THEME - A Multipart Series: Technology Support Issues...

UPFRONT -At ICS, Support is Our 'Middle Name'
FOCUS -Site Facilitators: Effective Training is the Key!
FROM THE DISTANCE EDUCATION CLEARINGHOUSE: NETNEWS -Conference Information
UW CAMPUS HILIGHTS - UW Campus Updates
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT -GWETC-Hotels are Filling Up!
COPYRIGHT - House Committee Approves Amended Bill
ETC. -Framework for Online Teaching, California Spins Off Its Virtual U, Wireless Andrew Links Carnegie Mellon Campus
NEW TECH TRENDS - Video-con-ferencing, Online Role Play
NEW ON THE LIST - New Subscribers This Month
FYI - News, Conferences and Institutes
ENDNOTE -Deconstructing the Digital Kid, Information Ecology

AUGUST ISSUE FOCUS - A Multipart Series: Technology Support Issues...Resource Support

 

UPFRONT
At ICS, Support is Our 'Middle Name'

When people think of Instructional Communication Systems (ICS), they think of support - it's our 'middle name.' It's what we do every day - distance learning technology and training support...so we know how critical support is and what can happen when it isn't considered a top priority.

Last month, Milly Jones, Manager of Program and Site Coordination at ICS, wrote about the support that is necessary for students, faculty and technology. This month, Debbie Webb, Director - Northwest Indiana Distance Learning Cooperative looks specifically at Site Facilitators and their critical role in helping faculty. She knows what she's talking about. Support services and training are what she does, too...every day.

 

FOCUS

Site Facilitators: Effective Training is the Key!
Debbie Webb
Director, Northwest Indiana Distance Learning Cooperative

Do you ever wish you had a clone at the other end of your distance learning class? Someone who could read your mind and do what you wanted exactly when you wanted? I have quickly learned that support personnel or a facilitator can make or break a class. Effective training is the key. That effectiveness starts with a philosophy of active learning. I firmly believe that distance learning should be interactive and participatory. Infuse this underlining premise throughout your facilitator training. Develop a training that simulates experiences the facilitator will face. The training should incorporate information about working with materials, tests, the teacher of record, and the students. Remember, your motto should be "actions speak louder than words."

Additionally, give your facilitators a notebook containing helpful hints and a place to capture the information they are discovering through the training activities. Model organizational techniques and the verbal and non-verbal ways to communicate that your instructors will be using in class. Experiences with the modifications an instructor makes for the distance learning setting will create an effective link between instructor and facilitator. Because most facilitators have never experienced a distance learning class, consider doing your training on line with the facilitator both receiving and presenting information. In terms of the content, the major areas of training that I have identified for our facilitator's here at the Northwest Indiana Distance Learning Cooperative are: technology/equipment; the facilitator's role; logistics; communication; instructional support and equity.

Technology/Equipment. Paraphrasing Kevin Costner in "Field of Dreams," my philosophy of equipment training can best be expressed by saying, "If they touch it, they will succeed." Conquer the fear of the technology by asking your support staff to practice, practice, practice. Design activities such as relay races, "Button, button, where is that button!" and scavenger hunts that involve practicing on the technology. This will create confident and knowledgeable users who won't interrupt the learning atmosphere with the cry, "How do I do that?" And don't forget to cover troubleshooting technological problems. Role playing the nightmare of lost video, lost audio, missing equipment, where to find technical assistance, etc. can mean the difference between a 5 to 10 minute disruption and a lost class period.

Facilitator Role. Your facilitators may be another teacher, paraprofessional, community member, graduate student or any combination of the above. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you assist the facilitator in understanding that the instructor of the class is captain of the ship. The facilitator is a person of support. The teacher is in charge of the curriculum and students. The facilitator is there to assist the teacher as asked. Try generating a list of tasks and ask your facilitator to identify which is the responsibility of the teacher of record and which is the province of the facilitator. This provides a great foundation for discussion about how to support without being intrusive.

Logistics. When it comes to distance learning, it's all small stuff and you really do have to sweat it! Your facilitator needs to know what to do with assignments, tests, class attendance, student questions, texts, how and where to gather materials for activities and registration/payment/enrollment questions. Some of these issues will be campus wide, some will be instructor specific. Training can cover campus wide policies and suggestions for the handling of assignments, tests and other instructor specific requests. It's a good idea when covering the logistical portion of your training to invite instructors to meet with their specific facilitator for a brief time to discuss their specific needs and wants. Meeting over lunch or during a break in the training where there is food is often a great incentive for otherwise busy faculty to participate.

Communication. Incredibly important!! While your faculty member and facilitators are chatting, ask them to set a weekly time to talk about what is happening in class, future lessons, special instructions or concerns. Also ask everyone to exchange phone numbers, addresses and email addresses. Create a form! The information needed may seem obvious, but I cannot count how many times I have received a call asking for an instructor or facilitator's address and phone number. Encourage everyone to use e-mail to communicate questions and information.

Before your faculty leave, discuss with everyone the importance of their commitment to their weekly meeting via telephone or in person. The facilitator is the eyes and ears of the teacher in the distance learning class's extended sites. A good facilitator will let the teacher know when a student is struggling with material, asking questions outside of class or having some other type of problem or success. Video flattens the non-verbal cues instructors rely on to check whether their message is being received. The facilitator can read those non-verbal cues and pass them on to the instructor. Finally, identify who the facilitator's supervisor is while both the faculty member and facilitator are present. Supervision may involve both the instructor and another person at the extended site. If a problem arises at a location with the instructor or the facilitator, everyone needs to know who to talk to immediately.

Instructional Support. Practice instructional support techniques! During the training, you must include and simulate all of the following: the giving of instructions, classroom management problems, material distribution, collection of assignments, testing and taking of attendance. Demonstrate techniques a facilitator can use for each of these areas. Show your facilitator how to quickly communicate what is happening in the classroom by using a non-verbal signal. Model the behavior you want a facilitator to use in each situation. Remember that each site's physical and cultural setting is unique so you may have to modify.

Equity. Last, but probably most important, is the issue of equity. In order to create an effective learning atmosphere, there needs to be a feeling that each site is an integral part of the instructor's classroom. Therefore, each distance learning site must be treated the same by both the facilitator and instructor. I learned this lesson the hard way when one of our facilitators had a candy jar on her desk. Students at that site helped themselves to the candy while the other sites had none. Sounds like a simple problem, right? Maybe so, but in our case the problem escalated even though the candy jar was removed. The sites split into factions and competed among themselves. It took a lot of work to recreate that whole classroom atmosphere and partnership among the sites. In your training, split your facilitators into "haves" and "have nots." Give one group a candy bar and have the other group watch from the other side of the room while the facilitators eat the candy. Discuss how each group felt and what could happen. Also talk about visual actions that can cause a rift such as using a document camera to make comments to each other. The rule of thumb for both the instructor and facilitator is if you can't do it for everyone at all the distance learning sites, don't do it!

Conclusion. How do you end your training? You don't! Instead, set up your own strategies for communicating with the facilitators throughout their tenure. Peek in, if you have time, on the classes. Sometimes you can do this in a broadcast mode on-line without anyone knowing you are there. Send out an e-mail survey during the semester asking for feedback. Encourage the facilitator to e-mail you with questions and moments they would like to celebrate. Create a listserv so facilitators can communicate with each other. Meet half way through the semester for a lunch with everyone you have trained both experienced and new. Creating these types of connections among your facilitators and yourself will assist you in identifying new concepts/situations that need to be covered in training. And your facilitators will feel they have your continued support. Facilitator's training? You bet! You may not create the perfect clone, but your instructors will thank you for the competent support person at the other distance learning sites. Go train 'em!

 

FROM THE DISTANCE EDUCATION CLEARINGHOUSE: NETNEWS

Conference Information
Michele Jacques

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

Every month the DESIEN Newsletter provides announcements, lists and notices for a number of conferences and other distance education and related opportunities. The Distance Education Clearinghouse collects and maintains most of this information in its Conference Database: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conf/

Included here are links to conferences, calls for papers, and proceedings from local, national, and international events. They are arranged both chronologically and alphabetically by conference name.

Also included in the collection is a section of other conference databases which may provide additional leads to conference information.

Two important conferences which are taking place in Wisconsin are:

The Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning
The 14th Annual Conference is scheduled to be held in
Madison, Wisconsin on August 5-7, 1998
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/distanceconf/deconf.html

 

The Governor's Wisconsin Educational Technology Conference (GWETC)
To be held in Green Bay Wisconsin on October 6-8, 1998
http://www.wetc-wi.org/

Every month the Distance Education Clearinghouse receives messages from conference planners and organizers worldwide requesting that we link to their conference Web sites. We are happy to link to events which have a distance education focus or theme, and would be of interest to the users of the Distance Education Clearinghouse. If you know of any that we should include, please let contact us.

Michele Jacques
Distance Education Clearinghouse
Information Resources Manager
Instructional Communications Systems (ICS)
University of Wisconsin-Extension
jacques@ics.uwex.edu

 

CAMPUS HILIGHTS
(Send campus distance education HILIGHTS to: lehman@uwex.edu)

**There is absolutely no doubt that Distance Learning is growing in the UW System. The new Fall "UW Extension 1998 Catalog of Distance Learning from UW System Institutions", compiled and produced by ICS, attests to that. See for yourself as you read the list of *new* courses/programs from the catalog below:

UW COLLEGES - *Business* - Managerial Accounting, 3 cr (Compressed Video). *Communications and Letters* - Greek and Latin Origins of Medical and Scientific Terminology, 3 cr (Compressed Video); Introduction to Mass Communication, 3 cr (Compressed Video). *Education* - The Exceptional Child, 3 cr (Compressed Video). *Fine Arts* - Creative Writing, 3 cr (Compressed Video); Fundamentals of Music, 3 undergrad cr (WWW); History of Western Music, 3 cr (Compressed Video). *Foreign Languages* - First Semester French, 4 cr (Compressed Video). *Physical, Mathematical and Computer Sciences* - Data Structures, 3 cr (WisView Audiographics); Surfing the Net, 2 undergrad cr (WWW); Trigonometry, 2 undergrad cr (WWW). *Social Sciences* - Survey of Physical Geography, 4 undergrad cr (WWW); World Regional Geography, 3 undergrad cr (WWW).

UW-EAU CLAIRE with UW-BARRON COUNTY - *Business* - Legal and Regulatory Environment, 3 undergrad cr (Compressed Video). *Social Sciences* - East Asian Studies, 3 cr (WONDER Network).

UW-LA CROSSE - *Social Sciences* - Asian Government and Politics, 3 cr (WONDER Network).

UW-MADISON - *Agriculture* - Science of Food, 3 cr (Broadcast TV/Cable TV/Videotape); *Engineering* - Advanced Technical Japanese Seminar, 3 cr (Email). *Foreign Languages* - Basic Chinese Conversation for Professionals, 3 cr (Compressed Video/Videotape/National Technological University Satellite). Japanese Language and Culture for Professionals III, 3 cr (Compressed Video/Videotape/National Technological University Satellite). *Health* - Diabetes Educator Initiative, 1.2 CEUs (/WisLine); Unintentional Injury Prevention in Early Adolescence (10-14 year olds), 0.3 CEUs (WisSat Satellite). *Library and Information Studies* - A Book Is a Gift You Can Open Again and Again, 0.3 CEUs (ETN); After Frog and Toad and Before Ramona: Evaluating and Selecting Easy Readers and Transitional Fiction, 0.3 CEUs (ETN); Book Censorship and Intellectual Freedom 0.3 CEUs (ETN); Genealogy, 1 undergrad/grad cr (compressed video); If Only I Had Known (What They Never Told Me When I took This Job), 0.4 CEUs (ETN); Internet: Public Access Policies and Sites and Best Sites for children, 1.0 CEUs (ETN); More (and Better) Planning for Results, 0.4 CEUs (ETN); What is Everybody Reading? 1.0 (ETN).

UW-MILWAUKEE - *Foreign Languages* - French Literature from the Middle Ages to the 18th Century, 3 cr (Compressed Video). *Health* - Health Care Delivery in the US, 3 cr (WWW). *Social Sciences* - Individual Behavior and Social Welfare-offered with UW-La Crosse, 3 undergrad/grad cr (Compressed Video); Methods of Social Welfare- offered with UW-La Crosse, 3 undergrad/grad cr (Compressed Video).

UW-RIVER FALLS - *Education* - Introduction to Counseling, 3 cr (WestWING Network).

UW-STEVENS POINT - *Physical, Mathematical and Computer Sciences* - Special Topics: Using the Calculator Based Laboratories, 3 grad cr (CBL); Materials in the Algebra Classroom, 3 cr (Internet).

UW-WHITEWATER - *Business* - Accounting and Management Information Systems, 3 grad cr (Online); Advanced Statistical Methods, 3 grad cr. (Online); International Management, 3 grad cr (Online); Seminar in Business Communication, 3 grad cr (Online). *Education* - Approaches to Teaching ESL to Adults, 3 undergrad/grad cr (Compressed Video/Email/Internet); The Whole Child: A Caregiver's Guide to the First Five Years, 2-3 undergrad/grad cr (ETN/ETV).

 

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
GWETC-Hotels are Filling Up!

Hotel rooms are *already beginning to fill up* for the October Governor's Wisconsin Educational Technology Conference (GWETC) in Green Bay. One reason...the Packers play in Green Bay the night before the conference begins. So...when you register for the conference - and you should do that soon - remember to register for your hotel room, as well!!

The three-day conference, October 6-8 at the Regency Conference Center in Green Bay, will focus on Higher Education on October 6, All Levels of Education on October 7 and on K-12 on October 8. Featured speaker at the October 6 luncheon will be Stuart Robertshaw (Dr. Humor) who'll challenge and entertain all of us with "Technology and the Prevention of Humor Impairment."

This year's conference includes workshops and sessions concurrently throughout the conference. Workshops will require preregistration and will be on a first-come, first-serve basis when materials are picked up at the conference site, with no additional charge for the workshops. The Governor's Conference is sponsored by: University of Wisconsin-Extension, the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board, the Department of Public Instruction, the Wisconsin Technical College System and TEACH Wisconsin. More information and Registration are at: http://www.wetc-wi.org

 

COPYRIGHT
House Committee Approves Amended Bill

HOUSE COMMITTEE APPROVES AMENDED DIGITAL COPYRIGHT BILL - The House Commerce Committee has approved legislation that would update U.S. copyright laws for digital works, while maintaining "fair use" provisions for libraries and educators. The "fair use" provision was tacked on at the last minute in an amendment sponsored by Rep. Scott Klug (R-Wisc.). The legislation had been previously approved, without the "fair use" clause, by the Senate and House Judiciary Committee, and the bill has now been sent to the House floor for a vote. The committee also approved an amendment that would allow cryptography researchers to crack anti-piracy safeguards as part of their work, and one allowing Internet users to disable such measures to prevent the collection of personal information. (Reuters 17 Jul 98)

 

ED ETC.
Framework for Online Teaching, California Spins Off Its Virtual U, Wireless Andrew Links Carnegie Mellon Campus

FRAMEWORK FOR ONLINE TEACHING - In the most recent issue of DEOSNEWS, Morten Flate Paulsen, Assistant Professor, Department of Distance Education in NKI, Oslo, Norway presents a framework for an online teaching system. In the article, he discusses the various elements within the system environment and examines the teaching process and ways in which the elements are related. This learner-centered framework provides a guide for improving online teaching.

"... students are central in this model. The learning resources, the course content and the teachers are at their disposal. To facilitate learning, the teachers have teaching methods, teaching techniques and teaching devices at their disposal. Among the components presented in the model, the most pivotal for this article are the teacher, the teacher functions and the teacher application of methods, techniques, and devices."

The article begins with a description of the environment with its constraints, demands and choices. It continues with a discussion of learners, learning resources, teachers and their functions. The research in the article is based on Paulsen's thesis. A component of the thesis is an international survey of teachers who have online teaching experience. Interested in taking part in this survey? Go to: http://home.nettskolen.nki.no/~morten /cmcped/. Also included at the site is a Forum for Online Teachers to participate in. For the (DEOS NEWS Vol. 8 No. 7, ISSN 1062-9416)

 

CALIFORNIA SPINS OFF ITS VIRTUAL U. - The state of California has privatized its virtual university, turning it into the California Virtual University Foundation. The CVU Foundation includes the state's main university systems - the University of California, California State University and the California Community College organization - and several high-tech companies such as Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, Pacific Bell and Oracle. The Virtual University provides students a choice of 1,600 courses offered by 95 schools, all of which are available entirely online. "It's going to provide access to quality education to a larger percentage of our population," says Governor Pete Wilson. "Its accessibility is the reason it's attracting so many companies." (TechWeb 30 Jul 98)

 

WIRELESS ANDREW LINKS CARNEGIE MELLON CAMPUS - Carnegie Mellon's local area network, nicknamed "Wireless Andrew" after benefactors Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon, links students to the campus network through a network of 400 base stations located around the campus, each of which can channel two megabits of data per second to each computer in their cell - about 1,000 times as much as a standard modem. Users are automatically connected to the LAN when they switch on their laptops, but if they choose to wander off campus, they can still link to the campus network via the city's mobile phone network. Designing the software to accommodate both high- and low-speed networks is the key to the system's seamless transmission. Researchers at the university now are working on a scheme to adapt video compression software to different levels of resolution, depending on the access point to the network. (The Economist Jul 18-24 98)

 

NEW TECH TRENDS
Video-con-ferencing, Online Role Play

VIDEO-CON-FERENCING - Jim Mayers, Offender Job-Linkage Coordinator for the Correction Department in the Cleveland area, gathered employers in downtown Cleveland and used the videoconferencing system to let them interview offenders at the penitentiary in Belmont, Ohio and the Marysville Correctional Institution for women, where inmates were soon to return to their homes. The groups were connected for about 10 hours for 29 interviews. The real boon was the employers' reaction. According to Mayers, Lincoln Electric hired one ex-offender after meeting via videoconference and conducting a few more interviews after his release. Husky Industrial, had never interviewed inmates before the videoconference and it opened the door for more soon-to-be-released inmates. Since the interviews, Husky has placed 12 ex-offenders from various Ohio prisons. Mayers is now interested in doing some job-specific training with inmates and he thinks this technology might be a way to provide it. (Training, April 98, p. 96)

 

ON-LINE ROLE PLAY SOFTWARE - Check out a new online role playing technology available from Method Software. It adds a multi-person simulation capability to online learning. The web site is: http://www.method.com (TechLearn Trends #54, 21 July 98)

 

NEW ON THE LIST -

Welcome this month to: John Keatley, Aaron Goodman, Judy Resop, Natsha Gitany, Peymer Igor, Domonique Hallett, Softarc, Dawn Drake, Margaret Donohue, Kara Monroe, Louis Beaubien, Alfredo Lopez-de-Cosio, Petra Fisser, Dale Lee, Michael Martin, Debbie Webb, Kerry Duchesneau, Stuart Sugar and Simone Conceicao-Runlee.

 

FYI
News, Conferences, Institutes

WORLD CONFERENCE OF THE WWW, INTERNET & INTRANET will be held in Orlando, FL, Nov. 7-12, 1998 at the Holiday Inn International Drive Resort. The Conference is organized by AACE-Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education in cooperation WWW/Internet businesses and industry and includes over 350 presentations in 8 major topic strands and 15 key speakers as well as tutorial presentations. For the complete WebNet 98 Advance Program, see: http://www.aace.org/conf/webnet.

 

EDUCOM'98 - Making the Connections - is scheduled for October 13-16, 1998 in Orlando, Florida at the University of Central Florida. The conference is planned for: academic computing professionals, policymakers & planners in higher education, faculty, administrators, budget directors and development professionals, networking and library professionals, information technology specialists and corporate representatives from the information technology industries. Featured speakers are: James Burke, author of Connections; Ben Shneiderman, U. of Maryland and Alan Kay, VP of Disney Imagineering. Nine tracks of exciting sessions are scheduled. For further information see: http://www.educause.edu/confer ence/e98/.index.html.

 

CAUSE'98 - The Networked Academy - will be held December 8-11, 1998 at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center, Seattle, Washington. Keynote speakers are: Molly Broad, president of the University of North Carolina; Charles Garfield, strategy advisor to business leaders and Steve Jobs, Interim CEO of Apple Computer. Sessions will be organized under eight tracks that include: networking networking, web applications, changing structures and roles, training, the support environment, information architectures and business reengineering. For more information go to: http://www.educause.edu/conferen ce/c98/c98.html.

 

The Third Annual IIEP Workshop on 'The Planning and Management of Distance Learning' will be held on December 14-18, 1998 in cooperation with Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU) and will be held at the University's campus located in the suburbs of Bangkok, Thailand. This workshop has been designed to give educational administrators, policy makers and managers an overview of the skills and techniques essential for the planning and management of distance-learning systems. It will address the needs of senior civil servants, chief executive officers, senior administrators of large institutions and those likely to take charge of departments/institutions where distance learning is under consideration as an element of the educational delivery system.

The IIEP Center in Paris, disseminates educational and distance learning research and trains specialists; over 5,000 people from 180 countries have attended IIEP's training programs. For more information contact: John Hall, International Institute for Educational Planning (UNESCO) 7-9 rue Eugene Delacroix, 75116 Paris, France.

 

ENDNOTE
Deconstructing the Digital Kid, Information Ecology

DECONSTRUCTING THE DIGITAL KID - In its recently released "Deconstructing the Digital Kid" study, Jupiter Communications predicts that the number of teens (ages 13 to 18) online will rise from 4.5 million today to 11 million by 2002, and the number of children (ages 12 and under) will skyrocket from 3 million today to 20 million during the same period. That increase will mark one of the single biggest demographic shifts seen on the Web so far. The study also found that 68% of parents surveyed were concerned about their children's Internet usage, and that more than 25% said they would be willing to pay for services to restrict their children's access to adult or undesirable sites. Two-thirds prohibit their children from giving out personal information over the Web and 62% don't allow online shopping. According to the results, boys tended to surf for gaming opportunities and sports content, and girls were more likely to focus on email and instant messaging. (TechWeb 25 Jun 98)

 

INFORMATION ECOLOGY - Information "is data endowed with relevance and purpose." (Peter Drucker) In other words, it takes *us,* not machines machines or networks, to do something with the information. In a recent and important book, 'Information Ecology: Mastering the Information and Knowledge Environment,' Thomas Davenport, Director of Information Management at the University of Texas-Austin argues that it's time to "put humans back at the center of the information world, banishing technology to its rightful place on the periphery." He is emphatic in saying that we need to stop modeling an information environment based on machines and buildings, and begin to think in terms of "information ecology." We need to switch our attention from systems and architectures to the behavioral and cultural changes needed to engender an environment where knowledge is created and freely shared with others. The core of his message "is that people now matter *more* than ever!" If you read the book, pay particular attention to the chapter titled "Information Staff," where he discusses the type of people that are needed to help shape and support information activities. (Training, April 98, pp. 93-94)

AUGUST ISSUE FOCUS - A Multipart Series: Technology Support Issues...Resource Support

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

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.