The Online Revolution Message
HSC Online Study
New Zealand Study
Can Online Learning Improve Learning Outcomes
Critical Issues
Schools and students involved in the project
Principles of Site design
Project Design
Students Responses To Subject Matter Content
Teachers Perceptions
Teacher reflections on roles
Conclusions
Challenges
Focus Research
Net Characteristics of Young People

The Year 11 Economics Site is at http://alex.edfac.usyd.edu.au/Methods/HSIE/index.htm

OTEN/DE Economics Site is at http://alex.edfac.usyd.edu.au/Methods/HSIE/eco_oten.html

Webdate is at
http://www.edassist.com.au/webdate.html

The Online Revolution Message

Each day brings news of the expansion of the opportunities for online learning. From recent online Quality Teacher Programs ( QTP ) to a new online university ( for 100 000 students at lower costs of course ) envisaged by the Australian Labour Party ( ALP ).

The growth in this area, in relation to school education is rapid and diverse, extending across both the public and private sector. The Queensland Department of Education is into the second year of its Virtual Schooling Service. Virtual lessons will be available over the web for senior subjects in 23 pilot schools. Mawson Lakes High School in Adelaide is advertising the fact that "if children are unable to travel they can stay at home and access the internet ". In 2000 the Catholic Education Commission in New South Wales conducted a trial offering of an Ancient History preliminary topic online. For the first time OTEN DE in New South Wales has developed a resources support website for distance education modules that it offers in Economics and Business Studies to students from all over the world. Publishers increasingly offer website support for their textbooks and other publications. The Curriculum Corporation has bought the Worldschool homework support business and is offering curriculum support on line.

A number of Virtual Schools have been established, Net Grammar in New South Wales. The Board of Studies, the NSW DET and Charles Sturt University have developed HSC online a student tutorial and teacher professional development website. The NSW Principals association, with the DET and UTS has also commenced a pilot project to offer Preliminary courses online in six NSW Government schools. The idea in this pilot is to offer a virtual classroom environment.

A small number of teachers have developed webquests to present lessons in a different way, using the graphic powers of the world wide web and web images to design lesson resources that can be delivered on line.

It may be tempting to imagine that technology, especially the world wide web is

• revolutionising teaching and learning
• changing teaching practice and student learning and
• allowing students to improve their learning outcomes.

However the picture emerging from research studies contradicts some of the claims made for educational use of technology and the internet. A number of research studies point to limited use of technology and the internet in learning in schools.

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HSC Online Study

Robyn Hall On Line.Turned off ( Geography Bulletin, Spring ) 2000. This was a study into the use of the Geography HSC on line Node In 1997 a HSC nline site was established jointly by the NSW Board of Studies, the NSW DET and Charles Sturt University. The aim of HSC online was to provide HSC students with tutorial material on specific topics, access to reviewed URL's, information from the Board of Studies and access to a virtual education library. For teachers, the site provided a Professional Teachers Association node and material relevant to the implementation of the new 2001 HSC. Despite its marketing and profile an evaluation study of the Geography node in seven schools revealed that

• There was no teacher lead use of the HSC Online node in any schools
  
• Of 324 Geography teachers surveyed 2/3 had never used HSC online,much less the Geography node
  
• Of the 124 Geography teachers reporting use of the node only 3.2% reported frequent use ( the survey was completed at Geography Inservice courses )
  
• The greatest reported use of the node is to " print out information for distribution to students, to refer students for their own revision and to locate reference material.
  
• Teachers are reacting against online support in favour of print or face to face support " print based materials are regarded more favourably "

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New Zealand Study

A New Zealand Study reported in EQ Winter 2000 ( Mark Brown " Good Teachers and the Internet " ) surveyed 50 teachers nominated by their schools as proficient in the use of IT in the classroom. The results from research into this subset of teachers included

• The majority reporting that they received only poor or adequate support in their use of the Internet in teaching
  
• Only 40% had access to the internet in their own classrooms
  
• Few of the teachers reported that they had succeeded in integrating the web into their teaching
  
• The connectivity of the net does not appear to be exploited by this group of teachers
  
• Major use of the internet by the teachers students appears to be email, designing web pages, responding to surveys and virtual field trips, ask the expert and social action surveys, not actually teaching the subject matter
  
• There is no evidence to suggest that internet activities are replacing traditional mind tool applications

Research in schools with teachers, head teachers and principals typically reveal these findings. This is stark contrast to much of the research, claims and hype about the use of technology and the internet in teaching and learning.

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Can Online Learning Improve Learning Outcomes

However, this type of research has developed insights and results about how technologies improve learning outcomes. This research reveals that certain conditions must be met for classroom use of technologies ( especially internet technologies ) to improve learning outcomes in any meaningful way.

The Milliken exchange has developed a framework for these conditions.

Improving learning outcomes with technology in the classroom depends on

• How the students use the technology they have
• How much time they spend on the computer
• How the technology been combined with good teaching practice
• How the teacher uses the technologies and integrates it into the curriculum
• How the technology is used in assessment
• How the school supports the use of technology in the curriculum
• How the teacher approaches professional development

A 1996 Review based on 176 research studies and reviews found that ( IESD 1996 ) found that good teaching practice combined with technology can improve learning outcomes in the following way

• Significant positive affect on achievement
• Positive effect on attitudes to learning and self concept
• Learning becomes more students centred cooperative and exhibits more student teacher interaction
• Access can be improved to learning for students with disabilities because of adaptive, individualised application of IT

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Critical Issues

• Do Students learn as well and do they learn as well as students in face to face situations
  
• Is the material appropriate and useful &endash; is it sound?
  
• To be successful in this mode of instruction, what support to students need at their schools
  
• How would the role of teachers change if topics were presented this way
  
• Staffing implications
  
• Costs and /technology/advantages
  
• Technical lessons and proposed enhancements

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Students from the Master's of Teaching at Sydney University designed a website for the NSW Preliminary HSC Topic Five Financial Markets. The purpose of the website was to provide an on-line learning resource. Year 11 Economics students from Kingsgrove North High School in South West Sydney used this website in Term Three 2000.

Outcomes

· Students can demonstrate an understanding of financial terms, concepts and relationships

· Students can explain the economic role of financial institutions and government

· Students can apply appropriate financial terminology, concepts and theories in economic contexts

· Students can select and organise information from the internet

· Students can communicate financial information, ideas and issues in the activities booklet

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Principles of Site design

Teachers prepare and teach lessons in school drawn from the program that have been in schools. They teach topics that are drawn from mandated Board of Studies Syllabuses. They develop programs to meet the needs of their diverse students and resource their teaching by procuring new and reusing existing resources. Most internet or online course offerings have not been based on the programs and lessons that teachers tech in their schools.

Instead most research and development in this area proceeds in the following way

• Agencies external to the school develop online learning environments
• The online learning environments are rich and incorporate advanced instructional design
• The environments require considerable investment, resourcing and support
• The effect of the learning environments on students is examined and researched.

Most of this research is not immediately practical for use in schools or is easily adapted into a school environment. The focus of this research is to develop an online learning environment to be offered

• Within the schools existing technology resources
• Using the schools existing program
• With the class teacher present
• With the class teacher adopting a different teaching role and style

The online learning environment developed and researched was school driven and supported and explored the teachers classroom role in detail. The sites were developed by the University, schools and Master of Teaching students using a constructivist approach.

The Constructivist approach to the design of instructional materials is based on

• Learner required to engage with the materials
• Learner expected to analyse, synthesise, summarise, describe, and solve problems
• Learner interacts with expert
• Learner invited to explore and discover an environment, sometime with guidance
• Learner expected to build up own hypothesis, categories through study of examples and reflection on own experience
• Learner moved back and forward between symbolic representation of phenomena and the real life referent

Th internet seems a likely and useful tool to construct such learning environments &endash; because it is open ended, interactive and user centred. problem solving, collaboration and the application of skills can be emphasised in the site design.

Good teaching involves

• Student &endash; eacher contact and interaction
• Cooperation between students
• Active learning
• Prompt feedback
• Time on task
• High expectations
• Respecting diverse talents and ways of learning

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Stage One

· Locate links relating to the syllabus

· Design a theme and activities for the website

· Design a student activities folder

Stage Two

· Provide instructions on using the website and the activities booklet to the teacher and student

· 12 x 40 minute lessons in the computer room

· 14 students from the class and the teacher needed to be de-briefed

Stage Three

· Collection of data, via unstructured interviewing

· The interviews covered the content, availability and accesibility of the technology, usefulness of the booklet and time considerations in learning on-line

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Advantages

• The website was up-to-date and gave realistic examples
• It was easy to understand
• There was no need to ask the teacher as many questions
• The whole world is there

Disadvantages

• The writing in the websites was too advanced
• Needed teacher to explain the concepts
• Prefer discussion than using the computer
• It was difficult to learn from the internet for many reasons

Student responses to the Technology

• It was helpful because it was self-paced and could be used at home and at school
• The webpage was fun and interactive, rather than copying down notes

Student Responses to the BOOKLET

• The booklet was very helpful because it provided variety and was activity based
• The booklet can be used as a study tool
• The structure of the booklet clearly linked with the webpage
• It was good because the booklet covered the whole unit

STUDENT RESPONSES TO THE TIME AVAILABLE

• Some students had a reasonable amount of time, others thought the time was insufficient

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• The online environment was really useful in terms of getting the kids involved in learning, actually being able to do things themselves at their own pace.
  
• The fact that it was self paced was a bonus
  
• The online learning environment was too lock step for some students who would have appreciated more lateral design in the Missions.
  
• Teaching this way keeps you sharp and on the ball &endash; You are dealing with students questions, response to their questions all the time and from different topic and content areas and at different levels.
  
• Students started making the links themselves "this therefore means that " i.e.It wasn't me doing all the synthesisng.
  
• Some students are much better than the others in doing this synthesising --- this came out in reflection.
  
• Surface and depth learning needs to be reconceptualising, students made meaning but not necessarily the meaning wanted. This synthesising requires some relinquishing of teacher control. I think the thing with this is that you have to build in time for review, consolidation as you go.
  
• Keeping track of where they are up to is difficult.

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• Still a need to explain things to the students, engagement needs and requires mediation and explanation. Depth is a problem on the internet and requires professional discretion " How much do we need to know about the IMF " This much?
  
• You became facilitator rather than a teacher &endash; kids liked this change and the worksheet took account of this experience
  
• The facilitator role means that the teacher can concentrate on the process of learning rather than presenting the information
  
• The interaction between the students was very valuable, as there was one computer between two students, they worked in pairs &endash; they took the unit on as a common task and supported each others learning.

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Conclusions

The whole unit should not be based on using the internet. Other teaching methodology needs to be incorporated. For example students could work in groups and present the findings at the end of the lessons. The internet work could be set as a project or homework to increase the amount of teacher to student interaction in the classroom

The learning was very task oriented and higher order questions need to be incorporated into the activities. Some students did not find the internet a useful learning tool. Most students found the internet a fun, different and useful learning tool

On-line learning reduced the amount of student / teacher interaction. Students asked more questions relating to the tasks rather than the subject matter. Learning on-line needs to be combined with other teaching methodologies, for example discussion and class time

The accessibility and availability of technology can have a large impact on accessing the internet

There is a degree of computer literacy assumed in using computers, for the students and the teachers. This needs to be considered in the learning styles of the students

It is important to vary the teaching methodology. For example, the students found the combination of the activities book and the website very useful.

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1. The Emerging Net global system challenges the traditional school based system
The current structures will come under great pressures in the next five years.

2. Net education methodology is redefining schooling in terms of information models.
For example course noticeboards redefines communication to the students.

3. Secondary education will start to mirror the developments in tertiary education in that
More and more courses will be offered online.

-cost reduction, staff reduction

-investment in IT

-flexible and asynchronous learning

-application of learning theory to flexible delivery

Technology and Learning Sites For Further Reading

Educational Technology and Society

TechKnowLogia

Learning Market Space

Victorian Department of Education: Using the Internet
Seven Wonders Of the Ancient World Year 7 Holroyd High Unit

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DETYA ( 1999 ) Real Time - IT Skills of Australian School Students

• Net generation is comfortable with multitasking

• Net generation use multimedia

• Net generation network and use chat

• Net generation use Global Sources naturally by using the networked world

• Net generation take risks, learn as they discover, venture

• Net generation show frustration with current delivery of teaching and education

• NET GENERATION SUPERIOR IN ADVANCED COMPUTING SKILLS TO TEACHERS,

although they were similar in basic computing skills
•Technology Inversion at Work

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Teachers comments

" i don't have time to search for sites, it takes too long"

"even if you find some sites what do you do with them"

" i integrated some internet work into the topic I was teaching "

" we have the net in the staff room now, we are using it for research but not for teaching"

"you can't do PD online, i need to ask questions"

" I developed a range of sites for a topic and handed it to the students"

"some of the students don't have access"

"there isn't enough IT support service in the school for us to do more "

" we need more PD urgently"

" why isn't the internet faster - I typed in the site but it didn't come up - why is it down"

Students comments

" the library sucks - it doesn't have enough machines "

" we like using the internet to find resources "

" i tried to download an essay from schoolsucks without paying"

" we were supposed to look at some sites but the the site had changed so we couldn't do the questions,
i printed out the site"

" why can't we use chat"

" i know lots more than teachers about the web"

" we don't use it much except in science and english because those teachers make us find things "

" we have our own home pages " we chat with our friends "

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