Net-Learning*: Strategies for On-Campus and Off-Campus Network-enabled Learning

* Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN)[1]

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The ALN Web Group [1]

This paper was created for presentation at the Forum for the Future of Higher Education, Aspen Institute, Aspen, CO, September, 1998. It is reprinted in the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks with permission.

ABSTRACT
This paper examines the field of Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN), also known as Net-learning or anywhere-anytime learning. Commencing with definitions, examples of current practice and an accounting of types of schools and faculty that are engaged in ALN, the essay then examines the role of faculty in an ALN-world and considers which strategies are suitable for different types of institutions.

KEYWORDS
ALN models, ALN, Net-Learning, On-line courses

I. WHAT ARE ASYNCHRONOUS LEARNING NETWORKS?

A. Definition
Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALNs) are on-line learning venues that emphasize people-to-people communication combined with traditional and/or information-technology-delivered learning tools. The terms Net-learning and Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALNs) are used interchangeably in this essay. We interpret these terms to have the identical meaning. The purpose of ALNs is to enable people to learn anywhere and at anytime without the constraints of time and space. ALNs are useful in many educational arenas including on-campus education, off-campus education, and continuing education.

B. History of ALN
In 1993, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation initiated a program on "Learning Outside the Classroom" and made grants to early adopters of ALN, including New York University and the University of Illinois. Soon thereafter, many more grants were made; ultimately, some 25 million dollars were invested in the research and practice of ALN. The credit for initiating this field goes to Dr. A. Frank Mayadas of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation who has almost single-handedly pushed the field forward to its current state.

C. Components
While there is not yet any universal definition of what are the component elements of ALN, Figure 1 shows a possible apportionment among the elements that are currently thought to constitute ALN. The pie chart below shows about a 50/50 split between learning materials show in the figure as self learning and CBT and interaction between people through conferencing and synchronous means. Materials may include books and other printed materials as well as information provided on Web pages and in computer-based training modules. In ALN, most interactions among people are asynchronous.

Figure 1. The Components of ALN. ALN is roughly 50% self-learning and 50% Learning with others.

1. Conferencing
To provide asynchronous interaction between people, computer conferencing is widely used. Computer communication ranges from the use of email, listservs, newsgroups to threaded conferencing systems. The latter type of communication is particularly useful for organizing discussions around topics. A wide variety of computer conferencing systems are available; most have similar features, i.e., posting and replying to messages. Often, conferencing systems will provide the capabilities of editing and moving messages, posting multimedia, notifying participants of new message postings and organizing discussions.

2. On-line Materials
Currently most on-line materials are in the form of Web pages, often linked to discussion groups and places to try out examples. The enormous advantage of creating on-line materials is that it makes the materials easy to reuse and modify. For example, an on-line course typically employs a standard set of Web pages that an instructor can easily modify. In these materials it is straightforward to link to explanations in other courses (for remediation, for example) or link to authoritative sources on-line.

All materials in an on-line course do not have to be on-line. Printed materials, including books and journal articles, are also perfectly suitable and can form a basis for assignment and submission of problems and discussions on-line.

3. Computer-based Training (CBT)
While CBT modules have not yet become widely used in ALN, it is expected that adoption of CBT modules will become commonplace as technology progresses. The generation of simulations that explicate difficult to understand points will help augment on-line reading materials. Simulations of the way physical artifacts (e.g., machines) work to visualizations complex biological systems (e.g., the kidney) can provide powerful demonstrations to assist in learning.

4. Synchronous
Finally, even in an ALN world, there is room for a synchronous component in which people talk to each other in real time. Chat systems, telephone, and video point-to-point systems all provide this capability. While excellent for communication between two individuals, synchronous discussions do not scale-up. In courses in which hundreds of people are active learners, only cacophony would result from use of a synchronous medium.

II. WHAT IS THE ROLE OF ALN IN HIGHER EDUCATION?

Starting from an initial hypothesis that ALN could reduce costs without reducing quality (Sloan Foundation objective) and deliver education to anyone, anywhere and at anytime, research in ALNs has begun to show additional possibilities for higher education. For example, ALN should increase the capability of higher education to reach new markets, both for life-long learners and for learners in industry. ALN appears to have the capability of increasing productivity and scaling up to permit teaching larger numbers of learners without a decrease in quality of instruction.

The Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN) has become the major scholarly journal devoted to understanding ALN. Commencing with the first issue in early 1997, the JALN has focused on studies devoted to topics that include: the economics of ALN [2], creating virtual universities [3], ALN and writing [4], ALN in engineering [5],[6], the social dimensions of ALN [7] and impacts of ALN in various settings [8]. Each issue has a major issue-oriented article that discusses directions of ALN and related topics. Please see http://www.aln.org for the repository of articles.

III. EXAMPLES FROM ALN EXPERIENCE

The following examples come from our experience with ALN.

A. ES130 (Engineering Science)
ES130 is the first course offered to engineering students at Vanderbilt University. The course is offered in 9 sections of 40 students each. Lectures and laboratories are provided on Web pages; professors use the materials for in-class discussions and demonstrations, students follow the directions in the laboratories to complete a series of twelve exercises. Figure 2 shows an example of the page of laboratory materials.

Figure 2. An Example Page From the ES130, Introduction to Engineering, Website

The findings from offering this course for three years show that:

1. instructors require less preparation due to materials being completely developed,
2. new instructors can "get-up-to-speed" much more quickly,
3. laboratories run smoothly since instructions are complete, filled with examples and readily accessible on the Web,
4. modifying the materials (to customize or correct) is very easy and useful, and
5. students can review materials in their dorm rooms and complete about half the laboratories in their dorms.

Using a single set of Web pages for all sections of the course provided coherency among the sections, reduced the cost of preparation, permitted individualization, and encouraged the instructor team to easily contribute to the course pages.

B. EECE 274 (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
During the last several years, this senior/graduate course at Vanderbilt University has served as an incubator for ideas in Net-learning. The main page of the course is shown in Figure 3. The design of this page puts all the main elements that students need for the course in a single column of buttons. Figure 4 shows a portion of the assignments page. We have learned that students like to have all requirements for the course in one place, segmented according to what they are to do and when they are to do it. This page includes the capability for submitting homework as well [8].

The EECE 274 course focuses on team activities in which small student teams build information products. Communication is via the course computer conferencing system in which students have both public and private forums. Students post results of their work in the public forums and communicate among themselves in private forums. A surprising result for an on campus course was the very heavy use of the forum for group communication. It is common to hear that students have a hard time meeting in groups, even on-campus. The course conference utilization proved that students would use computer communications for group projects, when available. Another innovation was the inclusion of alumni in student groups. Alumni participated by providing project directions and working with each group. This type of activity would not have been possible outside of the ALN paradigm.

Figure 3. The Homepage of the Course "EECE 274, Introduction to Informatics Engineering.

Figure 4. The Course Assignments Page From the "Introduction to Informatics Engineering" Course.

C. On-line Laboratories
Figure 5 shows an example of two screens from a simulated laboratory that we created several years ago. The laboratory provides students with a set of experiments that duplicate their assignments in a physical laboratory. We found that students taking this computer-based laboratory prior to going to a physical laboratory were able to complete the physical laboratory in half the time [5],[10]. These findings are important, of course, because of the implications for cost savings due to more efficient use of expensive laboratory equipment.

Figure 5. Graphic Samples of a Simulated Instrument and Breadboard From the Laboratory Created at Vanderbilt University for Sophomore Electrical Engineering.

D. Workshops
Figure 6 displays an example page from our on-line workshop, "Getting Started with On-Line Courses." This workshop was first offered in the summer of 1997; since then over 800 people (primarily faculty members) have taken the workshop. The contents of the workshop include: learning to use computer conferencing, comparative studies of on-line courses, basic html, FrontPage, building the contents of an on-line course and managing on-line courses. In the space of six weeks, faculty members create the skeleton of an on-line course. The workshop is very much activity centered; each section of the workshop involves a set of tasks to carry out with specific steps for each task. Participants throughout the world have developed courses in almost every discipline imaginable from forestry to midwifery.

Figure 6. Topics in the On-line Workshop, "Getting Started with On-Line Courses," an On-line Workshop Offered by the ALN Web Group (http://www.aln.org).

IV. WHO USES ALN?

Interest in ALN grows dramatically each year. Reactions to Net-learning/ALN are varied – ranging from enthusiasm to skepticism to outright condemnation. We have empirical evidence about who is using ALN. In May 1997, the ALN Web Group began to offer a workshop on-line about how to create ALN courses on-line. The workshop has been repeated five times since the first offering. To recruit participants, we simply listed the course on our website and sent email announcements to people who had signed our guestbook and others. The breakout of the first 600+ participants’ affiliations is shown below:

These results would likely be different if the announcements of the course had gone to a different population.

In the category of university professors and staff, we found that departments from many areas in university life were represented. The highest concentration was in education, nursing and engineering. The college personnel and staff category included community colleges. The people from industry tended to come from training organizations. The professional organization category included such organizations as the IEEE and the East-West Center. Participants came from a dozen countries ranging from Korea, to the Ukraine and the Canary Islands. Some universities and organizations such as Tulsa Community College and Mayo Clinic sent many of their staff.

V. THE CHANGING ROLE OF FACULTY IN AN ALN-ENABLED WORL

A. The Sage and the Guide
In the traditional lecture mode of deliver, a faculty member is cast as a "sage on the stage." In an ALN-enabled world, faculty will become a "guide on the side," spending most of their time working with students and preparing course materials. Naturally, the mesmerizing lecture will remain a staple of excellent teaching; however, Net-learning will enable such lectures to be delivered anywhere and at anytime to become part and parcel of courses held anywhere and mentored by a capable faculty member.

B. Changes in Time Required for Typical Faculty Tasks

Figure 7. Projected Time Allocation Shifts in how Faculty Members Will Use Their Time in an ALN-enabled Learning Environment.

Figure 7 shows a prediction for how a faculty member’s time allocation will shift in the upcoming five years. In the left column is an estimate of current time commitments of five components of faculty activity in education. In the right column, the shift due to ALN enabling is shown. Time allocated for course architecture will likely remain about the same. Although significant time will be required to create courses in a Web-delivered format, materials will likely become available via publishers or by coalitions of authors. Course navigation will be reduced due to the capability of building navigation into materials. Lecturing can be dramatically reduced and mentoring greatly increased through the use of ALN. Finally, through automation, time for testing and evaluation can be reduced. Even after these changes, there should be additional time left over, primarily due to the reduction in time spent lecturing.

VI. A SAMPLE ECONOMIC MODEL FOR ALN UTILIZATION

Little is currently known about the real costs of creating and maintaining Web-based courseware. However, I will attempt, from my own experience, to estimate times, costs and revenue changes in order to provide a simple model of the economics of ALN. Unfortunately, there are many variables, including class size, location of learners, and the cost and availability of staff and student assistants that need to be taken into account. To simplify, I have made a number of assumptions to illustrate costs and revenues for one particular situation.

First, assume: (1) a typical semester course meets for 3 hours a week for 15 weeks, (2) instructor preparation can be estimated at 3 hours per traditional lecture, (3) student time is about the same as the instructor time requirement. In the lecture model, both the student and instructor spend about 10 to 15 hours per week per course or between 150 and 225 hours/semester. In the example, that I give below, a predominantly on-campus 40 student class, with one professor and one teaching assistant is assumed. Models with one professor and multiple teaching assistants can be very different [11].

Second, assume that the information technology infrastructure for supporting ALN is in place. The cost estimates made below for creating ALN instruction do not include the costs for installing and operating this infrastructure. This assumption is made because IT infrastructures are in place on most campuses already.

Third, in a guide-on-the-side model, the time spent by the instructor will be about one hour preparation for a one-hour facilitation. With materials on the Web, the time required to generate new materials is reduced by about 40%. In the Net-learning model, instructor time required per week will be about 6 hours a week or about 90 hours/semester.

Fourth, the time required to generate materials is high. For a typical 3-hour on-line course, about two to three hundred hours are required (from my own experience). A minimal course can be constructed in about 120 hours (from our on-line workshop results). In the comparison table below, we use an average time of 250 hours.

Fifth, reworking materials each year requires some time. I estimate about 20 hours are required each year to update materials.

Sixth, the scenarios provided are for primarily on-campus students with some off-campus students. The cost for on-campus instruction will be higher due to providing both on-line and face-to-face instruction.

Seventh, the breakout information below is given in hours since costs are difficult to quantify given the widely varying cost of faculty and teaching assistants. (For an analysis given these additional variables, the efficiency studies conducted at the University of Illinois [11] are quite instructive.)

A. Cost Analysis
Table 1 shows the hourly requirements over a period of three deliveries for a semester of 15 weeks, assuming each delivery requires a revision.

Table1. Time Requirements for Course Development Over Three Years

The estimates given in Table 1 show a gain in productivity only after the third offering of a course. However, if a course is given in multiple sections (e.g., the ES130 course described above), the benefits of time savings can be immediate. One may conclude from these estimates that Net-learning will not be economically useful in courses in which materials must be completely changed each year. Since the structure of the course is in place after year one, the hours for course renovation and updating allocated should permit more than 10-20 percent of the course to be updated each year. Updating a Web-based course is far easier than updating a traditional set of lecture notes because of the ability to use existing structure.

The amount of time required to develop an on-line course will vary with the complexity and depth of materials that are created. Table 2 shows total course time estimates for courses created with increasing amounts of material complexity for the most popular means of generating Web materials. These times are estimated for a faculty member who is expert both in domain knowledge and course creation.

Table 2. On-Line Course Creation Time Estimates

The addition of audio synchronized with slides is a time consuming operation and may not be worth the effort. However, there are various tools now on the market that can reduce this time significantly.

Table 3 shows the relative cost and relative benefit of using various other multimedia materials. We peg traditional Web development at 1 and provide an estimate of cost, benefit and complexity on a linear scale. All things being equal, in this evaluation it is best to create materials that have the lowest cost with the highest benefit. We show that currently the greatest effectiveness is secured from developing Web pages.

Table3. Relative Cost and Benefit of Multimedia Materials

The conclusion from the above analysis is that on-line Web materials can be quickly and easily created; however, adding more complex media requires a significant additional investment.

B. Revenue Analysis
Table 4 contains an analysis about how revenues might change in a ALN-enabled learning environment. These estimates are crude and are based only on the experiences that we have had with offering on-campus ALN courses and on-line workshops to off-campus students. Current income is pegged at 1.0 for the on-campus course offering. We believe that about 50% more students (e.g., 20 in a 40-person class) can be added without much additional cost (perhaps by including some professor and additional teaching assistant time, estimated here at 20% of a traditional class course). Offering courses off-campus, however, we believe offers more significant revenue accrual. By not having the tradition classroom, net income can likely be increased by 60% or more over the traditional model. As a caveat, however, these analyses don’t include the maintenance of the infrastructure needed. A more detailed analysis would show how partial or full utilization of a shared delivery infrastructure would affect the revenue projections.

Table4. Estimate of ALN-enabled Learning Revenues

While the above projections are crude, it is probably fair to say that efficiencies can be achieved with ALN. More data will enable better estimates.

VII. DEVELOPMENT MODELS: DIFFERENT MODELS FOR DIFFERENT TYPES OF UNIVERSITIES

Net-learning requires several different strategies for different types of institutions. For the purposes of this essay, I use the following hierarchical organization of institutions:

• Public
  • Comprehensive: off campus
  • Comprehensive: on campus
  • Community colleges

• Private
  • Research
  • Small Liberal Arts Institutions

A. Public Institutions
1. Strategies for Comprehensive Public Institutions: Off-campus

• Reduce expensive video satellite broadcast operations and consider replacing video studios. Video broadcasting of lectures has been the dominant means of reaching distant populations at public institutions throughout higher education. This method can now be replaced with either asynchronous learning methods or with synchronous media, both on the Web. Both techniques will cost much less than current video broadcasting methods. Offering lectures-on-demand as streaming audio and/or video is an attractive possibility for capturing the traditional lecture on-line.

• Extend the sphere of influence of your institution. Net-learning can provide a technique for reaching into high schools, industry and engaging alumni that has not been present before. For institutions with an outreach mission, on-line learning methods make sense due to the potential for reaching many more people at a lower cost than traditional means.

• Provide robust facilities and staff to carry on an outreach mission. Large public institutions with distributed campus are in an excellent position to provide significant support for on-line activities to faculty. With the Net, providing distributed facilities to a distributed population is possible and desirable.
• Use Net-learning to reach your entire region or outside your region. Net-learning will help reach learners throughout the traditional area of public state institutions and also reach learners outside those boundaries equally well. One must consider strategies for collabotition between and among comprehensive public institutions. It is anticipated that competition and collaboration (collabotition) will occur.

2. Strategies for Comprehensive Public Institutions: On-campus

• Objective: Provide a wide range of ALN-based activities that enhance learning, reduce costs, and provide outreach.
• Consider Asynchronous Learning Networks (i.e., Net-learning) as a means for managing large class sizes. ALN provides an attractive means for managing large class sizes; the paradigm scales very well.
• Use conferencing to engage large classes. Networked discussions scale very well: "the more the merrier."
• Eliminate large lecture hall presentations. If Net-learning is used on campus, the routine large lecture hall presentation no longer makes sense. Presentations that simply present information can be videoed and put on the Web. Presentations to large groups probably should be reserved for speakers who can provide excellent presentations.
• Reduce the crunch on lab facilities via simulation. Simulation of laboratory exercises can easily reduce the utilization of physical laboratories.
• Devote human resources to smaller groups. Creating ALN courses will free faculty time that can be spent in direct interaction with smaller groups of learners.
• Automate testing and grading. Putting trial tests on-line, making grades web-accessible, and automating grading of tests can reduce the amount of tedious grading for faculty. At the present time, methods for assisting in grading and management of testing are still in their infancy.

3. Strategies for Community Colleges

• Reach a more geographically dispersed student body through ALN. Reach more students, providing learning experiences for those who must learn at night and on weekends.
• Bring education to the workplace. Provide the knowledge people need to learn where they need to learn it.
• Create an integrated curriculum. A focused, integrated, customer-driven curriculum may be easier to create in community colleges, but not in most other educational environments.
• Train your entire faculty. Have your faculty work together (example: Tulsa Community College).
• Form a competitive edge strategy. Decide what you can do well and try to corner the market.
  • Problems: competition —most other community colleges will have these same ideas.
  • Our observation: community colleges are embracing ALN more than most other institutions of higher education.

B. Private Institutions
1. Strategies for Research Universities

• Use ALN to improve the learning experience of students and reduce the cost of instruction. Critics believe that the learning experience is already optimized, that technology cannot improve learning and that costs cannot be decreased. Even institutions that focus on small classes and intense faculty-student dialogs will likely find some use for on-line learning methodologies. For example, some possible strategies include:
• Facilitate on-campus learning. Computer supported cooperative work can enhance learning for on-campus students. For example, computer conferencing will permit student learner teams to communicate and organize information more conveniently than traditional methods.
• Provide excellent on-line knowledge access facilities (e.g., residential networking) that will permit students to access research information when and where they need it (e.g., when they are writing a research paper late at night in their dorm rooms).
• Engage alumni in life-long-learning and in interaction with students via the Internet
• Secure student engagement with industries in research activities pursued by faculty. Student teams can work with non-collocated industries for mutual benefit.

Problems:

• Need to provide more non-faculty support for Net-learning since an often research-driven faculty has little time for new educational activities or motivate faculty to use Net-learning routinely in their teaching.
• It is likely to be difficult to engage faculty in research institutions since there appears to be little perceived reason among the faculty to change from the current lecture-driven methodology. Perhaps lectures-on-demand may the key in these institutions.

Observation:

• Research institutions produce large amounts of intellectual capital. Those research institutions that can more effectively deploy their intellectual capital to learners both on and off campus will be the winners.

2. Strategies for Small Liberal Arts Institutions

• Objective: Improve residential experience for students

Strategy

• Focus on creating on-line community. This can be accomplished via computer conferencing and through shared materials on-line, portfolios and the like.
• Improve relationship to alumni. The alumni represent a potentially rich source for improving student contact with the outside world, and at the same time, binding alumni closer to the institution.

VIII. MODEL FOR ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE BASED ON ALN

A. Faculty Change
Many administrations have been inviting speakers to campus to help their faculties understand the "art-of-the-possible" for Net-learning. For example, Dr. Burks Oakley of the University of Illinois is in constant demand. J. R. Bourne from Vanderbilt has also been providing a few lectures a year to university faculties getting started in ALN. Talks about ALN have been going on with ever increasing rapidity for the last two years; there is certainly an awareness among faculty of what is possible. However, attitudes of faculty often appear less than receptive to the ideas of Net-learning. It appears that ALN activities have been occurring in most disciplines, with perhaps the most interest but the least expertise in education. Faculty most often want to know why they should use Net-learning and what they will get out of it. Quite obviously, the easiest way to teach a course is to lecture from notes that have been prepared in the years before (the "yellowed note" syndrome). It is difficult to persuade faculty that putting the course on-line would enable learning outside the classroom, enable them to easily and quickly update their course (when the initial pages are complete), and provide improved learning experiences for their students. At some institutions, the faculty have been eager to engage in creating on-line courses; at other institutions, they resist steadfastly. From the anecdotal information secured through running the ALN Web, it appears that faculty at smaller and more vulnerable institutions (e.g., community colleges) are much more interested in ALN than the faculty at the research institutions. The proper course of action with faculty appears to be to continue to provide presentations to the faculty about what is possible and why students will learn better with ALN/Netlearning.

B. Conferencing
Computer conferencing is the best first step in getting into the ALN world. The bringing together of people is probably the most important feature of ALN. Conferencing can be implemented on a small scale with any one of several conferencing software programs [12],[13],[14]. Features that should be included are 1) the ability to have threaded discussions, 2) email notification, 3) multimedia, 4) registration, and 5) private and public conferences. The most important feature is the first, in which lines of discussion can be followed. We have run undergraduate courses with simple conferencing systems and with systems that have more features. The students will use the feature-laden systems while they hesitate to use the less robust systems. Some discussions are available about alternatives among conferencing systems [15].

The cost of hardware and software to implement conferencing is not particularly high. However, the cost of maintaining user accounts, training people to use conferencing and keeping the server and software running become a non-trivial cost. Some systems are remarkably more difficult and costly than others. It would be best to secure advice prior to purchase.

C. Organization
How do you make an organization work with ALN? The faculty-driven imperative does not appear to work in many cases. The "let every flower bloom" model permits new ideas to bubble to the top of an academic organization. Yet, multiple bubble streams invite differing approaches, methods and ultimately will slow down mission-critical activities. The top-down leader-driven imperative appears to be a better model.

During the winter of 1998, the ALN Web Group worked with the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing to begin educating the faculty of that school about how to create courses on-line. The choices at the outset were two: (1) create a support staff that would create courses for the faculty or (2) teach the faculty how to accomplish their goals themselves. We chose the latter route. We began with a series of weekly lectures about the state-of-the-art of ALN, computer conferencing methods, HTML, using FrontPage, and evaluation and assessment methods. Following the initial lectures, some 22 nursing faculty took (along with 230 other people) our on-line workshop on building courses on-line. In addition, three of the nursing faculty who had taken our on-line course previously helped us facilitate the on-line course.

The major factor in enabling an entire faculty to learn about ALN was the strong support of the Dean of the School. In our case, she actively pushed the faculty to participate. Once they were engaged, they were enthusiastic about creating on-line courses.

We have had the same experience with two other institutions: Tulsa Community College and the Mayo Clinic. In both cases, the administration strongly encouraged and supported faculty. We have also seen cases in which the administration is not supportive; in these cases, nothing happens.

IX. STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTING ALN

I articulate several strategies for success in ALN that have worked for us. Some of these strategies are controversial. Nonetheless, we have empirical evidence that these strategies work. You will certainly hear other viewpoints.

A. Teach your faculty how to build on-line courses; don’t hire students to create courses for the faculty!
The most common mistake in building on-line courses is to think that one can hire students to assist faculty in creating on-line courses. While you can do this, it has been proven time and time again to be a less-than-perfect strategy. One can get rapid initial success, but long term gains are lost as soon as students leave or become unavailable. By not upgrading faculty skills, one loses time, money and agility. Many people will tell you that using students is the best option. I don’t believe that it is. Of course, the judicious use of students to do work that does not require their continued presence is perfectly fine. In fact, some support models show that students can be quite useful when given direct guidance. The peril, however, is that the tendency of faculty is to turn course creation over to students and not learn the fundamentals of ALN themselves.

B. Select a good authoring tool for faculty to use
There are many good authoring tools with which one can generate on-line courses. These tools range from tools that guide a faculty member through every step but are inflexible, to tools that are full-featured but require a fairly steep learning curve. We prefer the latter due to the known rapid dissatisfaction that people have when boxed in with a tool that does not permit them to do what they would like to do. Many faculty members are creative; hence, tools that provide flexibility likely will be better for the long term. A strong argument can be made, however, for providing both modalities.

C. Share
A useful strategy is to give away what you make and share with others—at least until your faculty are good enough to make something better than anyone else. Sharing within an institution is good, including sharing techniques, making links between courses and building cohesive sets of course materials.

D. People Strategies
Find the best people. However, those people may not be who you think they are. We find that faculty that have an abiding interest in education can be attracted to ALN very easily because of the student-centered nature of ALN. In contrast, the great orator will infrequently adopt ALN since it is alien to the lecture hall type of education. In numerous cases, we have seen faculty who are near retirement commit to ALN programs and produce superb on-line materials that can be used long after they are gone. Creating video streamed lectures that can be viewed on-demand may prove to be a useful method to capture the attention of faculty who do not wish to adopt other methods.

E. Select the Right Areas
Select courses to put on-line in which success can be assured. For example, don’t pick a small graduate course to put on-line. Small face-to-face courses are vastly superior to ALN due to the direct person-to-person interaction that is possible in a very small group. Instead, pick large classes—e.g., 40 and up. The more the merrier; ALN works much better with more people participating.

Build around opinion leaders and popular courses in which a success will be noticed by the rest of the faculty.

X. TACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS: ALTERNATIVES

A. Concepts

• Improving Awareness. Many campuses are active in raising the level of understanding about the "art-of-the-possible" using Network-based learning. There are a number of ALN lecturers that provide lectures to faculties about what can be done with Net-learning. A series of symposia is an appropriate way to get started.
• Understanding the Collabotition. Collabotition = collaboration plus competition. We think there will be increased competition among universities as the barriers of space and time are erased (in part) from the higher education equation. At the same time, one must consider collaboration with others that have complementary skills. Many universities will try to tap the same markets; those with a higher prestige/cost ratio will likely be able to secure students more easily. The ability to collaborate will reduce cost and competition.
• Understanding which aspects of ALN are useful for the target institution. As discussed above in the different types of strategies for different types of institutions, it is important to understand what will work best for your institution.

B. Methods
Implementation approaches that appear suitable are listed below:

• Provide Infrastructure. First, network infrastructure should be present on-campus for both students and faculty. In cases we have seen in which faculty have to work at shared workstations or students use only laboratory computers, there is much less enthusiasm than at institutions in which every person has a computer and network connection. Once the infrastructure is installed, one can see dramatic increases in utilization. There is no way to prove that the infrastructure will be useful before it is used.
• Implement conferencing. By far, the easiest way to engage university faculty and students is to provide computer conferencing for the campus. Perhaps the simplest technique is to provide a server for multiple courses, perhaps allocating servers by university unit (e.g., a school or college).
• Help faculty learn how to do ALN. Provide a way to train faculty on ALN. Do not provide student help to do the work for the faculty.
• Build out from successes. Select pilot projects that are likely to demonstrate success. Do one or more per year. If the faculty is enthusiastic, many projects can be done in parallel.

C. Management Schemes

• Provide local management of servers. Distributed management of shared file systems seems to work. One clear mistake is purchasing servers to be run by computer personnel who are not engaged in the teaching and learning process. They have little or no incentive to keep servers up and running. In our experience, a distributed set of servers managed by the people who are offering ALN courses works far better than a centrally managed set of servers. This scheme could translate to having a server or servers in each unit of an institution. These servers could and should be centrally managed but provide the capability of restarting, file transfer and the like to the people facilitating and creating ALN courseware.

XI. CONCLUSIONS

Will ALN be ubiquitous in the University of the Future? As with all innovations, ALN will likely become part and parcel of the everyday life of the University, not replacing the current methodologies but simply changing them. In some universities, ALN will become a major force–especially in universities that have a mission of outreach. In others, ALN will simply supplement on-campus experiences. We suspect that ALN will continue to merge into a composite of conferencing, computer-based training and on-line reading materials. There will be advances in providing learning experiences that are tailored by individual needs. The person-to-person aspect of ALN will dominate since cohorts of learners following the same set of ideas is a very compelling scenario.

Life-long learning will become important—much more so than presently. Universities can reach a broad new market of life-long learners who need continual professional education. Other segments of the population will be interested in learning about the liberal arts as an avocation. The retired population represents a potential market for universities since education can be delivered into the home. Probably the largest segment of the life-long learning population is industrial workers who continually need new skills to advance or even to remain in the workforce.

Competition for student tuition dollars will become intense as universities figure out how to scale up. The offering of an excellent introductory course in a popular topic to as many people as possible will become a siren call to institutions wishing to "corner the market" in a particular subject. Of course, competition will lead to far better courses than have been known before. However, institutions that produce poor courses will lose income.

International education will change. ALN will provide a way to educate international students without their coming to the U.S. Currently, massive numbers of foreign students are enrolled in US institutions. We predict these numbers will decrease and be supplanted with ALN teaching a much larger number at a lower cost at a distance. Both international institutions and U.S. institutions are already gearing up for these activities.

In summary, we think that ALN can reduce costs, free more faculty time, and enable us to do more with less. As with any innovation, acceptance will be slow, however the impact on higher education is likely to be powerful.

There seems little doubt that we are currently in a period of very significant change. Technology has finally matured to the point where a clear difference in education can be made by implementing ALNs. During the upcoming decade we expect to see innovations that include: (1) the building of coalitions of institutions to create and utilize on-line materials, (2) the rapid falling of institutional barriers and formation of multiversities, (3) modularization and sharing of courseware, (4) courseware that adapts to the needs and learning styles of the learner and well as many things that cannot yet be envisioned. It is an exciting time to work with asynchronous learning networks!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Generous support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is acknowledged. Special thanks are given to Dr. A. Frank Mayadas, Program Officer of the Sloan Foundation, who has made ALN possible. Appreciation is also expressed to the Hewlett Packard Company, Allaire Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, and to Vanderbilt University for support of this work. I thank Frank Mayadas, Lanny Arvan, Donald Spicer, Olin Campbell and Marsha Woodbury for very useful reviews of the manuscript. The assistance of the ALN Web Group (Martine Dawant, Olin Campbell, Donald Z. Spicer, Arthur Brodersen, John Crocetti, Eric McMaster, Choon Thaiupathump, Jason Mann, Joy Holly, Nabil Alrajeh and Meridith Sanner) throughout the projects is acknowledged.

REFERENCES

1. The ALN Web Group is the group at Vanderbilt University that operates the ALN Web (http://www.aln.org): John Bourne, Martine Dawant, J. Olin Campbell, Arthur Brodersen, Jason Mann, Joy Holly, John Crocetti, Eric McMaster, Choon Thaiupathump, and Nabil Alrajeh.
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9. Bourne, John R., McMaster, Eric, Rieger, Jennifer, Campbell, J. Olin, Paradigms for On-Line Learning: A Case Study in the Design and Implementation of an Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN) Course, Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Vole 1, No.2, pp. 38-56 , August, 1997
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12. Allaire Forums, Allaire Corporation, Boston, MA, http://www.allaire.com
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14. FirstClass, http://www.softarc.com
15. http://jrbnt.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/slides/conferencing/