financial pressures complicate the relationship
• Both sides have “family baggage”
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Where is this relationship going?
More Sloan Survey results
• A majority of academic leaders (57 percent) already believe that the learning outcomes for online education are equal to or superior to those of face-toface instruction
• Two-thirds of all schools believe that online learning is critical to their long term strategy
• Enrollment for the Fall of 2003 is expected to exceed
1.9 million students
• A one-year enrollment growth rate of close to 20%
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Where else?
• NSF’s National SMET Digital Libraries
(MERLOT, JiTT, AAPT…)
• Faster, more realistic simulations and visualizations
• Richer communications tools (iChat AV, whiteboard…)
• Ubiquitous wireless networks
• Students and Faculty with better access to information and each other
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Conclusions?
• Education and the Web mostly get along
• Communication is important in any relationship
• There are lots of kids, and many seem happy
• Some of the kids do have behavior problems
• There is a lot of financial pressure
• The families often interfere
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What do you think?
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