[Access] [Faculty] [Learner Satisfaction] [Mainstreaming] [Learning Effectiveness] [Keynote] [Plenary]

The Ninth Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning

Keynote Address, ALN: WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING?

Friday, November 14, 2003 6:30-8:00 p.m. Rosen Centre Hotel

John C. Hitt, President, University of Central Florida

Welcome to Orlando to the ninth Sloan-C International ALN Conference. The Sloan Consortium has come to be recognized as the group of institutions that--with the generous support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the leadership of Frank Mayadas--has helped to define quality in online learning. This year's theme, The Power of Online Learning-Implications for Teaching and Learning, focuses our attention on a very important set of issues.

Like many aspects of the academy, the basic practice of teaching and learning in the American University has changed little over the past three and a half centuries. Although much experimentation has taken place with innovative pedagogy and technology, the fundamental "tell-teach" model of classroom instruction has persisted as the most prevalent practice. The typical lecture contains approximately 5,000 words, 500, or 10 percent, of which the student captures. The statistics for material presented on a blackboard or in a demonstration are about the same.

We know that pedagogies that place learners in passive roles inhibit learning or pretty much assure that it will occur outside of the classroom.

In his groundbreaking study, What Matters in College: Four Critical Years Revisited, Alexander Astin correlated 146 input variables and 82 outcome variables, drawing from a sample of nearly 25,000 students from 309 institutions (Astin, 1993). He concludes that student-faculty interaction, student-student interaction, and learning communities are among the most powerful predictors of positive learning and social outcomes in colleges and universities.

Major changes are beginning to occur, however. During the past 30 years, advancements in new theories of learning, new student-centered pedagogies, and new online interactive technologies are enabling a shift from a teaching-centered paradigm to what Barr and Tagg (1995) refer to as a learning-centered paradigm that includes:

• an emphasis on discovering and constructing knowledge rather than transferring knowledge from the teacher to the student
• an emphasis on active students rather than active faculty
• the support of multiple learning styles
• a shift from seat time to outcomes as a measure of learning
• a shift from faculty members as lecturers to faculty members as designers of learning environments
• the conceptualization of learning as a cooperative and collaborative activity, rather than one that is individualistic and competitive

During this same 30-year span, the emergence of the personal computer, the Internet, and the World Wide Web have fundamentally changed many aspects of American life, including higher education, as these resources rapidly became commonplace. The rate of diffusion of the Internet since the development of the World Wide Web is greater than for any previous communications technology.

I've worked in higher education long enough to have seen many innovations in learning technology come and go, from the filmstrip to audio visuals, to instructional television, to computer-aided instruction. The practitioners of each of these technologies have, in turn, promised that the technology of the day would transform teaching and learning. Even though all of these technologies are still in use, they have largely failed to achieve that goal. What is different about ALN? Why should university administrators believe ALN will have any greater impact on teaching and learning than did previous technologies?

First, the World Wide Web is a highly capable platform for the delivery of education. John Seely Brown (2000) notes key characteristics that distinguish it from other media. The Web:

• is ubiquitous -- browsers are bundled with every personal computer that is sold or can be downloaded free
• is two-way
• acknowledges multiple intelligences
• links people together in new ways

• inherently interactive
• multimedia--Web browsers display text, graphics, images, high- fidelity audio, video, and animations
• multilingual--English is the most commonly used language on the global Internet, but Web browsers are capable of displaying text in virtually any language or specialized character sets
• multiplatform--browsers are available for multiple versions of Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX workstations, and more recently, for a variety of handheld devices
• capable of both synchronous and asynchronous communication

How, then, can we apply these new educational theories and new technologies such as the Web to fundamentally improve teaching and learning? More dramatically, how can we harness these tools to transform our institutions?

Certainly, the use of technology by individual faculty is a positive thing; but, if online learning is to have a lasting impact on the institution, it must be framed to align with institutional mission, goals, and strategies. First, this will ensure that online learning develops in a manner consistent with the institution's needs, mission, and goals. Second, it will ensure that investments in online learning will be made strategically, rather than ad hoc.

Tony Bates (2000) notes that it is necessary, but rare, that institutional strategic plans adequately address a future vision for teaching and learning, and the role of technology in that vision.

In a 2001 EDUCAUSE Review article, I noted the need for an institutional vision that encompasses teaching, learning, and technology and pointed out that "what we are looking for is not just change, but a broad and deep institutional transformation grounded in our mission . . . . Leadership . . . must have a vision; we must bring people along with that vision--integrating and implementing it."

Accordingly, the UCF online learning initiative is closely connected to institutional strategic objectives aimed at increasing access, improving teaching and learning, increasing student convenience, and helping to reduce educational delivery costs.

For strategic alignment to exist, there must first be strategy.

o      When I came to UCF as president amost twelve years ago, I articulated five goals for the institution:

• offer the best undergraduate education available in Florida
• achieve international prominence in key programs of graduate study and research
• provide international focus to our curricula and research
• become more inclusive and diverse
• be America's leading partnership university

o      At UCF, we have an excellent strategic planning process that has broad participation and awareness throughout the institution, and, we have integrated these goals into our strategic planning.

o      We also have attempted to infuse technology-awareness into our strategic plan as a way of facilitating strategic alignment. Our previous plan contained more than 60 specific references to technology; and our new plan, just published, provides broader, but equally clear, technology directions, including strategic directions for online learning.

o      Moreover, the strategic plan gains its focus, content, and power from the participation, not only of the president and provost, but also of the deans, department chairs, faculty and staff.

Our strategic plan and our five goals shape the university's budgeting process. Each year, the university budget committee makes a set of competitive, strategic awards to projects that closely align with and support our goals. Divisional budgets are also driven by the institution's priorities.

At UCF, we have consciously connected our technology initiatives with my five goals and the institutional vision represented by the strategic plan. We have provided the resources needed to realize our technology vision because we believe in supporting what we say is important. Our faculty, staff, and students have been empowered by new tools and resources. They have internalized them and made them their own. As a result, they are doing new things--and old things in new ways. They have become part of the process of change, and in return, they truly have transformed the institution.

An emphasis on access, quality, and cost, and an obligation to be accountable, have been with the academy for decades. And, we are entering a period of increased external demand for improvement in these areas

At both the state and national levels, we are seeing huge budget deficits, increasingly hostile lawmakers, and demands for improved graduation rates, increased access for ethnic minorities, reduced prices, and more efficient operations.

States across the nation are cutting education budgets by 10%, 13%, even 25%. In Florida this year, the state cut was $40 million even though enrollments will increase by more than 20,000 students.

In many states, governing boards or legislatures have authorized or mandated large tuition increases--over 62% in the last several years in North Carolina, 50% expected in Texas over the next few years, and 18-19% in South Carolina.

The Florida legislature approved an 8.5% increase in in-state undergraduate tuition, with an optional additional 6.5% increase in out-of-state and graduate tuition. Many institutions implemented the full 15%.

Meanwhile, the July 11 issue of the Chronicle carried a cover story titled Bush's Next Target. Citing these rapidly rising tuition costs and statistics that suggest that only 50 percent of all students who begin their higher education graduate in five years--and as few as 8 to 20 per cent of low income students--the Bush administration appears poised to use the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act as an opportunity to introduce significant accountability measures as well as caps on tuition increases.

And so, the four perennial issues affecting higher education--access, quality, cost, and accountability--are again returning to the forefront.

In case these terms sound familiar, they are the same institutional goals that are driving ALN at the University of Central Florida. They are also very similar to the five Sloan Consortium Pillars for Quality Online Education:

• Access
• Learning Effectiveness
• Student Satisfaction
• Faculty Satisfaction
• Cost Effectiveness

The five Sloan-C Pillars provide a useful framework for elaborating on the implications of ALN for teaching and learning.

Access is perhaps the most complex of these issues, and one where ALN can play a significant role. Many factors determine whether and to what extent an individual can obtain a degree or advanced credentials. Among the thorniest currently is cost. As states continue to under-fund higher education, institutions are responding by increasing tuition.

Yet, the U.S. Department of Education estimates that this year nearly one-half of all college-qualified, low- and moderate-income high school graduates--over 400,000 students fully prepared to attend a four-year college--will be unable to do so, and 170,000 of these students will attend no college at all. And over the course of this decade cost could potentially affect access for over 4.4 million students.

A second challenge, and one that is particularly relevant to online learning, is the digital divide. In A Nation Online: How Americans are Expanding Their Use of the Internet, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (2002) painted a comprehensive portrait of computer and Internet use by various segments of American society. The percentage of U.S. homes with Internet access declines by 12 to 14 percent for each $10,000 decrease in family income, with the effect being even more pronounced in rural areas. Clearly, federal and state financial aid policies need to recognize these problems and ensure that full financial aid benefits are available to online as well as face-to-face students.

The GAO, like most of our institutions, has found that students who enroll in online courses are usually older, more likely to be employed, more likely to be married, and more likely to be attending school part-time. For many of these students, the availability of online programs may be a primary determinant of their ability to access higher education. UCF's fully online degree programs, like those at other institutions with mature online programs, are seeing steady increases in online enrollments.

At UCF, we have developed nine online degree programs and four online graduate certificates, with five additional programs and one certificate currently under development. We have seen the power of online learning to foster access by noting enrollment growth in these programs. This fall, nearly 7,200 students are enrolled in fully online courses that are part of one of these degree or certificate programs, in what we call the UCF Virtual Campus. Those students account for 13 percent of UCF's total enrollment and about 4 1/2 percent of our total student credit hour production. Our fully-online student population is nearly equal to the number of students who are taking face-to-face courses at one of our 21 regional campuses, and the Virtual Campus population is increasing at 20 times the rate of face-to-face regional campus growth.

The implications of ALN to promote access are clear. Online learning does provide options to students that help overcome various barriers of time, distance, handicap, and the obligations of jobs or family.

Learning effectiveness is also an important element, but a difficult one to measure. We already know a great deal about how students learn, and are continuously expanding this body of knowledge through research. Yet, when you look across the faculty of a university, you find relatively few members who come to the academy with an extensive knowledge of student learning styles or effective pedagogical practices. As one veteran faculty member put it, "we do to them what was done to us." Likewise, despite emergent efforts to measure subject mastery, our primary outcome measure is grades and, as we all know, grades are a highly variable and imprecise measure.

A second learning effectiveness issue lies in our expectations. When approaching the use of technology--any technology--in education, our first principle appears to be drawn from the Hippocratic Oath: "first do no harm."

Carol Twigg (2001a) and Chris Dede (1996) observed that early applications of technology in any area of human endeavor are likely to replicate past practice. Twigg cites as examples the fact that early movies were filmed stage plays, automatic teller machines were initially placed inside banks, and the pony express responded to the invention of the telegraph by employing faster horses. Likewise, Twigg notes, many online courses emulate traditional classroom teaching: they are developed by individual faculty, they follow the standard semester timetable, they follow standard read-discuss classroom procedures, and student learning is evaluated by traditional methods. The problem with this approach, according to Twigg, is that it increases costs without producing improved results.

Tom Russell's study of the "no significant difference" phenomenon has long been taken as demonstrating that the use of technology does no harm because it generally produces results "as good as" face-to-face instruction. The problem with this approach is that it implicitly accepts traditional face-to-face teaching methods as the standard, when we know well that we can and should do much better. But almost a decade ago, Richard Clark reminded us that it is instructional design and pedagogical approach--not the use of technology per se--that leads to improved learning. No significant difference implies settling for too little.

It is common practice within the Sloan Consortium community for faculty to be responsible for developing and delivering their online courses. The key to improved student learning performance, therefore, lies in designing an effective online instructional model or models, preparing faculty to design and deliver instruction in these modalities, providing ongoing support to ensure continuous quality improvement, and conducting formative and summative assessment measure outcomes. To achieve improved student learning outcomes, we cannot merely replicate classroom practices. Rather, we must help faculty understand both the new opportunities and new challenges the online environment brings, including the shift to more active--and interactive--modes of student learning.

We have observed over the past seven years that student academic success (that is, attainment of a grade of A, B, or C) in our online courses that blend face-to-face with online instruction runs higher than for any other mode of instructional delivery. Likewise, we have found that students in our fully online courses rate their course and instructor to be "excellent" 13 percent more often than in face-to-face courses. We believe this is no accident, but rather a result of high-quality faculty development, the use of instructional designers and digital media specialists in course development, and extensive faculty and student support for online course delivery.

Improved student success has other benefits. For the university, it means improved time-to-degree, and fewer students retaking courses, often-used assessment measures by state legislatures. Improved student assessments of instruction also contribute to faculty teaching awards and granting of promotion and tenure. A happy situation all around.

Although student and faculty satisfaction are influenced by different factors, many only indirectly related to online education, they are closely related. Measures of student satisfaction with online learning include:

• the rate at which students enroll in online courses as opposed to courses delivered in other formats;
• formal student evaluations of instruction, as practiced at many institutions
• direct research into student affect

Student success and satisfaction also require an array of online services, including course registration, financial aid, advising, and library services. Of course, online academic support services benefit all students, but they are critical to the success of our online populations, especially those at a distance.

From the research conducted by our Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness, we have found that once a student enrolls in an online course, he or she is highly likely to take another, and we often see online course sections fill more rapidly than their face-to-face counterparts. Students also report that the online experience has empowered them, that it is more convenient, and that they are more in control of their learning. Overall, students give high satisfaction ratings to their online course experiences, and, as noted above, evaluate their online courses as excellent at rates exceeding those of face-to-face courses. As many of your institutions have, UCF has observed a steady increase in the number of students opting to take online or blended courses, with a compound annual growth rate exceeding 35 percent. This fall, for example, more than 25,000 of our 42,000 students are enrolled in one or more online course.

Faculty satisfaction is also a critical success factor, for without faculty participation, there would be no online courses. We've studied our online students, but we have also studied our online faculty since 1996. Faculty consistently report high levels of satisfaction and say that online courses generally require more time than their face-to-face courses. A consistent finding of our research is that only two factors have had a statistically significant correlation to positive faculty satisfaction: 1) the level of interaction in online courses is greater than in face-to-face courses, and 2) the quality of interaction is higher. No other factors we have studied, including workload, level of experience, tenure status, age, gender, or the amount of assistance given to the faculty member have had a statistically significant correlation with either positive or negative faculty satisfaction levels.

We attribute our high levels of faculty satisfaction and faculty and student success to the excellent faculty development opportunities we provide. Faculty who are selected by their department or college to develop and deliver an online course are provided a one- course release or equivalent stipend to participate in our faculty development program. Faculty are also provided a wireless-equipped laptop computer, an instructional designer, and access to a team of production experts. Our faculty participate as students in a blended online course, with class meetings, labs, online work--even homework and grades. Through this authentic learning experience, our faculty gain the knowledge and skills needed to develop successful active learning experiences for their students.

I am very pleased, by the way, that UCF's faculty development initiative was selected to receive this year's Sloan Consortium Award of Excellence, and I commend our staff and faculty for their accomplishments in developing such an effective program. I particularly want to recognize Joel Hartman, Steve Sorg, Barbara Truman, and Chuck Dziuban for their leadership in UCF's efforts in ALN.

When asked what they like most about teaching online, our faculty cite:

• the flexibility of time and place
• the high level and quality of student interaction
• and the enjoyment of working with the technology

On the other hand, faculty concerns include:

• the time commitment required to teach online
• the lack of or reduction in face-to-face student contact, and
• the occasional technical problems

Our Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness also assists faculty with teaching-related research. For any faculty member interested in conducting research, particularly research into the process and effects of online learning, RITE will:

• help design the study
• obtain or develop the necessary instruments
• administer the instrument
• collect and analyze the data
• provide the results in publication-quality format that remain the intellectual property of the faculty member

Over the past several years, between 30 to 50 faculty members at a time have been engaged in such research, with most presenting or publishing their findings. Several of our professors have begun to work in interdisciplinary teams that are deeply engaged in the scholarship of teaching and have produced an increasingly large body of work.

A final measure of faculty satisfaction is the diffusion of online practices throughout the institution. We find that faculty who have taught online courses go on to use similar techniques and resources in their traditional face-to-face courses. At UCF, this phenomenon has transformed teaching and learning to an extent that we are no longer able to use face-to-face courses as a nominal category. We have achieved a state in which the use of online resources has become so pervasive that it is approaching the baseline standard.

Although student and faculty satisfaction have been regarded as distinct indicators of program quality, we tend to treat them as mutually dependent. Dissatisfied students do not lead to satisfied faculty; likewise dissatisfied faculty are not likely to have satisfied students or high student ratings. We must be concerned about both our online students and our online faculty, and provide the necessary support resources to ensure that both succeed.

The final factor is cost: a four-letter word, indeed. Although the fiscal pressures on the academy are more than evident, we somehow resist engaging in a meaningful discussion about how to use technology to reduce instructional costs or increase capacity. One reason for this may be a fear on the part of faculty that this would result in an administrative plot to replace them with machines.

The Pew Project in Course Redesign, headed by Carol Twigg and sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, had as its primary goal the creation of successful online models that achieved both learning improvements and reduced instructional delivery costs. Across the 30 projects that were funded, including several institutions present here, the cost reductions ranged from 20 percent to 84 percent, with an average reduction in delivery costs of 42 percent. UCF's Pew-supported project demonstrated cost savings from our use of blended or hybrid courses, which reduce seat time and allow multiple courses to be scheduled in the instructional space normally occupied by a single course. We have constructed models that suggest similar saving levels would be routinely achievable in many other courses through broad scale application of the models resulting from the Pew project and our own experience.

Another source of savings results from economies of scale. Institutions such as UMUC (University of Maryland University College), SUNY, Penn State, and UCF have observed efficiencies associated with their large populations of online students. The marginal costs of serving such students is often significantly lower than those for face-to-face students.

As a case in point, here is an analysis based on our own circumstances. Up to 8,500 student enrollments in fully online courses will occur during a given semester this year, most in pursuit of one of UCF's online degrees or certificates. The economic impact of these fully online students is sizeable:

o      For each classroom seat we do not construct, we save nearly $5,000, with an additional annual operational cost saving of $182. Thus, our students taking fully online courses represent the avoidance of nearly $3.1 million in construction costs and nearly $116,000 a year in operational and maintenance costs. These are estimates of costs avoided.

o      The annual tuition and fees realized from these online students is nearly $7.3 million. Were the normal level of state funding to be provided this year--which it wasn't--that would have added over $17.5 million, for a total of nearly $25 million in revenues. And, that's just for this population of fully online students. If we were to factor in the other 10,500 students enrolled in blended courses with reduced classroom attendance, the revenues and savings would be even greater.

o      In summary, a properly managed and scalable ALN program, coupled with the positive economic impact of innovative course redesigns and resource management, provides a powerful tool with which to address the fiscal realities of the present day.

So, to return to the title of these remarks and the theme of this year's conference, I would suggest that with online learning we now have the knowledge and tools to:

• increase access to students anywhere in the world and increase convenience for our on-campus students
• improve student learning outcomes and student progression
• achieve and maintain high levels of student and faculty satisfaction
• help our faculty and graduate teaching assistants learn and employ new and more effective teaching practices that they will employ in their online and face-to-face courses
• impart advanced information literacy skills to our students and faculty
• reduce instructional delivery costs while potentially producing new revenues
• foster the scholarship of teaching and interdisciplinary activity through the facilitation of faculty research.

In summary, we have witnessed the beginnings of a transformation of the practice of teaching and learning at our institutions. Looking to the years ahead, nothing could be more exciting.

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