Transitioning from a Traditional Classroom to the Online Environment

This chapter will focus on how faculty can effectively determine their technological needs as they move from the traditional classroom to an online teaching environment through strategic planning. SIMPLE is a technology planning model, which can be used by faculty and administrators to stair-step themselves through this transition period. SIMPLE is an acronym representing six areas which should be addressed when developing and implementing technology strategies – 1) student/instructor assessment, 2) inventory, 3) measurement, 4) planning, 5) leadership, and 6) evaluation. These six components represent common threads throughout the literature on the subject of technology planning, which were utilized to develop the SIMPLE model, and can be easily utilized to guide faculty.

LARGE-SCALE INTERACTION STRATEGIES FOR ASYNCHRONOUS ONLINE DISCUSSION

Designing online trainings or courses for large numbers of participants can prove to be challenging for instructors and facilitators. Online learning environments need to be structured in a way that preserves actual or perceived levels of interaction, participant perceptions of value and utility, and achievement of the learning objectives. This chapter describes five Large-Scale Interaction Strategies that offer guidance for addressing some of these online instructional design issues. Evaluation data are presented in support of two of the strategies, and recommendations are provided about how future research in this area might be conducted.

Model-Facilitated Learning Environments

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how instruction, technology and models converge to create online model-facilitated learning environments. These instructional environments are designed in such a manner that the interaction with the model on the computer network is essential to the learning experience. The idea is to use these models to maximize the pedagogical power that helps students construct conceptual mental representations that lead to a greater degree of retention and overall recall of information. How students will act and learn in a particular environment depends on how the instructional designer creates the environment that maximizes their learning potential, considering the interrelationships between the learning experience, the technology, cognition, and other related issues of the learner.

Functional Relevance and Online Instructional Design

Online instruction will more likely be effective if it fits with, and is perceived by, students as being functionally relevant for their education, work, or other personal contexts. Existing practice may emphasize an ad hoc approach to online design by being pragmatic and somewhat unsystematic. It is proposed that using a functional relevance perspective, as described in this chapter, is more likely to have designers and online learners attain a greater advantage in using the capacity of the Internet to support teaching and learning. This chapter introduces the concept of functional relevance and identifies some of the underlying theories. Discussions are made on how the concept of functional relevance can be used as a conceptual framework to identify and to drive decision-making processes that occur during the design and development of instruction.

The Relationship of Online Gaming and Feedback Type in Facilitating Delayed Achievement

Instructional gaming has historically been used as a means of rehearsal and motivation. A majority of research in this area has attempted to identify the most effective method of rehearsal that maximizes student achievement and minimizes information loss over a specified time period. A few studies have suggested that instructional gaming environments have the ability to provide corrective feedback and reinforcement of previously taught information. The author is interested in investigating whether or not instructional online and computer gaming and the use of different forms of feedback produce a significant difference in improving delayed retention of different instructional objectives.

A Pragmatic Framework for Promoting Interactivity in E-Learning

As e-learning keeps growing, an increasing amount of learning activities can be expected to take place through interactivity between learner and e-learning materials. To better understand the processes and qualities of interactivity in e-learning, the chapter proposes a framework for analyzing and promoting interactivity from an information processing perspective. The framework consists of the dimensions of accessibility, information attributes of multimedia, learner control versus system control, hypermedia navigation, and cognitive engagement.

THE "THEORY OF INSTRUCTIONAL DIALOGUE"

This chapter presents a unified theory of instructional design in the cognitive domain; this includes, of course, online instructional modeling. The theory differs from specific instructional design theories in that it describes how all instructional systems operate (regardless of their goals) in terms of resources and dialogues common to all instructional systems; it predicts certain instructional outcomes (related to groups of learners, not to individual learners) based on given initial conditions. The theory affords practical and theoretical advantages. Practically, it (1) simply and accurately describes the mechanisms at play in instructional systems, (2) presents readily quantifiable operational definitions, (3) suggests hypotheses that may be evaluated empirically and (4) points the way toward optimizing instructional systems. Theoretically, it (1) subsumes all current theories of instructional design and (2) views campus-based, distance and online instructional systems as a single discipline.

Online Integration of Information Literacy in an Environmental Management Systems Course

Recognizing the value, as expressed by the Association of College and Research Libraries Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, of incorporating information literacy [IL] instruction into a subject discipline, LSU Libraries partnered with the instructor of an environmental management course to develop online IL instruction with direct tie-ins to the subject matter of the course. This chapter discusses the results of that effort, including the advantages and problems encountered.

Teaching Social Skills

The ubiquity of instructional technology necessitates a more critical look at the theories that drive adoption and the practical implications of its usage. Blended learning has been offered as one compromise to fully online learning or strict adherence to traditional lecture-based instruction that seems outdated. A particular approach to blended learning is examined in the present chapter through the use of an online learning system. Concept Keys was developed to assist instructors of social skills in breaking down these abstract concepts into manageable units of information appropriate for daily delivery via email. This program is shown to be easily integrated into existing curriculum through two studies. A concluding section attempts to tie these studies together and suggests potential limitations and avenues for future research.

UNDERSTANDING FLEXIBLE LEARNING THEORY AND HOW IT IS USED IN ONLINE LEARNING

Flexible learning is a term becoming increasingly prevalent in distance education. The concept of having a flexible learning environment is appealing to distance learners. Many learners choose a flexible environment over the traditional classroom so that learning can fit into their busy lifestyle. This chapter will define and discuss flexible learning theory, describing how it is used in the distance education setting and how it is a changing tide in education.