The Role of the Internet in Education and Training: Medium to Long-Term Research Issues

1
The Role of the Internet in Education and
TrainingMedium to Long-Term Research Issues

• John Cook
• j.cook_at_unl.ac.uk
• http//www2.unl.ac.uk/exbzcookj/cook.html
• Learning Technology Research Institute (LTRI)
  www.unl.ac.uk/ltri/
• School of Informatics and Multimedia
  Technology, University of North London

2
Structure of talk

• Aims and Scope of Talk.
• Current Context.
• Medium-Term Research Issues.
• Long-Term Research Issues.
• Conclusions.

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Aims and Scope of Talk

• My main message is that Community, Culture,
  Computing, Communication and Cognition should be
  investigated in future research.
• Learning applies to training and education.

4
Current Context

• Information Society Technologies (IST) programme.
• KA III - Multimedia Content and Tools.
• EUs eLearning initiative.
• eUniversities, school of tommorrow and eCommerce,
  etc.

5

• Christopher Galvin, President Motorola
• We are not hiring any more graduates with four
  year degrees.
• We want employees with forty year degrees.
• (Quoted by Wilson, 2000)
• Training and Development is a
• 62 billion dollar industry in transition
• corporate spending on Web training hit 600
  million in less than five years
• expected to jump to 10 billion by 2002.
• (Wilson, 2000)

6

• Gavriel Salomon from the University of Haifa
• with the Internet and multimedia, with its
  model-building and simulation capacities, with
  its email, hypertext, CMC and other unfathomable
  possibilities, seduces us to believe that it can
  do miracles Its introduction for learning
  purposes into classrooms, colleges, homes and
  even work places, is supposed to cause a major
  shift in education.
• (Saloman, 2000)
• However, Salomon and others in the field,
  including myself, are disappointed with the state
  of current research ...

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• One possible criticism of current research is
  that it has a tendency to investigate the
  optimisation of current practice
• Are our expectations, and consequently the
  financial investments in educational computing,
  justified?
• Some studies suggest that very little, if
  anything, has happened so far as a result of
  computing in education.
• An anecdote attributed to Alan Kaye at an
  Ed-Media conference some years ago runs as
  follows.
• We have a tendency to optimise the old, or
  current, ways of doing things, e.g. putting
  lecture notes on the web. We are only slowly
  finding new ways of doing things.

8

• A second possible criticism of current research
  is that it has a technology centered focus.
• A typical rationale that seems to underlie much
  research is What can we accomplish with our new
  technology?
• Rarely do research papers start out from the
  learning perspective.
• Of course there are always exceptions. Seymour
  Papert (1980) for example, put forward some
  powerful ideas on how to use computers to augment
  cognitive growth.

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• However, technology is often seen as the
  beginning and the justification for all
  rationales.
• Rather than knowledge construction, the computer
  or the technology has tended to become the focus
  of attention. Why?
• Computers hold a strong fascination for us. They
  are marketed like cars, they are even sexy!
  Teaching and learning strategies, unfortunately,
  cant compete.

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• A third concern is the choice of the wrong
  research questions.
• For example, Does the use of learning technology
  X produce better learning results than
  traditional approach Y.
• We have a tendency to keep repeating this
  car-racing paradigm.
• Ideas of the interactive means by which different
  teachers promote learning or by which learners
  learn, nor ideas of ecological context, have had
  an impact on the vast majority of studies.

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• Another issue related to the third concern is the
  kinds of research outcomes we expect from the new
  media which we study.
• New technologies are not just another means to
  attain the same old goals of traditional
  education.
• Imagine that I had just discovered electricity
  and I decided to evaluate it in terms of its
  ability to light fires in the coal stoves.

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• Recent work at LTRI that has attempted to
  overcome some of these disappointments.
• At the LTRI we have been involved in work that
  puts the educational vision first.
• Internet based constructivist learning
  environments are being developed to promote
  multimedia students critical thinking and active
  learning (Boyle, 1997 Cook and Boyle, 2000
  Cook, 2000a).
• The development of a pedagogical agent to foster
  musical creativity (Cook, 1998, Cook, 2000b
  Cook, 2000c).
• Davis (2000) has examined CMC in the context of
  social and emotional factors in foreign language
  teaching.

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Promoting active learning
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Web-based critical arguments
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Supporting musical creativity and problem-solving
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Medium-Term Research Issues

• Need multidisciplinary research teams.

17

• The Internet affords new activities, new
  experiences, and new ways of encountering the
  world. We should therefore adopt new research
  goals.
• Of course some good research has already been
  conducted in the areas I am about to specify, but
  we need to build upon this work.

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• How do we promote in our students and trainees
  the following abilities?
• to cooperate and collaborate in groups,
• to evaluate information critically,
• to acquire life-long learning skills,
• to construct higher-order knowledge
• and probably above all else,
• to be adaptive and creative when tackling new
  problems.

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• Research should test which learning environment
  is better for what purpose. For example
• How compatible is remote learning via CMC with
  what we know, for example, about the difficulties
  of self-regulated learning for the lonely
  student?
• Would we want to move socialisation away from the
  school-based peer group and into the family
  environment?
• We also need more research into
• issues surrounding the re-use of educational
  materials,
• standards that enable good practice and materials
  to be exchanged and extended.

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• As well as some of the above issues, at the LTRI
  we are also interested in looking at
• the theoretical basis of learning technology,
  i.e. establishing the foundations of an applied
  discipline of computer-assisted learning
• design innovation based on the mapping of
  pedagogical theories onto the opportunities
  created by the rapid advances in learning
  technologies
• methods for the development of computer-based
  learning that promote communities of inquiry,
  creativity and problem-solving
• theory and practice for evaluation, which takes
  into account the requirements of different
  stakeholders
• the influence of cultural differences on learning
  and assessment in e-universities.

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Long-Term Research Issues

• Gordon McCalla from University of Saskatchewan,
  Canada, has recently speculated on a research
  agenda in the context of localisation for the
  design of environments to support learning in the
  year 2010.
• (McCalla 2000a, McCalla 2000b).

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• By then, the increasing universality of
  information technology will have so overloaded
  people with information that they will find it
  necessary to drastically constrain their
  interactions in cyberspace. The result will be a
  major trend to localization, not globalization.
  This localization will result in a fragmented
  social environment.
• (McCalla 2000b, p. 177)

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• McCalla provides a useful perspective which seems
  focused on communication.
• An alternative, but related perspective, is
  selective coherence, a theme in psychology.
• How do you stop yourself being overwhelmed by
  information or communication demands?
• Mastery and control are we being driven by
  technology or can we stay in control?

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Conclusion

• Future research could focus on combinations of
  some the following five Cs
• Community, Culture, Computing Communication and
  Cognition.

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• Community
• Localised villages, perhaps?
• But, care is needed so as not to exclude
  individuals.
• Culture
• May be unique to a community or distributed.
• Multidisciplinary approach needed to develop
  useful systems. Teams may include social,
  political and economic sciences as well as the
  more usual disciplines found in research teams.

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• Computing
• Tools and technologies designed to support the
  above 2Cs and embedded in that context to help
  the learner.
• A systems pedagogical goals may be implemented
  computationally.
• Software without boundaries distributed
  ecological agents, active data, applications take
  on meaning relative to end-use, unpredictable
  behaviour of agents.

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• Communication
• Inter and intra community.
• Tools that guide individuals, groups and
  communities.
• Cognition
• Fragmented styles of teaching and learning,
  just-in-time teaching and learning.
• Socially distributed cognition and socially
  appropriated knowledge.
• Modelling (AI-ED) may merge with
  situated/constructivist approaches.

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• Endnote
• We need to develop systems that
• promote in learners openness and creativity,
• that enable citizens to fulfil their potential,
  both personally and in their work lives.

This should in turn lead to computers, and
related technologies, that help to create a new
or modified culture. We need to use computers to
help build communities of intelligent life-long
learners who are guided by some community and
cultural values that transcend simple
self-interest.
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References

• Boyle T. (1997). Design for multimedia learning.
  Prentice Hall. Web site to complement the book,
  which is accessable at http//www.unl.ac.uk/simt/
  dfml/website/
• Cook, J. and Boyle, T. (2000). Effective Delivery
  of On-Campus Networked Learning Reflections on
  Two Case-Studies. 2nd International Conference on
  Networked Learning, April 17 to 19th 2000,
  University of Lancaster.
• Cook, J. (1998). Mentoring, Metacognition and
  Music Interaction Analyses and Implications for
  Intelligent Learning Environments. International
  Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education,
  9, 45-87.
• Cook, J. (2000a). Designing web-based adaptive
  support for debate with dialogue modelling. Paper
  accepted for International Workshop on Advanced
  Learning Technologies, 4-6 December 2000,
  Palmerston North, New Zealand. Will appear in
  proceedings published by IEEE Computer Society
  Press.
• Cook, J. (2000b). Cooperative problem-seeking
  dialogues in learning. In G. Gauthier, C. Frasson
  and K. VanLehn (Eds.) Intelligent Tutoring
  Systems 5th International Conference, ITS 2000
  Montréal, Canada, June 2000 Proceedings, (p.
  615-624). Berlin Heidelberg New York
  Springer-Verlag.
• Cook, J. (2000c). Evaluation of a support tool
  for musical problem-seeking. ED-Media 2000 -
  World Conference on Educational Multimedia,
  Hypermedia Telecommunications. June 26-July 1,
  2000, Montréal, Canada. AACE.

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• Davis, M. (2000). Computer Mediated Communication
  as a Foreign Language Potential and Pitfalls in
  Cyberspace. Presented at the PALSO Conference,
  Panhellenic Federation of Foreign Language School
  Owners, Athens, Greece, August, 2000.
• MacCalla , G. (2000a). Life and Learning in the
  Electronic Village The Importance of
  Localization for the Design of Environments to
  Support Learning. Invited talk given at
  Intelligent Tutoring Systems 5th International
  Conference, ITS 2000 Montréal, Canada, June 2000.
  Talk was based on MacCalla (2000b).
• MacCalla , G. (2000b). The Fragmentation of
  Culture, Learning, Teaching and Technology
  Implications for the Artificial Intelligence in
  Education Research Agenda in 2010. International
  Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education,
  11, 177-196.
• Papert, S. (1980), Mindstorms Children,
  Computers and Powerful Ideas. Harvester Press.
• Salomon, G. (2000). Its not just the tool, but
  the educational rationale that counts. Invited
  keynote address at ED-Media 2000 - World
  Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia
  Telecommunications. June 26-July 1, 2000,
  Montréal, Canada. AACE.
• Wilson, J. (2000). The Internet Tsunami -
  eLearning. Keynote Speaker at ALT-C 2000, 7th
  International Conference of the Association for
  Learning Technology, 11-13 September, UNMIST,
  Manchester.
• Acknowledgement Thanks to Tom Boyle for making
  some useful comments, at very short notice, on
  this talk.