F-LIGHT

E-Newsletter for the Flashlight Program
For the Study and Improvement of
Educational Uses of Technology

• Online Support Services for Distant Learners: Findings About Student Needs and Satisfaction
• Online Collaborative Learning: Can Distance Enhance Quality (First in a Series on 'Asking the Right Questions')
• "Assess How Much Technology Use Helps Education? Helps It How? A Taxonomy of Goals for Using IT"
• WebCT starts the ball rolling: Selecting, Using, and Studying Web Course Management Systems
• Upcoming: The TLT Group's Seventh Annual Summer Institute at Syllabus  (last chance for a Flashlight Workshop....)
• New Flashlight subscribers
• Have a Question about Educational Uses of Technology?
• Learning More About Flashlight( free demo accounts), The TLT Group and F-LIGHT
  

Goal#1 of F-LIGHT: Gather and share examples of studies and of other evaluation-related activity that are making a difference in their institutions.  If you've done something of this sort, whether or not you used Flashlight tools or methods, we'd like to hear about it and have the opportunity to report on it here. 

E-mail is wonderful: please send the URL of this issue to everyone who needs this information! For information about starting or ending a subscription, sending us announcements, etc., see the bottom of this message.

Online Support Services for Distant Learners 

This report from Robin Zuniga, Associate Director of the Flashlight Program, summarizes a couple of interesting findings from our first two years of work with a Learning Anytime/Anywhere Project (LAAP) grant with the Washington State Board of Technical and Community Colleges.  Flashlight has been developing an evaluation tool for gathering data on the need for student services, and student satisfaction with existing online student services.

As Robin's brief article describes, studies during the first two years indicate that:

1. the more years of experience students have with technology, the more they prefer that various support services be offered that way (and vice versa), but
2. Some services they prefer 'face-to-face' (or even by telephone) to the Web, regardless of how much technology experience they have.

One of the most common questions about computers in education for the last forty+ years has been "How much better do they make education?" or words to that effect.  But what does "better" mean? Better at what?

One common error, often made in past years, was to assume that a program was either supposed to improve learning outcomes or to extend access to new learners, but not both. In fact it was assumed that attempts to extend access tended to threaten quality (by spreading resources more thinly among a larger number of learners, or by forcing a 'dumbing down' of the curriculum because, it was assumed, the new learners would be less well-prepared or motivated than others).  And it was assumed that technology aimed at improving outcomes would threaten equity of access - the expense of the technology would favor the rich institutions and students.

The truth seems a good deal more complicated. In a previous article, I argued that the best uses of computing tend to simultaneously improve some aspects of access to education and the quality of outcomes, while also threatening other dimensions of access and quality.  

In a new article, just posted on our Web site, Mauri Collins and I detail this argument by applying it to collaboration.  It's been a truism in education that:

• A campus is the right place for collaboration: Face to face
• Small is beautiful 

But is that always true? It's possible, in well-designed programs, that online interaction can aid the quality of learning in at least three ways (and the article provides examples of each):

• More intensive interaction
• Interaction among a wider variety of more diverse learners who, together, bring more to the table than the learners on campus can alone.
• Interaction about more authentic data, i.e., better things to talk about.

Have you done a study that documents whether or not these kinds of simultaneous gains in access to education and the quality of outcomes are possible? Whether your answer is "it worked" or "it failed" we'd like to publish your work here.

All evaluation starts with a "blob": the initial query or concern that starts things going. The vaguer the blob, the more focusing you need to do in order to get started with a useful study. The biggest (and probably the most common) blob is "how much better are we gaining from this investment in technology?"  

Designing a study requires focusing on some particular sense of that word "better."  What kinds of improvement are most often pursued through the use of technology.  The attached (first draft) article suggests a six part typology:

1. improving attainment of traditional learning goals; 

2. enabling new content/goals; 

3. extending access to education; 

4. increasing efficiency at the process or program level; 

5. attracting and retaining students and staff who demand certain levels of IT access

6. enhancing institutional status

Each of these goals suggests a different approach to assessment. The paper goes into more detail on #1 and #2, briefly describing some specific learning goals that are often pursued with technology.

The paper then discusses two ways to look at such goals: are these outcomes supposed to be the same for everyone ("uniform impact")? or might each student be pursuing different goals ("unique uses")? The paper summarizes how assessment strategies should differ according to the way it  balances these two ideas.

The full text of the paper is on the Web.  Comments, suggestions and related references can be sent to the author:

Thanks to a generous grant from WebCT, Flashlight is about to accelerate its development of a study package to help institutions assess and improve their use of course management systems.  The study package will be useful for all such products, commercial and home-grown.  Initial work will focus on a study package that can be used to improve faculty development, course development services, and technology support. 

We continue  to collect studies that colleges, universities, corporations, schools and others may have done of their uses of such Course Management Systems (CMSs), especially studies at the departmental or institutional levels.  We've begun to assemble and annotate the studies we've found. Not many so far: we need your help!  

Here are the kinds of studies and instruments in which we are most interested:

• Studies and instruments designed to document how an institution's system has been used, how it hasn't been used, what kinds of support and training were successful or unsuccessful, and what factors affect the system's use for different purposes. 

• Surveys, focus groups, data collection by the WCMS's themselves, and other means of investigation. 

• Studies that produced findings that were seen as useful by the institution (e.g., helped to confirm or alter arrangements for training or support; helped confirm or alter decisions about what WCMS to use). 

• Studies that helped document whether the system was of educational benefit to students, departments or the institution as a whole.

• Studies of the obvious and hidden costs (including time) of maintaining such systems.

If you have done such a study could you please send us a copy or a URL?  We'd also like to talk with you about whether or how you might improve the study design. If you know of such a study, could you tell us how we can find it?

Please send your information and suggestions to Helen Parke or Steve Ehrmann.

P.S.  The TLT Group also has other resources helpful in choosing a Web Course Management System.

The TLT Group's Seventh Annual Summer Institute at Syllabus, Santa Clara, California, July 20-24, 2001

The TLT Group can help you tackle some of the toughest and most important issues that can make or break efforts to use technology to improve teaching and learning.  This includes challenges such as:

1. Organizing collaborative change in ways that bridge gaps that can separate people, offices, departments and institutions (Engaging leading academic administrators;  Collaborative leadership skills;  Vendor relations;  TLT Roundtables;  Spiritual side of technology;  etc.)
2. Dealing with the support service crisis (Student Technology Assistants,  Finding, selecting, developing, or adapting support resources;  Disabilities & Intellectual Property Issues;  etc.)
3. Creating teaching, learning, and technology centers that can really synthesize the efforts of professionals in faculty development, the library, information technology, and other sectors of the institution (Inter-departmental, inter-office, inter-institutional programs;  Web-based Course Management Systems and Other Low-threshold Applications;  Compassionate pioneers;  etc.)
4. Gathering the kinds of data that can help fuel further improvement or chart the kinds of pressures and costs that can sometimes lead to busted budgets and burned-out staff  (Flashlight studies;  etc.)

Treat this conference as a working retreat where you or a team from your institution can tackle big issues while also attending sessions that help you both focus and widen your perspectives.   You will have: time to work, supporting briefing papers (if you're working in one of the areas above), and the opportunity to attend the normal panoply of excellent sessions and workshops at the Syllabus Conference.

Important Note: Flashlight holds only a few long workshops each year; the preconference workshop for the Summer Institute (July 20)  is the only one now scheduled; there are not likely to be any more in 2001.

Click here for:

• More information on the TLT Group sessions at Syllabus
• More information on the Syllabus Conference 

New Flashlight Subscribers

Institutions joining the Flashlight Network this past month include: Millikan University, the University of the District of Columbia, the University of Notre Dame, and Wright State University.

For an almost-current list of the almost 260 institutions in the Network, subscribers to the Tool Series, and other licensees of the Flashlight Current Student Inventory, you can visit our list of participating institutions.

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The Flashlight Program for the Study and Improvement of Educational Uses of Technology is part of the non-profit TLT Group, Inc., an affiliate of the American Association for Higher Education. 

If your institution needs to get a better look at the Flashlight Current Student Inventory, or at Flashlight Online (the Web-based system that lets you use the CSI, among other utilities), the best way is for someone at your institution to request a temporary, free demonstration account.  Send e-mail to Flashlight@tltgroup.org with the header "Free Demo Account" to ask for details. One account per institution, please.

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