Challenges for eLearning and Instructional Technology

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Challenges for eLearning and Instructional
Technology

• Technology Day April 11, 2006Danny Adams 
  dadams_at_nsu.edu Director of eLearning
• Norfolk State University

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Examine Forces and Trends

• Forces of Change in Education
• Impact of Instructional Technology on Education
• Student Preparation for Technology in the
  Workplace
• Competition
• Improving Cost Effectiveness
• Globalization
• Workforce and population
• Business
• Science and Technology

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Make A COMMITMENT

• Develop an understanding of instructional
  technology
• Establish a shared vision
• Develop planning team
• Identify resources
• Examine the institutional organization
• Address institutional culture
• Be ready for change . . . but first, develop
  mechanism for interpreting change

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What COMMITMENT entails

• May increase workload in the short run
• Will not manifest overnight
• Be ready for change . . . but first, develop
  mechanism for interpreting change
• Develop an understanding of instructional
  technology (ongoing)
• Focus is placed on content delivery

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Mapping the Strategy

• Planners and Implementers

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Mission of the Institution
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Purpose and Direction

• Vision
• The Office of e-Learning is a competency center
  for effective, leading-edge methods of
  instructional delivery to the Norfolk State
  University learning community.

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Purpose and Direction
Mission Statement

• The Office of e-Learning provides coordination
  and support services to Norfolk State
  Universitys educational divisions --
• to comprehensively infuse technology across the
  curriculum utilizing electronic learning
  (e-learning) initiatives which include distance
  learning, blended learning, and face-to-face
  instructional technology and pedagogical best
  practices--
• that enhance student success in the global
  marketplace.

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SnapshotOffice of eLearning
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Purpose and Direction

• Imaging Statement
• Learning Electronically for Global Service
• L-E-G-S

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Awareness of eLearning across ALL organizational
units
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Review Peer Institutions
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Establish instructional technology goals and
plans
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Coalition-building providing Infrastructure

• Arrange for instructional support
• Assist/guide campus leaders support
• Encourage faculty adoption of instructional
  technology
• Implement prototype instructional initiative
• Assess and determine return on investment
• Develop an understanding of instructional
  technology (ongoing)

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BUSINESS Angelo Malone EDUCATION Larry
Ferguson LIBERAL ARTS Damani Drew Harry
Styles SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Wallace
Hendricks SOCIAL WORK Courtney Mitchell
Instructional Technology Liaisons . . .
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Forces of Change in Education

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Status of Online Education
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Impact of Instructional Technology on Education

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What are Common Factors and Best Practices of
Institutions that have Been Successful at
e-Learning?
Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness
(Feb 1, 2005)Executive Summary of Findings
Summary Finding One Higher Education
institutions that are succeeding in
Internet-supported Learning have strong
motivations to do so. Some of the factors that
are most closely correlated with degree of
success are Consistency of Internet-supported
learning with institutional mission (64)
Competitive pressure to provide
Internet-supported learning (64) Intention to
grow enrollments through Internet-supported
learning (59)
Source Alliance for Higher Education
Competitiveness (Feb 1, 2005)
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What are Common Factors and Best Practices of
Institutions that have Been Successful at
e-Learning?

• Summary Finding Two
• Institutions successful with Internet-supported
  learning have a strong commitment to the
  initiative.
• Administrators and faculty are clear that
  Internet-supported learning is a long-term
  commitment. (91)
• Administrators are actively involved in leading
  the efforts and administrative support for
  success is perceived as adequate for success.
  (82)
• While top-down leadership predominates,
  facilitative leadership that nurtures grass-roots
  support, coupled with a focus on high impact
  programs appears to be most effective.

Source Alliance for Higher Education
Competitiveness (Feb 1, 2005)
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What are Common Factors and Best Practices of
Institutions that have Been Successful at
e-Learning?
Summary Finding Three Successful institutions
measure themselves in a variety of ways depending
on what is important to them quality is at least
or more important than growth. The measurements
used to evaluate Internet-supported learning in
order of frequency are Student outcomes
(29) Student satisfaction (21) Growth in
enrollments (21) Faculty satisfaction (10)
Source Alliance for Higher Education
Competitiveness (Feb 1, 2005)
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What are Common Factors and Best Practices of
Institutions that have Been Successful at
e-Learning?
Summary Finding Four Students and faculty are
well-supported at successful institutions through
a set of well established capabilities that are
being constantly improved. Most prevalent
support services include Highly available
website or course management system (100)
Faculty helpdesk (91) Course development help
from a support center (86) Student phone
helpdesk (86) Technical training for faculty
(86) One-on-one instructional design
consultations for faculty (82) Orientation to
online courses for students (82) Clear and
effective policies for ownership of online
materials (82) A single program coordinator or
student contact point (78) Student feedback
through course assessments (78)
Source Alliance for Higher Education
Competitiveness (Feb 1, 2005)
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What are Common Factors and Best Practices of
Institutions that have Been Successful at
e-Learning?

• Summary Finding Five
• The secret sauce of achieving success in
  Internet-supported learning varies from
  institution to institution, however, a
  programmatic approach with a commitment to
  fully online programs seems to be most critical
• A focus on getting programs (a full degree
  program) fully online (a programmatic approach)
  as opposed to single courses fully online or
  web-enhanced courses, greatly increases the
  chance of achieving overwhelming success by a
  four to one margin
• Best practices of the programmatic approach
  often result in new program/course configurations
  that enhance quality
• Program redesign sessions to facilitate faculty
  leaders creating a better program
• Pedagogy defined to reflect the uniqueness of
  the program

Source Alliance for Higher Education
Competitiveness (Feb 1, 2005)
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What are Common Factors and Best Practices of
Institutions that have Been Successful at
e-Learning?
Summary Finding Six Institutions successful in
Internet-supported learning have gone beyond the
technical issues and are much more focused on
achieving a better educational product. A large
variety of innovations and best practices have
been developed by the successful institutions
applied to all areas of the curriculum. Examples
include 24/7 learning labs Participation by
100 of full time faculty Faculty required to
take comprehensive training program Course
standards Maintaining a high degree of
faculty/student interaction Use of class
archiving and video replay to improve study
Commitment to same high quality experience for
all students Innovative business and
centralized support models
Source Alliance for Higher Education
Competitiveness (Feb 1, 2005)
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What are Common Factors and Best Practices of
Institutions that have Been Successful at
e-Learning?
Summary Finding Seven The major challenges
experienced by successful institutions indicate
why many institutions continue to struggle with
Internet-supported learning. Even though the
predominant methods for involving faculty in
development of courses is to work with early
adopters or those hand-picked by the academic
leadership, the greatest challenges by far
concerned the development and delivery of
effective online learning materials and
environments Technology learning curve and
associated training required for faculty, coupled
with lack of time for training (18)
Developing online learning materials and
environments that support the quality and variety
desired (13) Finding and engaging enough
faculty to meet the demand (11)
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What are Common Factors and Best Practices of
Institutions that have Been Successful at
e-Learning?
Summary Finding Eight To successful institutions
Internet-supported learning is an opportunity to
reconsider the intersection of mission and
student service and to create an improved
educational product. It is not about technology
adoption. The successful institutions are
addressing strategic, cultural and process issues
that will help them perform their mission more
effectively in the future no matter what
direction technology takes.
Source Alliance for Higher Education
Competitiveness (Feb 1, 2005)
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Best Practices in Internet-Supported Learning in
Higher EducationTrends and Vendor Satisfaction
Update March 2006
Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness
Introduction. 5Top Findings This Period.
6Survey Description. 7Executive Summary
Points. 7Respondent Characterization.
10Institution Representation Distribution.
11Students and Degrees. 13Online Initiative
Maturity. 15Online Enrollment Growth Trends.
17Course and Program Delivery Modes. 18The
State of Internet-Supported Learning Practices. 21
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Challenges and opportunities in setting up
NSU'sOffice of e-Learning

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Staffing Office of eLearning
PROPOSED
CURRENT
Director
Director
Program Support Coordinator
Program Support Coordinator
Instructional Designer
Media Specialist
Support GAs / TAs
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e-Guidelinesand Procedures

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Instructional Technology Liaisons . . .
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eGuidelines
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eBulletins
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eBulletins
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Procedure Removal of Old Courses
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Procedure Removal of Old Courses
RESULTS of Clean-up
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eBulletins
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eBulletins
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Course evaluations Instruction to Students
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Develop an understanding of instructional
technology

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Communications Start-up Support Group
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eLearning Study Group
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Data Statistics

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Online Courses Spring 2006
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SnapshotOffice of eLearning
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Course Assessment

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eLearning Newsletter
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Peer Review Instrument to Assess Course Quality
(Summer 2005)
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Results Course Quality Review
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Address institutional culture

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Support and framework for instructional/academic
technology

• CULTURE
• Documented IT Strategic Plan
• Documented Instructional/Academic Technology
• Strategic Plan
• Faculty willingness to integrate technology
• Senior leaderships direction and focus related
  to
• instructional technology
• Accreditation requirements related to technology

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Infrastructure to enhance the learner and
establish successful learning

• Understanding learners is the first step to using
  Instructional/Academic Technology
• Increasingly, students are native to
  technology their lives have been shaped by it
• Non-traditional studentsincreasingly find it a
  fundamental part of their environment
• The use of Instructional/Academic Technology
  should be predicated on learner needs rather than
  technology capabilities
• The focus should not be on the technology but
  on what it enables. Its not about technology but
  through technology--learners doing things
  through/with technology.
• Similarly, the shift is to outcomes (learner
  impact) rather than inputs (technology)

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Globalization

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CHALLENGES
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Challenging forth . . .
The World is Flat describes the unplanned cascade
of technological and social shifts that
effectively leveled the economic world, and
accidentally made Beijing, Bangalore and
Bethesda next-door neighbors. Today,
individuals and small groups of every color of
the rainbow will be able to plug and play. .
. . these flatteners converged around the year
2000, and created a flat world a global,
web-enabled platform for multiple forms of
sharing knowledge and work, irrespective of time,
distance, geography and increasingly, language.
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Challenging forth . . .
Flatteners 1. Fall of the Berlin Wall
(11/9/89) 2. Netscape and the dotcom boom
(8/9/95) 3. Common (workflow) software
platforms 4. Open-Source code 5. Outsourcing 6.
Offshoring 7. Supply-Chaining 8. Insourcing 9.
In-forming 10. Portable/personal devices
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Challenging forth . . .
Flatteners 1. Fall of the Berlin Wall
(11/9/89) -- opened the balance of power across
the world toward those countries advocating
democratic, consensual, free-market-oriented
governance, and away from those advocating
authoritarian rule with centrally planned
economies 2. Netscape and the dotcom boom
(8/9/95) --trillion dollar investment in fiber
optic cable --browser one of the most important
inventions in modern history
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Challenging forth . . .
3. Common (workflow) software platforms --
standards dont eliminate innovation, they just
allow you to focus it -- interoperability --
They XML and SOAP enabled digitized data,
words, music, and photos to be exchanged between
diverse software programs so they could be
shaped, designed, manipulated, edited, reedited,
stored, published, and transportedwithout any
regard to where people are physically sitting or
what computing devices they are connecting
through (WF, 75) 4. Open-Source code --
enabling global collaboration -- promotes public
movements intellectual commons, and free
software
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Challenging forth . . .
5. Outsourcing -- have another company perform a
needed function integrate into overall
operation --invoked by Y2K Indias IT
footprint 6. Offshoring -- shift production by
building it there, and hiring the labor there,
and integrate into supply chain 7.
Supply-Chaining --Wal-Mart phenom horizontal
collaboration among suppliers, retailers, and
customers sushi in Arkansas
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Challenging forth . . .
8. Insourcing -- UPS/ delivers, distributors, and
services -- largest private user of wireless
technology in the world (over 1 million phone
calls per day) -- on any given day, 2 per cent of
worlds GDP in UPS delivery trucks 9.
In-forming -- Google, Yahoo, MSN Web Search
democratization of information. . . . Jerry
Yang, Yahoo! cofounder. -- personal equivalent
to opensourcing, outsourcing, insourcing,
supply-chaining, and offshoring 10. Portable /
Personal Devices --Digital, Mobile, Personal,
Virtual
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More than simply virtual . . .
dwelling . . . (synchronous asynchronous)
Home . . . (ethos)
in time . . . (being)
and space . . . (virtual)
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Thank you!

Technology Day April 11, 2006Danny Adams 
Director of eLearning Venita Taylor Program
Support Coordinator