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Summary of the Discussion on Affordable ALNs: An Online Discussion

by Sloan-C

In this forum we discussed issues related to developing and delivering ALN courses affordably (i.e., inexpensively and cost-effectively). Several related topic threads were introduced initially and others emerged during the course of the two-week conference.

I. Affordable Access

This thread introduced several questions regarding making ALNs affordably accessible. These include how to:

• make computers and other hardware affordably accessible
• serve student populations which lack easy access to computers
• subsidize Internet/Web service
• make instructional software and tools accessible affordably
• identify and deal with other barriers to affordable access

Kathleen Miller Green discussed accessible Web design features for persons with disabilities, such as limiting complicated graphics, increasing readability, and appropriate use of sound. These also provide some help with general access issues by vastly simplifying the information disseminated in Web-based courses. For example, see the University of Washington Web page that deals with accessible WWW page design. It is at http://weber.u.washington.edu/~doit/Brochures/universal.design.html .

John Sener noted that public libraries might subsidize ALN access. However the moderator described his largely unsuccessful attempt to gain easy Web access through a free Internet access service provided in local public libraries, concluding from this exercise that some of the little advances are now often taken for granted. These include point and click navigation, GUI interfaces, and graphical web browsers. These greatly increase ease of use, but are still not sufficiently widespread to provide universal access. Universal or even widespread access will require replacement of archaic and unfriendly interfaces with friendlier ones, either currently available or to be developed (e.g., voice recognition).

Careful design for affordable access is important. John Bourne suggested that designing for future hardware configurations rather than trying to accommodate existing installations would eliminate access problems such as those encountered by the moderator at the local public library. In reply, Sener noted that it's important to design for the highest computer configuration that's feasible for one's target learners and goals. Cynthia Liston then observed that it's not always possible to go "high end" because of often-limited available technology resources. A key consideration is to design content delivery formats and applications that keep download time manageable based on what students are using, while creating a format that allows addition of "bells and whistles" as the available technology increases.

Liston also noted that selection of computer applications is important when attempting to serve and retain students with very limited computer experience. Applications that intimidate or turn off such students often means they drop out of the course.

Tom Abeles observed that the question of affordable access was the right question to ask. He asserted that professors need to share the burden of institutional fiscal decision making with administrators, and that online learning raises the question of whether 'bricks and mortar' campuses are affordable.

II. Affordable Development of ALNs

Several related issues were raised and discussed here:

How to compensate faculty fairly for quality course development?

One obstacle described by Marsha Woodbury was making on-campus students suffer through even larger classes if faculty receive release time to develop courses. Olin Campbell proposed using existing royalty agreements for product revenue sharing between the inventor, department, and school as an alternate arrangement for compensating faculty for course development. John Gundry referred to Murray Turoff's article on development costs for a virtual university at http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/issue1/turoff.htm which asserts that a world-class virtual university could compete with private university fee structures and offer top class faculty by re-directing bricks and mortar costs to faculty salaries. Pedro Hernandez-Ramos responded with a concern for what would be lost by not having spaces, such as dining halls, to support the social side of learning.

What potential pitfalls exist for developing ALNs for delivery on the Web?

Respondents agreed that the Web is far from a panacea for affordable ALN development. A lack of universal product standards may prevent learners from accessing parts of some courses - a problem that is getting worse. Olin Campbell observed that while putting content (e.g., a set of lectures) on the Web is straightforward, providing an "envelope" of motivation and support services such as tutoring, a list of frequently asked questions and answers (FAQ), and frequent deadlines is not.

What kind of possible partnerships can be formed to share development burdens?

Campbell proposed that name brand universities and large training companies will negotiate with universities and freelance authors for courses, and that a Web course development and delivery cottage industry may thrive for a while. Abeles pointed out that corporations have formed consortiums to share development and delivery burdens, and that similar higher education consortiums are considering sharing course offerings among institutions.

Can private sector instructional designers develop ALNs affordably?

Abeles raised the question of whether academic institutions will be able to compete with the private sector, pointing out that quality or price/value issues become important and course quality comparisons will increase, requiring more continual rather than episodic course improvement. Non-academic vendors such as Microsoft are taking aim at potentially profitable pieces of the academic market, so it is questionable whether institutions of higher learning can still afford to respond to this challenge with a piecemeal (courses, programs) rather than a comprehensive approach.

Comparative work and costs of authoring vs. coaching workloads between ALNs and lecture/discussion groups.

Campbell suggested that ALNs may be most cost effective for high volume courses. That is because ALNs will likely have a higher initial cost (for development of learning materials and establishing conferencing systems), but lower incremental costs (for coaches) than lectures. The high development costs can be spread over many learners, while coaching costs increase as class size increases. He also suggests unbundling services (e.g., individual coaching), from products (e.g., online simulations, tutorials, and lectures).

III. Affordable Instructional Support

Sener asked whether instructional support was necessary for ALNs, and for examples of ways of providing it affordably. Campbell responded with two ideas: automate scoring and grade reporting with explicit criteria for grading so that learners know what they are expected to produce, and use highly qualified and low cost coaches. Sener responded that NVCC/ELI used student tutors as de facto low-cost coaches successfully.

Harvey Williams raised the issue of whether online courses should charge in-state or out-of-state tuition rates and whether online students should be required to pay the same tuition as on-campus students. Burks Oakley replied that out-of-state students should pay out-of-state rates and that the tuition should be the same for online students as on-campus students. Richard Landry replied that as online education delivery spreads and competition increases, there will be more pressure to create a uniform tuition based on full cost recovery especially since the delivery vehicle (i.e., the Internet) will be the same, resulting in relatively fixed design and delivery costs.

Pedro Hernandez-Ramos stated that the key issue for any ALN is on what basis clients will choose one provider over another. Cost will be one, and not necessarily the most important, of many factors considered. This means that higher education has to think hard about its approaches to education. Bourne agreed with Hernandez-Ramos on this point and thought that ALN offerings have the potential of plunging higher education into a self-evaluation rather rapidly for a variety of reasons. John Gundry alerted us to Perelman's book School's Out and its relation to ALN and technology-enabled learning. Tom Abeles agreed that these comments and references were right on target and cited several developments (e.g., course sharing, vouchers, Mind Extension U.) signaling that a radical transformation of education is underway.

IV. Faculty Workload Issues

This thread was spun out of another thread. Sener, Campbell, and Gundry discussed and listed various strategies for reducing faculty workload, which Gundry summarized and Sener added to. Strategies listed include:

• assign collaborative groups of learners who work together to create some exhibit or output without full-time faculty involvement
• adopt the role of guide and coach of resource-based learning
• use inexpensive teaching assistants
• use automated scoring
• provide automated online reminders for late assignments
• offer a FAQ database to reduce question and answer load
• use occasional face-to-face video and other media
• assign learners class teaching roles with coach-led discussion about what was learned
• assign learners the task of summarizing discussions
• develop online tutorials by improving from one version to the next
• develop a software tool to automate the process of pairing student participants and monitoring and recording their progress through assignments
• Select learning activities that are suitable for asynchronous vs. face-to-face interaction

Gundry and Sener also discussed reasons why faculty perceive their workload to be higher, including the 'newness of events' phenomenon. In Sener's experience the actual faculty workload in ALNs can be more, less, or the same as with on-campus classes depending on use of strategies like those above.