Abstract:
A “Web Courselet” is a set of customizable online course materials developed and pre-formatted for use in WebCT or other Courseware Management Systems (CMS). These newly emerging instructional products have the potential to redefine the Instructional Systems Design (ISD) process and the roles of those involved in providing Distance Education in Universities.
The presentation examines the resource-reallocation function of “Web Courselets.” It suggests a new paradigm for online course creation – one that is designed focused, rather than the current development-focused paradigm. The presentation also explores how this new paradigm will result in the redefinition of roles in faculty-support organizations, and the changes that may take place in the Instructional Design Process. One hoped-for consequences is an improvement in the quality of online educational courses based on University adoption of “Web Courselets”.
Keywords:
Web Courselet – A set of customizable online course materials developed and pre-formatted for use in WebCT or other Courseware Management Systems (CMS). Also referred to as “E-Packs”, “Resource Packs”, or “Online Learning Centers (OLC).
Sub-theme C:
The changing status, structures and functions of universities in the networked age: Increasing interdependence between knowledge producers and the economy in the knowledge society.
The Resource Reallocation Function of Web Courselets
Introduction
We use the word 'Courselets' to refer, at first, to the online course modules now being supplied by educational publishing companies ready for online delivery through major Course Management Systems (CMS), such as WebCT or Blackboard. These modules are generally designed to accompany a textbook, following its chapter structure, and providing additional resources and quiz questions.
Defined this way, Courselets are the latest manifestation of a trend, which began years ago in the publishing industry -- supplementing the traditional textbook with other instructional media, such as video, CD-ROMs, and, more recently, websites.
But even though they are in one sense, merely the next step in an evolutionary process, Courselets also represent a radically different capability. Due to the emergence and rapid adoption of Course Management Systems in post-secondary education, Courselets have the potential to move beyond supplementation and into outright replacement. Once it is installed inside a CMS, a Courselet is a complete stand-alone instructional vehicle. Students can interact directly with these Courselets-in-a-CMS as their entire credit-bearing experience, with minimal, if any, faculty involvement.
It is not inevitable that Courselets will lead education in this direction. More than ever before, however, the possibility exists for courses to be entirely commoditized and outsourced. Profit-making corporations would be the producers, educational institutions would be the middlemen, and students would truly be consumers.
Courselets are Here
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, publishing companies became multimedia producers, focusing on CD-ROMs as a readily distributable textbook supplement. Gradually the content development efforts shifted to the Web, so that by the late 1990s, all of the major educational publishers had created websites for most of the large enrollment undergraduate courses.
Like the CD-ROMs and the videocassettes before them, publisher websites were, at best, a collection of supplemental resources. It was not until the proliferation of Course Management Systems, such as WebCT or Blackboard, that the crucial step toward Instructor irrelevance was even conceivable; i.e., this potential has emerged within the past twelve months.
Let's take a look at where things stand:
1) The CMS Perspective: WebCT claims the highest adoption of its CMS in post-secondary education, with over 1500 colleges and universities around the world using the product. As of November 1, 2000, twenty-five publishers were offering a total of five hundred and ninety Courselets for the WebCT platform. This number is expected to grow at a phenomenal rate.
Blackboard, WebCT's primary CMS competitor in the higher education marketplace, is supported in a similar manner by many of the same publishers. Several publishers also support the eCollege and/or Top Class platforms.
All Course Management Systems providing Courselets use proprietary compression algorithms, which allow an entire online course to be "zipped," and only "unzipped," (uncompressed) within the specified CMS environment. The zipped Courselet can be supplied to the student via file-transfer protocol (FTP) or burned onto a CD-ROM that is then shipped.
2) Inside a Courselet: Courselets are designed around textbooks. They follow the topical structure of the textbook they are meant to accompany, with each topic supported by a wide range of resources that could be characterized as "Instructional Objects." A Courselet is not merely a collection of objects organized into chapters, however.
A Courselet can be seen as an almost-complete online course, immediately usable with very little modification. Publishers articulate their instructional design considerations by chunking and presenting the resources they supply into a coherent sequence. Prompts and suggestions are also provided to help the intended Faculty users in applying the material to fulfill educational objectives.
The resources contained in a Courselet include graphics, audio and video clips, simulations, self-tests, quizzes and examinations. These instructional objects are stored in searchable databases, so that Faculty users who do not wish to use a Courselet "as is" can easily pick and chose items to supplement their own material. Thus, a Courselet can be seen as a convenient and extensive source of completed objects for the development of customized learning support environments.
3) Producing Courselets: Publishers tend to select large-enrollment, general studies courses for building Courselets. However, if an editor thinks that supplementary material is warranted for a more specialized course, and has the budget for it, a Courselet may be developed.
Production models vary somewhat, but the process generally involves a Professor, acting as Subject Matter Expert (SME), working in conjunction with media specialists. The SME is responsible for an outline and summary of what is to be covered chapter by chapter, as well as test questions, suggested learning activities and a glossary. Since academic SMEs generally lack the computer skills or resources to develop digital multimedia content, this aspect of the process is handed off to technical specialists, who may work directly for the publisher or be independent contractors. Input into the content of a Courselet is also provided to an overall editorial team by the publishers' direct sales force, who are in daily contact with faculty in colleges and universities all over the world.
4) Acquiring Courselets: There are as many financial models for acquiring and using Courselets as there are publishers offering them. Most models involve student payment, either directly or indirectly.
First, in what might be called the "Student Centered" approach, the decision to purchase a Courselet is made solely by registered students in a given course. The economic transaction is exclusively between the publisher and the student, with a typical cost ranging between $20-$30 for a semester-based course.
In other cases, an instructor might decide to use the Courselet either on a stand-alone or a supplemental basis and pass the associated cost along to the students as an increased textbook fee. In one senior-level management course with approximately 30 registered students at Utah State University, the cost of using the Courselet resulted in a $10 surcharge for the textbook.
Finally, in some instances an Instructor is able to convince the publisher that course enrollment is so large that the Courselet surcharge should be waived. At least one publisher, McGraw-Hill, routinely makes Courselets available at no charge to the school, student, or instructor regardless of class size, as long as one of their textbooks is adopted for the course. By providing free online content preformatted for WebCT and other Course Management Systems, this publisher hopes to gain new business from instructors who are teaching online. This policy is, of course, under constant review.
Out of the Cottage and into What?
Education is still the last of the great cottage industries. It has not been taken over by private enterprise for a variety of complex reasons, but the fundamental resistance to profit-driven change lies in the way that the service has necessarily been delivered. Education has never been a good candidate for pure market capitalism because it has been too labor intensive and more characterized by economies of proportion than economies of scale.
All of this is changing.
There are, of course, several profitable, post secondary education companies operating at this time -- including the University of Phoenix, Devry Institute, and Sylvan Learning Systems -- with more private universities being launched on a regular basis. Commenting on the phenomenon of private sector competition in education, Marchese (1998) quotes several Wall Street reports describing education as "an addressable market opportunity, "inefficient, lowtech," and "lacking professional management."
Apparently the financial community believes that the time has come to run education like a business. Budget pressures and taxpayer revolts play into this equation. So does the national movement for standards and standardized testing, which create consistent and widespread output measures needed for scalability.
Without the technology to enable new ways of developing and delivering instruction, however, education would remain in the cottage. It is the Internet as a low-cost delivery vehicle and Course Management Systems as a platform that finally give the private sector the means to transform the last hold-out against industrialization. Taylor (2000) describes past transitions to capitalism, and claims that in most cases, "we can identify a critical point -- usually based on a newly available technology -- at which the successful invasion of craft-based production began."
All of the forces driving the industrialization of education are represented in Courselets. They are the embodiment of Internet publishing, combined with knowledge management, interactive multimedia, and learning objects. They also have the potential to be explicitly standards-driven. Courselets are the "critical point."
"Socrates was not a Content Provider"
David Noble, who made the wry observation about Socrates quoted above, has led the protest against everything that Courselets stand for. His fiery rhetoric is always entertaining and sometimes on target. Along with others, he has performed a valuable service by pointing out the perils of post-Cottage education.
Noble sees a future characterized by "digital diploma mills," in which technology replaces expensive human beings wherever possible and turns the rest, inevitably, into wage slaves. Courselets do, in fact, create just such a possibility. From the faculty perspective, a stand-alone, self-grading course with content tailored to standards and accessible on a 24/7 basis definitely looks threatening. John Henry never beats the steam hammer.
How does it look from the learner's point of view? The idea of an educational system devoid of human interaction and confined to Courselets on a CRT is pretty grim. On the other hand, an educational system consisting primarily of large lecture courses and overworked Graduate Students isn't all that different. Besides, with market forces freely at work for the first time ever in American education, ineffective Courselets might be weeded out, allowing the superior ones to prevail.
The upside for students is obviously convenience, and to some extent, quality. Industrially-produced learning resources can be more costly and sophisticated than cottage industry materials because the development expense can be amortized over a much greater number of students. Typical Courselets available today, for example, contain a significant number of items that are costly to produce, such as animations, or audio and video clips, which are beyond the means of a single faculty member or even most academic departments.
However, critics of distance education, such as John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, Michael Margolis, and Noble would never equate higher production values with quality. Distance and any form of mediation means less human interaction. Learning, in this view, is inherently a social experience, which depends upon immediate collaboration and interaction. To David Noble, Socrates is the perfect exemplification of learning as an active interchange between mentor and student.
The actual information exchanged is not the point of a Socratic dialogue. It is the living experience that matters. Courselets are the opposite. They are content-driven and focus exclusively on the delivery of information.
Awareness
Publishers, faculty and instructional designers all have a crucial role to play if Couselets are to lead to more effective instruction. The pitfalls and dangers are clear. But what is the path that will direct us all toward more engaging learning experiences for students?
As an emerging phenomenon, Courselets need to be properly introduced to University faculty. Rather than heralding them as a way to create an online course in a matter of minutes, they should be represented as a resource to be drawn upon in support of a design already developed by the instructor, perhaps in cooperation with an instructional designer. Furthermore, faculty members need to be made aware of the structures that exist within the University to assist them in making the most out of the Courselets available in their subject area, both for online and traditional face-to-face courses.
Publishers and their representatives also have a role to play in creating awareness. These companies maintain records of textbooks in use at each University, records that can be cross-referenced to courses supported by Courselets. With this information, there is no reason for instructors to be unaware of such additional resources. Universities might even make this process more efficient by inviting multiple publishers to show their Courselets to the entire faculty at annual or semi-annual Technology Expositions.
An event of this nature recently conducted at Utah State University had representatives of seven major publishing companies in attendance for the express purpose of exposing Courselets to faculty members.
Finally, most colleges and Universities have created impressive Faculty Development Centers, meant to empower teachers by training them in the use of technology. As a part of their educational mission, these Centers typically conduct workshops and seminars in the Course Management Software adopted by their University. By adding Courselets as a component of the overall training process, availability and benefits of publisher-supplied materials can be efficiently transmitted to a self-selecting audience that is presumably ready to hear the message.
From Development to Design
The role of Faculty Development Centers in ensuring the appropriate utilization of Courselets goes well beyond creating awareness. Originally launched in many cases to help faculty become digital producers, they have often had the opposite effect of shifting the locus of control for online development from the faculty to the center. Now they are expected to keep the cottage industry spirit alive, when it is in the process of being overwhelmed by well-funded high-tech private competitors. As developers, both faculty and their centers cannot possibly keep up and should not waste their precious resources attempting to do so any longer.
Getting out of the cottage-scale development business is not a tragic loss -- it is a wonderful opportunity. It means that Faculty Development Centers and the faculty itself can focus on design and teaching. It means that instead of becoming "instant courses," Courselets be seen as a repository of learning objects for the instructor to use selectively, within the framework of an overall instructional design.
Courselets in and of themselves are nothing more than information presented in a variety of media. And in the frequently quoted words of Dr. David Merrill:
Information is not instruction
The meaning of this phrase is identical to Noble's point about Socrates. Clearly, instruction has something to with information. But for learning to take place, it is best for the information to be embedded in an engaging experience. Furthermore, the experience needs certain characteristics to ensure maximum effectiveness -- it should be an active experience, with problems to solve and skills to apply, as well as a human experience, with coaching and demonstrations.
A Systematic Process
Creating such experiences is what instructional designers and faculty members should be working toward, in partnership. Despite the protestations of those who believe that distance and technology must come at the expense of interaction, it may be that the shift from development to design will allow us to create human connections among more learners than ever before.
However, partnerships between faculty and instructional designers need to be guided by procedures and supported by preparation by both sides or these benefits will not occur. To the extent that faculty are seeking to enrich courses they have already taught many times, their objectives and content breakdown may already be known, at least implicitly. They need to make this curriculum analysis explicit and then bring it to the partnership, along with clear indications of the level of interaction they feel is required at each important point in the material.
For their part, instructional designers need to be equally well prepared regarding instructional strategies, as well as elements within available Courselets that can support those strategies. It is the designer's responsibility to evaluate Courselets and to frame this analysis within a consistent template, which can then serve others within the University. Armed with a working knowledge of Courselet resources and pedagogical techniques for creating student interaction, designers can match their tools up with well-articulated faculty objectives.
This process of linking faculty needs to sophisticated designs at the micro level can proceed on a step-by-step basis through an entire course. Such an approach can help ensure that distributed learning means more than merely absorbing content. Panels, discussions, debates, role playing simulations -- these and many other learning activities can be used to breathe life into online courses.
Quality Instruction on a Global Scale
Attractive a model as it may be, Plato's idyllic academy model could never serve a significant number of the residents of planet earth. Internet-based collaborative tools, used in conjunction with content delivery vehicles such as Courselets, may preserve the dialogue and the teacher-student relationship, while making the experience available to more people than Socrates spoke with in his life.
Critics will point out that this sort of engaging, involving instruction is not the norm at this time by any means. As is generally the case with a new medium, we are looking first at its predecessors and attempting to copy the old onto the new. In specific, this means shoveling lecture notes onto HTML pages as rapidly as possible and pretending that these boring page-turners are the real thing.
Courselets are the logical extension of this approach. They may go beyond mere text on a page, but they are most frequently not interactive and they miss the social dimension of learning entirely. However, we should not extrapolate from this early phase and assume that the online learning future has to be devoid of everything that makes instruction meaningful.
We need to stop looking at the past for our models. What we used to call a course within the confines of a classroom may not be what courses will look like at all in the distributed learning environments of the not-too-distant future. There will be an important role for Courselets in the new online formats we develop -- in fact they might lead the way to online Academies that Socrates would be proud to teach in, Academies in which developers develop, designers design, and teachers teach.
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