Extending Educational Opportunities in Rural Areas

Rural schools in many countries face problems in providing educational opportunities to children and youth for a variety of reasons. There has been the tendency in many countries to migrate to urban areas, often in search of better economic opportunities. The resulting shift from rural areas to urban/suburban areas has placed increased pressures on schools in rural communities. Schools often form the hub of social and civic activity in rural communities. Although they are an important component to rural communities, many rural schools are struggling under the weight of declining populations, declining budgets, staffing difficulties, and increased pressures to better prepare students for the workforce or further education. Rural schools face particular difficulties in attracting and retaining qualified teachers. Faced with problems of providing a comprehensive curriculum and qualified teachers, many rural schools in the United States have turned to distance education. This case explores the use of distance education in the United States through a national survey of distance education use, analysis of barriers to distance education and an experimental study of enhancing distance education through more appropriate training of local facilitators to support students.

Technological Adaptability in the Ethiopian Education System

Ethiopia has been using live “plasma” TV as a major mode of instructional delivery in the government secondary schools since 2004/2005 academic year. Since then, some improvements have been observed in terms of students’ listening skill. However, many students, teachers and parents argued that students are becoming mere listeners of the TV. They were not active in the learning process due to the large amount of instructional time taken by the live transmission. The “plasma” TV was also too fast to understand, pre-programmed, non-rewindable, and non-repeatable in character. This mode of instructional delivery should be assessed in terms of, among other criteria, its appropriateness (benefit for students’ learning); level of sophistication for the students (with respect to their language skill, etc); cost effectiveness; and availability and technical quality. Unfortunately, the current “plasma” TV was not effective in light of the above criteria. This study indicates that the “plasma” TV lessons shall be distributed on CDs to every school and teacher, and used as a supplementary instructional aid. The current “plasma” mode of instruction shall not continue in the way it is if we are genuinely intending to help our students develop their creativity, problem solving and critical skills. Teachers and students should get enough instructional time in the classrooms for discussion.

Building Relationships in an International Blended Learning Program

Several challenges that were encountered in establishing a joint international Masters program in Instructional Technology in a Central American country were explored. These challenges involved aspects of program development, delivering effective course content, using appropriate learning strategies, operating in a cross-cultural context, and working in an organization that had limited technological capacities. The foundation for working with these challenges involved establishing strong, mutually beneficial relationships with the Central American country, the Central American University (CAU), and the students. In addition, the overriding theme in developing this blended learning program was to allow for capacity-building since one goal for creating this program was so that the North American University (NAU) would build the program and relationships to the point that the CAU would be able to take over and manage the Instructional Technology program on its own.

Curriculum Development, Implementation and Evaluation of Project Integrated Online Training

New project management skills and processes are prerequisites to meet the challenges of the globalization. Enterprises, companies and institutions that are operating in transnational and distributed ICT projects on global market need highly qualified project-managers for virtual collaboration. Most training organizations and certification programs focus only on classical soft and technical skills. Participants and most important managers of distributed projects however need training and practice in virtual collaboration and intercultural aspects to be able to consider international socio-cultural issues encountered in business. Therefore, the target of Pool2Business (P2B) was to establish on the one hand a modular online course to address certain specific requirements and qualifications of a company as well language and culture specific differences between participants and on the other hand to ensure with Project Integrated Training parts that the learning outcomes can be immediately used in practical application. By following an adapted and extended ADDIE Model, the P2B-Consortium was able to establish the whole Curriculum more effectively by having the same strategies, following the same procedures and knowing the next steps to fulfill the target of P2B.

Building an Interactive Fully-Online Degree Program

Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College (SMWC) expects to launch an interactive fully-online undergraduate degree program in 2010. This program will fill a market need not currently met at SMWC. The program is designed for an online community of learners with a format and focus that appeals to net generation (millennial), neo-millennial, and computer savvy non-traditional students, including military personnel. The General Studies in the new program will focus on seven themes of Leadership for Environmental and Social Justice and will build upon a subset of the existing General Studies. This new program will complement the Woods External Degree (WED), an existing distance education program, established in 1973, that was built on the “correspondence model.” In the new program, students will not be required to come to campus, but will become a vibrant part of the SMWC community by being empowered to explore, discover, and interact through innovative technologies.

Blending Traditional and Technological Factors in Teacher Education in Jamaica

This chapter highlights the challenges and opportunities in blending traditional and technological factors in teacher education. It examines the partnership between one Caribbean state and one campus of a regional institution to develop an ODL teacher upgrading program which has become the model for a regional Bachelor of Education distance program. The aim is to use the teaching of History to make the case for using a blended approach in transitioning to ODL and for careful consideration of the use of technology in the delivery of ODL programs. It discusses how a Bachelor of Education program articulates distance learning and face-to-face modalities and examines the skills needed and the challenges involved in developing a curriculum for teaching History to distant learners using a blended approach and incorporating available technology. It suggests that readiness of faculty and learner to adopt technology as well as careful consideration of the use of technology is crucial for the success of blended learning approach in traditional teaching environment.

Employing Fuzzy Logic for a Real-time Comprehensive Quality Assessment Model of Service Providers in E-learning Environments

Assessing quality is obviously a key concern in many aspects of learning, education and training, so why should it be especially crucial in relation to e-learning? The e-learners, as with other distance learners, are working in isolation with limited or sometimes non-existent human support. This means that the first impact of any failure in the providers’ quality assessment regime falls directly on the e-learner. When an e-learner encounters errors caused by a failure in a providers’ quality assessment regime the impact might be immediately evident or not become evident until the learner undertakes an assessed outcome. Since e-learning development is fundamentally a team-based activity, the effectiveness or quality of an e-learning program depends on the weakest link in the production chain. E-learning exists at a point of convergence between technology based disciplines and human-centered disciplines.

Professional Development Programme in the Use of Educational Technology to Implement Technology-Enhanced Courses Successfully

Universities globally have realised that they need to educate instructors, lecturers and teachers in how to integrate technology into education. Some higher education institutions have already introduced professional development programmes in educational technology to ensure that technology will be effectively utilised, which in turn will enhance the quality of their educational practices. In this chapter, a case study of the implementation component of the e-TUTO programme will be discussed in depth with the findings from the participants who participated in the programme during June 2005 to June 2006. An overview of professional development programme in the use of educational technology to assist lecturers to implement technology-enhanced courses successfully is presented, as well as an overly demanding e-TUTO programme, which might hinder the successful implementation of a technology-enhanced course. The professional development programme should empower faculty members to utilise and integrate technology to enhance the quality of teaching and learning.

Person-Centered Learning

As the distance grows between the instructor and student within education it becomes necessary to explore new ways of addressing the instruction that goes into distance education. This chapter will describe a distance-based instructional model, the person-centered model of instruction, as well as a case study implementation of the person-centered model of instruction in a web-based course. The case study will focus on an investigation of whether differences in significant learning occurred between a group that used the person-centered model of instruction and a group participating in a constructivist learning experience.

Global Education Greenhouse

Knowledge iTrust (KIT), a non-profit organization, through the co-operation of educational institutions, NGOs, and the private sector, launched the Peace Diaries1 following September 11, 2001 to establish a forum where educators, students and their families of diverse cultural backgrounds and discourse groups could gather and submit multi-modal literary works (e.g. text, artwork, audio recordings, etc.) that address issues of personal, local and global significance. While this project was a successful demonstration model of what is possible in the way of global learning in collaboration with many stakeholders and actors, there is enormous potential to extend and transform this initiative into a more synthesized and sustainable online global education portal. This learning will be incorporated into Global Education Greenhouse, a corporation in formation, that will create a new class of products and services for students in primary and secondary schools/grades k-12 that address a void in the current educational system.