A Decade of Online Learning Technologies

Welcome to Dr. Trudy Abramson's class blog for DCTE 760, winter 2008. I have been monitoring the evolution of Web 2.0 technologies - blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and to a lesser extent, podcasting - waiting for a respectable foundation of scholarly literature to be published appropriate to higher education teaching and learning. Whereas much has appeared, it is largely how-to, anecdotal, K-12 or training related. It remains for us, and others who are undertaking similar experiments and investigations of the new technologies in higher education, to bring Web 2.0 applications into the mainstream.



To initiate our foray into the read/write web, below is an editorial written about a decade ago for a now defunct journal, HyperNexus, the Journal of Hypermedia and Multimedia Studies, published by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) for HyperSig, a special interest group.



Abramson, T. (1998). The editor's pulpit: Adapting instruction to the medium. HyperNexus: Journal of Hypermedia and Multimedia Studies, 8(3), 2-3.


Adaptive Instruction Circa 1998
The word "adaptive" as an adjective describing instruction or assessment typically refers to a process that adapts to an individual learner. Recently, adaptive instruction has taken on a new meaning: Adapting presentation of instruction to available technology.


Today’s Internet has three menu offerings: plain vanilla or all-text with hyperlinks, vanilla and chocolate or text with still images and hyperlinks, and best of all, any three flavors or text, still and moving images, sound and hyperlinks. Given freedom of choice and the assurance that all orders will be filled equally fast, most people would opt for full hypermedia/multimedia. However, sometimes the best of all possible worlds is simply not available. Computers that access the Internet at a speed lower than 56 kilobytes per second (kbs) or that are equipped with last year’s browsers, can do little more than present text at people-acceptable rate. The choice, then, is take what is available or do without. We advocate choosing to use Internet resources in the learning process.


Adapting learning to media is an instructional design (ID) issue whose solution is nowhere as cumbersome as it first appears to be. There are five steps to the ID process. First is analysis where a thorough needs assessment is conducted to determine the needs of the target audience. Second is design in which the subject matter expert provides the subject expertise to the designer who sculpts the lesson plan. Third is development where prototypes of the lesson take shape. Through these time-consuming, labor-intensive processes, tentative decisions are made regarding which media to use for product development. At the fourth step, implementation, the lesson is given a physical life of its own and becomes a product. The final ID step, evaluation, assesses the value of the product as an instructional vehicle.


Internet Technologies

Increasingly, education and training applications are being delivered across the Internet in order to reach as many learners as possible in as many different settings as possible. As defined above, the Internet is not a single technology so it then becomes necessary to ADAPT THE INSTRUCTION TO THE MEDIUM. In other words, the same content may be delivered using all text, text and graphics, and full multimedia. Will these option present equal learning opportunities? Of course, they do not. However, the alternatives are to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator or to exclude those who do not have state-of-the-art online systems. Supporters of adaptive instruction say, in effect, "Here is the instruction. Avail yourself of the most sophisticated version possible."


How much additional development time is required to develop the three options? Refer back to the ID description above. Only implementation must be done in three versions to accommodate different browsers and modem speeds. Given the choice between text only or no access at all, almost everyone would choose text only. Similarly, given the choice between fast-access text and watching images come across one line at a time or watching images build at some unfathomable fashion, most people would choose text only.


Educators have long ago agreed that the involvement of the greater number of senses and the use of more sophisticated media enrich the delivery and accommodate the largest number of learning styles. Until the day when we all have the best possible technology, let us adapt instruction to available media.
[End of editorial]

All responses/comments should be 200 words or fewer.

1. Write a brief history of how far we have come in a decade in terms of evolution of online learning technologies. Include URLs if appropriate.

2. Write a brief, state of the art description of the availability of online learning tools. Include URLs if appropriate.

3. Describe an online lesson that capitalizes upon implementation with today's media.

4. Comment on the applicability of the instructional design process described above to today's learning media.

5. What can we do with today's technologies that could not be done a decade ago?