University Technology Policy and Governance

Technology Governance

Benchmarks for course and program quality are based on a deep understanding of the needs and desires of adult students. As Hanna (2003) indicates, the new metrics for program quality in higher education are “…based on outcomes that matter to students and employers rather than on inputs that matter to faculty and administrators” (p. 30). Flexibility, responsiveness, timeliness, efficiency, and applicability are at the heart of the quality benchmarks (Hanna, 2003). Johnstone (2005) adds that the differentiator for remarkable programs “…is, and will be, service to students.”
The following documents represent established guidelines for quality higher education courses and programs and they form the foundation of principles of good practice at.
Best Practices for Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate Programs - The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. (Best Practices in Distance Education).

Sloan-C Five Pillars of Quality – (http://www.sloan-c.org/effective/index.asp)
o Student Access
o Student Satisfaction
o Learning Effectiveness
o Faculty Satisfaction
o Cost Effectiveness and Institutional Commitment
TLT (Teaching, Learning and Technology) Flashlight Project - Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. (http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/seven.html)
o Encourages student-faculty contact.
o Encourages cooperation among students.
o Encourages active learning.
o Gives prompt feedback.
o Emphasizes time on task.
o Communicates high expectations.
o Respects diverse talents and ways of learning.
Chickering, A., & Ehrmann, S. C. (1996). Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. AAHE Bulletin, 49 (2), 3-6.
Chickering, A., & Gamson, Z. (1987). Seven principles of good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin, 39, 3-7.
Hanna, D. (2003). Building a leadership vision: Eleven strategic challenges for higher education. EDUCAUSE Review, 38 (4), 24.
Johnstone, S. M. (2005). “New Benchmarking Approach: Open Educational Resources.” NUTN [Conference]. San Francisco. 12 June. 2005.
Distance Education: Guidelines for Good Practice
The Higher Education Program and Policy Council of the American Federation of Teachers:
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/higher_ed/distance.pdf

Instructional Technology Development

Distance Education

Models for teaching online
It is a truism among educational researchers that media studies, i.e. studies which seek to compare one means of instructing against another, have no useful purpose, whether or not the measured differences in learning are significant (c.f. Twigg). In large part this is because different media for instruction have different strengths.
Some researchers have investigated possibilities of developing software that would be flexible enough for the varying pedagogies of differing disciplines. Others have quietly continued to contribute studies that have gradually developed the mainstream models and pushed our understanding of the current models forward. Instructional design theory, with its careful attention to the pedagogical process, was slow to leap into the breach but then contributed practices that have been essential to the success of online learning. Still others have been software-oriented. Few academic fields have contributed; educational disciplines (which own the underlying pedagogical discourse) have remained within their towers, while teachers of dance and engineering have floundered.
Ertmer, P. (2006). Efficacy of peer feedback in online learning environments. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA. Available: http://www.edci.purdue.edu/ertmer/docs/AERA06_fdbk.pdf

Measuring Success in Online Courses and Programs
The Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) report, Measuring Success in Web-Based Distance Learning represents one example of criteria for evaluating course and program success.
(see Measuring Success in Web-Based Distance Learning for the full report.)

Client-Services Support and a Team Project Approach
Distributed Learning often employs a multi-point, client-services support model. The goal is to provide all the services and resources instructors and students need, when and where they need them. To this end Distance Learning staff interact with faculty, staff and students in-person, with the web and Internet, and with the phone. Distance Learning staff work to make instructors successful with all of their distance and distributed learning experiences. (See Fink, 2002).
Fink, M.L. (2002). Faculty on the Move: Rethinking Faculty Support Services, In Syllabus, 15 (7), 27-29.
Team Project Approach Source:
Adapted from a process developed by the Online Instruction Group at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Public Health. Used with permission.
Note: Process outlined in an article originally published in The Technology Source (http://ts.mivu.org/) as:
Chapman, D., & Nicolet, T. (2003). Using the Project Approach to Online Course Development, In The Technology Source, March/April 2003. Available online at The Technology Source

Course classification - the continuum
alt^I supports a wide variety of course types, including all of the technology-mediated courses described in the Sloan Consortium publication, Growing by Degrees: Online Education in the United States, 2005 – p.4:
http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/survey/pdf/growing_by_degrees.pdf

Sloan-C effective practices
http://sloan-c.org/effective/index.asp
Sloan-C focuses on five pillars of quality in online education: student satisfaction, access, learning effectiveness, faculty satisfaction and institutional cost effectiveness. For each of these areas, pillar editors are collecting practices that are innovative and replicable.

1:1

DiGangi, S., Kilic, Z., Yu C. H., Jannasch-Pennel, A, Long,L., Kim, C., Stay, V., & Kang, S. (in press). 1 to 1 computing in higher education: A survey of technology practices and needs. AACE Journal.

Penuel, W. R. (2006). Implementation and effects of one-to-one computing initiatives: A research synthesis. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 38, 329-348.

Open Source

Dougiamas, M. & Taylor, P. (2003). Moodle: Using Learning Communities to Create an Open Source Course Management System. In P. Kommers & G. Richards (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2003 (pp. 171-178). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

CMS/LMS

Providers and Consumers in Today’s Distributed Learning Environment
Carol Twigg, National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT)
http://www.center.rpi.edu/Monographs/Quality.html

Innovations in Online Learning: Moving Beyond No Significant Difference
Carol Twigg, National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT):
http://www.center.rpi.edu/Monographs/Innovations.html

Google apps for education.Retrieved November 20, 2006, from https://www.google.com/a/edu/

Kindle, J. (2006, October 12). Check your inbox, you’ve got Gmail. ASU Web Devil, Retrieved October 26, 2006, from http://www.asuwebdevil.com/issues/2006/10/12/news/698216

Technology Support

Accessibility

Cast.org researchers, focusing on ways to include learners with disabilities, concluded that their most productive path would be research and development in universal design for learning. To encourage all learners, Cast.org suggests these principles:

1. Multiple means of representation, to give learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge,
2. Multiple means of expression, to provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know,
3. Multiple means of engagement, to tap into learners' interests, offer appropriate challenges, and increase motivation.

Rose, D. & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Burgstahler, S., Corrigan, B., McCarter, J. (2004). Making distance learning courses accessible to students and instructors with disabilities: A case study. Internet and Higher Education, 7(3). p. 233-246

Global Education
At the dawn of Internet-based education, evolving as it did from paper-and-pencil correspondence courses, a conundrum for educational thinkers was: how will we cope with learners in different time zones? Quickly as technology may develop, in this case the rate was relatively slow. It is not without reason that the Sloan-C consortium calls its initiative by the name of ALN, or asynchronous learning networks. Clearly, asynchronous learning was the answer to the time zone problem. Considerations of how to integrate instructional means such as virtual reality were dropped. Videoconferencing, though it kept the discussion alive, was not widespread enough to be of great importance in the developing model of online instruction. In 2006, with the growing use of 3d environments, consideration of synchronous environments may once more rise to the top of the priority list. In the meantime, global education thinking also considers the role of culture and gender, as well as the ease or lack of ease of connectivity, including digital divide issues.
Zembylas, M., Vrasidas, C. & McIsaac, M.S. (2006). Of Nomads, Polyglots, and Global Villagers: Globalization, Information Technologies, and Critical Education Online. In: Vrasidas, C., & Glass, G. V. (2006). Editors. Current Perspectives on Applied Information Technologies: Distance Education and Distributed Learning. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.
Price, L. Gender differences and similarities in online courses: challenging stereotypical views of women. (2006, October). Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 22 (5). 349-359.

Du, J.,Havard, B., Yu, C. & Adams, J. (2004, Fall). The Impact of Technology Use on Low-Income and Minority Students' Academic Achievement: Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002. Journal of Educational Research and Policy Studies, 4 ( 2). 21-38.

Assessment
Assessment in distance courses is an area that will require ongoing investigation and research into best practices. Alternative assessment practices include portfolio-based assessment, which has led to the development of OSP. The US Department of Education, working with CAST, is encouraging the development of assessment practices and software that can be used for all learners.
Gibson, D. & Barrett, H. (2003). Directions in electronic portfolio development. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, [Online serial], 2(4). Available: http://www.citejournal.org/vol2/iss4/general/article3.cfm

Hansen, K. (2005). Application of traditional and online journaling as pedagogy and means for assessing learning in an entrepreneurial seminar. Developments in Business Simulations and Experiential Learning, 3(2).

Dolan, R. P., Hall, T. E., Banerjee, M., Chun, E., & Strangman, N. (2005). Applying principles of universal design to test delivery: The effect of computer-based read-aloud on test performance of high school students with learning disabilities. Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment, 3(7).

Professional Development
Teachers at all levels find technology a necessary element in instruction. At the university level, where pedagogical principles are not well integrated in all disciplines, the introduction of technology and distributed education can lead to breakdown of teaching models. Professional development models are therefore critical. Vrasidas and Glass have collected chapters ranging from pre-service teacher preparation to the support of university faculty in their recent edited book.
Vrasidas, C., & Glass, G. V. (2006). Editors. Current Perspectives in Applied Information Technologies. Preparing teachers to teach with Technology. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.
Krista Glazewski and Thomas Brush’s chapter, Integrated Field-Based Models for Technology Preparation, investigates pre-service models at seven universities.

Judith A. Duffield’s chapter, Mentoring a Teacher Preparation Faculty Toward Technology Integration, discusses lessons learned in the integration of technology use with faculty over a nine-year period.

Research Methodology

Reeves, T.C., Herrington, J. & Oliver, R. Design research: A socially responsible approach to instructional technology research in higher education. (2005). Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 16(2), 97-116.

Carini, R. M., Hayek, J. C., Kuh, G. D., Kennedy, J. M., and Ouimet, J. A. (2003). College student responses to web and paper surveys: Does mode matter? Research in Higher Education 44(1): 1–19.

Data mining

Hearst, M. (2003). What Is Text Mining? Retrieved November 27, 2006 from http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hearst/text-mining.html

Rajman M., & Besancon,R. (1998). Text Mining – Knowledge extraction from unstructured textual data. Paper presented at the 6th Conference of International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS-98), Rome.