Cyber learning opens door to net gain in knowledge

By ADAM GIFFORD

This year 600 Massey University courses were conducted partly or completely over the internet - next year it will be 1600.

The internet is changing academic life and creating opportunities for students who may not be near a campus or have the time to sit in classrooms.

Gerrit Bahlman, assistant to the university's vice-chancellor, says 22,000 students are using the Web CT environment, a learning management system that handles registration, course presentation and delivery, testing, email and chatrooms.

Some courses, such as a bachelor of education aimed at helping people in rural areas become teachers, are now conducted completely online.

"It is not just extramural courses, it is every dimension of what we do," Bahlman says.

"Online learning is not a product. It is about pedagogy, it is about the effective and appropriate use of technology.

"The fundamentals are still, how do you set up a learning environment which engages students and makes it possible for learning to happen easier?

"There is a paradigm shift, and it is about the sage on the stage moving to the guide on the site."

Bahlman says the university is looking carefully at what is the appropriate use of technology to best meet student needs.

The bachelor of education is an example where it identified a cohort of students with a particular need and constraints that limited their ability to access training and education.

"The other element of the shift is about the concept of a community of learning. That is an old concept in university terms, but what about the people who cannot come on to campus," Bahlman says.

"That is why we need to establish an electronic community of learning."

Susy Pointon, who developed and is teaching an online screenwriting course for Porirua's Whitireia Polytechnic, says setting up an online community was a major part of the course.

The polytechnic uses another widely used courseware software, Blackboard, to manage its online environment.

"We set up discussion boards and chat rooms so the students can interact with each other," Pointon says.

"Normally when you take workshops, you generate energy through face-to-face contact. I was a bit apprehensive about working online, but it works well.

"It is also good for people already in the industry because they can access it at any time."

Students can take the screenwriting course on its own, or as part of an online diploma in creative writing.

Whitireia Polytechnic also offers online a postgraduate certificate in forensic psychiatric care, a diploma in publishing run in partnership with Daphne Brasell Press Associates, and free courses for its students in computer and writing skills.

Auckland University is also moving education online, using a software package it developed in-house, Cecil, to support students, run tests and take complete courses to the web.

Garry Clayton, director of graduate programmes at the Auckland school of business, says the students taking the graduate diploma of business administration, a foundation course or prerequisite for the masters in business administration, can do it at the city or North Shore campuses or online.

"It enables people who are time hungry or who are not living in Auckland to do all the preparatory work before coming to us," Clayton says.

The diploma, which costs $7672, consists of seven modules in 12-week blocks, requiring 12 to 15 hours of study a week.

"We saw e-learning was going to be a growth area, so we wanted to pick one [a course] we knew made business sense," Clayton says. "The administration diploma is our most popular offering, so we decided to use that one as a pilot."

And it wasn't a simple matter of transferring all the course materials online - known in education circles as shovelware.

"We needed to rethink our strategy of teaching. You don't have the opportunity of face-to- face, opportunistic learning, such as students learning from each other over a cup of coffee, so you have to create those situations by chatrooms or some other intercourse with students.

"Another positive spinoff is that by totally focusing on what we were changing, it allowed us to do a greenfields review of what we did as an integrated programme, which fed back to the on-campus learning."

Clayton says not everyone enjoys online learning.

"It requires people who are computer literate. They need to be self-disciplined and self-motivated."