Academic Exchange Quarterly
Winter 2005 ISSN 1096-1453
Volume 9, Issue 4
To cite, use print source rather than this on-line
version which may not reflect print copy format requirements
or text lay-out and pagination.
Lan
Li,
James
W. King,
Matthew Kutscher,
Li, is an instructor and doctoral student at the College of Education
and Human Sciences (CEHS), King, Ed.D., is an associate professor at the Department of Agricultural
Leadership, Education & Communication, Kutscher,
is a doctoral student and instructional designer at CEHS.
Abstract
Rapidly
developing technologies have influenced online education causing substantial
changes in course design. We interviewed six online educators in a mid-western
university about their course development experiences. Special attention was
paid to multimedia integration.
Questions included: multimedia integration in course components,
multimedia development, multimedia training, multimedia and student learning,
and future multimedia trends. Three
themes emerged – a growth in multimedia integration in online classes, more
focus on multimedia facilitated interaction and feedback, and the positive
relationship between instructor training and multimedia integration in online
courses.
Introduction
Education has experienced three major historical revolutions (Ehrmann, 1999). The first happened 2500 years ago when oral
communication between teachers and students was supplemented and in some case
replaced with reading and writing. A second upheaval occurred when students and
teachers shared the same facilities such as libraries and laboratories, shaping
today’s educational community and campus life.
The most recent revolution has been “made possible by computing,
video and telecommunication” (Ehrmann, 1999). Fahmy (2004) termed this a “technology revolution” and
asserted that this change enlarged learner groups and, in particular, is now
having inevitable impacts on the way universities deliver services.
Looking back at the last century, there had been a profound
relationship between technologies and education, especially in the field of
distance education. As a matter of fact, “all communication technologies have
been used at some point as vehicles to transmit instruction and support
education at a distance, including letters, newspapers, film, radio,
television, and most recently, computers with web-based connections” (Clark,
2003). While the impact of technology applications on distance education had
been generally positive, the force was relatively small until the widespread arrival of the World Wide Web in
1995. This “changed the distance learning
landscape” (James, 2001) and made online education the centerpiece of distance
education. It is probably safe to say that computers and the Internet shaped
and continue to mold the way online education appears today.
Computer technology and Internet applications have unremittingly
developed at an astonishingly exploding speed. In 2000 US Internet users were
estimated to be over 95,000,000,
33% of the national population. In June 2005, only five years later,
US Internet users climbed to
over 202,000,000, 68% of the population (“Internet World Stats”, n.d.).
Higher education, like any
other segment in our society, is influenced by technologies and always strives
for the necessary changes to use it (Fahmy, 2004). “The information revolution
that is radically altering our whole world at an ever-accelerating pace touches
every aspect of university life” (“
In this setting, we
undertook a series of preliminary interviews with faculty to gain insights into
the current status of online education compared to five years ago and the
changes over time in design and delivery of instruction with a particular focus
on multimedia use and integration. We sought to better understand how online
educators are using multimedia in their courses and to predict where online multimedia
use might be headed.
Methodology
To study the perceptions and experiences of educators who have
been developing online teaching materials, we visited 15 online course sites
offered by various departments at a large mid-western university. Each of the
15 course sites was categorized according to the degree of multimedia
integration (1= text based to 5 = multimedia rich).
Six
online courses representing each of these five levels of multimedia integration
were purposefully sampled from the 15 reviewed course sites. Of the six, two
representative courses from level four were selected because of their very
complete descriptions and their capability to help us understand multimedia
integration possibilities. Course
instructors of the six online courses were then interviewed.
Interviews
were organized into five sections related to multimedia integration in the
online course. Questions were open ended
and covered:
1. Course
components ¾
multimedia (such as text,
graphics, audio and video, etc) integrated in the course
five years ago; multimedia integrated in the course currently; description of
new multimedia application(s); advantages and disadvantages of new multimedia
application(s); and the reason(s) for utilizing multimedia into course
delivery.
2. Course
development ¾ means by which multimedia course materials were
developed (by instructors and/or external assistants); expectations about
instructional designers’ roles in online course development.
3. Training
¾
attendance at any training to learn online instruction or multimedia
development; future development needs.
4. Student learning ¾ instructor
perception of the satisfaction
level of student learning with multimedia course delivery; desirable multimedia
improvements to enhance student learning.
5. Trends ¾ expectations of multimedia course components in the future;
prediction of the impact of new multimedia tools on online course delivery.
The
researchers conducted the interviews with instructors. Some interviews were
done in-person and some were collected by telephone; Notes were made during all
the interviews. A thematic approach was used to analyze data obtained from the
interviews (Creswell, 2005). The interview data were coded based on the level
of multimedia integration. This was done for each of the five sections. Next, we collapsed the five sections into one
and looked for similar coding among the interview data. Then we reviewed the
aggregated data to see if there were commonalities or themes; that is, we looked
at all the interview data to identify similar comments, common applications,
and results from multimedia integration between the six courses. The aggregated
data revealed three overarching multimedia themes.
Findings
Theme One: Multimedia Integration
To promote meaningful
learning, online instructors are starting to incorporate multimedia products to
present subject matter to students.
Products used include PowerPoint slideshows, Flash multimedia
animations, or streaming video. All the instructors interviewed stated that,
compared with their course presentations five years ago, they now have more
multimedia materials included, such as pictures, PowerPoint slides, audio and video, either as
downloadable QuickTime movies in a course site or on a CD mailed to students.
Compared with five years ago, both faculty and students have access
to more advanced computer hardware and software, allowing for the integration
of various multimedia components. This also reflects the growth of Broadband
applications to even remote learners.
One instructor indicated, “The technology has improved to the point that
few students now have difficulty accessing the materials that I have created
for the class. Formerly, there were students who struggled with configuring
their computer properly.” All faculty recognized and agreed with the growth in
technology sophistication.
All interviewed instructors predicted
that more integration of multimedia would be a future development for online
courses. Compared to five years ago, today’s online courses are somewhat more media
rich; this is because of the development of easy to use programs like
PowerPoint. In addition, technology itself has
improved to the point that few students now have trouble with their computers
or accessing class multimedia materials. In 2005, advanced technologies,
increasing online capacity and personal experiences with online classes would
make technology-savvy students out of most learners. However, one instructor
did state her concern regarding limited faculty time to design and develop high
quality multimedia materials. All
instructors were concerned about the fast changing media such as expanded
broadband applications that created new learning demands from students.
In addition to multimedia integration, a second theme surfacing
from interview data was the substantial increase of student-to-student and
student-to-instructor interaction because of multimedia use. All the
instructors interviewed use web-based discussion boards to enhance
instructor-student and student-student interaction. Three instructors also
indicated that they were striving to improve the level of feedback through
multimedia tools like discussion boards, chat rooms, or e-mailed video
feedback.
One of the six instructors used the online chat tool provided in
the course management system to promote instructor feedback in the final exam
review session. Another instructor noted the feature of attaching and
retrieving examples of feedback across student work. One teacher used
PowerPoint with audio to prepare
students for tests and to provide group feedback. Another instructor is starting to make small
“movies” of herself in her office to welcome students to class, to provide
introductions to the instructional units, and to offer group and individual
feedback on selected course activities and exercises. From our interview
sample, it appears that multimedia integration in online courses is growing in
instructor applications for feedback and interaction.
The importance of interaction and feedback in education has been
widely studied and well documented in the literature (Chickering & Gamson,
1987, 1991). Research suggests that interaction and feedback are strong in
promoting student perceptions of quality learning, fostering student
development and encouraging student engagement (e.g. King & Doerfert, 1996;
Topper, 2005). Due to the geographic
separation of instructor and students in online education, web-based
interaction and feedback are particularly critical.
Theme Three: Instructor’s Role in Course Development and
Training
We found that all six instructors interviewed stated they got help and assistance from diverse sources such as instructional designers housed in their department or through the university, or the use of graduate students in some cases. However, the degree of support varied. Interestingly, our analysis indicated that instructors of media robust courses tended to have a large individual involvement in their courses’ multimedia development. For example, the instructor of the most media robust course did most of the multimedia development and integration by himself, receiving some assistance for developing a web-based sign-up sheet. On the opposite end, the instructor whose course was mainly a text-based site was involved the least in course multimedia development. Most of the multimedia work for this instructor was made and integrated by instructional designers provided by his college.
Multimedia training emerged as
another issue. Five of six instructors interviewed attended training sessions,
workshops or relevant conferences about the use of multimedia in online
instruction. Topics ranged from practical skills such as how to use course
management systems, working with multimedia products like PowerPoint, Acrobat,
or Dreamweaver, to theoretical approaches such as design principles of online
instruction. When we ranked the level of course multimedia integration and the
level of instructor training participation, it appeared that there was a
positive relationship between these two factors; that is, the higher level of
multimedia integration in online courses was associated with more multimedia
training for instructors.
Discussion
Our preliminary data suggest a
continuum in online course design and development.
o The most
multimedia robust course site (evaluated on the degree of multimedia integrated
and the level of interaction supported by multimedia technologies) is
associated with more instructor involvement/participation in multimedia
development/integration. The large portion of instructor involvement seems to
be associated with more staff development and training.
o The least
multimedia robust course site (evaluated on the degree of multimedia integrated
and the level of interaction supported by multimedia technologies) is
associated with comparably less instructor involvement/participation in
multimedia development/integration. In these cases, instructional designers did
most of the multimedia development. The smaller portion of instructor
involvement seems to be associated with less staff development and less
training.
This
study suggests that instructor training plays a very essential role in
multimedia integration. Training appears to correlate positively with
instructor involvement of multimedia development. At the same time, the latter
has a reciprocal relationship with the degree of multimedia integration. This
interpretation suggests and reinforces the importance of training, which
provides educators the opportunities to understand design principles of online
teaching and master the skills of using multimedia technologies. However, since
the sample size of this study is small (only six online instructors were
interviewed), we suggest that further research with a bigger sample size is
warranted.
From this study, it appears that
multimedia integration is gradually but steadily taking place in online
courses, especially where faculty have been involved in training. This trend is
inevitable as an outcome of the impact of today’s rapidly developing technologies.
Fascinating technologies are building higher education a generation of
technology-savvy students. As a result, more multimedia rich online education
environments are needed to fulfill student needs.
Clark, R. E. (2003). Research on web-based learning.
In R. H. Bruning., C.A.Horn & L.M. PytlikZillig (Eds.), Web-based learning. What do we know? Where
do we go? (pp. 1-22).
Chickering, A. W, &
Gamson, Z. F. (1987). Seven principles of good practice in undergraduate
education. AAHE Bulletin, 39, 3-7.
Chickering, A. W., and
Gamson, Z. F. (1991). Applying the seven principles for good practice in
undergraduate education. New Directions
for Teaching and Learning. 47 (Fall).
Creswell, J. W. (2005). Education Research.
Ehrmann, S. C. (1999) Technology's
grand challenges. Academe. Bulletin of the American Association of
University Professors. 85 (5), 42-46.
Fahmy, M. F. (2004). Thinking about technology effects on higher
education. The journal of technology
studies, 33(1), 53-58.
Internet World Stats. (n.d.).
http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/us.htm
James, L. (2001). Going
the distance. Publishers Weekly,
248(26), 37-41.
King, J. C., & Doerfert, D. L. (1996). Interaction in the distance education setting. Retrieved
Topper, A. (2005). Facilitating
student interactions through discursive moves. Quarterly Review of Distance
Education, 6(1), 55-68.