Chapter Nine
The Technology of Online Courses
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How Online Courses Are Created
It All Starts with a Welcome Message and a Syllabus
There’s some pretty slick technology that is utilized for online
courses. When online teaching and learning first came on the scene in
the late 1980s, it was comprised mostly of text-based lectures and
e-mail correspondence. Today that has changed considerably, as online
learners take advantage of sophisticated Web 2.0 educational
technologies that enable them to interact with each other
in ways that are highly conducive to learning.
The
focus for this chapter is on explaining what’s available to online
learners from a technology point of view so that you understand what you
may or may not see in your online courses.
There are numerous examples of how educational technologies are used in
online MBA programs (and, in fact, in all higher-education disciplines).
All sorts of electronic and web-based teaching and learning tools form
the interfaces and functions of online courses, and it takes a talented
group of information technology (IT) professionals and instructional
designers to make online teaching and learning operate smoothly and
effectively.
Some institutions are better at implementing effective uses of
educational technologies, and better equipped, than others. A lot
depends on what kind of
staff, as well as what kind of investment in software and
technology-support, the institution has allocated toward their MBA
program. For instance, some programs may have a talented staff
supporting sophisticated audio/video productions (known as rich media),
for creating streamed lectures and simulations of real-world business
challenges that students can interact with. Other programs may not have
the means to create rich media course elements and rely more on text-
based lectures and discussion forums for teaching and learning.
Following are some of the educational technology elements that you may
or may not see in your program of choice. Getting a basic understanding
of these elements could form the basis of technology-oriented questions
you can ask before applying to any program.
How Online Courses Are Created
Many institutions have teaching, learning, and technology centers,
sometimes referred to as TLTs, with a staff of instructional designers,
webmasters, writers, content experts, graphic designers, software and
multimedia experts, and other IT specialists who help build online
courses.
Faculty are the main drivers behind what goes into the online courses
they teach. They are the content or subject-matter experts who typically
start out the course-development process by sharing the course outlines
and learning objectives of their courses with the TLT staff. The TLT
staffers and faculty members work as a team to hopefully create an
effective online teaching and learning environment that students can
easily access and work through from their home or business-office
computer workstations or laptops.
Instructional designers can be considered the second-most important
drivers behind the development of an online course. These professionals
help with the organizational structure and methods used for presenting
online courses. They will introduce faculty to online teaching
strategies, course content resources, student activities, testing
methods and what kind of technologies may best fit their desired
teaching goals. They might advise a faculty member, for instance, to
replace a long text-based lecture, or a cumbersome list of links to
academic resources, with a well-designed PowerPoint presentation with
audio components.
Regardless of the kind of educational technologies being used in in any
online course, these technologies are not as important as the
interactions you will have with faculty and students, as well as the
actual learning you will accomplish by completing all the required
readings and assignments.
“It
did take some time to get acclimated to the online environment as a
student,” said Robert Breen, online MBA student, Arizona State
University. “My initial reaction while reading the modules of my first
course was to get out a highlighter and streak my notebook computer
screen with it. Since that course I have found a balance of online
reading and offline printing that works pretty well.”
In
simple terms, the course management system (CMS), which may sometimes be
referred to as a learning management system (LMS), is the electronic
shell or graphical interface that holds all the elements of your online
courses. The CMS also provides most of the underlying operational
software that controls such things as file management, grading, online
testing, asynchronous and synchronous discussions, and more.
There are basically two interfaces in any CMS: the one used by faculty
and instructional designers to build out an online course, and the one
used by the student to take an online course. Overall you need not
concern yourself with the technical aspects of a CMS. The school will
give you an orientation on how everything works and what you need to
know in order to utilize all the functions and features of the CMS.
Most institutions will lease a CMS from a software vendor, such
Blackboard or eCollege. For example, Arizona State University uses
Blackboard, and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs uses
eCollege. There are other CMS vendors, such as CyberlearningLab’s Angel
CMS, which is used by the Pennsylvania State World Campus, and
Desire2Learn, used by the University of Wisconsin system. Other
institutions may have built their own CMS, which is referred to as a
home-grown system, such as the one used at the University of Maryland
University College, called WebTycho; and the CMS used at the University
of Florida, called iNet; or the CMS used by the University of Phoenix,
called eResource. All these CMS products pretty much have similar
features and functions.
You
will access a CMS, which is hosted on servers either at the campus you
are enrolled in or on remote servers owned and/or managed by the CMS
provider, through a username and password authentication process. Once
you’re in, the fun begins.
It All
Starts with a Welcome Message and a Syllabus
Just like in a traditional classroom environment, your instructor will
provide you with a welcome message and a syllabus that outlines all the
elements of your online course. Like almost everything else in the
course, the syllabus resides in your CMS. The syllabus starts with an
introductory message from the instructor, including contact information
and office hours he or she may hold via live chat, e-mail, or telephone.
All
textbooks and any online supplemental course materials, such as online
lectures and other readings, required for the course will be duly noted,
along with the course objectives, a description of how you will be
graded, and a course outline that lists what is required of you on a
weekly basis.
Most weekly course requirements include a good deal of reading,
listening, and/or viewing of a variety of course material and resources,
depending on the educational technologies being used; a list of
discussion topics related to the readings, with deadlines for when you
need to post your comments and respond to other students’ comments on
the discussion board; a number of exercises, online quizzes, and exams;
and possibly some precise days and times when you need to participate in
an online web conference, or live chat, or in a teleconference, to
interact in real time with your fellow students and the teacher.
Your weekly course work will typically be broken up into modules, which
is basically a way of dividing up the entire course into smaller pieces
that are more easily digestible. These modules will be related and
integrated with each other to form the structure of an entire course.
Textbooks and Other
Reading Material
Depending on the school, the textbooks and other supplemental course
material you will need as you move through your coursework may come in
many different shapes and sizes. Textbooks, which you will be able to
purchase online through the campus bookstore, may be supplied as
digitized electronic books over the web or in the more typical hardcover
printed form, which will be shipped to you. Even if a textbook is
available only in print, many of today’s textbooks have accompanying
websites and/or supplemental reading and viewing material supplied on
CD-ROMs or DVDs..
There is a relatively new movement by the textbook publishing industry
that is pushing more textbooks into the digitized format because they
are less expensive to produce and thereby less costly for students to
purchase, as well as easier to distribute and to update.
The
University of Phoenix has spearheaded what could be a sign of the future
of digitized textbooks, also called eBooks, in online MBA programs
through a service it offers to its students called eLibrary.
eLibrary is a customized publishing service whereby instructors can pick
and choose segments of a variety of electronic textbooks to include as
reading material in a course, instead of having students purchase one or
two primary textbooks that may have some superfluous information or may
not cover absolutely everything an instructor may want to cover in a
particular course. The eLibrary service also allows students to search
through numerous electronic textbooks to obtain segmented information by
their topic of choice.
Supplemental reading material can include research papers, business
journal and magazine articles, digital library resources,
business-related websites, and lots of case studies in digitized form.
Much more information about how electronic case studies are used in
online MBA programs is provided in Chapter Ten.
Obviously, many courses, be they online or on-campus, have lectures. At
the University of Florida’s Internet MBA program, some faculty burn
their lectures onto DVDs. These DVDs might also include Microsoft
PowerPoint presentations, supplemental video clips, and animated
simulations.
According to Alex Sevilla, University of Florida MBA program director,
“The DVDs we use are much more of a show than a talking head where you
put a disk into your computer and hear a faculty member drone on about a
particular topic. It is very much meant to simulate a real lecture
environment, where faculty talk on a particular topic, show their
PowerPoint slides, and highlight certain content and resources that
interact with their lecture.”
PowerPoint is pretty much the software of choice used by businesses for
viewing presentations online, in a live meeting, or via external media
such as DVDs and CD-ROMs. In the online learning world, it’s not any
different. Many faculty compose their lectures with PowerPoint slides
and add audio and animation to them. Depending on the program’s
technology infrastructure, you may be able to access PowerPoint lectures
with audio through your CMS over the web. Other programs will ship you
CD-ROMs or DVDs that hold the PowerPoint lectures.
Still others may have lectures video streamed and provided online
through such software plug-ins as RealPlayer, Macromedia Flash, or
Windows Media Player. (Refer to Chapter Thirteen for information about
technical requirements, including video streaming plug-ins.) Others may
have text-based lectures provided in Microsoft Word or as PDF-formatted
documents, or simply posted on a web page. The beauty of all of these
methods - although anything that is purely text-based these days is
pretty boring - is that the lecture is recorded and can be viewed again
and again. So, if you’re not getting the subject matter under
discussion, you can always go back repeatedly until you do.
One
of the more modern trends in educational technologies is web
conferencing, which is a technology that allows students and faculty to
collaborate over an Internet connection in real time.
Classes meet online in a special conference area that allows them to
communicate with each other while simultaneously displaying PowerPoint
presentations, text, graphics, and video clips. With the proper software
and equipment, such as a computer microphone, speakers, and sound card,
students and faculty are able to speak with each other during
presentations as well as share and store files and links to online
resources, conduct polls, and use a whiteboard to annotate their
presentation or draw onscreen.
The
only downfall to this kind of educational technology is that it is
synchronous, requiring everyone to be online at the same time, which is
amplified if students live in different time zones. Plus busy
professionals who frequently travel may encounter difficulties accessing
this kind of technology over their on-the-road Internet connections.
However, web conferences can be recorded for later viewing if you can’t
make the live online gathering. Some of the leading web conferencing
software vendors in higher education include CentraNow, Macromedia
Breeze, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, HorizonLive, and Elluminate (not
by any means an exhaustive list).
According to Sevilla, “The students using our web conferencing tool (CentraNow)
speak very highly of it, and many of them understand what a quality
product it is because they use it on the corporate side. My guess is
that in three to four years, this won’t be a competitive advantage for
us because everybody will have some kind of web conferencing tool that
works well.”
Web
conferencing technology is a trend that has been occurring for some time
at major corporations that see it as a means for making dynamic online
presentations to their employees, partners, and sales prospects
worldwide and consequently saving dollars on travel costs. Many online
MBA programs have adopted this technology or have future plans of using
web conferencing in their online courses.
Because many online students cannot take full advantage of synchronous
(real-time) educational technologies such as the aforementioned web
conferencing tools, the next best thing, and the most ubiquitous
technology in an online course, is the online discussion board, which is
an asynchronous communication technology that does not require real-time
access. I discuss this topic more fully in Chapters Fifteen, Sixteen,
and Seventeen.
Basically, the discussion board is the heart and soul of most online
courses. Every CMS has discussion board software. Essentially,
discussion boards all work pretty much the same, with the professor
opening up discussions by posting a thought-provoking comment, question,
or challenge, such as an assignment to analyze and resolve a problem
represented in a business case study. Students respond to the
professor’s post, hopefully intelligently and in a meaningful way that
spurs more discussion among all students in the course. The initial post
ends up becoming a long thread of responses and varied points of view
that ultimately leads to a learning experience.
“A
huge part of our courses is the discussion board, which is used to
analyze cases,” said Paula O’Callaghan, fomer director of the Syracuse
University iMBA program. “It works very well in our program because it
is asynchronous. Our students are in 10 time zones. The discussion board
is the single most used feature in Blackboard.”
Live chat is another synchronous tool within your CMS that enables you
to communicate with students and faculty in real time. Chat is pretty
much limited to only text-based messaging that users type into a text
field, so it does not have all the bells and whistles of web
conferencing software. Live chat is used in those instances where
students and faculty may want an immediate response to a discussion or
lecture. It is also frequently used by professors to hold live office
hours at specific days and times.
“Syracuse University introduced me to a whole new realm when it comes to
digital convergence,” said Mike Venable, Syracuse University iMBA
graduate. “I could communicate with my classmates via e-mail or
real-time group chats. The Blackboard technology was a critical element
to my learning experience at SU.”
The
good old telephone is also frequently used in online MBA programs,
especially for team-based projects where groups of students need to
speak with each other to organize each other’s responsibilities and
deadlines concerning team assignments, which are common in online MBA
programs (see Chapters Ten and Seventeen). Phone-conferencing systems
are used in online courses for real-time, voice-to-voice interaction
among classmates and the instructor. Participants dial in to a special
number and join a meeting by entering an ID code. In some cases, the
phone conference is recorded and digitized and becomes available for
review online.
The
use of electronic simulations is another learning tool that is popular
in online MBA programs, as well as in on-campus MBA programs.
Simulations provide an electronic representation of real-world business
challenges that students can interact with repeatedly. The underlying
goal is to make the right business decisions and ultimately learn
something during the decision-making process.
The
University of Phoenix, for example, has a set of custom business
simulations that place students in real-world situations. The
simulations are created in Macromedia Flash. Students role play as
managers who must make a crucial business decision, such as pricing a
new product, or developing a marketing strategy, or implementing a
technology plan. They are provided with information such as marketing
reports and financial data that will help during the decision-making
process. The simulations are divided into cycles of time - week, month,
quarter, year. Students input their decisions and are given feedback.
Simulations are often referred to as the premiere model for engaging
students in effective problem-based learning environments. Problem-based
teaching and learning is discussed in greater detail in Chapter Ten.
The
typical multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and short-answer and
long-answer quizzes and exams are included in many online MBA courses.
In particular, quantitative courses rely heavily on quizzes that test
your knowledge of calculation theories and concepts, as well as your
ability to solve computational challenges with accuracy.
Many quizzes and exams are exactly like take-home tests, except they are
conducted with the aid of spreadsheet and database software such as
Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access. Some CMS products, or other
software applications, have equation editors that allow students to do
math equations online. For online quizzes, the instructor may give you a
specific date when the test will be made available through your CMS, and
a password to access the quiz. Some online quizzes are timed and
consequently shut down over a pre-established period beginning from the
moment you log on to take it.
For
final exams, you may be required to set up proctoring arrangements,
meaning you’ll need to be under supervision as you take the exam.
Sometimes these can be arranged through testing centers at local
colleges within your area. In Chapter Sixteen, I discuss quizzes, exams,
and test-taking skills.
Grading is also conducted online. Your professor will clearly outline how your final grade will be determined. Like on-campus courses, your grade will be calculated by percentages aligned with specific tasks. For example, a grading rubric may be divided as 20 percent for quizzes, 10 percent for team responses, and 60 percent for the final exam. Or it may be 50 percent quizzes and exams and 50 percent written assignments. The CMS may have a grade book tool that faculty use to record and keep track of your grades. Your progress as you move through the course will be made public to you and you alone when the faculty releases that information to you through the CMS, usually displayed in a table with your point totals for each item and your overall grade.
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