Pedagogics in Open Learning

Pedagogy in Open Learning

Lesson 1: Harald Haugen, HSH:

Background and Clarification of Terms

Pedagogy

- is a comparatively familiar term at all levels in the teaching community, with roots stretching all the way back to classical Greece. Today it generally refers to the theory or science of upbringing or teaching. Our aim is to relate it to the special conditions that apply to the relatively new and modern concept of open learning. We will not be offering an introduction to traditional pedagogics here, as we assume that the majority of the students attending this course has some background from teacher education or postgraduate teacher training. We shall rather examine those features important for open learning. During the course we shall endeavour to use various pedagogic methods, so that not only the content, but also the way these lessons are presented will illustrate some of our teaching objectives, both for learning and for exchange of information about pedagogy in open learning.

This first lesson is thus intended to represent one of the most primitive types of open learning, the most simple of ways whereby a traditional lesson is written and distributed to students as a compendium. In putting together this compendium I use a modern word processor, enabling me to copy parts of some of my other works, and to borrow from other sources and publicly available texts via computer networks. I have been able to move and edit text, insert figures, tables etc. But the content and structure are relatively traditional where one reads line by line from left to right as in any book. I might use exactly the same method for a regular lecture at the university. Perhaps a prepared compendium will make the content more accessible - making the teaching more open - but we could hardly call it open teaching for that reason.

Nonetheless, distribution has been modernised - some people might prefer to say hampered - by employing up-to-date information technology. The entire lesson is available to you almost at the same instant that I post it at the electronic network - provided that the technology actually works and that you are ready to receive material for learning then and there. This also provides the opportunity for processing the text further, for whatever reason. For example, when working on the exercises at the end of the lesson, it might be desirable to cut and paste answers straight from the lesson. The most important aspect is probably that you have access to the teaching material at the place you are just now, far away from the lecturer who is sitting on a little island far northwest in Europe, on the ocean's edge. Thus teaching has been made flexible, open and accessible for a much higher number of people than those now studying at the college.

A number of you thus are distant students in the traditional sense of the term. The pedagogics so far is traditional, both in its structure and in formulating the lectures. You could just as easily have received this compendium in the form of a mailed paper copy, to be read on arrival in the mail. That would have taken a little bit more time, otherwise there would have been no real difference - apart from avoiding all the technical hassles. Even the exercises could have been answered on paper, and returned by mail.

If we are to talk about a new pedagogy, we must exploit more of the new technology, those opportunities to create an electronic learning environment which makes this form of teaching at least as effective as traditional forms, whether we are talking about classrooms or distance-learning students. We are going to examine some of these methods, especially those which may be exploited in open and flexible learning situations. We shall not examine all possible media which may be used in open teaching, but we will spend most of our time on methods which exploit information technology (IT) and electronic networks. Thus we need to clarify what we mean by open teaching, and examine the background of the present situation, in 1996.

Distance teaching

When we look at Norway's long coastline and well spread population we can easily see why it is natural that distance teaching has a long history in this country. Specialised and general institutions for distance learning, correspondence schools and so on have focused huge resources on offering appropriate education to students who can no tor do not want to pursue traditional educational paths. However, this form of instruction has a relatively short tradition within the university and college system. The closest approximation has been a series of decentralised and specially adapted courses and educational programmes for various subjects and vocational categories. Teacher education has a long history of continuing education courses arranged locally for most subjects and fields that are relevant to teaching.

The most important characteristic of distance learning is that this teaching occurs where the teacher and the student are separate in time and space. This is the core in both national and international definitions of this term. It is defined on the basis of traditional correspondence schools, and education programmes via radio or TV, where teaching is dispatched from a centre to students scattered in various places. Many interested parties want to retain this international concept in order to distinguish it from other forms of teaching.

The Norwegian - and for that matter also the international - academic tradition demands that if a person wants to study or acquire a higher degree, this has to be accomplished through physical presence and participation in an academic community. Most professionals within the academic communities still regard distance teaching and flexible programmes inferior to attending traditional lectures, seminars or classroom teaching on campus. Because of this it takes time to establish credibility for the organisation forms which feature distance teaching as one of their objectives - especially when this applies to basic education. The Ministry of Education has actually made a ruling whereby basic education cannot be solely provided as distance teaching.

Open and Flexible Learning

This concept has made a particular breakthrough in recent years as an extension of traditional distance teaching, and is more solidly anchored in higher education. In the first place, more focus is placed on learning than on teaching; after all, it is the learning effect which is most important, not how the teaching is performed. Secondly, emphasis is given to learning and teaching being available when and where the need exists, both externally, outside the institution, but also internally. This should lead to more open studies and easier access for those who need or want higher education.

One of the underpinnings of this trend is the national and international focus on lifelong learning, which is an attempt to cover some of the upgrading needs required in the work force because of rapid developments in society. More and more people are realising that basic education is only a time-limited ticket for entering the work force, and that there will be an increasing demand for continuing education and training at all levels, within many professions and trades. Hence there is a great need for open and flexible learning opportunities which are available where and when they are wanted, at the workplace, in the home, in the districts or in connection with the educational institutions.

Open learning programmes are often established in two different ways:

1. Course-menu, i.e. courses are offered by institutions or organisations that want to market their competence and their skills within subject areas or vocational training where they have traditions and experience. Offers are presented as a choose-and-pick menu. Engineering colleges offer continuing-education courses in technical disciplines and subject areas which they normally offer internally. To make their training "open" it is commonly divided into modules and presented on videotape or in other ways. In teacher education, decentralised continuing education courses are arranged in conjunction with the local authorities or Directors of Education, and often these courses include the opportunity to expand the study units so that they raise formal qualifications. The menu may contain a series of different course modules.

2. Special order, that is courses where the employer or end user groups specify what they want, and then an institution with the appropriate competence will try to meet their requirements. This might be a company in the middle of a restructuring process, an enterprise about to reorganise or an entire school system introducing new curricula. In such cases it is not probable that an existing under-graduate university course or a word processing course would be the appropriate solution. Nor would the business, enterprise or school be in a position to send their entire staff away to a hotel for a course or to an institution for a lengthy training period. Perhaps such a standard course does not even exist. Rather the course would have to be especially developed for the purpose.

The first alternative is the easiest to implement, the second presents the greatest challenge to the course planners. In both cases there are major challenges in selecting teaching and presentation forms which offer efficient learning conditions and are also financially viable in the given situation. Many academic environments are working with such challenges, giving different emphasis to subject specific content, technology, methods and pedagogic underpinnings. For this course, the objective is to impart information and experience about the pedagogic aspect, without disregarding the other factors. We particularly want to examine how new technology may be exploited for teaching purposes - or citing the Norwegian Ministry of Education & Research's 4 year plan (1996-99) for Information Technology (IT) in the Norwegian, Educational System: We shall use IT to learn.

This is not a particular Norwegian phenomenon but an international trend, where among others the EU is focusing much attention on several programmes for development, research and use of «ODL» or «OFDL» - "Open (Flexible) and Distance Learning". They have obviously striven to include all the key words in order to avoid the debate about what is the most important aspect of this form of learning and education.

Distributed Teaching

It is not only students and end users who can be included in flexible solutions for open learning. Those providing the teaching can also be included in open relations as there are several sources and end users in the teaching and learning network. This is suitable for inter-institutional/departmental collaboration, enabling academics from various colleges and universities to collaborate on joint studies programmes, whether this is according to the menu-principle or a special order. This facilitates the utilisation of expertise wherever it is found and the use of free capacity where it exists. This in turn enables load sharing when the parties involved have mutual interests. This is one of the core ideas behind the concept of a Norwegian Net of institutions of higher education. In our small country it is simply not feasible to have experts ready and waiting on every promontory and in every dale - we must learn to collaborate and take advantage of each other's specialities instead of competing against each other. This may even apply to Europe as a small unit compared to the rest of the world.

Such collaboration may also be an important factor in implementing open learning programmes, in that entire courses or parts of them may be exchanged between institutions, so that each institution's students gain access to a wider range of studies. To make this work in practice, it is important that course authors and advisors are acquainted with and exploit the appropriate pedagogic solutions for this type of teaching. Our experience tells us that this is somewhat different than traditional classroom or auditorium lectures. This course will try to demonstrate some of these features.

IT and electronic networks are really gaining momentum as the technologies for open learning, primarily because they offer a comparatively simple solution which is inexpensive to operate. Their use is also becoming widespread and they are becoming increasingly available both at institutions and in private homes. It is, nevertheless, important that the inherent potential in IT and networks is exploited so the equipment is not merely used to pass on dull, grey, text-based information (as in this lecture!). At the very least it must be possible to transmit formatted documents, i.e. text with blocks in italics or bold, figures, large fonts, tables etc. Another reasonable demand is that other effects should also be possible, such as colours, sound, simulation models, support programmes, animation, video, hyperstructures etc. Using current technology we must also expect that the special national, e.g. Greek or Norwegian letters, can be written and read.

Other media might also be appropriate as the transmitting technology for distributed and open learning. Nevertheless, it appears that these media are gradually merging and being integrated into what is commonly called multimedia.

Present Projects and Experiences

You are now part of the extension of the project which formed the most important background for the pedagogical experiences we intend to give you, that is NITOL. MECPOL is a European version of some of the same ideas that have made the basis for NITOL. A brief history of the organisation and background for this is found in the Course Catalogue for the 1996/97. We shall not dwell on the project itself, but only mention some of the things we have learned.

The courses have been offered over a period of mote than 2 years, 1994 - 96, and have always been based on developing new ideas in combination with the experience we gain along the way. We have been aware that the course content has been the essential element for preparing the students for their exams, but we have also tested various ways of organising the teaching. Each semester, we have been given valuable feedback about negative and positive aspects of our methods through internal evaluation, questionnaires distributed on-line to and answered by students and teachers. Today's methods are quite different from those that were used in the spring of 1994.

The teaching material and our lectures have generally been transmitted via electronic (news) conferences as formatted attachments, produced in MS Word, Powerpoint etc. Much time has been devoted to discussing the technology and software to be used in the teaching. For the time being it seems like standard Internet systems like the WWW will be the dominant channel for distribution. We set aside the details of these technical details for now, we only want you to be aware that they are the practical basis that enable us to practice this type of teaching and open learning. The important thing is how this is utilised.

All along, a central objective for us has been to create an electronic learning environment, a virtual classroom, where students, teachers and other experts can discuss the material which is presented. To this end discussion conferences have been established for each course, in addition to teaching-material conferences. These have been more or less successful from course to course; we still remain at a loss to explain why. It definitely depends on the course teacher to get the discussions rolling, employing initiatives and issuing challenges, as well as student reactions. It also appears to depend on theme and course content, and also to a certain extent on the number of people taking the course in question. There appears to be a "critical mass" which must be exceeded before the penchant for discussion grips hold. It is also apparent that some students are active - some even highly active - in discussions, while others remain entirely or partly passive. On their evaluation forms some students have said that they do not have the time for such activities, but that they would very much have liked to participate.

One of the ideas behind the discussion conferences was that they should serve as a forum for the exchange of the information each of the participants might have. This is especially profitable when courses have adult participants who have extensive and important experience in the area covered by the subject in question which others can learn from. The combined knowledge collected at the conference during the semester may form an important learning source for other participants. Thus we are creating a developing knowledge base, which is a product on its own, emerging out of the course work. This may also be a pedagogic factor, which we will return to in later lessons.

Exercises

For this particular lesson, the exercises are not compulsory, but may help your practical understanding of some of the content, relating it to your own experience. It would increase the value of the discussion conference (adddress/name/ location??), it you submit your answers or views there. The author (harald.haugen@hsh.no) is also open for comments, and will wellcome your answers/reactions to the questions

1. List examples of different categories of learning programmes which you have experience with or know about, specifying if you see them as distance teaching, open learning or distributed teaching programmes, adding brief comments explaining why you have placed each of them in a particular category.

2. What are your ideas as to how to make a discussion conference work?

3. In your opinion, which are the central elements of an electronic learning environment, beyond discussion conferences?

The lesson is the property of the author. As a course participant you are free to use the lesson for your own, personal application. Course participants who may want to use the lesson e.g. in their own teaching or courses, should make direct contact with the author for arrangements.