Edited by Betty Collis
Faculty of Educational Science and Technology
University of Twente
The Netherlands
June 1994
by Betty Collis
This book has a remarkable history. It is the product of a collaborative, on-line, cross-cultural educational activity involving 35 persons from ten countries. It was begun and completed within a month's time. The authors are all students in the senior-level course, "On-Line and Distance Learning", being offered for the first time at the Faculty of Educational Science and Technology in The Netherlands. There were 21 students in the course, one of whom was participating in the course at a distance, while being part of an exchange year in the UK. Four of the students in the course were exchange students themselves at the University of Twente, three from Barcelona and one from Germany. Because of the exchange students, the course was entirely conducted in English, the mother tongue of only one of the students. Thus cross-cultural issues were part of the course from the beginning.
The goals of the course were to give the students a wide range of experiences in various aspects of on-line learning, both as a supplement to traditional face-to-face courses and to support distance participation. We studied issues and possibilities relating to communication, cooperative-work at a distance, and locating resources. We examined different types of instrumentation to provide the user interface to on-line learning and we accessed different types of servers and services. We paid most attention to the Internet, as an available and fascinating channel for educational activity. The final assignment of the course had, as one component, that the students work together on-line with a partner in the course and a distant partner--a "reviewer" invited to contribute in an on-line interaction with the students on the basis of the passing back and forth of various versions of a document about some topic of importance to on-line learning.
These documents are the chapters of this book.
The book is intended to be a self-study document, through which the reader can not only get an overview of issues affecting on-line learning, but can use on-line resources on the Internet to follow-up the material in the chapters. The book will subsequently be mounted on a WWW server and made available on-line as part of the course materials for the following round of the On-Line and Distance Learning course.
Chapters 1 to 7 take as a starting point some aspects of the technology of on-line learning. From these starting points, they make extensions to educational activities. All make reference to interesting resources available on the Internet. Chapters 1 and 2 look at two types of tools and environments to help information organization and retrieval on the Internet: Mosaic and WAIS. Chapters 3 and 4 look at e-mail and computer conferencing. Chapters 5 and 7 extend the technology to examine developments in video and audio conferencing over the Internet, and ISDN.
Chapters 8 through 11 focus on on-line learning from perspectives broader than the technical opportunities themselves. Chapter 8 considers motivating the distant and perhaps isolated learner, Chapter 9 focuses on the teacher and his needs as he attempts to locate on-line resources and integrate them into his instructional practice. Chapter 10 looks at the implications of on-line learning for an educational institution. Chapter 11 reflects on issues relating to cross-cultural communication when the on-line learners come from different cultures and language backgrounds.
Taken together, the book is first iteration of an on-going adventure--discussing the educational possibilities of on-line learning and having at least some of this discovery take place through the process itself of using on-line resources and communication.
We wish to express particular thanks to the persons who served as external members of our class community during the preparation of these chapters. Their names are listed in the table of contents. Having external colleagues with whom they could work cooperatively on an on-line task was a valuable experience for the students, and the generous contributions of time and input that the external reviewers made is much appreciated.
Please address any questions to:
Betty Collis
COLLIS@EDTE.UTWENTE.NL
Faculty of Educational Science and Technology
University of Twente
Postbus 217
7500 AE Enschede
The Netherlands