E-Learning Synthesis: Instructional Technology Systems

Terms or concepts that are unfamiliar may be the best place to start exploring findings and conclusions from NCREL's review of the e-learning literature. Please use the list of terms below to review critical e-learning vocabulary and concepts. Each concept has an active link: After the term or phrase, there is a description that identifies one of the best online resources available outside of the NETRO Web site. The key vocabulary offered here are included to help each user build a working knowledge of online learning that is understandable to and appropriate for K-20 educators and educational leaders--anywhere, anytime.

Remember that you can always return to the NCREL E-Learning Knowledge Base by clicking the "back" button on your Web browser.

• Connectivity and Hardware Issues (Total Cost of Ownership / Consortium for School Networking [CoSN]).
• Commercial E-Learning Products (Distance Learning on the Net / Glenn Hoyle).
• Course Development Platforms (Online Educational Delivery Applications: Comparative Analysis / Centre for Curriculum, Transfer & Technology [CCTT], Douglas College, British Columbia, Canada).
• Higher Education Online (World Lecture Hall / University of Texas, Austin, TX).
• Virtual High Schools (http://www.cait.org/shared_resource_docs/vhs_files).
• Online Professional Development for Educators (How to Find Online Courses / Distance Learning Resource Network, WestEd).
• Basic Web Page Design and Interactivity (Web Style Guide: Basic Interface Design / Lynch & Horton, Yale).

The systems of hard and soft technologies that enable and support online learning are incredibly complex and technically sophisticated. The possible variations on computer workstations and servers, the various available (and often competing) operating systems, and the complexities of local area networks (LANs), wide-area networks (WANs), and the ubiquitous Internet (or World Wide Web) make it nearly impossible for any single online instructor to be able to individually troubleshoot or successfully diagnose and advise students when they occasionally encounter software or hardware glitches and malfunctions.

The powerful new instructional technologies like e-learning continue to create new possibilities for innovative instructional delivery systems and creative learning outcomes. Along with these new technologies comes the possibility of increasing access to educational opportunity for disadvantaged segments of our nation's learning community. These developments support an increased acceptance of a more eclectic definition of instructional technology. Of possible competing definitions for instructional technology, one of the most liberal is Reiser's (1987) eclectic definition: "The combination of these concepts in the broad context of education and society yields synergistic outcomes--behaviors which are not predictable based on the parts alone--but outcomes with extra energy which is created by the unique interrelation of the parts" (p. 41).

Working definitions of e-learning and the broad definition of technology in education will probably continue to change and evolve in the foreseeable future. The application of new technologies to improve teaching and learning will necessarily follow the ongoing invention and development of new hard and soft technologies. Technology innovations seemingly evolve so rapidly that investments in infrastructure and professional development risk obsolescence before the anticipated benefits of upgrades and improvements can be realized. The pace of change has become so extreme that we may even risk destabilizing the very learning environments we all work to support.

However, it is important to remember that people--real human beings--are also an important part of technology systems. In particular, support personnel are a critically important part of distance learning systems. Research on the effectiveness of distance learning in higher education has shown that the availability of properly credentialed and effective support technicians is one of the most important factors differentiating between effective courses demonstrating a high rate of completion and courses where a high percentage of students beginning an online course never finish and withdraw or just never come back (Kearsley, 2000).

Infrastructure factors affecting online instruction are generally identical to those affecting all complex learning technology systems. NCREL's (2001) enGauge Framework offers the following indicators of success regarding robust access--anywhere, anytime:

• Technology Resources
• Connectivity
• Technical Support
• Technology-Ready Facilities
• Virtual Learning Opportunities
• Administrative Processes and Operations

Platforms and Networks

NCREL's (2001) enGauge Web site goes on to detail the following topics important to hardware platforms and network connectivity: Technology Resources

• Equipment and digital resources are strategically deployed and sufficient to meet the needs of learners and educators.
• Thoughtful assessments are conducted to assess the organization's capacity for integrating technology into the curriculum, adapting to new learning environments, and systematically upgrading equipment.

• The telecommunications infrastructure provides appropriate, robust communication from every learning setting.
• Current and future bandwidth issues are routinely considered.
• Access extends beyond the school day and the school facility.

Practitioners of distance learning frequently face questions regarding the technical adequacy of computer platforms and the complaint that there is never enough bandwidth available to permit the newest state-of-the-art technologies to be used to support online learning. To avoid the zero-sum choice, ongoing redefinition of technical adequacy should include room to permit the compromises needed to achieve a balance among all the factors conditioning the quality, efficiency, equity, and choices guiding the implementation of K-12 distance learning.

Available E-Learning Options

One of the most interesting choices facing K-12 school districts that may be considering the use of online learning as some part of an organized instructional program (probably at the high school level) is whether to: (1) license or purchase use of commercially developed, course-equivalent online courses from software vendors, or (2) initiate software development projects using master teachers as subject-matter experts who participate in designing, developing, and implementing locally created online courses.

In effect, this second alternative follows along lines that are similar to the role played by lecturers who participated in developing correspondence courses and other varieties of distance education in the U.K.'s Open University and in many U.S. colleges and universities. Most of the online courses presently being offered in higher-education institutions in the United States were developed along these lines by participating faculty members from the respective departmental faculty members.

Based on experiences by those developing e-learning courses in America's higher-education institutions, there is a growing body of research and other publications on aspects of policy and practice relevant to undertaking the local development of online learning and course-equivalent learning environments. K-12 technology leadership and teachers considering undertaking the acquisition or development of online learning would be well advised to study this growing literature and apply the some of the lessons already learned in higher education.

In particular, work done by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) established the SREB Distance Learning Policy Laboratory, which seeks to reduce or eliminate existing or potential policy barriers to distance learning activities in three broad areas: access, quality, and cost. SREB (1999) lists the laboratory's objectives as follows:

• Assessing educational policy issues that are identified as barriers.
• Establishing policy baselines of current practices, procedures, and strategies.
• Assisting states and institutions as they develop ways to use technology to improve quality, expand access, and reduce costs.
• Establishing trial or pilot efforts with state partners to test new distance learning approaches or strategies.
• Promoting state-level policy changes via existing SREB organizational arrangements and agreements.
• Developing and testing agreements among institutions and states.
• Utilizing the regional platform to serve as a clearinghouse for states and institutions to discuss policy issues and concerns.
• Measuring the implementation of policy changes in the SREB states and widely disseminating the results.

In particular, the Distance Learning Policy Laboratory has determined that there are a number of major barriers to distance learning. K-12 educational leadership and faculty considering roles developing courses in virtual high school or participating in the local development of online high school courses would be well advised to consider the following topics outlined by SREB (1999):

• Finance issues, including traditional funding models and budget allocation practices.
• Faculty issues, including faculty assessment, skill development, reward structures, and intellectual property issues.
• Student issues, including credit transfer, credit banking, and student services for the distance learner.
• Tuition differentials between in- and out-of-state students.
• Quality assurance.
• Financial aid for distance learners.
• Reaching underserved populations.
• Coherence and values in distance learning.

Designing Effective Online Learning Environments

Concerns about how to design effective online learning environments always run close behind all the distance learning policy issues raised by groups like SREB. Instructional design is an extensive and important domain of theory and research-based practice pursued by instructional design specialists all over the world. In the United States, as Knirk and Gustafson (1986) note, the growth and general acceptance of instructional systems design within the education community is often viewed as a historical byproduct of decisions concerning the design of adult learning made in the late 1960s by the U.S. Army Combat Arms Training Board at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the Center for Instructional Technology at Florida State University.

When U.S. Army training programs were reviewed in the late 1960s, the Army's training specialists thought that by following the principals of instructional design they could dramatically increase the efficiency of military training. They believed the result would be a more efficient and better disciplined fighting force. The resulting document is the Interservice Procedures for Instructional Systems Development (IPISD). The Interservice model starts with an in-depth analysis of the job to be performed and a detailed account defining the scope and sequence for all the subtasks required to accurately and efficiently train another person to do the same job. The intrinsic aspects of human interface design are a serious concern of today's military training commands (Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, 1999).

As Plotnick (1997) reports,
"In 'Survey of Instructional Development Models, Third Edition,' Gustafson & Branch (1997) define instructional development (ID) in terms of four major activities.

• Analysis of the setting and learner needs;
• Design of a set of specifications for an effective, efficient, and relevant learner environment;
• Development of all learner and management materials; and
• Evaluation of the results of the development both formatively and summatively."

In contrast, classroom instructional development models are of interest primarily to professional educators who accept as a given that their role is to teach, and that their students require some form of instruction. Teachers usually view an instructional design model as a general road map to follow. Generally, a classroom instructional design model outlines only a few functions, and typically provides a plan or flow chart organizing instructional events for a unified series of related instructional events (Plotnick, 1997).

Since the 1960s, there has been an evident tension between instructional design theorists who advocate use of a more rigorous instructional systems design process and educators who have expressed their belief that the model is too labor intensive to have practical value as a model for planning and conducting routine classroom instruction (Gordon & Zemke, 2000).

The complexities of instructional design can be greatly simplified by reducing the elements of traditional design to the following basic principles (Hemphill, 2000):

Frequency of Interaction: Increasing the frequency of interactions between the learner and online lesson-learning materials generally increases a student's engagement and retention of content.

Complexity of Interaction: Interactions with an online learning environment vary in complexity and sophistication and generally fall into the following five categories:

• Simple recognition (true/false or yes/no).
• Recall (fill-in, free recall, or matching).
• Comprehension (multiple choice, substitution, paraphrase, or short answer).
• Problem solving (simulations or modeling).
• Knowledge construction (project-based outcomes, research, or products from creative activity).

Feedback Content and Quality: Online courses should offer students substantial feedback on all tests and work products. Online feedback provided in the online learning environment can be simple judgments indicating correct or incorrect answers, or can be complex responses that include diagnosis and/or remediation. Diagnostic or remedial online feedback promotes generally better outcomes than simpler feedback signaling that a response is simply right or wrong.

Balancing Comprehension and Significance: Information provided onscreen in the learning environment can be either easy or difficult to comprehend based on its density and complexity. In general, screens displaying too much information (text or graphics) can be difficult or confusing to read or interpret. However, information that is overly simplified may be perceived by the reader to be trivial or even irrelevant.

Achieving a reasonable balance between excessive complexity and trivial simplicity seemingly has more in common with judgments about aesthetic worth that might be applied by artists and artisans than it does with any kind of objective science. In the last analysis, design and implementation of online learning may well be something that is learned most effectively through practice and guided experience, following an apprenticeship model like the one followed traditionally by guild members and skilled artisans. Whatever it takes, it seems certain that the production of high-quality online courses will remain an important concern of educational leaders and teacher technologists in K-12 schools into the foreseeable future.