A GLIMPSE AT THE POSSIBLE REAL BENEFITS
OF THE UNIVERSITY'S LINK
TO THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY

Richard B. Morris, Trent University

Recently much has been claimed about the benefits of embracing the new information technologies for teaching and communications of all kinds at the primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels of education. Unfortunately, many of the claims regarding the impact of these technologies appear to be based only on hopes, dreams, and wishful thinking rather than on sound theory and empirical research. I argue in this paper that, from the perspective of the university teacher and researcher, there are very tangible benefits in the form of almost instant communication and access to a vast amount of resources , but that it is far less clear what the benefits are, or might be, for students. A few URLs are included to provide a very restricted view of the relevant Web-based literature on the issues involved. The paper concludes with a brief reference to a suggested theoretical framework that my serve as a guide for research concerning benefits for teachers, researchers, and students alike.

This year, for the first year in a fairly long teaching career, I have opted to teach my courses without a textbook or a book of selected readings. This strategy for course presentation may be usual for some disciplines. However, in psychology it is rare to present an undergraduate course without an assigned text. Instead I am using reserve readings and my web pages both for lecture notes and links to potentially informative web pages. There are a number of reasons why I have abandoned standard textbooks, but that is a another story. I have jumped into this without thorough preparation or a complete understanding of the potential benefits and drawbacks of making such a move. In this paper I explore aspects of the use of new information technologies for teaching and communication that may provide me with a better understanding of just what is involved.

In a recent presentation at Trent University Don Tapscott, billed as a leading "cyber guru" by Al Gore, issued a call to universities to embrace the new information technologies for teaching and abandon the traditional "drill and spill" and "sage on stage" methods of teaching. In his new book, Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation (1998), Don describes the impact of information technologies on the thinking, learning, and education of youngsters in primary and secondary school. The scope of his investigation, the procedures that he used and the magnitude of this project may be appreciated with knowledge of the facts that he had available a team of experts and access to experiences, thoughts, and ideas of over 300 young people in-person and on-line via the internet. For the purpose of this paper the gist of Tapscott's message is that information age technology is changing the way youngsters are approaching education, politics, and life in general. These youngsters are taking a more active role in formal and informal education. Don is one of a growing number of individuals in the business world, in education, and in government claiming that information age innovations have the potential to drastically change the way students think, learn, act, and feel about themselves. Because of this focus on change it is not surprising that such claims are being made in the context of progress and reform within our educational systems. In Ontario alone, over the past several years there have been a number of attempts to formulate educational policy that has the potential to radically change the Ontario's educational system. In a recent Ontario Ministry of Education and Training document, For the Love of Learning (1995), there are numerous recommendations for changing the current educational system in which information age technology for teaching and learning is given a high profile. Unfortunately, what one finds in documents of this type are only hopes, dreams, and wishful thinking concerning the impact of these technologies rather than justification of claims based on sound theory and empirical research. In Growing Up Digital Don Tapscott provided anecdotal evidence to support his many claims but I would say that an accurate assessment of his efforts is that "there is a potential thesis on every page" in need of empirical verification.

Tapscott's focus and that of the For the Love of Learning commissioners is on issues pertaining to primary, junior, and secondary education. Knowledge about use of information age technologies at the post-secondary education level can be found at a growing number of web sites devoted to distance learning or asynchronous education and a number of other web pages constructed by innovative professors encouraging the use of the new electronic technology available. In this literature one finds indications of hopes and dreams and calls for reform. However, it is evident that there is more reflection on pedagogical and political issues rather than unsubstantiated claims of revolutionary change that will result in the enhancement of the quality of education. Also one sees evidence of a considerable amount of time, effort, and hard work in the preparation of these locations.

In my "bookmarks" I have numerous examples of such pages but three examples from relatively different domains will serve my purposes here. The first example is provided by Professor William G. (Bill) Huitt, an educational psychologist at Valdosta State University in Georgia. Professor Huitt maintains a very professional-looking web site. Available there is a paper entitled "Success in the Information Age: A Paradigm Shift" (1995, revised 1997) in which Professor Huitt presents an analysis of the potential impact information age technologies will have in changing the present status quo in teaching and learning. In a recent email exchange I expressed my concern that although there are claims being made about the benefits for teaching and learning of this "paradigm shift" we may be short on empirical evidence to substantiate such claims. He replied with a note indicated that indeed empirical evidence is sparse. But included was an informative discussion of data on success he has had in moving to on-line course presentation both for distance learning clients and typical undergraduate instruction. Professor Huitt indicated some of the costs and modifications that had to be made in teaching strategies as well. He warned that his data were incomplete and analysis quite preliminary but positive enough to recommended trying on-line course presentation.

The second example comes from the web pages of Professor Guy Bensusan, Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies and Senior Faculty Associate for Interactive Instruction Television at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. Within his pages one can find an essay offering suggestions on course redesign for on-line presentation with the title "Beyond Teaching" Twelve Pillars for Managing Learning." Professor Bensusan (1996) warns his audience that teaching on-line requires a radical shift in the present teaching and learning paradigm. Based on extensive experience Bensusan could say with conviction that on-line teaching "...involves extensive thinking and hard work; it takes several semesters to construct the new system; you don't learn everything all at once..."

My third example is provided by Professor John Mitterer, Departments of Psychology and Computer Science, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON. For a number of years John has been instrumental in the production of video disks, CD-ROMs, etc. for multimedia presentation of lectures in psychology. He has recently expanded his interests to include web-based, hypermedia course material. Professor Mitterer's (1997) "webliography" is well-worth spending browsing time with the links he has provided! In a recent email exchange I shared my concerns with him as indicated above in the exchange with Professor Huitt. John responded with "three grand thoughts" that I quote here: " (1) the new technologies are immensely powerful, (2) the new technologies very clearly expose the inadequacies in our theories of teaching and learning, and (3) most attempts to harness this power for teaching and learning are, then, dramatically underdetermined by theory." Professor Mitterer's "grand thoughts" are very insightful and clearly illustrate the difference between Tapscott's "experiential" approach to the issues and an academic psychologist's approach.

Collectively, the academies concerns, as well as mine, are succinctly stated in the title of an essay abridged from a more extensive study by G. Roger Sell (1996-1997): "Challenges in Using Technology for the Improvement of Undergraduate Education." In his opening paragraph he commented that "opportunities provided by new technologies such as the Internet and World-Wide Web, CD-ROM data bases, multimedia presentations, and other instructional uses of computers require considerable reflection and debate as to whether, and under which conditions, they will enhance the quality of learning and teaching." In the remainder of his essay Professor Sell asks questions of the literature and explores hidden assumptions that challenge the various claims made for using information age technologies to improve post-secondary education.

So where are we? The title of this paper is "a glimpse of the possible real benefits of the university's link to the information highway" but so far little has been said about benefits. In my abstract for this paper I indicated that my thesis would be that there are reasons to be optimistic as never before about the impact recent technological changes could have on education from primary education to post-secondary education and beyond to "life-long learning" but I must admit that I was more optimistic when I started with this exercise than I am now. Perhaps this need not be stated explicitly but it is clear that the benefits to which I refer must be viewed from the perspective of the teacher and the perspective of the student.

From my perspective the benefits are very tangible and far outweigh the costs of implementation. Think of this presentation as an example of possible communication links via email and the World-Wide Web. This document exists both as a standard paper presentation document and as an HTML document. If one were to access the latter form, links would be provided to the various people and papers I have cited. Surely, my potential audience would prefer to link to these various locations and arrive at their own conclusions about the material I have so briefly discussed. Who is this Don Tapscott anyway to whom Morris refers? What are his credentials? Is there more to Guy Bensusan's "twelve pillars" that would be useful for me to read? To what literature does Professor Sell refer in his essay? My communication links via email to Professors Huitt and Mitterer were virtually immediate, "just-on-time," for inclusion in this document. I might be faulted for an incomplete job of research on the issues discussed but I can note here that in putting my story together I have relied heavily on documents that could be obtained off the web.

But the concern here is use of information-age technologies for teaching and learning. My remarks do not apply to email communication as that is another story. In preparing my courses for on-line links to local web pages and remote web sites I immediately thought of the potential for obtaining access to documents that are not readily obtained from libraries as well as facilitating access to monographs that can be obtained in our library. Such documents can be linked to and from lecture notes in such a way as to encourage the reading of complete manuscripts rather than reading pre-digested textbook material. I also envisioned an organization of material that would allow me to tap into expertise on particular topics that needed further development in a manner that I was not prepared to provide. In this way students could be encouraged to tap into links of allied disciplines to facilitate the breaking down of disciplinary boundaries. For me, when browsing the web, there is an exciting atmosphere of discovery of new material and a way to delve more deeply into previously unexplored territories.

What are the potential benefits when viewed from the student's perspective? Because of my concerns as indicated in the beginning of this paper my focus is on the education of the typical, on-campus undergraduate student. Here the benefits are far from tangible. It is here that we must consider the question suggested by Roger Sell's comment above. Under what conditions will the new technologies enhance the quality of teaching and learning? In his essay he pointed out that novices in undergraduate education may be "paralyzed by overload" due to the quantity of material they are expected to cover because of the many and varied potential links to classics I think they should read. This suggests to me that we as teachers must find a way to modify and eliminate the "is it going to be on the test" syndrome in order to reap benefits from this new facility. It is here that we must ask Guy Bensusan what he means when he stipulates, with conviction based on experience, that the use of information-age technologies demand that we "...shift from Traditional Teaching and Testing to a genuine Learning Paradigm" and we "...MUST re-engineer the system, making basic structural changes in the essence as well as the substance of what we do." For my purpose here, an important thread running throughout Bensusan's essay is means by which students may be shaped in a step by step way to become more active, self-reliant, and motivated to explore new material. What this suggests is that to reap the potential benefits provided by web-based course material one must design the course so as to facilitate "learning to swim" before "before learning to surf."

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to overcome in launching a successful on-line, web-based course is finding just the right theoretical framework to serve as a guide. Borrowing the right theoretical framework from educational and psychological literature should result in benefits for teachers and students alike. I tend to agree with Professor Mitterer's "grand thought" that "the new technology very clearly exposes the inadequacies in our theories of teaching and learning." But I know that theories exist that can serve as this much needed theoretical framework. Guy Bensusan has certainly provided a useful framework with his call for a shift to "a genuine Learning Paradigm." A careful reading of Don Tapscott's Growing Up Digital reveals a carefully reasoned theoretical framework. In a chapter concerning N-Generation learning he provides a loosely articulated theory dubbed Interactive Learning. Here one finds an interesting discussion about a shift from a learning format that is linear to one that is more interactive and non-sequential or "a shift from linear to hypermedia learning" in which N-Geners are not paralyzed by information overload but welcome the opportunity to explore as they "surf the Net" for new material.

Much of what Tapscott presents in his chapter on N-Gen learning suggests links to Guy Bensusan's "genuine Learning Paradigm". There are other theoretical frameworks such as self-directed learning, self-regulated learning that I think would provide the guide that Mitterer suggests is missing. The self-regulated learning construct has been used in descriptions of effective academic learning. It has been used to bring a body of research together that examines the role of the whole person (cognition, motivation, and emotion) in any learning situation. For me, this construct represents the convergence of a number of humanistic-cognitive approaches to learning and motivation. Self-Regulated learning consists of a framework and a research tradition of extreme importance in today's dynamic educational environment. The potential connection between self-regulated learning and the implementation of on-line instruction environments is best summed up by a quote for a recent article by Philip Winne (1995):

        Models of self-regulated learning (SRL) portray students as calling on
        a library of information and applying a suite of varied skills during
        studying activities in which achievements are forged.. When they
        begin to study, self-regulating learners set goals for extending knowledge
        and sustaining motivation. They are aware of what they know, what they
        believe, and what the differences between these kinds of information imply
        for approaching tasks. They have a grasp of their motivation, are aware of their
        affect and plan how to manage the interplay between these as they engage with
        a task. They also deliberate about small-grain tactics and overall strategies,
        selecting some instead of others based on predictions about how each is able
        to support progress toward chosen goals. (p. 173)

The model of the student is in place. What is necessary now is to find a way to structure the situation so that appropriate self-regulatory skills can be used most effectively.

Bensusan, H.G. (1996). Beyond teaching: Twelve pillars for managing learning. [WWW Document]. URL http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~hgb/beyond.html

For the Love of Learning: Report of the Royal Commission on Learning (Short Version) gopher://gopher.edu.gov.ca/11/english/abcs/rcom/short

[Gopher document].URL

Huitt, W.G. (1995, revised 1997). Success in the information age: A paradigm shift. [WWW Document]. URL http://www.valdosta.edu/~whuitt/psy702/context/infoage.html

Mitterer, J. (1997). Using computers to create multimedia displays for the lecture theater: A practical guide. [WWW Document]. URL http://cogito.psyc.brocku.ca/~mitterer/EPA97.html

Sell, G.R. (1996-1997). Challenges in using technology for the improvement of undergraduate education. Teaching Excellence, 8(2).

Sell, G.R. (1996). Using technology and distance instruction to improve postsecondary education. [WWW Document]. URL http://www.uni.edu/teachctr/technol2.html

Tapscott, D. (1998). Growing up digital: The rise of the net generation. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Winne, P.H. (1995). Inherent details in self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 30(4), 173-187.