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Technologies Available For Use In Distance Learning?
DaScope asks: "I have been assigned a new project: setting up a distance learning facility where the teacher can simultaneously teach to different people across the country. Audio/video streaming, interactive whiteboards, photo albums and discussion boards are different options available to us. What other technologies are available for distance learning use? What are the cons/pros of the different technologies available, and are they available for Linux?"
Based on my experience, I would say one of the most important things you could setup would be a web based discussion forum. The need to easily interact with the rest of the class during non-class hours is something I have really missed. An important thing to allow (I think) would be anonymous posting. Since the distance students are kind of "disconnected" from the rest of the class (if there is a live class at all) it can be hard to get a feel as to where the rest of the class is at in comprehending the material. It would be good to allow people to post questions without their names on them to avoid looking like a complete dumbass. This may sound stupid, but its a lot more common than you may think.
The next most important thing I would say you should think about is applicable to live classes only. (A lot of NTU feeds are on taped delay.) This would be some way for the distance learning people to interrupt the teacher in real-time. There have been several times when I would have really liked to have been able to ask a question. I would say it would be OK not to have a AV feed from the student back to the teacher (Umm, can you say OVERKILL!), but SOMETHING (like ICQ maybe) is needed to allow the distance people to break in.
My final advice would be to train the hell out of the camera operators. It is ANNOYING to have some schmuck on the camera that thinks panning and zooming around all of the time is cool. Just leave the thing in one spot for crying out loud! Make sure the instructors are up to speed on the equipment as well. It can be annoying to watch them spend 5 minutes trying to figure out how to get their PC screen to go out on the feed.
Just my 2 cents. dv
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
SameTime 2.0 from Lotus. http://www.lotus.com/sametime. Java video and audio conferencing, NNTP-style discussions, authentication, restrictions (on who can do what), h.323 compatibility, etc. etc. Also includes encrypted instant messaging, online awareness, and a heckuva lot more functionality than I feel like typing in. Also scales well for really big implimentations.
A couple semesters ago, I co-authored a journalism project about distance learning that can be found here. The most important thing that I learned from my sources is that teaching classes online requires two learning curves: one for the subject matter and one for the technology. It's all good if you're teaching a class to Slashdot readers, but elsewhere, you'll find lots of people will be confounded by simple computerized tasks. To steal a famous quote, "The medium is the message."
Don't focus too much on live video and audio at first. What you need is a good discussion forum that not only keeps messages from the current class but from past classes as well, it is really helpfull to read past disscussions especially when doing a difficult assignment.
Have a section where people can (optionally) post thier email addresses ICQ, AIM etc. If you go the IRC/chat room route make sure you publish the logs (see above) and make them searchable.
Ineractive quizzes. Just do some cgi/php/whatever scripting to randomly select questions and mark them right or wrong when the form is submitted. This allows students to know if they are understanding the curriculum and I can't emphasise enough how important that is. Your students don't have any face time to see if they understand things, quizzes give those who understand it the confidence to move on and tells those that are struggling where to put in extra work. I can't emphasis enough how important that is, after disccussion boards it should be your next priority (ie. before shiny video streams).
As far as video/audio does go I'd put up some mp3's of lectures, nothing fancy just pure audio that will allow people to record them to cassette and listen to them on the way to work etc. I'd do some kind of flash presentation before going the video route, ask yourself what a video feed will get you that a slide show and audio won't, remember that many of your students will be on 56k or less.
Notes to the curriculum designers;
- Optional material. In my experience you will have some distance students who have large ammounts of prior knowledge, optional material will allow you to challenge these students without placing extra pressure on those that are struggling.
- Be very prompt when answering student questions. Solo study is very isolating and having to wait more than one working day for a response just unacceptable.
- Allocate enough tutors (see above). Make sure assesment marks are back promptly. (This is where my course falls down.) It is exceedingly frustrating to not have your first assignment back when your doing your third or fourth.
Best of luck
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I recently participated in a Latin I course over a video distance learning setup. The teacher was located in a town about 15 miles away, but could have just as easily been 1500 miles away, and taught very effectively.
Each classroom on the system was setup with a camera for the instructor and a camera for the students, microphones for everyone desk in the room, a chalkboard which was situated so that it could be seen on the instructor camera, and a small setup that served as an overhead projector. The teachers most often use this for notes and such as it is more convenient than traditional chalkboard use.
We also had a full audio-visual setup so that the teacher could play video onto the system for all participant to see, or so students could record class periods for viewing. The entire setup was controlled by a fairly simple piece of software on a touch-screen interfaced PC. No one had trouble using the system.
We only had two incidents where we lost connection with the host and these were either intentional, or quickly remedied. It was no different than a teacher calling in sick.
I would suggest you do something similar, if you really want distance-learning. It is very effective.
Pax Digitalia
HTH
rr
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Usually administrators see distance learning as a way of making money. They get the same tuition or fees, but don't have to pay for heating a classroom, janitors, etc. What they don't realize is that doing distance learning right is very expensive, not least because it's a huge amount of work for the instructor to set up the first time, and they can't do it without release time.
There are also some real problems associated with distance learning. Students don't form the same kind of social bonds they normally would. In the science classes I teach, I like to have the students do little hands-on experiments, which they wouldn't be able to do at home. And of course, how do you teach labs? There's also the issue of students pulling scams, like getting help on exams. (At my school, we recently had a person take an entire course for someone else.) Students in these courses also tend to lack the necessary commitment. Of course, all these problems were problems back when distance learning meant TV telecourses. Distance learning has usually been a failure, and probably will be until technology changes drastically (like really fast broadband access in all the students' homes).
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IMHO, the best compromise solution is audio streaming (teacher -> student) with a discussion board/photo album. The way it works is that the teacher lectures along to the photo album. The discussion baord is used for the studnets to post questions and offer solutions to examples.
The only drawback is that the use of a discussion board requires students with a bit of restraint and sometimes that's more of an issue that people think (even with adults).
My $0.02, having done just what I described
-dave
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Frequently there were equipment problems, network problems, and the latency was ridiculous. The lag and audio quality was so bad the students in Hawaii hardly ever asked questions. How would you like to come to class to see a message written on the board by the TA saying "Sorry, we can't get NetMeeting working today."
A better approach would be to send the audio portion using POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). If you figure how much each student pays in tuition and divide it by the number of lectures he or she attends, the price of the phone call is nothing. Even if you were paying a dollar a minute you still come out a head, keep in mind 30 or so students were attending remotely. One lecture missed due to technical issues means hundreds of dollars in wasted tuition.
I work for an elearning software company, and I can say from experience that if your distance learning initiatives are dependent on video/audio feeds, you're most likely going to run into problems.
One of the main problems is end-user bandwidth. We have a completely web-based elearning product that requires nothing beyond a 4.0 browser and a 28.8 connection, and still end users run into problems...
For elearning today, you're best off using something with forums, threaded messaage boards and text chat. This makes it easier for the teacher to control the situation, and easier for the students to ask questions without completely interrupting. These methods actually fit the model better, and you don't have to worry about as many issues with getting the information out to the student.