Faculty work in developing and teaching web‐based distance courses: A case study of time and effort

Abstract

Using an experiential case approach, this study explores the conventional wisdom that distance education courses require greater faculty work effort and time commitment than traditionally taught courses. The study's basis for analysis is an instructor's time and effort in developing and delivering a graduate‐level course in public administration, for both a distance course (a modality with which he had no previous experience) and his traditional classroom courses. The study finds support for the conventional wisdom. But it also suggests hypotheses for future comparative analysis that development and delivery time and effort may partially depend on the accumulation of instructor experience and the level of institutional support. This article also identifies some implications for future research and faculty participation in distance education.     

Identifying at‐risk students in videoconferencing and web‐based distance education

Abstract

Based on the multivariate framework of student attrition developed by leading researchers in the field of distance education and instructional technology, this study centers on a method of assessing the ability of a student to complete a distance learning course. The focus of the investigation is construction and validation of a brief survey instrument to identify at‐risk students enrolled in Web‐based and videoconferencing courses.     

Web‐based student feedback: comparing teaching‐award and research‐award recipients

We examined web‐based ratings and open‐ended comments of teaching‐award winners (n = 120) and research‐award winners (n = 119) to determine if teaching‐award winners received more favourable ratings and comments on RateMyProfessors.com. As predicted, students rated teaching‐award winners higher than research‐award winners on measures of teaching quality (i.e. helpfulness and clarity). A higher percentage of teaching‐award recipients relative to research‐award recipients received positive open‐ended comments about competence, use of humour, clarity, appearance and personality as well as both positive and negative open‐ended comments about level of course difficulty. We discuss implications of these findings for lending credibility to the RateMyProfessors.com indices and for promoting published faculty evaluations at post‐secondary institutions more generally.     

Enhancing Web‐based Courses through a Mutual Aid Framework

Students taking a class together belong to a group where members typically develop a sense of connection to each other by engaging in mutual support and assistance through shared experiences and knowledge. Some have argued that the lack of face‐to‐face interaction precludes such processes and prevents the effective teaching of social work in an online environment. When online students were asked what they liked most and least about their classes, one‐third of the responses referred to ideas that reflected interactions among students and with faculty. These comments were evaluated in the context of Shulman's (1999 Shulman, L. 1999. The skills of helping individuals, families, groups and communities, Itasca, IL: Peacock.  [Google Scholar]) processes of mutual aid. This exploratory study suggests that despite a lack of face‐to‐face contact, mutual aid is relevant to online students and could be used to strategically enhance the delivery of course content in an online environment and facilitate a sense of connection among students.     

Writing web‐based distance education courses for adult learners

Abstract

This study examines faculty writing style in Web‐based courses aimed at adult learners, a key audience for university‐level courses. Taking into account independent‐study courses and others, the investigator conducted faculty interviews, looking at written and oral strategies implicit in teaching; print vs. Web formats; and adherence to educational philosophies. Faculty who were interviewed revealed minimal experience in both print and Web realms, minimal style differences beyond teaching netiquette or using occupational jargon, and adherence to active learning or social constructivism.     

A research‐based teaching sequence for teaching the concept of modelling to seventh‐grade students

The purpose of this study was to construct and study the impact of a research‐based sequence for teaching the concept of modelling to seventh‐grade science students. We identified students' notions of models and the aspects of school science to be addressed regarding the model concept, which were then taken into account when we planned the learning sequence. The idea of modelling in science was taught while the students were learning about the change of states of matter in seventh‐grade physics. A pre‐interview revealed that the students' notions of models were very limited, while a post‐interview showed that this improved in the course of the series of lessons. There was also a statistically significant difference in the students' understanding of modelling between our target group and a control group consisting of ninth‐grade students who had received only the normal teaching. However, a delayed post‐questionnaire completed a few months after the teaching sequence showed that the stability of learning results were dependent on whether models and modelling were used in the normal teaching conducted after the teaching sequence. Implications for teaching, teacher education and research are also addressed in this paper.     

A methodological framework for understanding and describing discipline‐based scholarship of teaching in higher education through design‐based research

Since their inception in 1993 at an Australian university, the workshop tutorials in physics have evolved and grown beyond the initiating department. In this paper, we adopt an interpretive perspective to: (i) reflect on why the tutorials continue to be successful; (ii) use models from literature to understand that success; and (iii) abstract key features that can inform scholarly inquiry into teaching and learning in higher education in other contexts and discipline areas. Practitioner (action) research and design‐based research not only provide useful methodological frameworks that support the success of the workshop tutorials, but they also offer a worthwhile methodological strategy for fostering scholarly inquiry into university teaching and student learning.     

Mixing distance and face‐to‐face higher education

There is an unreal demarcation in higher education between distance and face‐to‐face providers, argues Malcolm Tight, Director of the Centre for Research and Development in Part‐time Higher Education at Birkbeck College, University of London. Given the undoubted success of distance education, established by the Open University and others, there is now a strong case for diversifying methods of provision in higher education, in the interests of expanding opportunities for students and increasing the effectiveness of teachers.     

Problem‐based learning and action research in postgraduate teaching: the interdisciplinary core

Rapid changes in the world due to the emergence of an information society, scientific and technological developments, and a growing capitalist global economy have made intercultural and inter-ethnic contacts a fairly ordinary phenomenon. However, paradoxically, cultural diversity has had to cope with powerful homogenising instruments of a globalised planet; consequently, cultural issues cannot be considered apart from power relations. In education, a recent phenomenon – the teacher research movement – has tried to fight against conservative and dominant forms of teaching and teacher education. In this article, it is argued that teacher research, as an international movement, has the potential to become a counter-hegemonic strategy to construct critical teacher education approaches in a globalised world.     

Problem‐based distance learning of energy issues via computer network

Problem‐based learning (PBL) modified for distance education (PBDiL = Problem‐Based Distance Learning) has been used for teaching energy issues at Uppsala University, Sweden. Collaborative learning in groups of seven to eight students was enabled by computer communication and enhanced the use of Internet. Two different teaching methods have been tried and are compared, both being influenced by methods used in conventional face‐to‐face PBL. The problem presentation was entirely built on pictures, and examination through student reports was successful. A student remark, ‘I study on my own but yet not alone’ shows the importance of social contact.     

Helping students value cultural diversity through research‐based teaching

Although international students studying in New Zealand desire and expect contact with their domestic peers, the level of cross‐national interactions remains generally low. This paper describes an initiative to promote more and better intercultural understanding within a target group of students having similar needs and interests in a higher education setting. A research‐based teaching approach progressively increased student engagement with higher order cognitive skills and both topic and process were aligned in such a way that training opportunities in intercultural competence were explored while also providing a process that offered further training in intercultural competence. Enduring appreciation of cultural diversity issues was achieved via deep styles of teaching and learning that raised awareness, changed attitudes and behaviour and ultimately impacted classroom culture. Initiative design, evaluation and results are described and limitations noted. The findings should be of interest to teachers of multicultural students and to academics studying cultural diversity issues.     

From a distance? Globalisation,space‐time compression and distance education

In this article, Roger Lewis, Director of Services, for the Open College, examines notions of ‘quality’ in open learning for corporate users, and how this can be evaluated. The approach to ‘quality’ is based on The Training Agency's publication, ‘Ensuring quality in open learning’, and the argument for the importance of assessing resultant change and therefore benefits is relevant, it is proposed, to training and evaluation more generally.     

Advancing knowledge of the teaching profession through web‐based assignments

Abstract

An Introduction to Teaching course was strategically developed to allow university students of many backgrounds to access, synthesize, and evaluate the teaching profession as a possible career. The authors planned a multi‐layered course that included Web‐based assignments, required and suggested readings, targeted writing assignments, and field experiences. In this study, student perceptions of the usefulness and effectiveness of the Web‐based assignments were investigated.

A survey was administered to 92 students across three course sections. Most students (85%) were positive about Web‐based research, despite some difficulty with completing the assignments. Reasons for their difficulty included lack of knowledge, incompatible software, and outdated address information. Students reported that the Web‐based assignments were one effective way to learn about the teaching profession but that more contextual projects, such as field work and writing ethnographies, were more powerful learning took. The authors examined the construction of the course for possible reasons for this perception and suggested ways to enliven the Web assignments to make them more interactive.     

Design‐based science and real‐world problem‐solving

Design‐based science (DBS) is a science pedagogy in which new scientific knowledge and problem‐solving skills are constructed in the context of designing artifacts. This paper examines whether the enactment of a DBS unit supported students’ efforts to construct and transfer new science knowledge and ‘designerly’ problem‐solving skills to the solution of a new real‐world design problem in a real‐world setting. One hundred and forty‐nine students participated in the enactment of a DBS unit. Their understanding of the curricular content was assessed by identical pre‐instructional and post‐instructional written tests. They were then given a new design problem as a transfer task. There was a statistically significant increase on scores from pre‐test to post‐test with an effect size of 1.8. There was a stronger correlation between the scores of the transfer task and those of the post‐test than with those of the pre‐test; we use this finding to suggest that the knowledge that was constructed during the unit enactment supported the solution of the transfer task. This has implications for the development of science curricula that aim to lead to the construction of knowledge and skills that may be useful in extra‐classroom settings. Whether participation in consecutive enactments of different DBS units increases transfer remains to be investigated in more depth.     

Examining the implementation of two co‐teaching models: team teaching and station teaching

In Turkey, the number of students in mainstream education is increasing, and a support service does not exist even though mainstreaming has been implemented for many years. Therefore, within this system, many students with special needs are failing. Thus, there is a need for evidence‐based research projects concerning the ways of supporting these students such as the co‐teaching approach. In the research detailed in this article, the participants were one regular education teacher and the researcher as special education teacher. The design of the study was action research. Data collection techniques were a checklist, documents (lesson plans, students’ products), researcher journal, actual recordings of co‐planning and reflection meetings and instructions. The findings were demonstrated based on the co‐planning meetings, teaching practices and reflection meetings. Concerning the challenging issues of implementation, support services should certainly be provided in the mainstream classes, and additional research is needed to systematically examine the impacts of teachers taking time to undertake common planning and/or discussing student performance.     

Design‐based Research: Case of a teaching sequence on mechanics

Design‐based research, and particularly its theoretical status, is a subject of debate in the science education community. In the first part of this paper, a theoretical framework drawn up to develop design‐based research will be presented. This framework is mainly based on epistemological analysis of physics modelling, learning and teaching hypotheses. It includes grand theories, a specific theory that following Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, and Schauble is a “humble theory” in the sense that it does “real work”, and tools for design. In the second part, we will show how this specific theory and its tools led designers to develop teaching resources in the case of a teaching sequence on mechanics (Grade 10). We will explain how the components of the specific theory and tools guide the design at different levels; the conceptual structure of the teaching sequence, the chronology of the activities, the various choices of the type of activity and their wording. This presentation makes the bases of designing teaching resources explicit and therefore allows for scientific debate.