e-Learning: Emerging Pedagogies
Bob Jensen at Trinity University
Introduction
Emerging Pedagogies
Assessment of Online Learning
The Darker Sides of Distance Education
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For two workshops at the American Accounting Association 1999 Annual Meetings in San Diego, I prepared update modules on the following topics:
Module 1: e-Education: Partnerings Save the Day
Module 2: e-Learning: Emerging Pedagogies
Module 3: e-Research: New Research Opportunities
Module 4: e-Technology: Emerging Technologies
Module 5: e-Publishers: A History of Failed Ventures
Module 6: e-CPA Review: Updates on Commercial CPA Exam Software
Module 7: e-Peep: Peeking out from Behind our Campus Bunkers
Module 8: e-Sharing: Some Free Cases from Bob Jensen
What follows is Module 2 on e-Learning with particular focus on innovative e-Education
experiments with pedagogy innovations.
Web Becomes the Library of the World
Searches and Filtering
Probably the major advantage of digitization of text has been the ability to search
digitized text for key words and word strings. But as the web exploded with millions
upon millions of documents, overload of information (e.g., thousands or even millions of
"hits" on a search topic), this technology became a curse as well as a blessing.
Fortunately, various forms of filtering services have emerged. For example,
on July 25, 1999, the PBS show Computer Chronicles ran a feature on web sites for
parenting. One of the web sites not only filters out subsets of parenting web sites
and rates them, it allows users to aid in the rating process.
Instant Publication/Updating
Another enormous value of the web is the spontaneity with which something can be
published, edited, and revised. When I put up a document, I sometimes start getting
feedback within minutes from users about needed corrections and suggestions for revisions.
A woman whom I've never met face-to-face usually has something constructive to say
within minutes after I post a new weekly edition of Bob Jensen's New Bookmarks.
I can create revised documents instantaneously from anywhere in the world. In
a sense this is the purist form of competition. The test for an author's
contribution is not a backroom filled with unseen referees holding the keys to the gates
of publication. The Internet's gates are never locked and contributions are tested
in the most competitive of all criteria --- whether or not users find them worthwhile.
There is a a dark side, however, when authors disguise bad research or make
outlandish claims that referees would never allow to pass through the locked gates.
For example, Internet users should be very wary of health advice and claims for herbal
cures to diseases.
RDF/XML
The biggest thing to ever hit the Internet was invention of HTML/HTTP components that
constitute what is known as the world wide web or simply "the web." The
web's inventor in 1990 was a particle physicist named Tim Berners-Lee. Now in 1999,
Tim Berners-Lee claims that the next big thing on the web will be RDF built upon XML.
You can read about this as follows:
My point in this section is that the emerging search and filtering utilities are having a monumental impact upon learning and research. Old pedagogy must take these utilities under its wing and lift up to new heights.
Web Becomes the Business Turnpike of the World
Go to the e-Commerce
Updates
Since the Industrial Revolution, commerce has never seen a revolution as enormous as the e-Commerce revolution. We are just now beginning to realize that the e-Commerce revolution may be just as important to business education curricula and research in the 21st Century and the Industrial Revolution was to higher education in the 20th Century.
Universities are already beginning to realize this and are adding courses and programs accordingly.
Go to the Haas School of Business
Some Curriculum Imagination --- Tearing Down Smoke Stacks and Turf
Fences
Go to the Penn State
CUBE Site
Brigham Young University
AECC Innovations
Education technologies and ease of communication increase our abilities to
integrate the traditional disciplines of business education (e.g., accounting, finance,
information systems, management, marketing, business economics, business statistics,
etc.). Advantages include the following:
The Ernie-Types of Interaction From Databases
Go to Ernie
Just-in-time learning will entail online searching of knowledge bases
much like Ernie customers search the Ernie database for answers to accountancy,
tax, auditing, systems, technology, and personnel questions.
Delayed-Response Interaction --- the ALN Experiments
See University
if Illinois Experiments
The Sloan Foundation funded experiments in various universities demonstrated that communication between students and their instructors tend to increase rather than decrease when classes no longer meet face-to-face in asynchronous learning pedagogy. Communication between classmates also increased. These interactions can by synchronous even when classes do not meet face-to-face, but the preponderance of communications tend to be delayed in the sense that instructors and classmates process messages when they find the time unless chat rooms are set up for synchronous interactions online.
Live Interaction With Experts
It would be very expensive and impractical to bring 30 students, five professors from different nations, five standard setters from different nations, and five leading professional accountants together each week for one semester in a traditional classroom. It is possible, however, to carry this off using newer distance education technologies used by Professor Lightner.
Sharon Lightner's International Accounting Course http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255light.htm
Live Interaction With Instructors and Classmates Around the World
GEMBA
SoloMike and NetMike Simulated Realities
Go to Mike's
Bike Shop
[Add quote form a link page]
Virtual Realities and VR Caves
Go to SDSC
Visualization Site
Science educators and researchers are bringing VR visualizations to life across the web. Applications have great potential for accountancy education, but they are virtually non-existent today.
Mixed Pedagogies
Nothing says that a complete course or a complete curriculum must be all synchronous versus asynchronous. Nor is it necessary for all classes or all courses to be either traditional or distance education courses. Both the GEMBA and the E&Y Assurance Services curricula mix some courses that must be taken on campus with courses that must be taken over the web. For example, the GEMBA curriculum has 11 weeks of residential courses and 50 weeks of online courses.
Go to the E&Y MS in Assurance Services
Go to the GEMBA
Intermediate Accounting Goes BAM
One thing I really like about the BAM project at the University of Virginia and
Villanova University is that drill on topics resurfaces on a regular basis over the course
of two semesters of Intermediate Accounting. See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm#UVA020
. I might add that this is probably one of the reasons the students do better on the CPA
examination without having to necessarily increase the time spent in drill --- the secret
is distribution over time. See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm#UVA000.
Go to the
BAM Homepage
Go to Bob Jensen's analysis at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
The innovative way that general education core courses are taught
without lectures at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:
Go to Christian Science Monitor Article about Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/insites/miller_print/mm981009.htm
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1998/05/05/fp51s1-csm.htm http://www.rpi.edu/dept/science/www/Interactive_learning/classrooms.html
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/bp/oz/tsld011.htm
(PowerPoint Slides)
Coaches Versus Teachers
The May/June 1999 issue of Educom Review is available in hard copy and in electronic form at http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm99/erm993.html. This issue has two articles about coaches versus teachers in education. On Page 28, Don Norman states the following:
So the real trick in education is to provide just the right level of difficulty to allow learning to occur and not to allow frustration to occur. If students are too frustrated, they will just give up. I would like to see a much more interactive style of lecturing where professors become coaches as opposed to the source of all knowledge.
On Page 22, Peter Denning states writes as follows:
Nevertheless, many faculty feel disoriented as teachers in the world of multimedia, web-based modules, TV links, live-boards, chat rooms and other affects of information technology. They have not been trained as coaches and managers and their institutions offer no significant development programs to help them learn; and yet at some point they will be evaluated more on the results produced by their students than on opinions of their faculty peers. They are professionals but do not see that this is the primary reason that students come to them. Herein lies the major opportunity for professional success of teachers.
To this I might add the problem of overcoming biases of students --- they expect teachers to teach rather than be "coaches and
managers." Even if their learning is superior and longer-lasting after being coached
and managed, they may give low ratings to educators for not teaching. Being taught, in
viewpoint of many students, means not having to learn as much on their own and having to
read less and sweat less. Students seek out teachers who funnel feed great knowledge with
masterful wisdom. It is the hard-hearted and battle-scarred coach who can overcome the
urge to be popular knowing that without pain there is not gain. My more detailed comments
about this are located at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm.
Here is some recent information on assessment of learning. This article does not deal
with
accounting. Rather it focuses more IT training. However, it is very current and seems to
be
somewhat better than the bulk of the short articles on assessment that I stumble upon. The
title is
"Training Developers More Efficiently," Information Week, June 14, 1999, 1A-10A.
The online
version is at http://www.informationweek.com/738/38addev.htm.
The bottom line conclusion is that "the manner in which information is presented is
as important as
the information itself, so using the latest technology and best practices is key."
The article points out that trainers and educators often do not evaluate vendors and
courseware
adequately. I think this is especially true for educators who adopt a particular textbook
and then
simply "take" whatever technology products come with the book (e.g., PowerPoint
slides or a
simulation game).
Another point raised in the article is as follows: "Though students may say that
exercises are boring,
drills are important to long-term learning." I think in our efforts to stay
"mod" with team projects,
group learning, discovery learning, etc., we sometimes forget the importance of drill.
There is a nice section in the article on self-study versus classroom learning.
The Darker Sides of Distance Education