Making Distance Education Tools Work for Schools

Moments can be recalled when anticipation would set in awaiting the class trip to the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Luckily being a resident of New Jersey, the travel time and distance were not a deterrent for a high school class to take on a journey of history and the arts. However, Shale Gardner faced such a dilemma with her high school history class in San Diego, California. Professor Gardner, excited about teaching the history of man and art to her students, decided a class trip was in order to broaden the students’ comprehension and culture. Unfortunately, due to educational budget cuts and restrictive policies, Professor Gardner was unable to travel outside of the state for such a venture. So, without hesitation, Professor Gardner reached out to the school district’s instructional design team for additional insight and/or assistance. As one of the instructional designers on the team, after hearing about Professor Gardner’s goal and determination, there was not second guessing taking on this project. The following provides an overview of the approach in which the design team presented to Professor Gardner to fulfill the needs of the class and provide a memorable, as well as knowledgeable, experience for the students.

The “Tour”

One key aspect to consider when tackling an instructional design problem is will the end product be just as effective in delivery as it is in presentation or packaging? Professor Gardner requested that the students have the capability to take a “tour” of the desired museums and have the functionality available to interact with museum curators and view the displayed exhibits. To answer this instructional problem, the design team presented the concept of a virtual three-dimensional tour. The tour (or course) will allow each student to access the module remotely at the same time without interfering with another’s entry. Upon entry each student would be prompted to create an avatar from a basic selection of characteristics to represent him or herself. Once created, each avatar will be visible to others taking the tour. This creates a student-centered learning environment (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2009) which provides the students a sense of being virtually together inside the museum regardless of their physical locations, similar to the Madden NFL™ programs but without the tackling, and allows each student to flexibility to venture the different exhibits at his or her own pace.

Another example from an educational perspective that has been noted by Berrien RESA, in 2008, as a successful three-dimensional learning tool is NASA digital learning network. Although accessibility is granted to the public, there are specific sections geared towards educators and highly informative for students of various levels of education. This site offers various supplemental tools such as guides, posters, and interactive games to aid on an instructors needs and/or a learners’ success.

Although virtual tours, worlds, or reality may depict an appealing method of interactivity, there is a greater need to ensure each student is actively learning. To fulfill the students’ learning needs, each student, regardless of the selected exhibit, will be presented by a museum curator with a series of questions for each student to answer. From a programming perspective, each question may be uploaded by the professor and linked to a learning management system (LMS) in order to assess the each student’s progress. This will allow the professor to gauge the need for intervention and allowing the course to take on a blended approach rather than solely student-centered. Such an assessment will not only engage the students and allow for greater comprehension, but also prepare the students for the required peer forum discussions.

The Forum

Once each student has completed the tour, the professor requested the capability for each student to interact with each other regarding a selected topic or group of topics. In order to best solve this problem, the designers opted to introduce the use of an LMS (i.e. Haiku) that provides the ability to create content blocks to capture images and text and offers the incorporation of discussion boards and/or blogs. Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, and Zvacek (2009) argue that the incorporation of a virtual word and the utilization of web 2.0 functionality (i.e. blogs) will enable and promote an asynchronous learning environment but to be certain to consider the reasoning and method(s) in which the course is delivered and to deter from “shoveling” the desired course information to avoid the opportunity of student-centered learning opportunities (p. 234 – 235). Although each student may access the discussion board and/or blogs remotely, the purpose of such discussion will prompt both asynchronous and synchronous methods of learning comprehension enabling flexibility for the professor and the students. While the virtual tour provides engagement through visual and kinesthetic stimulation, the benefit of the incorporation of the web 2.0 capabilities provides an arena for the enhancement of cognitive learning and offers the option to the professor and the students to interact real-time or on off times.

The 2010 Edublog awards provide visibility to some of the top innovative methods and educators that utilize web 2.0 capabilities to educate students at a distance. An example the successful incorporation of web 2.0 capabilities within the educational arena is demonstrated by a teacher’s extraordinary efforts to engage her third grade students in educational blogging. Linda Yollis, a California elementary school teacher, was a recipient of the 2010 Edublog Best Class Blog and Lifetime Achievement award. Yollis and educational colleague, Morris, speak to the benefits of educational blogs and blogging via a podcast interview (Betcher, 2011). Yollis and Morris have created a learning environment between each of each of their classes in the United States and Australia, respectively, though blogging. Each teacher urges educators to start on a smaller scale (i.e. stories) and provide the learners with the appropriate overview educational tools on how to be successful in blogging. The teachers strive to have a greater connection with other classrooms and students across the world. Yollis and Morris state that one key to success is to initiate and continue to maintain the relationships amongst the students. Yollis argued that such a learning method must be introduced during early education and the buy-in from parents of students is critical. The concern of online bullying provided distain and great concern for students’ safety. Yollis was able to successfully introduce the web 2.0 capabilities by initially making the use of the delivery method on a volunteer basis and ensuring to keep the parents actively involved in the students’ participation. With this in mind, the designers provided a comparison to Professor Gardner’s instructor-led course and the benefits of Yollis’s success in using web 2.0 capabilities.

The Decision

After a long review process, needs analysis, and assessment, Professor Gardner and the school board agreed to the implementation and delivery method of the course for utilization across the each district. The decision allowed for accessibility to all professors interested in providing the opportunity for students within one class or across multiple to learn about art history. The introduction of online learning to schools, universities, corporations, and the like extend the reach of education to various individuals that may have not been granted such privileges in the past. Yet with each benefit there must be heeded caution in regards to any areas of opportunity potential foreseen and unforeseen amongst the intended learner or group of learners. With such consideration, the job of the instructional designer can potentially be much easier to meet the needs of such a project.

Resources

Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderland, L., & Brizee, A. (2010, May 5). Reference list: electronic sources (web publications). Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/

American Psychological Association (2011). How do you cite an entire website (but not a specific document on that site)? http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/cite-website.aspx

Betcher, C. (2011, January 20). The virtual staffroom. VSR38: student voice. Podcast retrieved from http://virtualstaffroom.net/?powerpress_pinw=349-podcast

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance (4th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.