Alexander Romiszowski
(Educational Technology 48/1, January-February 2008, pp62-63)

Why bring this topic up again?

I am currently back in Brazil, after a nine month long stay in Africa, where I was working on several projects related to distance education and the use of ICT for Development (ICT4D). Shortly before going to Africa, I was engaged on program planning and implementation for the twenty second ICDE World Conference on Distance Education. During the last month or two, since my return from Africa, I was similarly engaged, assisting the program planning committee of the Brazilian Association for Educational Technology (ABT – Associação Brasileira de Tecnologia Educacional) to organize the program of its annual conference. As I write this column, the ABT conference has just finished. Some aspects of discussions at this conference have stimulated me to focus this month’s column on a topic which we have already addressed in a previous column – the apparent misalignment between theory and practice as regards constructivism and instruction, and the forces that are really shaping instructional change.

I was also driven to once more address this issue when I was informed by Tom Duffy and Sigmund Tobias that they are in the process of planning an edited book on the same topic, also stimulated by the recent article in the Educational Psychologist by Kirchner, Sweller, and Clark (Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based ,experiential and inquiry-based teaching.). Tom sees this project as “the next edition of the conversation begun with the Duffy and Jonassen 1992 book, Constructivism and the Design of Instruction: A Conversation.” At that time, says Tom, “most people did not have a clear sense of the implications of constructivist theories for instruction – while there were clear examples of the application, the main stream of instruction still thought of learning in behavioral or information processing terms”. However, he maintains that things have changed considerably in the last fifteen years – constructivist theories and a “constructivist practice” now dominate the fields of learning sciences, instructional technology, and educational psychology – and there is a firm belief that this is how people learn.

However, both Duffy and Tobias admit that there are some notable failures, “at least on the surface”, and that strong evidence in support of the constructivist model is sparse. They suggest that this is because the holistic view of the learning environment in the constructivist framework makes it impossible to isolate variables in the traditional, objectivist sense, or to develop comparison conditions that the opponents of the view find satisfying. However, let’s look at some other prfactitioner-perspectives on this issue.

The ICDE-22 Conference Debate.

At the ICDE conference in Rio, in September of 2006, I also organized a panel to debate the above mentioned paper and its implications for educational practice. As this was in the context of an international conference on distance education, the panelists were DE practitioners and researchers drawn from different world regions. One of the panelists, Som Naidu, from Australia, presented a reasoned argument for the differences that appear between theory and practice, focusing especially on the need for fundamental systemic change in schools as a pre-requisite to the implementation of constructivist theory in practice.

Another of the panelists was Peter Knight, at that time head of the Institute for Educational Technology at the Open University of the UK (since deceased – God bless his soul), who drew a detailed, hilarious, and somewhat cynical analogy between the typical actors in the drama of instructional theory versus practice and the main characters in “The Simpsons”: Homer Simpson -  crude, incompetent, intolerant, clumsy, thoughtless and extraordinarily stupid, but who occasionally displays flashes of brilliance and an integrity reflecting his own values; Marge  - the well-meaning and extremely patient wife; Bart – the oldest child, whose most prominent character traits are his mischievousness, disrespect for authority and sharp tongue; Maggie – the youngest of the five main family members, who is eternally a baby; and Lisa Marie Simpson – “an extremely intelligent girl, one of the brightest characters on the show, who serves as a mouthpiece for the show’s writers, many of whom are postgraduates, to voice their knowledge of philosophy, science and history” (here I am quoting Wikipedia). Peter offered a prize for identifying the educational-system roles of each character. There were few takers in the audience – perhaps because the majority of the international audience might have had difficulty in relating to the peculiarities of the British sense of humor.

A third panelist, the Brazilian economist and educational systems planner, Claudio de Moura Castro, drew our attention to the manner in which constructivist theorists often damage their own case by their fervent evangelism, which “turns theory and philosophy into a form of religion and practical implementation into something that resembles the Inquisition”. Perhaps not surprisingly, given that Claudio is a Brazilian and was speaking to a predominantly Brazilian audience on a phenomenon that is particularly prevalent among Brazilian educators, this contribution to the debate produced the most heated response from the floor, similar in fervor – if not in militant action – of the reaction to the cartoons on Islam that were recently published in a Danish newspaper.

Lessons from the ABT Conference.

The five international keynote speakers at the ABT conference were all selected and invited to present their take on what was really happening in their part of the world as regards the real impact of ICT on education. The keynote speaker representing North America was Bernard (“Bernie”) Dodge, from San Diego State University, well known (also in Brazil) for his work on the Web Quest methodology – a decidedly constructivist approach to the use of the Web for knowledge-construction through collaborative learning. Bernie did not devote his time to expounding the principles and practice of Web Quest, but instead focused on a comparison of such learning strategies and what is really happening, and indeed continues to be formally promoted, in USA schools. He explained how the basically sound philosophies underlying Government programs like “No Child left Behind” get to be distorted during implementation in order to match the established philosophies and practices of objective testing of the superficial outcomes of learning.

Once the policy is established, the “money follows on. Bernie showed by means of examples how the educational products of publishers and equipment providers tend to follow the established political pattern, thus further reinforcing the status quo – if you have a budget to spend, you will tend to be influenced by what the market offers and promotes, and this in turn is influenced by what the educational politicians and administrators tend to promote through their funding decisions. One example quoted by Bernie – the large and growing number of systems on the market, based on handheld electronic responders, that provide instant feedback to the teacher of student responses to objective test questions – immediately reminded me of the application of this methodology, albeit by less convenient and “sexy” technologies, in the hard-wired “feedback classrooms” of the programmed instruction era.

I used such classrooms quite extensively in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s in the UK, and found them very useful and effective in my context – the teaching of standard procedures to automobile factory employees and equipment maintenance technicians. Later, when I moved to working in a university context, teaching instructional design, I found these environments less useful. Indeed, when I first joined the IDD&E faculty at Syracuse University, I discovered a feedback-auditorium, hard-wired for some hundreds of students, installed in the Newhouse School of Communication. But I never saw the facility in use – indeed a year later, it was deemed to be a white elephant, or even a dinosaur left over from an earlier era, and dismantled. Now the purveyors of new educational technologies are making huge profits (and getting Federal R&D money) by reviving the dinosaur in a new context and in a micro-size.

Bernie did, of course, mention the Web Quest methodology in his lecture, but here again he concentrated on illustrating the way in which many practicing teachers distort the underlying philosophies and theories, developing Web-based learning activities which they label as Web Quests,  but which in reality run diametrically in opposition to constructivist principles. This example was picked up and elaborated by the other speakers who showed how, in other contexts, for example the learning object movement, innovative theory is distorted to fit the status quo.

One of the other speakers, John Hedberg, who was representing Australia,  based his lecture on a basic premise that 21st Century digitally literate learners (“digital natives”) are different from previous generations: they monitor multiple inputs rather than multitask; they collaborate expeditiously; they “rip, mix, mod and burn their tasks”. Therefore, in today’s education systems, effective instruction and learning must take into consideration the social impact of new technologies. The “digital native” students learn through multiple modalities and,  as they spend thousands of hours playing videogames, using mobiles and other technological tools, they develop new learning skills and shape new expectations for the educational process.

John introduced the concepts of “disruptive” and “sustaining” technologies. The latter is any innovation that tends to support doing what we do now more effectively or efficiently. The former is an innovation that tends to disrupt, undermine, and ultimately change the status quo. As an example, he argued that we are leaving behind the Gutenberg era which was dominated by print and the printed book and which for five hundred years “has disrupted the idea of what intellectual work really is: knowledge creation now recalls the cultural norms that prevailed in the pre-Gutenberg oral and folk culture of the Middle Ages”. So, print as it is typically used in schools, once was a disruptive technology, but has now become a sustaining technology that tends to impede change.  However, it depends how you use it. Annotation of print can a disruptive pedagogy, introducing new ways and possibly ethical standards for using other peoples’ content as part of a “mashup” in which you can overlay your work on the work of others.

Blogging, according to John, is another example of a potentially disruptive pedagogy, somewhere between a conversation and an essay. A blog may be used to publish and distribute a student’s production in a poetry class. In the first instance, the new poem is subjected to analysis and critique by the student’s peer group as well as the teacher. But it does not stop there. The audience may be more than the one class – earlier years may have later years commenting on their work – the general public may also show an interest and also contribute their critiques. Blogs may expand the ways of teaching content by providing a rapid way of presenting new internet links in a personal form and allowing construction of personal post-lecture essays and feedback on an instant website.

Schools are basically about groups led by teachers. At home or out-of-school, students can and already do meet in groups and link by other virtual means. So, at school the technologies that are used are more likely to be those that support existing teacher practices, but at home alternative technologies and tools are possible and are indeed enthusiastically chosen by students. As teachers, we tend to choose sustaining technologies, such as the interactive whiteboard, which tend to support teacher-centered control and already familiar forms of pedagogy. Students, however, tend to choose disruptive technologies such as SMS, instant messaging, blogs, and multimedia “mashups”. So, learners can take charge – the students can use their newly acquired tech-skills to interact and explore new content, either on their own or under teacher facilitation – the end result depends on the teacher’s ability to accept and adapt to change.

In Conclusion: what needs to be discussed?

The viewpoints reviewed in this column are just some of the many that have some contribution to make on the questions of what forces really might lead to significant change in today’s educational systems, and what is the whole range of reasons for the lack of impact of apparently sound theoretical innovations on educational practice. Also, I believe they are viewpoints that may enrich the academic discussion of why research data do not necessarily support the predictions of new theoretical positions. The debate is wider than educational psychology – it involves sociological, organizational and political theory as well. Therefore, it involves an interdisciplinary and systemic approach – the true sense of cybernetics. 

Alex Romiszowski.
(Educational Technology 47/6, November-December 2007, pp60-61)

Project PLAN – was it an early form of LMS?  

The year was 1967. As a young researcher, working in the UK in the newly emerging field of Educational Technology, I arranged a 3-month study tour of centers of R&D in North America. It was a busy schedule: a couple of days at professor Skinner’s labs in Boston, reviewing the latest research on programmed instruction; a visit to OISE in Toronto where some of the earliest R+D on CAI was underway; a stay at a Job Core Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, where the whole program ran on contingency-management principles; a visit to New Mexico to see how some Zuni Indian villagers were studying by means of a system of learner-directed, on-demand-video (what’s new in ed. tech?).

However, the part of the trip that is most strongly rooted in memory is my visit to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I stayed much longer than originally planned. Part of the reason was the time and place – San Francisco in the summer of 1967, at the height of the flower-power movement. The scenes at the Haight/Ashbury intersection and the Golden Gate Park have left indelible impressions. But that was incidental to my principal reasons for staying, which were visits to several R+D projects that influenced my own research for many years to come: Berkley, where professors Crutchfield and Covington were using programmed instruction for the development of creativity and productive thinking skills; Stanford, where professor Suppes was conducting a multi-year study on the use of CAI for the teaching of arithmetic (the results are still relevant today); and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) in Palo Alto, where professor Flanagan was then implementing project PLAN. It was at the AIR that I first met Robert Mager, who was running a workshop with a group of teachers developing performance objectives for all subject domains of the school curriculum. I sat in on the workshop for a week and got involved quite deeply in this project of “Program for Learning According to Needs”.  

The goal of project PLAN was to support classroom teachers by computer-based analysis of the learning performance of individual students and matching of this data to suitable learning materials and methods. The teachers writing objectives in Mager’s workshop were creating the indicators and measuring instruments by which any teacher in any classroom could assess the strengths and weaknesses of each of the students and prescribe appropriate basic, remedial or enrichment learning activities on a highly individualized basis. The materials and activities themselves were not computer-based; the management system that supported the teachers in their lesson planning, delivery and evaluation activities was.  

Project PLAN was one of the first large-scale implementations of CMI – computer-managed instruction. As such, it may possibly be considered as a precursor to today’s ever-growing number of LMS – learning management systems. What can we learn from revisiting this early project? 

The management of learning, according to PLAN

The data collection system and interface used in project PLAN was an electronic “postbox” installed in every participating classroom. The learning progress of the students would be evaluated on a daily / weekly basis by means of objectives-based multiple choice tests. The students would respond on pre-printed cards, marking their choices of response for each question, and then “posted” the cards into the “postbox”. The data would be optically read and transferred to a mainframe computer located in Los Angeles, which would update the databases and provide, in real time to each teacher, detailed reports on the progress of each individual student in comparison to others in the class, of this class in comparison to that teacher’s previous classes, of this class in comparison to classes in other schools, and so on. In addition, the computer furnished recommendations as to the learning materials that would be most appropriate for each student to next study, given that student’s performance profile to date compared to the profiles of all other students who had previously followed similar learning pathways. 

The system also made comparative analyses in order to generate long term educational advice. For instance, by linking the data of the project PLAN students to data collected in a previous long-term project (TALENT) that had correlated school performance and subsequent professional career success of millions of US youth, it was hoped to provide computer-assisted academic and career guidance counseling. I used the words “it was hoped” because the life of project PLAN was quite short – only a few years involving a few dozen schools spread across the USA – in fact, only as long as the funding  lasted. So, some of the long-term hopes of project PLAN were not realized. But the short-term results were very promising and pointed to how the management of learning might be implemented once the necessary technology became generally accessible and affordable.

That stage was reached some 20 years later, in the late 1980’s when relatively cheap microcomputers and networks came to be part of the generally expected technology infrastructure of a modern educational institution. But the pioneering educators, who first got involved, devoted much more attention to using computers as content-presentation devices than as learning-management devices. This was partly due to the limited memory and power of early microcomputers – by the time the CAI or simulation software was loaded, there was little memory left to devote to the storage and analysis of learning results – and partly due to the use of microcomputers as stand-alone machines, which made it difficult to integrate the results of many students working on different computers.    

Then along came the explosive growth in capacity and power of computers, the plummeting costs of technology in general, the Internet and the consequent interlinking of everything to everything else. So, let us look back from the vantage point of a further 20 years to see whether any large scale learning management systems based on lessons learned from projects like PLAN were ever implemented. Or alternatively, whether such initiatives perhaps superseded the approaches used in PLAN by more sophisticated and powerful methodologies based on more recent research and pedagogical theory? Where are we now in terms of computer-based management of learning?  

Management of learning, today

One confusing development is the plethora of names that have been invented to label, or mislabel the recent spate of educational management software and systems. First, were the so-called course management systems, or CMS, which provide instructors with the ability to perform tasks such as: putting course materials online; tracking student progress through assignments, quizzes and tests; maintaining online grade books; using discussion boards, group email and chat; generating course statistics and a limited range of reports. Academic literature sources that have attempted to classify the technology alternatives cite among the examples of CMS such commercial products as FirstClass, Blackboard and Desire2Learn, and also many open source systems such as Aulanet, Sakai and Moodle. However, other sources, including in many cases the brochures of the manufacturers themselves, refer to these as learning management systems, or LMS.

So are these terms synonymous? Apparently they are not. Writers who have attempted to classify the functionality of existing products, define LMS as software that may perform some or all of the above mentioned CMS tasks, but also performs other tasks such as: student registration; keeping track of participation and attendance; keeping track of completion of assignments, test scores and grades; testing the students; providing feedback, learning advice and follow-up; preparing a wider range of reports, aggregating data across various repetitions of a course; processing tuition charges, keeping financial records and transferring payments among departments; providing course catalogues and other orientation or marketing information. These authors would not classify most of the previously cited list as examples of LMS, but rather as CMS, due to their limited functionality. They quote such systems as NetDimensions EKP, Saba, and SumTotal Systems as true examples of LMS – products that are found most frequently in corporate training contexts, but rarely in universities and almost never in schools.
Then along came Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS). This led Leonard Greenberg, writing in the ASTD’s Source for eLearning (www.learningcircuits.org) to comment: “If you’re confused about the differences between a learning management system (LMS) and a learning content management system (LCMS), you’re not alone”. He states that an LMS and an LCMS are “complementary but very different systems that serve different masters”: an LMS is “a high-level, strategic solution for planning, delivering, and managing all learning events within an organization, including online, virtual classroom, and instructor-led courses”; an LCMS “gives authors, instructional designers, and subject matter experts the means to create e-learning content more efficiently …. just in time to meet the needs of individual learners or groups of learners”. But once more, other sources, including the manufacturers, do not always agree on these definitions.
So, it would seem that confusion reigns, and the use of the different labels is often driven more by marketing considerations than descriptive clarity. However, it would seem that today’s LMS (but not LCMS), while performing a much broader range of management functions, are still recognizable as the descendants of systems such as PLAN. They find ready application in corporate training, but they are not being widely used in school or university contexts, where the most popular systems seem to be the less comprehensive and multipurpose CMS systems. This may, at least in part, be due to their being somewhat out of tune with the reigning educational philosophies.  A glance at literature that is critical of the use of LMS reveals statements such as: learning — is not a process to be managed — is by nature multi-faceted and chaotic; using an LMS — dictates the nature of interactions between instructors, learners and content — limits discovery/ exploratory/ constructivist learning; one-way instruction doesn’t work well in the information society — networks do — blogs, wikis and collaborative learning spaces are more relevant. However, it is not at all clear from this literature how and indeed whether the resultant learning is tracked, evaluated and managed. Maybe that is the real reason for the historical discontinuity in the development of LMS for education – the management of learning is anathema to the formal education system. Is this so? And is this a problem?

A historical postscript

The year is 1971. My boss and I were teaching a workshop in Egypt. During a week-long break we made a rapid tour of the antiquities, flying from Cairo to Luxor, Aswan and the Abu Simbel temple in the Nubian Desert. On the third leg of this trip, our plane broke down and we spent a day in Aswan waiting for it to be fixed. The other passengers were mostly members of a tour group of Americans working in Saudi Arabia for the oil company ARAMCO. I spent the day chatting to the Director of Human Resources. He told me that his job was tough, as the Saudi government made ARAMCO responsible for providing all health and education services to family members of local employees, and the local concept of family was very much extended.

“I have five times as many children in our primary school as I have local hires” he said.
He then continued: “But we got that running really efficiently - we use Project PLAN”.

He proceeded to describe a scenario of Saudi children learning American history (“nothing in the contract about curriculum”) from English-language materials (“that can’t be bad”), supervised by untrained monitors, and managed by a computer in California.

“The technology works real well!”  He concluded.

I was dumbfounded. But on reflection, is this all that different from some e-learning systems we might find operating today, right here, just around the corner?

Alexander Romiszowski
(Educational Technology 47/4, July-August 2007, pp61-63)

The ID+SCORM conference.
As I write this column, in April of 2007, the third ID+SCORM Symposium has just taken place at Brigham Young University, in Provo Utah. Shortly before the event, I accessed the conference description and call for papers. I was directed to several URLs, including one to the paper, published in this journal, that summarized the principal issues discussed at the first of these conferences, held in 2002 (Bush, M. D. Connecting Instructional Design to International Standards for Content Reusability, Educational Technology, 42(6), 5-13, November-December 2002). I had read the paper at the time of publication, as I had been following, maybe with some skepticism, the growth of interest in the creation of learning object economies and application of standards that might facilitate their reusability. I was also directed to a critique of some of the points raised in Bush’s paper, which I had not read before, that was published by Stephen Downes in 2003, in his Blog. This was interesting, especially for Downes’ claim that “…design and reusability are incompatible….. design requires specificity, and specificity prohibits reusability…. conversely, reusability requires generality, and generality prohibits design.”
Is ID really dead? Or is the rumor of its death exaggerated?
Downes also (in his own words) “shoots an arrow straight into the heart of the discipline known as instructional design….. instructional design is not about considering different ways of presenting different types of materials, and different uses to which these materials may be put, in order to foster learning…. the difference is …(like)… the difference between writing a play and creating a game…. the difference between telling people what to do and when to do it, and creating an environment where people decide for themselves what to do and when to do it…. the difference between giving a person directions to the Forum and giving them a map of the city and letting them choose their own route… the difference between the way learning was and the way learning will be”. This line of argument raised counter-comments from many well known names in both the ID and e-Learning standards-development fields. In about equal numbers, these reactions either disagreed with the argument (e.g. pointing out ways in which Downes had supposedly “missed the point”), or agreed and extended the argument (e.g. suggesting that Downes had shot his arrow into the heart of an already quite long-dead “corpse”).
The comments reveal the same split in the distance-learning-materials-design community that was evidenced at the 1990 ICDE World Conference on Distance Education, in the “Neats versus Scruffies” debate. In case readers are unfamiliar with this debate and the “waves” it created for years after, the “Neats” were defined as those that believed in and practiced a prescriptive-model-based approach to instructional design (e.g. the authors in Reigeluth´s “Green” books) and the “Scruffies” as those who neither practiced nor believed that it was either feasible or desirable to seek research-based prescriptive ID models (“research on learning is a backdrop that the designer refers to while creatively and intuitively inventing learning activities, rather than a source of prescriptive rules”).
At that conference in 1990, after initial presentations by four excellent debaters, two for each side, an audience of some hundreds of the world’s distance education practitioners voted, more than two-to-one, for the “Scruffies”. It would be interesting to know whether a repeat of this debate seventeen years later would swing the vote back somewhat towards the “neats” position, or whether the constructivist and post-modern camps would show their increasing strength by carrying the vote even more in favor of the “scruffies”.  Whatever the possible percentage changes, there is no doubt that a considerable proportion of practitioners would still take a position that is in alignment with that expressed by Downes in his comments on ID and learning object reusability.
Will SCORM live or die?

The above issue is important, as it raises the possibility that the large investments being made in efforts to develop learning object economies and to establish interoperability standards such as SCORM, may fail to pay off.  I therefore accessed the presentations at the two previous conferences, held in 2002 and 2003, to verify whether this issue had been addressed. Apparently it had not. I then looked at the suggested themes of the current conference. According to the call for papers, there were 14 themes, or key issues, that the authors of papers were invited to address. However, none of the 14 themes addressed such questions as return on investment or cost-benefit. I found this interesting as it seems to me that one of the main motivating factors for the birth of interest in design of reusable learning objects, creation of a learning objects economy, and indeed the invention of standards such as SCORM, is to rationalize the work involved in development of new courses, by avoiding unnecessary rework and the continual “reinvention of wheels” – all this in the name of reduced costs and increased efficiency. Has this been forgotten, or is it taken as a foregone conclusion not worth addressing?

However, right from the beginning of the learning objects economies movement and the first release of SCORM standards, I have been haunted by the feeling that the e-Learning profession, while seemingly embarking on a voyage that is both logical and necessary, may run aground like so  many other technology-driven initiatives on the unpredictable shoals of human nature and organizational behavior. To illustrate my point, I would like to review some recollections from the past that may indeed still be relevant today.

Some past cases – with future relevance?

During the 1970’s, there were very many UN-supported projects throughout the world that were designing, developing and implementing education and training systems. In the process, most of these projects would generate new learning materials. It was realized that in many cases the projects in one country would be developing almost the same curricula and courses as similar projects in other countries. The ILO, for example, supported automobile mechanics training programs in several dozen countries – a typical case where the content of the required training would be very similar across all projects.

Throughout the early 1970’s it was standard practice for all projects that developed any educational or training materials to send a copy to the ILO headquarters in Geneva, where a samples-library was maintained. New projects could benefit by reutilizing, or repurposing, existing materials, rather than “reinventing the wheel” every time.

 In just a few years, the samples-library grew in size so that it filled several large rooms. All projects dutifully sent in copies of their learning materials. But it was found that very few of the projects made any use of the library. There were several possible reasons. The process of searching through the growing store of print-based samples was inconvenient and time consuming. Possibly relevant materials had to be copied and shipped out to a project, or the project staff had to spend considerable time in Geneva browsing through the samples collection. The materials were not developed according to a standard design model, so modules from different samples would be quite different in style and design. The materials designers were not always competent instructional designers, and project personnel were not always competent to judge the quality of the materials, so there was no guarantee that “good” materials would be selected and “poor” materials rejected.
The overarching reason, however, was that most projects had some internal or local contextual factors at play that reinforced the local generation of new materials rather than the reutilization of existing materials. Therefore, project personnel did not even attempt to access and reutilize any of the previously existing materials. The end result was that, one fine day in 1977, just a few years after the start of the samples-library project, all the materials stored at the ILO office in Geneva were removed and burned.
Some of the inherent weaknesses of the samples-library project were recognized by those in the UN who were responsible for the effectiveness of international training initiatives. Therefore, a different form of intervention was attempted. Around 1977, a number of new projects were set up to generate, centrally at UN-agency offices in Geneva, Paris, Turin and elsewhere, libraries of specially designed and developed learning units / modules on many common and recurrent areas of curriculum, which were to be used by trainers in field projects in many contexts and countries. The modules were developed by specialist materials designers (I was one, and trained many others), who followed a standard instructional design model and methodology. They were also highly modularized to a fine level of detail (granularity) so that the training materials for each specific objective were separate and identifiable. These projects did not use the term “learning object” to describe their products, only because the term was not yet invented.
Most of these projects failed as well. Due to the high cost and slow pace of the centralized development of learning materials, and the consequent non-renewal of the necessary funding, they closed down after just a few years of operation. But, before the close-down, a large number of learning modules were produced and made available to the international education and training community. Once more however, it was observed that few of the projects in the field chose to use the high quality, centrally produced, learning modules. The human, organizational and political factors, observed in the samples-library project, were just as evident in the new projects. The arguments for the non-utilization of the materials included such questions as those voiced by the “scruffies” in the 1990´s and the constructivists of today. But really, they were just a smokescreen to conceal the fact that the various projects wanted to “do their own thing”.

Some points for reflection
It is worth reflecting on this 1977 case from the perspective of the year 2007. Many recent information technology developments could go a long way towards overcoming some of the problems and issues listed above - but not ALL of them. Electronic storage could eliminate the physical volume of the materials collections and also make them available on an “any time / anywhere” basis – this is useful provided that the potential materials re-users actually want to access and view the materials. Indexing standards and metadata, such as implemented in SCORM protocols for learning objects could help to reduce the time spent in searching the collections and selecting relevant items – provided the end-users learn to use the search procedures correctly. The use of a uniform set of instructional design standards and methodologies may ensure both compatibility of presentation style and pedagogical quality - provided, of course, that those applying the procedures in specific contexts are sufficiently skilled in their application.
But it is at about this point in the list that the contribution of information technology stops. It is most unlikely that all personnel in all projects will ever be fully skilled and competent in the application of the new technological tools. Mistakes will continue to be made - that is a characteristic of human beings. Also, the existence of technology-based tools does not ensure that they will be applied - personal and organizational philosophies, attitudes, cultures, or politics do not change just because it is technologically convenient for them to change. Many of the problems that were identified in the previously presented historical examples will not be automatically solved by the use of the technological tools of the current wave of e-learning standards innovation. The tools do little to address the pedagogical issues involved in designing, evaluating and selecting high quality learning materials.  Also, the tools do nothing to overcome possible cultural and organizational resistance to the very concept of inter-institutional collaboration and materials utilization.
So, a host of questions remain to be answered. How should learning object development consortia organize their work so as to ensure a return on the invested effort and resources? What specific instructional design approaches are most promising? Will the promised “learning object economy” ever become a viable and sustainable reality?  Hopefully, some of these questions were addressed at the recent ID+SCORM conference, and hopefully, the answers proposed will be summarized and published, maybe in this journal, in a paper similar to Bush´s review of the 2002 conference.

The country is Mozambique. The year is 2003. I was contracted to perform a baseline study and evaluate progress on the planning and implementation of an “Open School” pilot project. This was in the predominantly rural and sparsely populated Province of Nampula, situated in the North of the country. At that time, only about 6% of the secondary school age children of Mozambique were graduating from high school, partly because of limited access to secondary schools, partly due to high rates of drop-out. But that was the national average - the situation in Nampula was much more serious. Only around 3% of secondary school age children were even entering secondary education, and this was because the few existing secondary schools could accommodate no more than 3% of the potential candidates. The primary school system, which had to be almost totally rebuilt from scratch since the end of the civil war a decade or so before, was approaching the UN’s Millennium Development Goals of universal access. But the secondary and high school systems still had a long way to go.

The “Open School” project was designed to address this need. This model has been applied in a variety of forms in many developing countries, in order to address problems of limited access, especially to secondary and high school education. Perhaps the largest and best known application of this model has been in Indonesia,  where the Sekolah Menengah Terbuka (Open High School) model was first used on a pilot scale in the 1970’s and then in the 1980’s and 1990’s became the principal manner in which access to high school education was extended to all. Similar approaches have been adopted, with varying levels of success, in several Asian, Latin American and African nations.

Basically, this model extends the existing secondary or high schools by linking them to a network of local learning centers. These learning centers have typically not been at all “hi-tech”, but consisted simply of a space, perhaps in a local church or mosque, where (mostly print-based and some audiovisual) learning materials could be stored and accessed, and where some local tutorial services could be provided by someone, not usually be a qualified teacher, who would receive some special training in how to support local students in the study of the learning resources.

Evaluation and grading, as well as specialist backup of the local tutors, would typically be provided by the qualified teachers in the “mother school”, by a combination of distance-learning methods and regular evening or weekend visits of groups of students from outlying “satellite” learning centers to the “mother school”. The existing high schools (and teachers) thus get to work on almost a 24-7 routine, and existing schools in effect expand their student intake by a factor of 200%, 300% or more.

In the case of the pilot project in Nampula, well designed print-based self instructional materials had been developed by staff of the Commonwealth of Learning in Vancouver, funded by the UK government. The teachers in the high schools of the five participating Districts (like counties in the USA – not school districts) were trained to perform their special duties and, at the time when I was performing my study, were engaged on selecting the first cohort of students. I particularly recall my days spent in Moma.

The town of Moma is actually a small seaside fishing village, but it is also the capital of quite a large District that goes by the same name. The candidates for the Open School project had traveled in from all parts of the District. Some had walked, or ridden a bicycle, 50 or 100 miles from their home village to the secondary school in Moma. One of the candidates that I met in Moma was a young lady who had walked 100 miles with a six year old son holding her hand and a six months old daughter suckling at her breast – she had nowhere to leave her children for the days it took her to get to Moma and try to register in the Open School. She showed a fantastic level of aptitude, motivation and determination, but just how frequently would she be able to repeat that trip?   

This was one, among many questions investigated in my study. By what means, and how frequently, are the distant students going to make contact with their tutors? There was no public transport, and when it rains, the roads are impassable anyway. There was no effective postal system, and no telephone link from Moma, except to the Distict capital, Nampula, by primitive radio-telephone. Furthermore, in this pilot project, there was no provision for local tutorial support, as there was nobody available or qualified to give it. All tutorial support was to be provided by the existing secondary school teachers.

Other questions were concerned with upgrading the teaching resources in the central schools. Computers? Forget it! For one thing, there was basically no electricity in most of the existing high schools. In Moma, there was a diesel-powered generator that would be switched on at sunset and off at 9:00pm – three hours a day was all the diesel fuel they could afford. So, science laboratory sessions in the high school would be held after school hours, so that the kids could see what happens to a beam of light when it passes through a lens, or how the current in a circuit varies with the resistance.

Yet other questions addressed the administration of the system – how to get essential data from the students to the schools, from the schools to the Provincial capital and from there to the Ministry of Education. We designed a primitive but workable educational management information system (EMIS) based on word of mouth, written messages carried by truckers and cattle herders, transmission of complex numerical data by persons reading it to others via crackly radio telephone, and the final step (from Provincial capital to the Ministry) actually by Internet. Oh yes, there was also some limited possibility for communication back from the mother schools to the satellite learning centers by means of community radio - but only two of the five Districts involved in the pilot project had operational community radio stations at that time.

And “that time” was 2003 – just four short years ago. Have things changed? You bet – and largely due to the expansion of the mobile telephony infrastructure.

A European Scenario from 2003.

I could not include the use of mobile telephony as part of a proposed solution to the Open School’s communication problems, due to lack of the necessary local infrastructure at that time However, there were already at that time, several relevant mobile-technology-based-solutions available, or in stages of research and development. For example, in October 2001, a 4.5-million-Euro “m-learning project” was launched, supported by the European Commission’s Information Society Technologies (IST) program. Participant organizations included universities and commercial companies based in three EU countries - Britain, Italy and Sweden. By 2003, when Mozambique’s Open School pilot project was being implemented, this research agenda had developed a series of mobile phone based tools and applications for education that could have served the project well. The more “basic” m-learning tools included the following three.
Java games – educational games that can be used to check skills on any color-screen, game-enabled, mobile phone. One application in the UK, operational by 2003, was a game to teach the knowledge necessary to pass the theory test for a car driving license.
SMS quizzes – multiple-choice and other objective test format questions, presented on the screen of the phone and responded by a single key stroke. More complex questions may be presented in printed text, the learner responding with an SMS composed of a string of characters that communicate the responses selected, and get an instant reply.
SMS quiz author - an online authoring tool that allows you to create SMS quizzes. This is a web-based application which allows you to set up an automated response system for multiple-choice quizzes on the learner’s mobile phone.
These three tools could have been directly linked to the quizzes and other questions that were already included in the Open School project’s printed learning materials, so automating part of the tutorial process. Some more “advanced” m-learning applications included: an m-Portal - a learning community portal system that allows people to create their own “microportal” and visit the “microportals” of peers, tutors and mentors within the online community; a relatively sophisticated Learning Management System; a virtual tutorial system named IWT (Intelligent Web Teacher); an application named mediaBoard, that allows learners to send text (SMS) or picture (MMS) messages from their phones to contribute new content to both personal and collaborative web sites; and a variety of Pocket PC Learning Resources created for PDA’s and Pocket PCs.
Some of these, more powerful, examples of m-learning are most relevant when learners collaborate in some form of educational activity and the learning process becomes more autonomous and student-directed. They were probably a bit futuristic and sophisticated for the Mozambique Open School project, as it had been designed some years before its implementation in 2003. But hey! Why not re-design in order to profit from these new technological developments? In 2003, the time was not yet ripe, due to the lack of a basic mobile technology infrastructure. But today, things are so different…

 Africa 2007: explosive - and intelligent - use of Mobile Telephony

In December 2006, as part of the work I am currently performing for the UNDP initiative to promote ICT for Development (ICT4D), I attended a session in a workshop on the use of ICT in education, held in the interior of Mozambique. Some participants raised concerns about having to learn about ICT while in their settings the infrastructure is still lacking. The facilitator responded through a provocative question: “Who of you is still not using a cell-phone?” It turned out that everyone in the room owned a personal mobile phone, and this fact helped to explain how near ICT was to them.

Africa is currently the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world. Over the past five years the continent’s mobile phone use has increased at an annual rate of 65 percent - twice the global average. For example, in June of 1999, Kenya had 15,000 mobile phone subscribers. By the end of 2004 the country had 3.4 million subscribers, and by June of 2006 this number has grown to around 6 million - all this despite the fact that only about 200,000 Kenyan households have electricity. People living in rural areas have experience of playing radios or record players using car batteries or a combination of battery and solar panels. Nowadays they are using the same equipment to recharge their cell-phones.

This explosive growth led the BBC to produce a series of TV programs, screened in January 2007, on the impact that the mobile phone revolution is having on life in Africa. Paul Mason, the BBC’s “Newsnight” business correspondent, traveled throughout Kenya, interviewing people. He reported on events such as the reaction in Kibera, Nairobi, described as “Africa’s biggest slum”, to the problem of eviction by developers who have often illegally “bought” the land from corrupt local government officials: “one day the bulldozers arrive and your house has gone”. But not any more - in 2006, when eviction threatened the residents of Kibera, an activist group used mobiles to call thousands of people from many different settlements to sit down in front of the bulldozers. This was done – please take note –  largely through the use of mass-mail SMS to user lists.

As I was writing this column, here in Mozambique, I read an article by Terry Calhoun, in the 2/15/2007 edition of the Campus Technology online newsletter: “I knew that in many countries, texting was a primary communication method — but my first exposure to the concept of large-scale, one to many communication via text messaging came with the news accounts of the evacuation of extranationals from Lebanon during the bloody and inane hostilities there in 2006 — the Swedish government used a series of text messages to get its citizens out of Lebanon, even before the United States had seriously mobilized its effort to just begin getting Americans out”. Hey, but the Kenyan slum dwellers were using this technology even before the Swedes in Lebanon! And it is interesting to note that the above “gem” was Calhoun’s way of introducing the main theme of his article – how US universities are learning to use text messaging: “many students are beyond regularly checking e-mail, so sending important and timely communications that way is increasingly fruitless”.

Mobile Tech in Africa: An Alternative Infrastructure and Business Model
There are other signs that Africa is inventing ways to use mobile phones that are hardly imagined in the developed world. In Africa, landline infrastructure was so poor that very few people could make a phone call at all. Rather than replacing existing, functional infrastructure, mobiles in Africa have created a new and different infrastructure. For example, most North American mobile phone users receive a bill for their usage every month. This model relies on infrastructure that is missing from many African economies: street addresses, a functional postal system, systems to check consumer credit; use of checks to pay bills. So, mobile network operators in Africa started selling scratch-off phone cards that allowed use of phones on a pay as you go basis. This strategy has led to an explosion in phone use, as well as creating thousands of new street-vendor jobs.
The community payphone is another innovation. These payphones are operated by local entrepreneurs – ordinary citizens who own a phone, buy airtime from the network and subsequently sell it to local people who don’t own phones themselves. A recent survey reported that 97% of Tanzanians now have access to a mobile phone thanks to the community payphone model. Similar figures are reported by most Sub-Saharan nations.
But what is the cost? When I buy a $4 scratch-off phone card here in Mozambique, I get around 20 minutes of call time to anywhere in the country. A dollar for five minutes of talk-time is still quite expensive for someone subsisting on a couple of dollars a day. But with my 20 minutes of talk-time, I also get credit to send 66 absolutely free SMS messages, nationwide. A large part of the local demand comes from the development by local entrepreneurs of innovative uses for this almost-free text messaging and text-based information access capacity. Here are some examples.
Information Access and Use. Many African fishermen now check the local fish market prices on their phones. Farmers can find out commodity prices before selling their stock. Some rural phone users have quadrupled their earnings because they have access to text-based information about potential buyers and prices.
Wap technology - which stands for wireless application protocol - allows people to access basic information on the Internet, like news summaries, through their mobile phone handset. According to July 2006 statistics, 61% of the BBC’s international Wap users came from Nigeria - over 400 thousand users, growing from zero a year before. A very small number of Nigerians access the BBC’s Internet news services by computer.
Banking and Financial Transactions - MTN, a South African mobile phone company, introduced a service that lets customers make simple banking transactions via SMS. In Kenya, a similar service, named M-Pesa, has been launched by Vodafone, through its local subsidiary Safaricom (I love the names). Vodafone says the service will soon go global “and then the 93 billion dollars of remittance money sent by migrants to developing countries each year could start flowing this way”. Western Union beware!

But what about Education 2007 – a “great leap forward”?

A recent study in Sub-Saharan African countries revealed that 96% of mobile phone owners reported regular or even daily use of mobiles for social and family reasons. The figure for non-owners was also high - 69%. Other common uses included: business – 25% and 11%; arranging meetings – 17% and 2%; religious reasons – 12% and 3%. But educational and general (non-business-related) information access uses were lagging way behind. Only 4% of owners and less than 1% of non-owners reported such use – and most of this use was to informally contact their school teachers. So it seems that systematic educational use of the mobile phone infrastructure is yet to come.

However, the European R&D scenario described earlier on suggests that the necessary technologies and some relevant tools and applications have been available for some time, just waiting for the communication infrastructure to catch up. This has now happened, and the time is now ripe for significant progress in technology-based learning, principally through intelligent applications of mobile telephony, in both voice and text mode. At about the time that this column will be published, a major conference focused on ICT applications in Africa (IST-Africa2007) will be held (May 9-11, 2007) in Mozambique (see. www.ist-africa.org). IST-Africa is an ongoing program whose goal is to apply the results of European ICT-related R&D to African problems. It is funded by the same organs within the European Union that funded the “m-learning project”. This event may well promote discussion, and maybe action, on the redesign of earlier initiatives, like the Nampula Open School project, to take advantage of the newly accessible, and relatively affordable, mobile infrastructure. Among over 130 papers and workshops accepted for presentation at the IST-Africa2007 conference (55 from African nations and 78 from elsewhere), there are 25 that address technology-enabled learning. Five of these deal with aspects of mobile technology, and it is significant that four out of these five are from Africa. So, here is one further sign that Africa may contribute to a “great leap forward” in the intelligent use of mobile telecommunication for educational purposes.

There are also some ongoing US-Africa “joint ventures” that may yield promising results. Nathan Eagle (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Peter Waiganjo Wagacha (University of Nairobi) have developed a mobile phone programming curriculum and are offering courses in both the USA and Kenya. The courses, in addition to teaching the technical skills of programming mobile applications, have an “emphasis on opportunity analysis and product marketing”. But will they direct some of the entrepreneurial energy latent in Africa towards “social applications development”, to address some of the enormous needs of (especially rural) populations in Africa, in areas such as health, community and education? I sincerely hope so. However, I am convinced that one way or another, we are on the verge of witnessing massive transformations in African education, both in terms of access and quality, as a result of intelligent applications of mobile technologies. As the slum dwellers in Kiberia demonstrated, these technologies enable the people in the communities to take control of their destiny. Who said that schools have to be set up by central government? That’s not how they came to be set up in early village societies. Africa may pioneer the mobile community school in the Global Village.

Alexander Romiszowski.
(Educational Technology 47/2, March-April 2007, pp61-64)

WHY DID I MISS WRITING A COLUMN FOR THE PREVIOUS ISSUE?

This column follows four months after the previous one that was published in the September/October 2006 issue of the magazine. I had to skip an issue due to other work on several projects with overlapping timelines. Up to September, I was fully occupied organizing the program for the ICDE World Conference on Distance Education. Then came the conference itself, followed by work on editing the 400-odd papers in preparation for production of the conference proceedings. In parallel, I started to work on three projects, one in the USA, one in Mozambique and the third in Azerbaijan. All three projects are concerned with curriculum and course design/development. This made it difficult to meet my column-writing deadlines. However, it also suggested that the next column could well address some aspects of curriculum and course design that have appeared interesting or critical in one, or maybe all, of these overlapping projects.

CURRICULUM AND ID: WHY IS IT TOUGH TO PUT THEORY INTO PRACTICE?

The USA-based project involves university level curricula and courses on organizational development, leadership and change management. At first glance, this seems to be a relatively typical university-based effort to use e-learning and blended learning to extend its reach beyond the “walls” imposed by convenient commuting distance. However, the pedagogical and philosophical approach to be adopted, as defined up-front by the client department of the university, is very up to date and modern, or maybe even post-modern. Reading the brief received from the client, I was immediately reminded of the topic addressed in my last column – the paper by Paul Kirschner, John Sweller and Richard Clark, entitled “Why Minimally Guided Instruction Does Not Work” (Educational Psychologist 41(2), June 2006). The authors listed some shared assumptions underlying the forms of instructional programs that, they claim, research shows to be generally ineffective (please see the last column for details). I was now reading the same form of language in my client’s briefing document. In my mind, this translated into:
“O.K. – this is what we are being told by the leading ‘gurus’ and this is what we believe, so let’s practice what we (and they) preach – oh yes, and be sure to make it work”.

The Mozambique-based project is part of a general program that runs in many countries under the banner of “ICT for Development” (ICT4D for short). The specific project I am engaged on is developing curricula and courses on how to recognize opportunities for, and how to obtain socially valuable returns on, investments (of effort as well as cash) in technology-based solutions to problems in all manner of societal contexts – education, health, employment, governance, poverty eradication and economical development. The target populations for these training modules include teachers, public servants in general, and a new category of professionals called “ICT practitioners” who work at the grass-roots community levels, managing rural tele-centers, disseminating ICT knowledge and skills to village communities, supporting small businesses, farmers and craft-workers in producing and marketing their goods, and generally acting as “local change agents”.

This project, together with others that form part of the overall program of ICT4D, is being conducted in alignment with guidelines that were developed by national commissions, with international input, and are now “consecrated” in the form of national laws and decrees that specify how things are to be in the future. As regards education and training initiatives, or curriculum design activities, this official document once more bristles with the language of currently popular pedagogical “creeds”: authentic problem-solving; student-centered; reality-based; collaborative; constructivist; etc. So, once more, the challenge is to successfully put into practice teaching-learning approaches that are currently the most “politically correct”, but according to Kirschner and his co-authors (and also many other researchers whom they quote), are based on a set of beliefs that have not been born out by academic research. Once more, the challenge is to practice what these “creeds” or “belief systems” preach, and succeed where others have failed. 

The Azerbaijan-based project is part of an ongoing national school curriculum reform program. My role is limited to reviewing progress and evaluating the outcomes of the primary school curriculum revision process. Once more, the practical work on specific subject areas for specific grades was to be in alignment with general guidelines set out in a national curriculum framework and policy document. And once more, the language of this document reflects the currently predominant pedagogical belief systems whose validity is questioned by Kirschner and others. One observation during my work with the Azerbaijan curriculum design teams was the difficulty that they were experiencing in putting into practice the principles that were spelled out in such carefully chosen language in the national curriculum policy document. This was indeed highlighted as a major problem by some of the leaders of the project, who also threw some light on why this may be the case.

This curriculum reform program is, they said, attempting to transform a school system that was designed in Soviet times to serve the political and other interests of the Soviet State, into a system that is expected to serve as an instrument for integrating a small but independent country (with oil reserves that are soon expected to run out) into the mainstream of nations that operate as knowledge-based societies in a barrier-free market economy. The challenges are immense, not least in the mentality-change that is called for in adults who were brought up and educated under the previous regime and therefore acquired the associated habits and beliefs. In the case of the present project, teachers, curriculum designers and educational administrators – all acculturated to the previous system, are now called upon to successfully implement the new curriculum as an instrument of major societal change. The task is probably as tough as converting a nation to a new religion. And it was quite obvious to me during my work with the curriculum design teams that there were a number of “converts” who had bought into the new belief systems (even if not always understanding the practical implications of some of the theoretical principles) and were showing great zeal in their efforts to implement change. But there were also similar numbers who, despite being members of the same design teams and therefore working under the same general guidelines of the national curriculum policy document, were not true believers in the principles embodied in this document and showed strong signs of resisting any attempts to “convert them to the new creed”.

CAN THE TEACHING OF RELIGION TEACH US SOMETHING ABOUT ID?

In the previous section, I have several times made an analogical connection between pedagogy and religion. This comparison may have limited validity, but I would argue that it is a useful analogy to the extent that both may be viewed as a set of firmly held basic beliefs or principles that should then guide decision making, and be put into practice in real life situations. In this section, I plan to exploit this analogy some more. In most countries that have secular governments (and also many that do not) the practice of the principles of separation of church and state result in there being no formal religious education in the national curriculum. But of course in most countries there are many private schools that are set up and maintained by religious organizations and these do generally include the teaching of religion as a key subject in their curricula. So, it may be interesting to examine how some religious schools approach the issues of curriculum design and implementation of the subject which arguably may be “closest to their heart”.

It could be argued that a religious school would take particular care to ensure that the principles of their specific belief system should be reflected in both the content and the methodology of teaching the subject of religion. It so happens that I have some case studies based on personal experiences that illustrate how such schools may vary widely both in the curriculum content and in teaching methodology. It also happens that I have found the analysis of these differences extremely useful as a means of understanding such problems of curriculum and course planning as were observed in all three, otherwise quite different, projects described at the beginning of this column.

The first case study concerns my own experience as a student in three separate Catholic boarding schools. The three institutions were each run by a different order of monks. There were some differences in curriculum and pedagogy, but as far as “religious instruction” was concerned, there was great similarity. Looking back with the hindsight of ID knowledge and skill, I can see that the methodology employed in all three schools would today be labeled as “Direct Instruction” which, as Kirschner et al suggest, is a proven methodology for the achievement of the types of objectives that are typically tested at the end of classroom instruction. In the case of my religious instruction, this was pretty well limited to the knowledge and comprehension levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.

In all three cases, the first hour of each day was devoted to “RI” as it was labeled on the timetable. This was in itself a telling guide to the underlying philosophy. I was after all in the UK, where the term “instruction” tends to be used in a much more restricted manner than in the USA – “instructors” could be found in industrial and military training contexts, but never in schools – the stamping ground of “teachers”. So it is interesting to note the use of “instruction” in the context of religion. Finally, being boarding schools run by priests and monks, there were many real-life opportunities to put learning into daily practice. However, my memories are of being taken through the motions of religious activities (Bloom’s “application” level), but seldom actively involved in reflection on the reasons behind the performance of the acts, or their broader or deeper implications (Bloom’s “analysis, synthesis or evaluation” levels).

The second case study concerns a close personal friend and also business partner through the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, who was a more-than-somewhat exceptional person. During this period, we operated an antique and crafts shop / boutique in the well known Portobello Road antiques area of London. For myself, as university professor, this was a somewhat unusual and definitely “sideline” activity, mainly at weekends. For my partner, however, it was a key activity that enabled her to gain a small but regular income while pursuing her main-interests at that time – these included acting (typically an occasional activity with significant “rest periods” between assignments), writing two regular columns for Womens’ magazines and the writing of her own autobiography (done in the shop between attending customers). The autobiography was published in two volumes (childhood reminiscences and later exploits) and was a big non-fiction best-seller. The “later exploits” included: a short episode in the British army (brought to an end when they discovered she had lied about her age in order to enlist); a Dior Top Model in Paris: actress in some 40 major British plays and films; anchor and presenter in her own TV talk-show; a three year period when she gave up these activities to sail as a cook on a charter yacht; etc. She is now a successful, author of fiction and non-fiction books, TV soap operas and serious plays.

As an educational technologist, I was of course interested in understanding what form of education or training may have been the basis for such an unusually varied and successful career, particularly as my friend had not studied beyond secondary school, nor formally trained for any of the professions at which she has excelled. When she described her secondary school experiences, I realized that one of the main factors in her education was the manner in which she was taught the subject of religion.

My friend was one of the children who had the bad fortune to be taken away from their families and out of London, to boarding schools in the countryside during WW2, in order to avoid Hitler’s nightly V2 rocket raids – the Blitz. She had the good fortune, however, to be placed in a rather exceptional school – a boarding school for girls that had at that time already been in operation for some 100 years. The school, located in a small village in the county of Wiltshire, was set up by Quakers when Queen Victoria was quite young. The very setting up of an academically high quality boarding school for girls at a time when it was not fashionable to educate girls at all illustrates the free-thinking philosophy of the Quakers. The Quaker brand of Christianity was, of course, well known for its free-thinking philosophy and a belief system that included the principle that each person is responsible for constructing their own belief system – one could call it a religion that espouses constructivist principles.  These free-thinking principles often got the Quakers into trouble with the other predominant religions in Britain, one result of which was that some of them left for North America where they hoped they would be able to “practice what they preached” without impediment or strife.. However, by the 1800’s, religious tolerance had improved in Britain and “Badminton School” was opened with a curriculum and teaching-learning methodology that truly attempted to practice what the religion preaches. The school still exists and, I believe, still puts the belief system into practice in much the same way as when my friend was a student there.

My friend encountered no classes at all that were labeled “religious instruction”. Instead, the whole school would put a given religion into daily practice during one whole trimester. All aspects of community life would be conducted according to the norms of that religion. Within one school year, the students would experience, in an authentic and real-life-based manner, no less than three major world religions, The following year, they would experience three more major religions, and so on. As they progressed, they would be encouraged to compare and contrast the practices and the underlying principles of the different religions and so construct their own concepts of truth, of right and wrong. They would engage among themselves in knowledge-building conversations that, from the description I received from my friend, were very reminiscent of the dialogues in Plato’s “Republic” and also of the methods of reflection-in-action proposed by Donald Schön.

But how can we rely on young children having fruitful conversations of this nature? After all, the majority of adults do not seem to develop the requisite skills of analysis, synthesis and evaluation required for effective reflection-in-action. Well, it seems that the Quaker curriculum had this aspect under control well over a hundred years ago. Badminton School did not start each day with an hour of religious instruction, as did my Catholic schools. But the first hour of each day was devoted to a standard exercise, practiced in all the grades throughout the child’s secondary school career. Each student was given copies of three daily newspapers of different political orientations: a right-leaning newspaper such as the London “Times”; a left-leaning paper such as the communist party’s “Daily Worker”, and a middle-of-the-road paper. For half an hour, the students would read the editorial columns of all three papers that addressed the same current events, and as they read, would highlight “statements of fact” in blue and “opinions” in red. For the remaining half hour, the students would discuss the differences: between their own perceptions of the content of the editorials; between the different ways that the same current event was presented and discussed in the three papers.  Is this not an example of the development of skills at the analysis, synthesis and evaluation levels of Bloom’s taxonomy? Is this not a great example of collaborative construction of knowledge – and indeed collaborative development of skills?

In my estimate, a student would be spending 5 hours a week, 200 hours in an academic year, or 1000 hours during the minimum legal period of secondary school attendance, on just this one exercise. What was the return on this investment? Was there a real need for so much repetition of this basic exercise in intelligent communication? Of course, as the years progressed, the nature and the level of discourse developed. In early days, the students would be developing their skills of intelligent reading and justified criticism. At later times, they would be mastering rules of language, syntax, dialectics, logic, and many other areas often neglected in school curricula. Also there were continuing spin-off benefits in terms of awareness of current events and ability to take a balanced and defendable position on just about any topic of current interest. In my opinion, the level of investment of time and effort in this exercise is not only justifiable, but necessary. I also consider this as an illustration of the vast difference in curriculum structure that exists between what may be necessary to achieve the learning benefits promised by the ‘gurus of new educational paradigms’, and what is actually present in most current – including some recently-reformed – school curricula.

Where might we look for the long-term, after school, benefits of the Badminton curriculum? Possibly, the professional records of alumni? Badminton, despite its small size, stands out among British institutions in terms of the number of outstanding women scientists, authors, journalists and politicians among its alumni – for reasons of space, I will mention only one: Indira Ghandi, a past President of India, famous for her dedication, statesmanship and revolutionary reforms. But there is another “bottom-line” measure that was mentioned by my friend, and which I later checked out by contacting the school. It turns out that there are many documented cases, from back in the 1940’s when my friend was a student, right through to the 1970’s when I contacted the school, of British politicians from all political parties refusing to give public speeches in the County of Wiltshire unless the students from Badminton School were prohibited from attending, such was their fear of being demolished-in-debate by a 14 year old schoolgirl.

Is this not an example of successful attainment of the types of objectives that are talked about in discussions of the “new educational paradigms”, but are seldom if ever measured by school evaluation systems?  Is it in the pursuit and evaluation of such objectives that we may find evidence to counterbalance, the research in favor of direct instruction? May we not scientifically demonstrate that certain categories of learning objectives are generally best achieved through methods such as direct instruction, but other categories may be better achieved by constructivist-inspired approaches, provided “we do it right and measure the right outcomes”?

CONCLUSION

The object of this column is to extend the discussion of the issues addressed in my previous column, linking them to the specific context of curriculum reform and course design. It argues that despite the evidence amassed by research such as that quoted by Kirschner and others, there may be some foundation in the claims that constructivist and other “new paradigm” approaches lead to superior learning – but of objectives that typically are not formally evaluated in most school systems. It has also pointed out some real-world difficulties in the practical implementation of “new paradigm” principles in curriculum and course design projects, and suggested that many of these difficulties are associated not only with adopting a new belief-system, but also accepting the deeper implications of these beliefs. Finally, through the comparison of two approaches to the teaching of religion, it has attempted to illustrate the vast differences that may exist in the structure of curricula and courses that plan to implement education based on different belief-systems. The example taken from the context of religion is merely a clearer and sharper example of what exists in all subject-matter areas and all educational cultures. Another implication of the story is that educators have known for hundreds of years how to effectively implement constructivist-based curricula, but in fact very few actually have done so – either before or after Vygotzky. Therefore, our final question remains – will education systems as a whole take the enormous steps required to implement the curricular and methodological changes that are required to harvest the benefits that are promised by the new educational paradigms? Dare we practice what we preach?

Forward into the Breach? Or Back to First Principles?
The first of this series of “Topics for Debate” columns focused on the issues surrounding the promotion and assurance of Quality in Distance, Flexible and ICT-based Education.  This topic was chosen as it was the theme of the then-forthcoming ICDE World Conference on Distance Education. The column raised some questions regarding such issues as whether technological or pedagogical advances were leading the quest for effectiveness, efficiency and quality improvements in the new e-learning forms of distance education. It questioned to what extent the quest for quality was different in the context of these new media, or whether there were some underlying basic principles that are equally valid in both distance and conventional learning contexts. It also questioned the long term sustainability of the trend towards collaborative group learning in online environments unless something is done to limit the extra workload this places on the teachers, the financial misconceptions that institutions tend to make about the real costs of effective e-learning systems, and some of the pedagogical misconceptions that are introduced by such catch-phrase terms as reusable learning objects, SCORM compliance, and blended learning.
Well, the ICDE22 World Conference is now over. All these issues were debated by some 1500 delegates from over 70 countries.  As could be expected, some papers presented enthusiastic visions of a new era in education, and some of the presenters did so with rallying cries that recalled those of Shakespearean knights, kings and crusaders: forward into the breach dear friends – the future is ours! However, I was interested to note the large, and increasing, number of voices crying: hold your horses – where are you going – why are you going there – let’s get back to first principles!  

Old Wine in New Bottles?
Nowhere was this more evident than in the after-effects of my own keynote debate presentation, in which I addressed the issues I had raised in my last column in this journal, related to the controversial paper on the failure of Minimally Guided Instruction, recently published by Paul Kirschner, John Sweller and Richard Clark in Educational Psychologist 41(2). I stressed that I was not necessarily in agreement with all of the conclusions of the authors, but was raising these issues as I felt it was important to seriously examine such apparently damning conclusions with respect to some of the most prominent recent paradigm shifts in our field. However, I inevitably stirred up the wrath of a few dyed-in-the-wool social constructivists, who told me what they thought of me and then refused to debate further. But for every such reaction, there were many – surprisingly many – conference delegates who declared that it is high time to reign in the gallop towards the adoption of each new educational philosophy without first examining the basic teaching-learning principles that it promotes, verifying whether the new approaches are indeed that much different from past practices, and if so, whether there is an adequate and sound research base to justify them.
The debate focused particularly on the statement in the aforementioned paper that, for many decades, each generation of educators has promoted new teaching-learning procedures under new names, but based on the same set of basic principles that had already failed to stand up to the scrutiny of experimental research. One participant labeled this as marketing old wine in new bottles. That led the debate to consider whether the wine was basically a good or a poor vintage, or whether the bottling process was at fault: whether the apparent failure to improve learning was due to faults in the basic principles underlying discovery, experiential and constructivist approaches to instruction, or to the inappropriate or inexpert manner in which such approaches are often implemented in practice. Not surprisingly, the debate did not reach any unanimous conclusions. Indeed, rather than provide clear answers to the initial questions posed, it raised yet more questions. Out oioned oned t familiar wtiongy research and development this topic. constructivist approaches to instruction, or to the inexpne question that was voiced several times through the ensuing days of the conference was: if we are to return to basic principles, what are they – where do we find a clear statement of the first principles of instructional design? This is the topic for our debate this month.    

Merrill’s First Principles.     
David Merrill has over the last few years published quite extensively on this topic, one paper published in 2002 in Educational Technology Research and Development 50(3) actually bearing the title “First Principles of Instruction”.  He has since published other papers that use the “first principles” identified in this paper to build some innovative instructional strategies, for example Levels of Instructional Strategy, that was published in the July-August issue of this magazine. However, we are interested here in the details of the “first principles” and how they were derived, so the following analysis is based on the 2002 seminal paper.   Merrill first defines his terminology, using Charles Reigeluth’s construct of “basic” and “variable” methods:
“A principle (basic method) is a relationship that is always true under appropriate conditions regardless of program or practice (variable method). A practice is a specific instructional activity.  A program is an approach consisting of a set of prescribed practices. Practices always implement or fail to implement underlying principles whether these principles are specified or not.”
The basic premise of Merrill’s paper is that a set of basic “first principles” can be found in most instructional design theories and models and that these design principles apply regardless of the instructional program or practices prescribed by a given theory or model.  He identifies such a set of basic “first principles” through the analysis of the “practices” proposed in some recent instructional design theories and models. These include the Star Legacy program of the Vanderbilt Learning Technology Center, Howard Gardner’s Multiple Approaches to Understanding, van Merriënboer’s 4-Component ID Model, David Jonassen’s descriptions of Constructivist Learning Environments, and the proposals of many other theorists published from the mid-1990’s onwards. To temper this selection of modern, or in some cases post-modern, viewpoints, Merrill also cites the writings of Johann Friedrich Herbart from over 200 years ago, demonstrating that the same basic principles may be identified in older as well as more recent work. So, what are these basic principles? Merrill identifies the following list of five that seem to be reflected in most of the instructional theories analyzed.
Problem-centered.  Learning is promoted when learners are engaged in solving real-world problems. Furthermore, learning is best promoted when learners are first shown the task that they will be able to do or the problem they will be able to solve as a result learning, when learners are engaged at the whole problem or task level, and when learners solve a progression of appropriately selected problems.
Activation. Learning is promoted when relevant previous experience is activated, by asking them to recall, relate, describe, or apply knowledge from relevant past experience that can be used as a foundation for the new knowledge. Furthermore, learning is promoted when learners are provided relevant experience that can be used as a foundation for the new knowledge, and are provided or encouraged to recall a structure that can be used to organize the new knowledge
Demonstration. Learning is promoted when the instruction demonstrates what is to be learned rather than merely telling information about what is to be learned, when the demonstration is consistent with the learning goal, when learners are provided appropriate learner guidance, and when the media used for the demonstration play a relevant instructional role and multiple forms of media do not compete for the attention of the learner.
Application.  Learning is promoted when learners are required to use their new knowledge or skill to solve problems and when the application (practice) during learning and the later posttest are consistent with the stated or implied objectives. Furthermore, learning is promoted when learners are guided in their problem solving by appropriate feedback and coaching which is then gradually withdrawn, and when learners are required to solve a sequence of varied problems.
Integration. Learning is promoted when learners are encouraged to integrate (transfer) the new knowledge or skill into their everyday life and are given an opportunity to publicly demonstrate their new knowledge or skill. Furthermore, learning is promoted when learners can reflect-on, discuss, and defend their new knowledge or skill, and when they are able to create, invent, and explore new and personal ways to use their new knowledge or skills.
Merrill quotes copious references to experimental research that supports the validity of each of these first principles in a variety of teaching-learning contexts, drawing on the work of researchers from a variety of educational philosophy “camps”. He concludes his analysis by stating that the many different theories and models reviewed in his paper do not seem to involve fundamentally different “first principles of instruction”. All the theories and models reviewed incorporate at least some, usually most, of the five cited principles, though none of them includes all five principles in all their relevant aspects. Also, some theories and models reviewed include additional principles or prescriptions that are not described in his paper.  However, no theory or model reviewed includes principles or prescriptions that are contrary to those described. Let us see where this leads us……

Is this the Egg of Columbus? Or of the Curate?

Merrill, in his paper, visualizes a basic “first principles” ID model in the form of an egg-shaped diagram, where the centrally placed egg represents the problem upon which the learning activities are to be centered, and placed around the egg are the four other first principles – I quote:  “(1) activation of prior experience, (2) demonstration of skills, (3) application of skills, and (4) integration of these skills into real-world activities”. Figure 1 illustrates the general idea. Note that the five principles are transformed into prescriptive “phases” of the instructional process, and the nature of the diagram suggests that these phases need not occur in a predetermined sequence, but may be executed in any appropriate sequence, or indeed concurrently.  The “egg” metaphor was probably not an intended part of the model’s diagrammatic representation, but I have used it here as it leads me into the next part of the discussion – introduced by the somewhat cryptic subtitle of this section. Maybe I should explain further…

Figure 1. The five Phases for Effective Instruction (Merrill, 2002)

The eggs of Columbus and of the Curate are well established idiomatic expressions of the English language. But as some readers may not have learnt English as their original mother tongue, and as at least one of the two idiomatic expressions is very common in Britain, but not so in the USA (we are said to be “two nations separated by a common tongue”), I shall quote the stories that gave origin to the expressions, using that wonder of modern information technology – Wikipedia – as the source for both.
The first story goes back, presumably, to the fifteenth century. Christopher Columbus attends a dinner given in his honor. Columbus asks all the gentlemen in attendance to make an egg stand on end. After all the men tried and failed, they stated that it was impossible. Columbus then placed the egg’s small end on the table, breaking the shell a bit, so that it could stand upright. Columbus then stated that it was “the simplest thing in the world - anybody can do it, after he has been shown how!”
The second expression “a curate’s egg” means something having a mix of good and bad qualities. The phrase originated in a cartoon in the humorous British magazine Punch on 9 November 1895. …. it pictured a curate taking breakfast in his bishop’s house (and attempting to eat a boiled egg of dubious quality). The Bishop says “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr. Jones” …the curate replies, “Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!”
Is Merrill’s “egg” similar to the egg of Columbus, or of the Curate, or maybe to both in different aspects? First let’s take the Columbus metaphor. In showing that there are underlying basic principles, tested over time, that reappear in just about any new formulation of instructional theory, Merrill draws our attention to the fact that, at least at a more general systemic level, instructional design theory is much simpler than we are sometimes led to believe.  “Good” instructional theory must be based on “valid” observations of what works and what does not. These observations may vary in specific cases due to differences in the context, content or conditions of instruction, but it is good to know that if these situational differences are allowed for and the principles are generalized, we see a basic pattern of generally applicable “first principles”.
However, in order to be able to fit so many apparently different instructional theories, based on different philosophical assumptions, into one “mould”, Merrill has to be very generous in his use of basic terminology. For example, with reference to problem-centered learning, he says: “The definition of problem varies among theorists… for some a problem is engaging in some form of simulation of a device or situation … for others it merely means being involved in some form of real world task.”
I cut the quote at this point in order to observe that the more you loosen your definition of “problem” the greater the range of different situations that will fit into the category. Any professional training program is, by definition, conceived to prepare people to perform certain tasks in the “real world” context of their jobs. Thus any such program is “problem-centered” according to the above definition. Now let us imagine the simplest and most basic professional training model/method I know – the TWI (Training Within Industry) method. This was developed during WWII as a stop-gap rapid approach to train the “unskilled” people (mainly housewives and retired senior citizens) who replaced the younger “skilled” labor that left the factories to go to war. One can see all five of the “first principles” reflected in this simple basic training approach. Similarly the most sophisticated and most (behaviorist) theory-based approach to instruction that I know – Tom Gilbert’s Mathetics – seems to pass the membership test with flying colors on all counts – especially with respect to the Demonstration, Application and Integration principles, that are embodied in the basic D-P-R (Demonstrate – Practice – Release) sequence that forms the “spinal chord” of the Mathetics model of programmed instruction.
So, is this eclectic “herding” of all existing theories and models, emanating from all imaginable theoretical and philosophical sources, into one common “stable” a good thing or a bad thing? Is it a “simple when you have seen it” but powerful insight like the egg of Columbus, or a problematic issue like the one faced by the Curate?  On one level, it is definitely good, as it shows that when it comes down to solving real instructional challenges in the real world, there are similarities as well as differences between alternative approaches – and maybe sometimes and in some senses the similarities outweigh the differences.  Therefore, let us put a stop once and for all to the partisan wars that tend to break out between different educational psychology and philosophy “camps”.  On another level, it is not all that good, as it still leaves us with the dilemma of selecting appropriate approaches for different practical situations. The same basic first principles may be reflected in alternative instructional approaches, but does that mean that any approach is as good as any other in a given specific context / for any given content / under any imaginable real-world conditions? Obviously that is not the case.  So, let us delve a little deeper.  The earlier quote, truncated midway, continues as follows: “The author’s use of the word problem includes a wide range of activities the most critical characteristic being that the activity is some whole task rather than only components of a task and that the task is representative of the tasks the learner will encounter in the world following instruction.”
It would seem that here we are beginning to see an aspect of restriction in the use of the term “problem-centered”.  Only “whole-task” instructional approaches qualify. Part-task approaches are excluded. Other exclusions appear as the above quote continues: “Problem-centered instruction is contrasted with topic-centered instruction where components of the task are taught in isolation (“you won’t understand this now but later it will really be important to you”) before introducing the real world task to the students.”  This would seem to exclude the topic-centered courses and curricula that form the bulk of current school programs in most countries. But it may also be excluding many of the small-step programmed instruction approaches I mentioned above, that are often based on a task analysis approach that breaks down a complex real-world task into a hierarchy of component sub-tasks and organizes the instruction on a step-by-step model, from the known to the unknown, or from the simple to the complex.
This raises a number of questions and issues. For example, what happens to the well developed research base on the relative merits of whole-task and part-task training for different skill categories? What happens to the accumulated knowledge-base on best practices for instruction of different categories of learning? And what about the two examples in the last paragraph: the latter is an example of a particular approach to instructional design that has a long pedigree of success and therefore, although it may not be best in all situations, should it be totally discarded; the former is, however, not an example of instructional design strategy at all, but of curriculum design strategy – is this not a very different case? It seems to me that the part of the above quote that Merrill included in brackets clearly excludes courses and programs based on topic-centered curricula, but it is not clear whether he also means to exclude task-analysis-centered approaches. Clearly there is a world of difference between the learning of some component sub-tasks a matter of hours, or even just minutes, before the mastery of the whole task (the case of most sequenced instructional programs) and learning a meaningless subtask months, or even years, before it is integrated into real-world authentic problem situations (the case of a poorly planned curriculum).
I feel that some of the uncertainty generated springs from over-generalizing the basic terminology – and therefore the concepts – of our field. Perhaps the problem(s) with understanding the issues raised by the definition of “problem” may be resolved by analyzing the definition(s) used for “knowledge” and “skill”.  Earlier, I quoted Merrill’s definitions of some of his first principles as the demonstration, application and integration of skills. Yet later in the paper, he repeats the principles, but replaces the word skills by knowledge. This is not some lapse of attention, as there is a footnote that states: “The author used the word knowledge in its broadest connotation to include both knowledge and skill, and to represent the knowledge and skill to be taught as well as the knowledge and skill acquired by the learner.”
So, the generalization not only seems to include knowledge and skill as two near-synonyms in our vocabulary – a point I will return to later – but it also seeks to include both the external connotation of knowledge as something to be found in books and other media, and the internal connotation as something constructed by the learner’s cognitive processes. This, in effect, herds a legion of different animals into the same stable – to include constructivist, cognitivist and behaviorist theories and philosophies – maybe also to include the soft technologies of instructional design and the hard technologies of knowledge management - all under the same roof. This is a fascinating topic to discuss and debate, that warrants its own column some time in the future. For this month, however, let us return to the issue of knowledge and skills.  

The importance of differentiating knowledge and skill in the ID process
It is very common to talk, both colloquially and technically, of instruction as the development of knowledge, skills and attitudes. This three-domain distinction goes back to well before Bloom, Krathwohl and others used the terms cognitive, psychomotor and affective as the basic domains of their taxonomies of educational objectives. There has since been a colloquial tendency to treat these two sets of three terms as synonymous. However, technically speaking, it is clear that they are not. Skills may be physical (psychomotor) or intellectual (cognitive), and many are a combination of both. Also, in my view, some components of the affective domain are skills rather than attitudes.
One should also mention that the original Bloom taxonomy of the cognitive domain includes both knowledge-objectives (knowledge, comprehension) and skill-objectives (application, analysis). I have been pointing out since the 1970’s that this makes for some difficulty in using the taxonomy. It is only in Anderson and Krathwohl’s recent (2001) updating of Bloom’s taxonomy that the knowledge and skill elements have been distinguished, by reorganizing the categories on a grid where one axis represents the different categories of knowledge and the other represents different categories of cognitive processing. And of course, cognitive processing is a task or activity that involves a set of skills that people may possess and develop to different degrees. 
The authors of the revised taxonomy acknowledge the contribution of my past work on knowledge and skills as a basis for some aspects of their revisions. Incidentally, they also acknowledge the earlier work of David Merrill, of about the same period, which distinguished knowledge and skill aspects of learning by means of a grid-representation of learning categories, as part of Component Display Theory (surprisingly, CDT is not directly mentioned and is indirectly almost negated in the paper here analyzed). So, I return to my writings of the 1970’s and 1980’s to pick up on a few points that might form the basis for further continuation of this debate.
First the basic definitions: knowledge is information that has been acquired, organized and stored in a reusable, and useful, manner in the mind (that is, of course the internal connotation – for the external one, just substitute the word media for mind); skill is the capacity to do something (i.e. perform) with a given degree of effectiveness, efficiency, etc (i.e. competence).If we accept these definitions, then some quite important implications follow on.
(a) Knowledge is a “go – no go” quantity. Either you have it or you do not. Or, you may have it but are unable to access and use it due to the way it is currently organized. Partial knowledge is the result of having some of the information elements or units, and not others. Learning of knowledge involves a combination of (1) the addition of new elements to the store and (2) the reorganizing of the existing, and the new, elements to form new knowledge structures. Furthermore, this learning process can often occur in a one-shot sort of manner – the sudden “eureka” phenomenon of, in an instant, reorganizing one’s ideas and acquiring a precious insight. Two people exposed to the same information (experiences) may incorporate different subsets of information elements into their knowledge structures, and even if they acquire exactly the same elements, may integrate them in different ways with previously existing knowledge. Thus people generally differ in the knowledge (both content and structure) that they possess. These internal differences are generally difficult to measure accurately and objectively, as they can only be inferred indirectly from tasks performed, or from the analysis of communication processes such as speech, writing, or artistic expression.
(b) Skill, on the other hand, is something that develops with experience and practice. The learning process for skills is seldom if ever one-shot. Repeated and appropriate practice is required to achieve higher degrees of competence. Two people may possess the same skills, but developed to different degrees. Later, after some learning process, they may still have exactly the same skills developed to higher, but again different, degrees. They may even exhibit the same skills to different degrees of competence in different contexts (tasks). As these degrees of competence are generally task-related, they may often be measured directly, accurately and objectively by analysis of the end results of specific tasks.
(c) Skilled performance, of course, requires the use of knowledge. The more sophisticated and complex the skilled activity, the more it depends on the existence of an adequate knowledge base and its appropriate utilization. The existence of an adequate knowledge base usually implies prior learning, although in some cases the learning of the knowledge may conveniently accompany the practice of the skill (these are the cases where just-in-time-training actually works). In other cases, part of the knowledge-base may be external, as a performance support system to be combined with internally stored knowledge during skilled performance, without ever being learnt.
(d) The appropriate utilization of the knowledge base (whether internal or external) may involve the use of other supplementary skills (e.g. critical thinking) and knowledge (e.g. problem-solving heuristics) that are necessary for the internal planning or control of the task. These meta-skills and meta-knowledge elements are internal and not directly observable, but their presence and power may be inferred from the competence with which the skilled activity is performed. They may also be observed and evaluated indirectly and subjectively through the process of conversation (live or online). Skilled activity can, and indeed should, also be self-evaluated by the performer. This process is called reflection. It depends on the use of specific meta-skills, sometimes characterized as the skills of conversing with oneself. The more knowledge-dependant the skill, the greater is the importance of reflection for its development.
(e) The driving forces, both economic and social, behind institutionalized education are generally derived from the value of the resultant skilled performances. Therefore, not only is it easier to do accurately and validly, but it is also more appropriate for final assessment of learning to be in terms of task performance criteria – and therefore skills rather than knowledge. The acquisition and internal organization of knowledge is then evaluated indirectly, through the measurement of the results of its application in skilled performance. Furthermore, as the acquisition of knowledge “for its own sake” seldom interests anyone other than maybe the students themselves – and even then only sometimes – we may conclude that the difficult-to-accomplish accurate measurement of knowledge-learning is not an essential part of the summative evaluation process.
(f) However, the measurement and evaluation of the internal process of acquisition, construction and organization of knowledge is more than an area of academic study for psychologists – it interests instructional designers and also teachers, as their understanding of this process and their ability to measure it, albeit indirectly and subjectively, is a key to the promotion of effective learning. It is therefore an essential part of the formative evaluation of instruction. Having said that, however, one should add that this focus during teaching on the internal processes of knowledge-learning, should not lead to the neglect of the ultimate goal of the exercise, which is to develop appropriate degrees of externally demonstrable and measurable skills-performance.  Regrettably, in some recent instructional theory literature, these two aspects apparently seem to be in conflict rather than being seen as complementary.

Alexander Romiszowski
(Educational Technology 46/5, September-October 2006, pp61-63)

Are post-objectivist educators on the wrong track(s)?

About two years ago, this magazine published an animated exchange, instigated by Clifton Chadwick’s somewhat provocative article, entitled “Why I am not a Constructivist”.  I read this article and the series of rebuttals and replies with interest, noting particularly the way that the discussion developed as argument was followed by counter-argument. Chadwick’s original paper, as I recall, rejected the constructivist position as a basis for the design and implementation of instruction on the grounds that such approaches have not been shown to lead to instructional improvements, and then proceeded to an analysis of constructivist philosophies in order demonstrate why such approaches could not be expected to add value to the teaching-learning process. The ensuing rebuttals, however, focused on Chadwick’s interpretation of the philosophies and largely ignored the initial reason for including such an article in a magazine that focuses on the technology of education, where “technology” is understood in the broad sense of applying scientifically proven knowledge to the solution of practical real-world problems.

I was tempted to enter into the discussion at that time, but did not do so, discouraged in part by the low level of interaction possible when a series of papers and commentaries is published in subsequent bi-monthly editions of a journal (and not knowing if the readers of a commentary had actually read the paper being commented) and in part by the drift of the discussion away from the aspect that I personally considered crucial – the question of whether or not (and why) the approaches “work”. I have, however, been stimulated to return to this issue in the context of this interactive column, where those who have an interest may, through online discussion, engage speedily and intensively in the debate.

Also, I was particularly stimulated by a paper, published recently, that has once more opened up this issue in a most provocative manner. The paper in question, by Paul Kirschner, John Sweller and Richard Clark and entitled “Why Minimally Guided Instruction Does Not Work”, was published in Educational Psychologist 41(2), in June 2006. In this month’s column I review this paper, make my own comments on some of the key points, and hopefully will get readers to enter on one or other side of the debate.

The first question to consider is the meaning of the term “minimally guided instruction”. The authors use it to describe a series of methodologies including discovery learning, problem-based learning, inquiry learning, experiential learning and constructivist learning, which they consider to be “differently named but essentially pedagogically equivalent approaches”. What leads the authors to consider these approaches as pedagogically equivalent is that there are some shared assumptions underlying all these forms of instructional programs: “first, they challenge students to solve ‘authentic’ problems or acquire complex knowledge in information-rich settings based on the assumption that having learners construct their own solutions leads to the most effective learning experience; second, they appear to assume that knowledge can best be acquired through experience based on the procedures of the discipline”. Another common aspect the authors mention is a tendency to provide students with limited guidance and “real-world” incomplete or unstructured information on the problems to be solved.

The second question to consider is what the authors mean by “does not work”. As defined above, minimally guided instruction represents the main stream of innovative approaches to rethinking of the teaching-learning process over the last half century. It includes methodologies based on the writings of many well known authors such as Bruner, Kolb, Papert and Vygotzky. It has been accepted, in one or other of its forms, by many partisan groups of education professionals, in both formal education and corporate training, as the rallying cry, almost the religion, by which they organize their professional life. So it may come as quite a shock to many to have their mainstream beliefs questioned. But the authors are quite clear and direct in their research-based attack:

“After a half century of advocacy associated with instruction using minimal guidance, it appears that there is no body of research supporting the technique. In so far as there is any evidence from controlled studies, it almost uniformly supports direct, strong instructional guidance rather than constructivist-based minimal guidance during the instruction of novice to intermediate learners. Even for students with considerable prior knowledge, strong guidance while learning is most often found to be equally effective as unguided approaches. Not only is unguided instruction normally less effective, there is evidence that it may have negative results when students acquire misconceptions or incomplete and/or disorganized knowledge”.

A provocative question: are these tracks circular, ultimately leading nowhere?

The above quoted paragraph summarizes several pages that review the research on all the methodologies that the authors have included in the blanket-term ‘minimally guided instruction’. They also quote previous research reviews published over the years that have consistently reported similar findings. This column is not the appropriate place to enter into the details of the research reviews or of specific studies. Readers are directed to the original article, which contains a bibliography of other relevant publications. The declared purpose of this column is to stimulate debate, so let’s “stir it up”.

My first provocation will, however, make reference to one of the quoted reviews: “Should there be a three-strikes rule against pure discovery-learning? The case for guided methods of instruction”. (Mayer, R. American Psychologist, 59(1) 2004), where we find the following indictment: “in each decade since the mid 1950’s, when empirical studies provided solid evidence that the then currently popular unguided approach did not work, a similar approach popped up under a different name with the cycle then repeating itself ….each new set of advocates for unguided approaches seemed either unaware or uninterested in previous evidence that unguided approaches had not been validated …..this pattern produced discovery learning which gave way to experiential learning which gave way to problem-based and inquiry learning which now gives way to constructivist instructional techniques”.

No punches pulled here! The implication is that some (maybe most) educators are oblivious to the lessons learned from empirical research. Do they not read the research? Do they consider it irrelevant to their context? Or do they purposely ignore it if the results do not support some pre-determined hidden agenda? Is the case of ‘minimally guided instruction’ unique, or have similar phenomena been observed in other contexts?

The last of these questions reminds me of a parallel case in my own experience. Some fifteen years ago I was working on problems and issues involved in the design of simulators for training in complex skills. Projects included applications in military and in paramedical and nurse training. In both contexts, the projects arose as a result of evidence that the investment in simulator design and development – many millions of dollars annually in the case of the military training applications – was not leading to the expected improvements in learning. Analysis showed that the design teams involved habitually followed certain principles, one of which was “fidelity” – the simulated experience should replicate as closely as possible the “real life” experience of doing the job.

However, a search of the literature on fidelity in simulator design revealed a chain of studies, initiating from some of the earliest work of Robert Gagné in the1950’s, clearly demonstrating that absolute fidelity to the real-life job situation in the simulated exercise was ineffective, especially in the early stages of learning. Partial simulation, that focused attention on the key skill elements that had to be learned, that enhanced relevant guidance and feedback information, and eliminated irrelevant “noise” that could distract the learner, was shown to be the most effective design for the early stages of learning. It was, indeed, quite possible to construct a research-based design theory for the incorporation of fidelity – indeed different aspects of fidelity (physical, perceptual, etc.) – in specific ways at specific stages of the learning process. However, the bulk of those involved in the design of simulators were completely ignoring this research base.

The parallel of this case to the ones described in the paper I am commenting are very close indeed. Is this just coincidence, or are these just some examples of a more general social-professional phenomenon? Are we simply returning to the observation made by John Dewey way back in the 1920’s that education suffers more than most areas of human enterprise from the “baby and bathwater syndrome” – that each new generation of educators perceives some problems in the system as it stands and so proceeds to reorganize it or substitute it with a new system that may possibly eliminate some of the problems, but inevitably throws out much of what was good with the bad?

Maybe education is doomed to progress in ever repeating circles of reform that lead nowhere. Maybe this is a phenomenon of society in general, summarized so neatly in the French expression “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”- the more things change the more they stay the same. I wonder if any readers have opinions on this issue.

An alternative question: are they different tracks to different goals?

However, here is a second provocation, from a different vantage point. Is it possible that the research studies reviewed in the article are flawed? The authors seem to totally ignore the counter arguments often presented by proponents of minimally guided approaches, that the conventional criteria used for evaluation are inappropriate – that emphasis on the construction of knowledge by interaction with ‘authentic’ problems and situations seeks (and possibly achieves) other outcomes of the teaching-learning process than those capable of being measured by means of the conventionally accepted testing and evaluation procedures.

It is surprising that the paper did not address this issue, especially as one of the authors, Richard Clark, has built his reputation on debunking a half-century of research on the effectiveness of instructional media, exactly on the grounds that much of it was based on flawed research design. Should we not be looking in a similarly critical manner at the design of the research on minimally guided instruction methodologies? Is it indeed possible to experimentally compare two approaches to instruction if their expected outcomes are quite different? On the other hand, is it admissible, in a society that invests significant amounts of scarce resources in the construction of an education system for its citizens, that there exist such divergent views regarding the expected outcomes?

In this context, I recall the extensive series of articles on constructivist-inspired instructional design that appeared in two special editions of this magazine in May and September of 1991, and especially the final paper written by David Jonassen, the contributing editor of the series, in which he addressed the question of “Evaluating Constructivistic Learning”.   He first commented that the authors of the papers, who were also participants in a NATO conference on “Designing Constructivistic Learning Environments”, were somewhat unwilling to address problems in evaluation that are raised by constructivism. And he said that he did not blame them for that, since “evaluation of learning from constructivistic environments is perhaps the most difficult issue related to constructivism”. He then proceeded to list and comment a series of possible approaches and related issues such as: goal-free evaluation methodologies; context-driven evaluation methodologies; learning-context-dependant evaluation; the need for different approaches to evaluation at different stages of learning and acquisition of expertise; the need to evaluate the multiple perspectives a student may generate on an issue; the associated need for multiple evaluation perspectives and therefore multiple evaluators; the issues involved in evaluating the processes, rather than the products, of knowledge-construction; etc.

In my view, despite this valiant attempt at listing and analyzing a range of pertinent factors that might differentiate the evaluation processes that would be appropriate in constructivist (as opposed to objectivist) inspired instructional systems, no clear procedural distinctions emerge that would assist a designer in setting up appropriate evaluation systems that clearly measure some “other outcomes” that might be expected from a ‘minimally guided instruction’ methodology. Jonassen’s only strong conclusion may be summarized as: IF constructivistic instructional methodologies were to be implemented on a large scale and IF they were to be appropriately evaluated, THEN “education requires perhaps a larger revolution than any have bargained for, that ultimately we must reconceptualize the outcomes of education from a societal perspective”.

In other words, the message from 15 years back, based on the analysis of the work of some of the world’s leading proponents at that time of constructivist approaches to instruction, was that such approaches are incompatible with the present macro-organization of most of the world’s educational systems. And there has been little sign, either before or since, that the “larger revolution” mentioned by Jonassen is likely to take place. Maybe this is the reason that the paper on minimally guided instruction does not even address the issue of alternative goals and evaluation methodologies. It seems to take the position that the currently accepted goals of education are the ones to be pursued, and if this is the case, then the currently accepted evaluation criteria are the correct and valid ones to use in any comparison. It then follows that we should employ the instructional methodologies that have been shown to be superior according to these criteria.  

So, which is the right track – and why?

This brings us to the third and last question we should consider, which is encapsulated in the first word of the title of the article that stimulated this column: WHY minimally guided instruction does not work - and as a corollary, what DOES work, and why? The authors are quite clear as to their position on these questions:

“Evidence for the superiority of guided instruction is explained in the context of our knowledge of human cognitive architecture, expert-novice differences, and cognitive load. While unguided or minimally-guided instructional approaches are very popular and intuitively appealing, the point is made that these approaches ignore both the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture and evidence from empirical studies over the past half century that consistently indicate that minimally-guided instruction is less effective and less efficient than instructional approaches that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning process. The advantage of guidance begins to recede only when learners have sufficiently high prior knowledge to provide ‘internal’ guidance”.

They continue by stressing that instructional methods that ignore human cognitive architecture are not likely to be effective, and that minimally guided instruction appears to proceed with no reference to the characteristics of working memory, long-term memory or the relations between them. They make several further stabs at the current ideological trends in education, prefacing their comments by stating that the “constructivist description of learning is accurate, but the instructional consequences suggested by constructivists do not necessarily follow”. They make the point that learners must construct a mental representation or schema irrespective of whether they are given complete information or partial information, but complete information will result in a more accurate representation that is also more easily acquired: “despite the alleged advantages of unguided environments to help students to derive meaning from learning materials, cognitive load theory suggests that the free exploration of a highly complex environment may generate a heavy working memory load that is detrimental to learning”.

They also criticize the shift of emphasis away from teaching a discipline as a body of knowledge towards learning a discipline by experiencing its processes and procedures: “it may be a fundamental error to assume that the pedagogic content of the learning experience is identical to the methods and processes (i.e., the epistemology) of the discipline being studied and a mistake to assume that instruction should exclusively focus on methods and processes”. And the final conclusion of the paper returns to the attack, stating that “it is regrettable that current constructivist views have become ideological and often epistemologically opposed to the presentation and explanation of knowledge”.

The debate is on.

Well, the lines of battle have been set – or rather they have been redrawn, as we are of course reopening discussions that have been going on for a long time.  Surely, such a strong attack on constructivist approaches to instruction (and by association, the other approaches here classified as minimally guided instruction) will generate some rebuttals and counter arguments. Recalling the series of articles generated by Clifton Chadwick’s paper, mentioned in the opening paragraph, let us hope that any discussion generated by this column will continue to address the initial questions, as raised by the Kirschner, Sweller and Clark paper and will avoid the temptation to enter too deeply into a philosophical debate on the nature of man, mind and society, thereby forgetting the prime purpose of discussing the improvement of the teaching-learning process.

Furthermore, recalling the structure (rather than the content) of the first column in this series, let us see if we can maintain quality in the overall structure of our debate, by being quite clear about the vantage point from which we address our comments. For example, it may be useful to keep in mind that the “human cognitive architecture” vantage point adopted by the authors in discussing why minimally guided instruction does not work, is quite different from the vantage points adopted by Vygotzky and others when discussing the construction of knowledge and socially negotiated meaning. We should also remember that arguing against each other from different vantage points without appreciating the other’s vantage point is likely to get us nowhere - and slowly.

Finally, let us see if our discussion leads towards greater clarity on some of the basic concepts that are used in the debate. It is high time that we worked out a more uniform usage of the terminology in our field – something that is considered essential for the development of a scientifically based discipline. Yes, I do realize that the last sentence must have been written some hundreds of times throughout the short history of educational technology, and that commissions have been formed to clarify the definitions of our terminology. But we are still often tripping ourselves up on the use of our words. Maybe we should devote a future column especially to this issue? “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”.
In order to post any comments on the views expressed in this article, or to add any further contributions from your own particular vantage points, join me at the following URL: http://www.tts-global.com/blog/ . I look forward to continuing the debate.

This rather lengthy title is the theme of the next ICDE World Conference on Distance Education, to be held September 3-6, 2006 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is significant that this theme and its sub-themes, as explained on the conference site (www.icde22.org.br), were generated in debate between representatives of over a dozen distance education institutions from nearly so many countries. Obviously, a large number of practitioners of distance education consider the issue of quality assurance to be worthy of debate.

To start the ball rolling, let’s analyze how the ICDE conference planners view the topic. First of all, it is significant that they felt the need to use a somewhat lengthy title for the main theme – one that highlights the relatively new ideas of flexible learning (anytime, anywhere, etc.) and e-learning (ICT-based) in addition to the basic idea of learning at a distance. This raises the question, in my mind, of the extent that the “new”, ICT-based approaches have changed or raised new quality-related issues, as compared to the “old” methods of distance education, or indeed of education in general. Are we facing new challenges, or the same old ones that we have never adequately addressed? Second, it is interesting to see how the planners have subdivided the overall theme into sub-themes, to reveal the complexity of the topic and its systemic structure. This structure will help us to organize our own thinking and discussion with respect to the many issues involved. In the following sentences, I will follow the example of the ICDE22 website and shorten the full version of the conference theme to the acronym “DFICTE”. 
One sub-theme is described as the “Value of DFICTE in relation to: national development needs; educational capacity building; lifelong and workplace learning; international collaboration”. This sub-theme addresses DFICTE  from a national/ international perspective, focusing on the political and philosophical aspects. Note that I have highlighted two words, used by Tom Gilbert way back in the 1970’s as two of the six principal vantage points that may be adopted in the analysis, or the debate, of almost any complex issue. A second sub-theme is defined as “Institutional quality issues regarding: developing quality standards; developing methods for promoting quality; accreditation issues; meeting the challenge of fake universities and false on-line degrees, etc”. This addresses DFICTE from a management vantage point, focusing on  client-system preparation (change management), implementation (project management) and sustainability (process management). The third main sub-theme is described as “Promoting educational quality regarding: faculty; pedagogy; student learning outcomes assessment; technology and delivery; cultural and linguistic diversity; etc.” By adopting the three remaining vantage points suggested by Gilbert - strategic, tactical and logistical - we may view these design-related issues in a more organized manner.
This short column will allow me to mention only a few of the factors that may be impeding the march towards quality in distance learning. I will select one issue perceived from each of the vantage points mentioned above. I hope that other related issues will emerge in later discussion.

The logistical vantage point: putting the ”E in E-learning” into perspective.

The bulk of recent literature on factors that lead to success or failure of E-learning projects focuses on the role of ICT’s in the provision of online learning: the importance of state-of-the-art Learning Mangement Systems; issues of networking, bandwidth, access speed and memory; the role of multimedia and hypermedia; interoperability standards and learning object reusability. But the literature also presents case examples of E-learning projects using the latest technologies that are suffering (learning) quality problems, and other projects that are achieving high levels of learning effectiveness whilst using technologies that are far from state-of-the-art. It would seem that ”high quality of learning” may not necessarily correlate closely with ”high tech”. I suggest that excessive emphasis on technology as the solution – on ”the E in E-learning” – may often in reality be a part of the problem. 

For example, current E-learning system standards, such as SCORM, focus on issues of course interoperability across platforms and reusability of previously developed learning objects, but they offer us little in terms of learning quality assurance. Indeed, the reuse of learning objects facilitated by such standards may promote the easy replication of past instructional design blunders and may contribute to a general lowering of quality. I have seen many so-called learning objects, SCORM-compatible of course, that from an ID standpoint should be banished to obscurity, rather than reused in other contexts. So, what steps do we take to ensure ”quality before reusability”?

The tactical vantage point: can teachers handle the E-learning workload?

One often-repeated argument is that the quality of learning is enhanced in online environments through the increased possibilities for collaborative small group learning, higher levels of human-to-human interactivity, and methodologies that promote the construction of knowledge. I agree with this argument and its theoretical foundations. However, such methodologies tend to require higher levels of teacher involvement, as well as higher levels of expertise and skill on the part of the teachers, and very much more time. Studies suggest that teachers spend at least twice as much time teaching online as they do in an equivalent face-to-face course.

This raises the question of how many students an online instructor can handle. In collaborative classroom activities, teachers can comfortably handle from 20 to 30 students, depending on the nature of the content and the teacher’s skills. In a web-based course that is highly individualized and uses colaborative small-group learning intensively, student numbers may have to be deliberately limited to somewhere in the range of from 12 to 15 students in order to allow teachers to handle the workload. But such levels of staffing are not economically sustainable. Some analysts suggest that distance learning has to exceed staff/student ratios of 200/1 in order to be economically sustainable over the long term – this is a whole order of magnitude beyond the typical face-to-face ratios. Distance learning systems have often achieved and sustained such ratios in the tele-course and correspondence modalities. But these are rightly criticized, from a pedagogical standpoint, for not providing opportunities for individualized small-group collaborative learning.

So, we seem to have a paradoxical quality-sustainability trade-off situation. What can we do to make teaching online less labour-intensive than teaching face-to-face, and at the same time ensure that the quality of learning, both as an experience for the student and in terms of learning outcomes, is enhanced? One possible approach is providing the teachers with sophisticated productivity and performance support tools. This seems a promising use of technology in support of learning quality. But is technology-based teacher support achievable in time and at an affordable cost? What will it take?

The strategic vantage point: so what’s new about blended learning?

Another current bandwagon is blended learning – originally defined as a combination of traditional instruction conducted in groups under a teacher’s supervision and E-learning or web-based training, where participants study individually or in virtual groups.  However, a glance at the literature reveals that blended learning now means different things to different people: combining different modes of web-based technology (e.g. synchronous and asynchronous modes), various pedagogical approaches (behaviorist, humanist, constructivist), any form of instructional technology with face-to-face instructor-led training, and even formal classroom instruction with on-the-job training. The term  has become “hype” – so popular and so misused as to be in danger of becoming valueless. But when we get “beyond the hype”, did it ever have any value in terms of instructional innovation or quality? I think it did not. Let me illustrate my point by reference once more to the literature base.

A review of a whole bunch of articles on blended learning identified five often quoted situations when it makes sense to implement blended learning. Four of these are driven by practicality and expediency factors: cost, convenience, and the availability of time and human resources. Only one of the five may have something to do with the quality of the learning experience: “matching delivery method to content and instructional need”. Beautiful words – but how do we actually do this matching?  The literature reviewed presents many examples of courses that use different delivery methods for different components, and also some models for the planning of blended learning systems. But, the examples do not throw any light on why specific modules were delivered be specific methods and the planning models are restricted to describing the procedural steps that should be followed, saying nothing about exactly how to decide what delivery method to select for what content or instructional need.

Let us reflect on what is really to be decided – nothing else than the systematic selection of media – which was the “hype of the day” in the 1960’s and 1970’s, with dozens of decision models being proposed. This particular bandwagon was slowed down, if not halted completely, in the 1980’s when Richard Clark in his now famous (some say infamous) research review relegated instructional media to the category of “mere vehicles” for the intended instructional design. So, is the current hype-of-the-day bringing something new and improved to our instructional decision-making toolbox? Can we expect the blended learning bandwagon to lead us to higher levels of learning quality? I am yet to be convinced. 

The institutional mangement vantage point: quality vs. cost – no free lunch.

Traditional approaches to institution-based education are highly labour-intensive and therefore have high operating costs. The “traditional” methods of distance education, such as the corrrespondence and telecourse models, are capital-intensive, but permit low per-capita operating costs, and therefore have proved to be lower-cost alternatives for large student populations. But, E-learning involves varying patterns of financial investment – the costs involved in developing and delivering a three credit hours Internet course have been estimated as varying from US$6,000 to $1,000,000, depending on the technologies and approaches used. So, the potentially higher quality of E-learning systems as compared to earlier distance learning modalities, is offset by very variable and sometimes not fully understood cost structures.

Let’s look at the case of South Africa, a country that now graduates more than half of all its higher education students through distance-learning courses. The ministry of education has for years provided higher education funding to institutions on the basis of a fixed annual amount per full-time-equivalent student enrolled, but distance students were valued at half the annual budget allowance of campus-based students. This may have been a reasonable policy when most universities were conventional single-mode campus-based institutions and the one large single-mode distance-learning institution – UNISA – operated on a low-cost correspondence course model. Today, the other universities have in most cases moved from a single-mode to an ICT-based dual-mode operational model. The cost-quality structure of the higher education scenario has changed dramatically. But recently the ministry of education was undertaking a study to even further reduce the per-capita funding for distance students. So how can we work to balance the often-opposed forces of cost and effectiveness?

The political / philosophical vantage points: distance education and globalization.

In this section I would like to introduce the first of my occasional collaborators - Professor John Tiffin, well known for his writings on the concept of a ”Global Virtual University”. In a recent article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, John points out that in 1950 there were 6.5 million enrolments in tertiary education worldwide and over three quarters of them were from the developed world, but today there are approximately 100 million and half of these are from the developing world. This demand is being met by building new universities, expanding old ones and also, by rapidly increasing use of distance learning. But this expansion process often also results in the dropping of academic standards. And the developed world is largely to blame.

At the present time, students in developing countries, who cannot find places in their own universities, spill over into the universities of the developed world, who gladly accept them as ‘full fee paying’ students. This growing global trade in tertiary teaching between the developed and developing worlds is, as in so many things, one-way. Few students from developed countries go to the universities of the developing world. John observes that “Adam Smith the founder of the idea of free trade argued that if a person has learned their lesson very well, ‘surely it can be of little importance where or from whom they learned it.’ …. Will we, then, one day see the pages of The Guardian Weekly filled with advertisements offering degrees on the Internet from the universities of the third world?  Or will we find that Adam Smith was wrong. That it is not what is learned that matters but the brand name on it.”

The brand name of higher education is often established more on the basis of excellence in research rather than teaching. Could one maybe reverse this trend and in the process modify this one-way trade in higher education? If excellence in teaching were to be accepted as the prime criterion of institutional quality, and if such excellence were to be clearly defined as a set of globally accepted standards and effectively implemented in a globally accessible virtual university, then such institutions could in fact be based anywhere - and with greater cost-effectiveness in the nations of the developing world where operating costs are lower.
This is indeed an intriguing line of argument. If we explore it further, could we not argue that rapid globalization, which is itself a consequence of the rapid worldwide impact of ICT, could lead, not only to the phenomenon described by John Tiffin of some developing nations offering higher learning quality at lower cost and so reversing the current direction of the trade in higher education, but that in the process, the globally oriented planners and promoters of such a trend will establish globally relevant and verifiable standards for the quality of higher education. Is it thus possible that at some point in the future, international E-learning initiatives will become the benchmarks for educational quality? Will we see the day when distance education will take the lead and force conventional education out of its complacency and satisfaction with the abysmally low quality standards that have for centuries been accepted as normal and inevitable?

Conclusion: “all things are intertwingled”

I borrow this phrase from the writings of Theodore Nelson, the “guru of hypertext” and protagonist of the idea of global interlinking of all world literature repositories into a universally accessible and universally useful global library. But I use it here in order to emphasize that the various “snaphot views” discussed in this column, each one from a different systemic vantage point, but each one relevant to the promotion and assurance of quality in distance learning, must be considered as a whole. They are interlinked local pictures of a “hyperpicture” of the issues that need attention in order to achieve real improvements in quality, not only of distance education, but of all education systems. There are many more such snapshot views that shoiuld be added and interlinked in order to form a complete vision of the road to the future. I hold out the challenge to debate not only the future of distance learning, but the future of teaching and learning in general, and to consider the motion that future distance education developments, if properly planned and managed, might lead to the revolution in provision of quality education that both the developed and developing world is (or should be) waiting for.