THEME - All Those Technologies and Media - How Do I Choose and Use? Part 3

"What is really important in education is...that the mind is matured, that energy is aroused."

-Soren Kierkegaard,

Either/Or, Volume II-

UPFRONT - Choosing and Designing for Distance Education
FOCUS - Stepping Up the Pace of Audiographics - A New look for Fall of 1997 - by Mavis Monson of ICS
NOTEWORTHY - UW System Instructional Technology Plan Projects; UW Center for Learning Innovation
CAMPUS HILIGHTS - UW Campus Information
FROM THE DISTANCE EDUCATION CLEARINGHOUSE: NETNEWS - Have You Seen These Items? - by Michele Jacques
TECH STATS - Some Vital Statistics
FUNDING UPDATE - AT&T to Fund Over $11,000,000 in Cash Grants
ETC. - Nearly Ten Million Children are Surfing the Net
NEW ON THE LIST - New Subscribers
FYI - News, Institutes, Conferences
ENDNOTE - TechnoStress
NOV. ISSUE - The Benefits and Potential of Videoconferencing - by Bruce Dewey and Rosemary Lehman of ICS.

UPFRONT - This issue of DESIEN is the third in a five-part series on "choosing and using technology." In the first of the series, Char Bell of the Educational Communications Board (ECB) wrote about broadcast satellite; last month, Martha Mealy of Flexible Learning discussed designing courses for the Web using the interactive software, LearningSpace (c). In this issue, Mavis Monson, Manager of Instructional Design for Instructional Communications Systems (ICS) writes about Audiographics and the new FarSite software being introduced to UW faculty. Next month, you'll read about interactive Videoconferencing and in the last issue - mixing technologies.

A growing number of methods for selecting the appropriate technology offer criteria for decision making. One method, developed by the Marine Corps Institute in Washington, DC provides a useful grid (see DESIEN 2-9.) The AAHE Flashlight Evaluation Project, noted in DESIEN issue 2-10 provides another possibility.* Now, a new publication, Distance Learning: a Step-by-Step Guide for Trainers** offers a third framework. This method stresses focusing on performance objectives and following the considerations for: the need for live interaction, the number of sites involved, the importance of the instructor seeing the students and the students seeing each other, the need for changing materials frequently, the need for special equipment and for high interactivity. Finally, there is the requirement for a cost-benefit analysis to justify the program.

After reading Mavis' article, consider whether audiographics might work for you? While capability of use is limited to locations that have audiographic sites, the number of sites is growing. This synchronous technology for teaching is highly interactive and collaborative, user friendly and relatively reasonable in cost. As Mavis states, our faculty have been especially impressed with the new software called FarSite. Many types of courses are being taught using audiographics including: Engineering, Language, Pharmacology, Music, Chemistry, Health, Management, Women's Studies and others. (Rosemary Lehman)

* http://www.wiche.edu/flshlght/flaslrpts.htm

** Mantyla, K. and Gividen, J. (1997). Distance Learning: a Step-by- Step Guide for Trainers. ASTD: Alexandria, VA

Stepping up the Pace of Audiographics - A New Look for Fall 1997
by
Mavis Monson

Introduction- If the term "audiographics" is new to you, think of it in two parts. The "audio" denotes that classrooms are in voice contact; the "graphics" denotes that classrooms can view graphics and other still visuals on computer monitors. The system uses two standard phone lines for each classroom, one for the audio, one for the computer. These lines are joined together using appropriate bridging hardware. An audiographics system is generally totally interactive so that faculty and students can share voice comments or electronically annotate on the computer display(s). "WisView" is the name used for the audiographics network in Wisconsin. With over two dozen sites in the state, WisView has been providing audiographics programs for many years; a significant change occurred this summer which is described below.

About two months into its use, the WisView Network with its "new look" has received high acceptance from the teachers, students and technicians involved in audiographics instruction. Beginning with the fall semester, the system (which incorporates faster computers/modems, an improved bridge to connect classrooms and a new audiographics software product called "FarSite") is stepping up the pace of audiographics delivery.

During the summer orientation sessions (provided by Instructional Communications Systems-ICS), faculty were impressed with many of the software's capabilities, but two features stood out. One is simplicity in working with visual materials; the other is a feature which "compresses" the visual information.

The first feature provides a much more efficient way of working with visual sources. Incorporating visuals from any Windows program into FarSite is easy: graphic formats are compatible, and the process is straightforward. For example, in just a few minutes, an entire PowerPoint presentation can be converted to a FarSite folder of visuals that is ready for a class presentation.

The second highly rated feature is the ease in sharing the visuals with the WisView classes. FarSite "compresses" visual information as it sends it to sites during a class session. Visuals are sent quickly. Fast enough so they can be sent "real-time." "Real-time" distribution eliminates the weeks of lead time needed to distribute visuals to sites ahead of class sessions. It's a significant advantage in preparing for teaching. Faculty like the flexibility of preparing visuals closer to the time of class. Many bring floppy disc(s) with visuals directly to the Wisview classrooms, creating their FarSite presentations just before the class convenes over the network.

Although two months is a very short time in evaluating the impact of any new system, if the current trend of acceptance continues, it appears that the "new look" of WisView has provided significant improvements. The additional capabilities in the software with its ability to process information on a compressed basis, the ability to quickly load visual materials, and the speed and efficiency of the system itself, has stepped up the pace in the ability to deliver and receive audiographic instruction.

(For further information on WisView including site and course information, see: http://www.uwex.edu/ics/wisview/index .html)

NOTEWORTHY - UW System is implementing five major project areas developed in its 1997 Information Technology Plan: 1) Faculty Technology Improvements - the 1997-99 Biennial Budget marks the first time that ongoing funds have been provided for faculty technology. One million total will provide support for selected faculty for curricular redesign; 2) Innovative Curricular Projects - centrally held funds will support a systemwide "virtual institute" that will include an electronic newsletter, best practices database and a best practices conference; 3) Student Technology Improvements - this provision will upgrade workstations, campus networks and student Internet/WWW access; 4) Assessment of Technology's Impact on Instruction - existing assessment studies will be analyzed and new assessment projects developed to analyze the impact on teaching and learning; 5) New Options for Technology Training - options that include new software/CD-ROMS to support technology training of students faculty and staff will be explored.

A new Center for Learning Innovation, was approved by the Board of Regents at its Oct. 9-10 meeting. The center will develop, market, distribute and support technology learning products and services for all UW campuses. Using the expertise of UW faculty and ideas developed by Continuing Education Extension, the center will assist in creating and developing courses and in supporting educational technology. It will offer on-line services and provide marketing and distribution services for UW developed learning technology. Its services will also be offered to businesses.

CAMPUS HILIGHTS
(Send campus distance education HILIGHTS to: DESIEN-List@uwex.edu)

UW-GREEN BAY - The Learning Technology Center (LTC) is moving this month to a newly remodeled area in the Instructional Services Building. Laura Carlson, former Manager of Learning Resources has been appointed interim director of the LTC. Other LTC team members include: Dr. John Stoll, Professor, Public and Environmental Affairs; Robert Skorczewski, Jr., Outreach Program Manager II and Pam Stoll, Instructional Consultant.

The focus of the LTC is to address the needs of faculty and instructional staff. Its core mission is to integrate up-to-date technologies into the university's broader mission of providing a problem-oriented, interdisciplinary educational experience for students.

The LTC will keep abreast of new teaching and learning technologies, be a clearinghouse for learning technology information and training and encourage collaboration and evaluation in the use of teaching and learning technologies.

On a related front, an academic program technology survey is presently underway. This survey is a first step in gathering information about faculty and student technology needs.

Preparations are also well underway for the "Second Annual Conference on Teaching and Technology in the Classroom," which will take place at UW-Green Bay on January 14, 1998. At the UTIC sponsored conference last year, eighty-four faculty and staff from UW-Green Bay, UW-Fox Valley, UW-Manitowoc and UW-Marinette discovered that technology would allow them to teach and their students to learn in a way that was previously not possible. The program was deemed so successful, that the UW-Green Bay Faculty Development Council decided to fund the entire program this year.

(Robert J. Skorczewski, Jr., Outreach Program Manager - UW Green-Bay)

UW-MADISON - UW-Madison's Department of Information Technology (DoIT) and ICS recently collaborated on a distance education workshop "Distance Education Options" for faculty in UW-Madison School of Pharmacy. Participants heard about the spectrum of technologies available for teaching: Audio - ETN and WisLine, Compressed Video, Desktop videoconferencing, Audiographics, Computer conferencing, CD-ROM, Videotape and Printed Material. Included in the workshop were: technology advantages, disadvantages, site and cost comparisons, hardware and learning curves.

UW-STEVENS POINT - On Tuesday evening, November 4, a nationally known expert, Dean Ornish, M.D., President and Director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, CA will be appearing in the Marshfield Clinic/St. Joseph's Hospital auditorium on "Open your Heart: Anatomically, Emotionally and Spiritually". He is serving as a consultant to President Clinton and the White House chef on serving healthy food choices.

Through the use of the WONDER fiber optic network, a large number of students in the Health Promotions and Human Development major from UWSP will be able to see and hear his presentation without leaving campus.

(Judi Pitt, Scheduling Coordinator University Telecommunications, UW-Stevens Point)

UW-WHITEWATER - On November 10 from 7:00 to 8:50 am, UW- Whitewater and UW-Stevens Point will join with the Independent Methodological University in Moscow, Russia to host a teleconference for K-12 students and teachers on the topic of environmental education. The American and Russian students will exchange information on their latest study projects and activities in the area of conserving water resources.

(Wallace Sherlock, UW-Whitewater)

FROM THE DISTANCE EDUCATION CLEARINGHOUSE
NETNEWS
by
Michele Jacques

Distance Education Clearinghouse on the web at:
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/home.html

"Have you seen these items?"

Here's a few resources which may of interest to readers. All are linked to the Distance Education Clearinghouse:

Distance Education in Higher Education Institutions
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs98/distance/index.html
This report has just been made available on the web. The Statistical Analysis Report from the National Center for Education Statistics (October, 1997) is a comprehensive report providing information and statistics on areas such as the number and type of US distance education course offerings, enrollments, completions, and goals of distance education programs. For example, the report offers this statistic: an estimated 753,640 students formally enrolled in distance education courses in academic year 1994-95. In addition to summaries and tables on the web, the full text of the report is also available online.

Instructional Design and Technology Dissertation Database
http://www.edtech.univnorthco.edu/disswww/dissdir.htm
This web site provides a compilation of doctoral dissertations completed during the calendar years 1977 through 1996. The directory includes listings of each student's name, graduation year, dissertation title, institution, and chairperson. It has been compiled by Edward P. Caffarella, Ph.D. Professor of Educational Technology University of Northern Colorado. Although it is a bit complicated to navigate, once you get used to its organizational structure, you have the ability to retrieve information in a variety of indexes.

A Guide to Online Education
http://www.fcae.nova.edu/~kearsley/online.html
by Greg Kearsley, professor in the Instructional Technology & Distance Education (ITDE) program at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (Version: 10/21/97). The purpose of this guide is to introduce some of the basic characteristics of online education. It is intended for students or teachers who are new to this domain and looking for some suggestions and advice about how to make it a more enjoyable and worthwhile endeavor.

Virtual Classroom Technologies for Distance Education: The Case for On-line Synchronous Delivery
http://www.detac.com/solution/naweb97.htm
North American Web Developers Conference, October 1997; compiled and edited by Dr. Barry Ellis. This article is available in full on the DETAC (Distance Education Technology And Consulting) web site. The author states: "Synchronous internet delivery more closely matches what we consider the traditional classroom model than does asynchronous delivery."

Of course these are just a few of the many hundreds of distance education resources which are available on the web. For a listing of articles, bibliographies, and other resources, check the collection on the Distance Education Clearinghouse web site at: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/current.htm

Michele Jacques
Distance Education Clearinghouse
Information Resources Manager
Instructional Communications Systems (ICS)
University of Wisconsin-Extension

TECH STATS - (See Michele's reference above) The National Center for Education Statistics recently released a major survey on distance learning in higher education. The full survey, conducted by the U.S. Department of Education's National Institute on Postsecondary Education, Libraries and Lifelong Learning can be found at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs98/distance/index.html Following are a few highlights:

* a third of higher education institutions offered distance education courses in fall of 1995
* in the academic year of 1994-95, higher education institutions offered an estimated 25,730 distance education courses with different catalog numbers
* three-quarters of the institutions that offered distance education courses in fall of 1995 used courses developed by the institution's subject area departments or schools and 30 percent used courses developed by commercial or noncommercial vendors
* distance education courses were delivered by two-way interactive video at 57 percent of the institutions; about a quarter of the institutions used two-way audio with one-way video; a quarter used computer-based technologies other than two-way online interactions during instruction
* there were an estimated 753,640 students formally enrolled in distance education courses in academic year 1994-95
* there were an estimated 690 degrees and 170 certificates offered in fall of 1995 that students could receive by taking distance education courses
* an estimated 3,430 students received degrees and 1,970 received certificates in 1994-95 by taking distance education courses exclusively

FUNDING UPDATE - AT&T Learning Network Grants Program is funding over $11,000,000 in cash grants to educational institutions to fund projects that demonstrate effective and innovative uses of technology to support families, schools and communities. There are no specific deadlines - grant proposals are considered as they are received and awarded as long as funds are available. Proposals should: encourage family involvement in education, provide professional development opportunities for educators, assist in the preparation of future teachers and develop and implement plans to promote lifelong learning and community collaboration.

The program is open to all accredited public and private elementary and secondary schools as well as accredited public and private two- and four-year institutions of higher education and educational nonprofit organizations in the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and all U.S. territories.

The AT&T Learning Network Grants Program focuses on the use of technology, not on the equipment and infrastructure necessary to support that use. AT&T Learning Network grants will not fund requests which are exclusively for the purchase of computers, modems, wiring or other infrastructure needs. Instead, the program provides resources to help families, schools and communities understand how to use technology.

To apply: 1) submit a brief letter of introduction and description of the project to the appropriate AT&T Regional Contributions Manager, 2) Regional Contributions Managers will determine eligibility for AT&T Foundation consideration and 3) the AT&T Foundation will then invite full proposals and applications from projects of interest.

For the guidelines visit: http://www.att.com/foundation/guide.html

Since the grants are awarded regionally, see the regional contact information listed at: http://www.att.com/foundation/contrib.html

You can also contact: AT&T Foundation; 32 Avenue of the Americas, 24th Floor; New York, NY 10013; 212-387-4801

ETC. - A new report by FIND/SVP and Grunwald Associates, based on a survey of 2,000 households, reports that almost 10 million US children are using the Internet - 14% of the approximately 70 million children under 18 in the U.S. Nearly half of the children currently access the Internet from school, and most of them use it for school or homework as their primary Net activity. According to Peter Grunwald, president of Grunwald Associates, "There will be a fundamental shift in the market in late 1998/early 1999 when more children will go online at school than at home. This is a result of government and private initiatives to wire classrooms." For more information, call 1-800-346-3787.

NEW ON THE LIST - Welcome to Jan Heck, Jerry Klumper and Tracy Greer.

FYI - NEWS AND REMINDERS

ED-MEDIA/ED-TELECOM 98 - the World Conference on Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia and World Conference on Educational Telecommunications are jointly held international conferences, organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). The '98 Conferences, June 20-25 will be hosted by Albert Ludwigs University, Freiburg, Germany. These annual conferences serve as multi-disciplinary forums for the discussion and exchange of information on the research, development, and applications on all topics related to multimedia/hypermedia and distance education. ED-MEDIA/ED-TELECOM, the premiere international conferences in the field, span all disciplines and levels of education and attract 1000+ attendees from 50+ countries. For further information and registration information see: http://www.aace.org/conf/edmedia

WETC - The Wisconsin Educational Technology Conference (WETC) November 4-6, at the Holiday Inn, Stevens Point, WI announced this week that a record 1400 have registered for the event. The conference includes: 1) a Keynote Address, "Treating Web Fever: Human Values for Shaping Educational Technology" delivered live via satellite by Dr. Ben Sneiderman, University of MD, 2) Labs and Workshops and 3) over 100 Presentation Sessions. For further information contact: Linda Connolly at 608-264-9724 or lconnoll@mail.state.wi.us. Visit the Web site: http://www.wecb.org/wetc

K-12 SYMPOSIUM - "Proving it Works: A Symposium on Assessing and Evaluating Information Technology for Learning" is set for November 12-13, at the Ramada Inn Capital Conference Center. Teams of faculty and administrators from UW institutions and PK - 12 teams, representing the recipients of the Technology Literacy Challenge Grants have been invited to this event. The Keynoter will be John Belland of the Telecommunity Project in Ohio. Eighteen Concurrent Sessions will be featured along with three sessions of Team Meetings and a Closing General Session with Chris Dede of George Mason University. UW System and UW- Extension are sponsoring this Symposium with the hope that educators from both systems can collaboratively create a vision for technology to improve teaching and learning.

ENDNOTE - TechnoStress - In their new book, TechnoStress, psychologists Michelle M. Weil and Larry D. Rosen say that the growing dependence on technology affects us negatively and that we count on our machines to do so much that when something goes wrong with our technology we are thrown into a tailspin. "Some people become so immersed in technology that they risk losing their own identity" - a syndrome called "technosis." You are a victim of technosis if you answer "yes" to questions such as: "Do you feel out of touch when you haven't checked your answering machine or voice mail in the last 12 hours?" Symptoms of technosis include overdoing work and never feeling finished, believing faster is better, and not knowing how to function successfully without technology. (TechnoStress, John Wiley & Sons 1997)

NOVEMBER ISSUE: FOCUS- The Benefits and Potential of Video- conferencing, by Bruce Dewey and Rosemary Lehman of ICS.

DESIEN ARCHIVE: An Archive has been created for past issues and interaction comments. Locate at: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/desien.html

DESIEN has been created to encourage information exchange and discussion of distance education issues concerned with: 1) UW Systemwide distance education progress and institution course/program development, 2) faculty/team development, 3) technology, 4) policy, 5) funding and 6) research. List recipients outside of the UW System are also welcome to join in with information contributions and discussion.