VOLUME 11, NUMBER 1, 1997
Editorial
Lessons from History
Michael G. Moore
Articles (for abstracts, click
here)
Educational Technology and Distance Education in Central Florida: An Assessment
of Capabilities
Patrick Moskal, Barbara Martin, and Neill Foshee
The Impact of Remote-site Group Size on Student Satisfaction
and Relative Performance in Interactive Telecourses
Paul M. Biner, Kimberly D. Welsh, Natalie M. Barone, Marcia Summers, and
Raymond S. Dean
Interactions in Audiographics Teaching and Learning
Environments
Ron Oliver and Catherine McLoughlin
Changes in Students' Attitudes toward Graduate Business
Instruction via Interactive Television
Thomas S. Westbrook
Interview
Speaking Personally with Maris O'Roarke
Michael G. Moore
Book Review
In Search of the Virtual Class:Education in an Information Society
by John Tiffin and Lalita Rajasingham
Stephen C. Ehrmann
Media Review
Classroom Design for Video Teleconferencing
Rick L. Shearer
EDITORIAL
Lessons from History *
Michael G. Moore
"This is no place to indulge in idle fancies, but it is no imaginary dream to picture the school of tomorrow as an entirely different institution from that of today because of the use of radio in teaching."
The above statement was contained in a 1927 application to the Federal Radio Commission by the State University of Iowa, seeking additional broadcast power for its radio station (Pittman 1986, 40). Just as the information superhighway is said to offer the promise of dramatic change in education in the 1990s, so did radio in the early years of this century, and television in its turn during the 1950s. Both radio and television failed to change schooling or higher education in any significant ways. What may we learn from this history?
The Story of Radio
Between the end of World War I and the start of World War II, the U.S.
government granted radio broadcast licenses to 202 schools of various
levels. It seemed, says historian Von Pittman, "as if educational
stations would permanently dominate open-broadcast radio" (1986,
39). In those first two decades of radio, at least thirteen colleges and
universities offered university credit for classes on the air. By 1940
nationwide enrollment in for-credit courses by radio was exactly zero.
(Pittman, 1986). Analyses of this failure of radio to live up to the high
expectations of the 1920s have focused on governmental incompetence, the
avarice of commercial advertisers, lack of interest by the public, and
the inability of educators to organize themselves to produce attractive
programs.
Faced by a new, little-understood technology, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in 1922 called for a conference of interested parties, the first of four such conferences. According to Ottaway (1994, 3).
Less than a month after the first conference, station WEAF in New York broadcast the first paid radio advertisement. By the end of the fourth Hoover Conference, in November 1925, radio's character had largely been determined; it would be a commercial medium, regulated but unsupported by government.
For a while, both NBC and CBS commercial stations broadcast educational courses for credit. In 1934, CBS president William S. Paley stated his opposition to allocating frequencies exclusively to educational institutions with the assurance on behalf of CBS that "the extensive periods we are now devoting to educational, cultural and informative programs generally will not be shortened, even if the time comes when we sell more than 30 or 31 percent of our hours to commercial sponsors" (Gordon 1965, cited in Ottaway 1994, 5). However, as the demand for entertainment and advertising time grew, both commercial broadcasters lost their interest in educational programming (Ottaway 1994).
Educators also failed to live up to the challenge. Developing programs that were truly educational and that would hold the attention of listeners against the competition of the commercially supported entertainment industry was beyond their creativity and competence. John W. Studebaker, U.S. Commissioner of Education and Chairman of the Federal Radio Education Committee, stated at the First National Conference on Educational Broadcasting in 1936.
Broadcasters have declared that education by radio is practicable within the present framework of our broadcasting system. Educators on their part have discovered that producing successful programs is a far more complicated process than it first appeared to be. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that radio will become one of the most powerful constructive forces for the education of our people if we devote adequate attention to the development of truly educational programs. (Marsh 1937)
Devoting adequate attention to making good programs was what the educational institutions would not do. Frequently a microphone was placed in a traditional classroom and the sounds of a lecture broadcast. One of the great radio pioneers, Professor William Lighty at the University of Wisconsin, had to beg cooperation from professors who considered speaking on the radio to be undignified-although they were willing to write out their lessons for someone else to read (Frost 1937). Addressing the National Association of Broadcasters in 1948, Dr. Lee De Forest, proclaimed by some as the "Father of Radio" asked,
What have you gentlemen done with my child? He was conceived as a potent instrumentality for culture . . . you have debased this child, you have sent him out on the streets . . . you have made him a laughing stock of intelligence, surely a stench in the nostrils of the gods of the ionosphere. (Carson 1948, 102)
The Story of Television
In 1948, television director Nathan M. Rudich warned educational broadcasters:
Don't be caught short. Start preparing immediately for the utilization of television as a medium of education. If properly used television can be one of the most significant aids that has ever come within the reach of the educator. Television is here. It works . . . it is up to you to provide the guidance and assistance necessary for television to assume its proper place in the American system of education on all levels. (Carson 1948, 133)
Just as with radio, educational institutions did much to develop the television medium, but were quickly left behind once it matured. As early as 1934, the State University of Iowa had experimentally presented educational television broadcasts, and in 1939 a high school in Los Angeles introduced television into its classrooms (Levenson 1945). According to Ottaway (1994, 10).
Educators, split between those who saw potential in television and those who disdained it, had difficulty in pulling together a united front to present their case. And this time, armed with the radio precedent and proceeds, the opposition was even better organized. Trade publications and associations vociferously opposed allocation of frequencies for educational television. In fact, the Illinois state broadcasters' association, through an individual sympathetic to their position, filed a suit to keep the state university from having its own television station.
Nevertheless, seven educational organizations, working together under the banner of the Ad Hoc Joint Committee on Educational Television, finally mobilized for hearings before the Federal Communications Commission in 1952 and achieved allocation of 242 of the 2053 television channels allocated.
Other milestones in the history of educational television include the support given in the 1950s by the Ford Foundation; the Educational Television Facilities Act of 1962, which funded Educational television station construction and improvement; the Public Broadcasting Act of 1964; and the contribution made by Annenberg/CPB projects in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet the outcome of all these effort is disappointing: a desert of appallingly poor general broadcast programs distributed by the commercial broadcasters with occasional oases of informative programming broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Stations; there is virtually no truly educational programming. As Ottaway (1994, 11) comments, "The laissez faire attitude that has dominated the United States government's approach to radio and television has left educational broadcasting emaciated and commercial broadcasting well fed and happy."
The National Information Infrastructure
Will this history of educational ineptitude in the face of commercialism
repeat itself as the various players jockey for influence with the latest
medium, the National Information Infrastructure (NII)? What part, if any,
will education play in the Information Infrastructure? At this stage,
the omens are not good. For example, only one educator served on the primary
NII task force, and education does not appear in the nine "Principles
and Goals for Government Action." The first of these goals, however,
is specific: to "promote private sector investment." The primary
fear, as expressed by Herbert Schiller, is that
Behind all the hype shaping the electronic highway are corporate interests. They want to find markets that will give them very lucrative rates of return . . . . They take their own set of aims, doctor them up, and present them as the aims of the entire society. (Ruggiero and Sahulka 1994, 46)
The takeover of the Internet by commercial interests has advanced fast in the two years since this statement was made. Will education fail as dramatically in finding a place on the Information Highway as it did on radio and television? Can we learn from history?
* Note: This editorial owes much to a term paper presented by a student in one of my Penn State classes, Mr. Brent Ottaway, whose work is used with permission.
References
Carson, S. 1948. Education on the air. In Eighteenth Yearbook of the
Institute for Education by Radio, ed. J. O. Olson. Columbus, OH: State
University Press.
Frost, S. E., Jr. 1937. Education's Own Stations: The History of Broadcast Licenses Issued to Educational Institutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Levenson, W. B. 1945. Teaching through Radio. New York: Farrar and Rinehart.
Marsh, C., ed. 1937. Educational Broadcasting, 1936. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ottaway, B. 1994. New technologies and missed opportunities. Unpublished manuscript. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University.
Pittman, V. 1986. Station WSUI and the early days of instructional radio. The Palimpsest (March/April).
Ruggiero, G., and S. Sahulka. 1994. The Information Superhighway:
Paving over the public. Z Magazine (March)
Educational Technology and Distance
Education in Central Florida: An Assessment of Capabilities
Patrick Moskal, Barbara Martin, and Neill Foshee)
The Central Florida Consortium of Higher Education's (CFCHE) Faculty Development Group did a needs assessment of the CFCHE faculty by developing a survey that evaluated the capabilities and experience of this group with distance learning, educational technologies, and instructional design. The final goal of the Faculty Development group was to supply workshops and consulting services relating to the design and teaching aspects of distance education courses and instructional enhancement. Central Florida began looking into how distance education could improve the quality, efficiency, and accessibility of higher education partly because of the high population of the state. Another reason was the rising student population; the growth had increased 270% since 1980 at the Florida State University System (SUS) and has not ceased to grow at a high rate.
2,000 surveys were sent out, 271 faculty responded.
"Assessment results include: 1) the factors perceived by instructors
as most important for both promoting and inhibiting the learning of new
educational technologies; 2) distance education experience with and interest
in various delivery approaches; and 3) the extent to which CFCHE faculty
possess the necessary instructional design skills to initiate distance
education courses."
The Impact of Remote-Site Group Size on
Student Satisfaction and Relative Performance in Interactive Telecourses
Raul M. Biner, Kimberly D. Welsh, Natalie M. Barone, Marcia Summers, and
Raymond S.Dean
Biner, et al. noted that in the majority of past studies involving televised courses at remote sites, student achievement was measured against on-campus students taking the same courses. In this study student achievement is evaluated by student report of satisfaction with different aspects of their telecourse as well as their overall course satisfaction. "An index of relative performance was calculated for each student". It involved comparing achievement in the telecourse then being compared with each students' previous overall academic achievement. The study was conducted at a large midwestern university in the US with 288 undergraduate students in 17 telecourses.
"The primary goal of the present investigation
was to determine if, and to what extent, the number of individuals attending
telecourse class sessions, at a given remote site …predicts a student's
1) satisfaction with facets of the course, 2) overall course satisfaction,
and 3) motivation." Remote-site group size was found to significantly
predict students' being satisfied with all aspects of the courses and
relative performance. Those groups with fewer students were more satisfied
with the courses and more apt to exceed their previous academic performance
than students in classes with a larger number of students.
Interactions in Audiographics Teaching and
Learning Environments
Ron Oliver and Catherine McLoughlin
Audiographics is an inexpensive, effective, delivery medium for distance education that can be integrated with new application to design "cost-effective and pedagogically sound" distance education milieus. This study is concerned with interactivity in distance education lessons delivered by audiographics technologies. To better evaluate the teachers' use of audiographics technologies, the six different teachers instructing a language class lesson were videotaped using audiographics to teach, so that observations could better be made. The researchers used the videotaped observations to "investigate the forms of interactivity supported by the technology, to determine the extent to which teachers were employing these interactions, and to establish the impact of the interactivity in enhancing the quality and form of the instructional programs." The study involved upper primary school students in remote schools in Western Australia and six teachers. The teachers used audiographics in language instruction other than English.
The six teachers who took part in this study "used
the interactive features of the audiographic technologies in quite different
ways", although the learning outcomes they sought were similar.
Changes in Students' Attitudes toward Graduate
Business Instruction via Interactive Television
Thomas S. Westbrook
Westbrook noted that in the distance education literature there are numerous cross-sectional studies that furnish "snap-shot" profiles of learners' content learning and attitudes, but that studies that extended to include the duration of a course or a degree program are "virtually nonexistent". Westbrook's study evaluated changes in attitude in graduate business students during the first term of a two-year degree program which was taught using a telecommunications system that was fully interactive. The specific purpose of the study was to evaluate: "1) the differences between students' pre-course (anticipated) and post-course (actual) perceptions of interaction, 2) student satisfaction levels, and 3) the extent of perceived technological interference with the overall success of the degree program."
Fifty-four students enrolled in one or two graduate business courses, fall term, 1994, were the sample for this study. The courses originated at Drake University where three remote classrooms were connected by the use of interactive television. The three remote classrooms were located at Community Colleges in Iowa. These classes were available to non-traditional age students taking part-time evening classes. Fifty-one students (94.4%) filled out and turned in both the pre-program and post-term surveys that were scored on a seven-point Likert scale. The results suggest that: "1) students attitudes change between the time they begin classes and complete their first term, and 2) there are site differences between the students enrolled on-campus, where the instructors are present and students at remote locations."
