My experience working with academics/lecturers in a university as an Educational Designer to develop online learning using a wide range of online technologies in Moodle has been very positive. My support has always been welcomed, even by those who were most cynical and pessimistic at the start. This support has mostly been one-to-one conducted in the academic's/lecturer's office. There are a few key things I think are important to have in place for universities to fully harness the potential and value of good online learning, many of which have been mentioned above in previous posts. From my experience, over more than 20 years, these include: an organisational culture driven by leadership that openly encourages and celebrates collaboration and innovation; understanding and working within academics/lecturers' time and budget constraints (hence the key importance of good project management - a skill that sadly is lacking not just in universities); respecting the classroom experience and expertise of academics/lecturers while recognising that they are also likely to be risk averse; seeking out and promoting early adopters who are willing to share openly their online resources as examples and models for others to use; having a stable and expert technical support team who, in an ideal world, are available 24 hours a day (searching on YouTube and Google for troubleshooting and step-by-step advice can also be very valuable); seeking regular feedback and input from students (all the content does not have to be academic/lecturer generated and often courses are greatly improved through the 'learning products' created by the students rather than their teachers, in particular video projects); keeping content short and relevant to what will be assessed (and signalling to students how long undertaking readings and videos will take as well as giving a reason for how these resources will help students to achieve learning and assessment); and finally follow the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) plus the 'Tell Them What You are Going to Tell Them/Tell Them/Tell Them What You Told Them approaches to learning design coupled with helping your students to plan their learning while reassuring them that there is always someone there online and/or face-to-face to help them.

Inertia

Why do you think that the need for online learning at university is inevitable? I certainly see value in online learning - just curious as to why it should be considered inevitable.

There is resistance to change and preference to work in already known conditions

I teach a quant MBA finance class ... answering a student question takes about 1-2 hours...have to create a mini teaching note that also involves the equation editor... the students can be however very motivated to learn the subject... online allows for wider access to groups who would otherwise have no possibility of learning even a fraction of the material. Trade-offs are obviously there, depends what aspects are weighted more...don't look for an absolute, final answer to this question. Is cell phone communication good, should email on cell phones be allowed? #rockwiththeTimes

Cheers!

This specific question was investigated by Philip Knutel in his 1998 doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan

The two most common impediments are: (1) lack of time for training & development and (2) human training commitment by teacher and institutions.

Often helpful manpower in such training is lacking at departmental and university level.

On the one hand, a neophyte would-be online teacher does not want to make a lot of time wasting mistakes. Therefore full-time trainers need to be reachable at all hours if something is not to take longer to develop or try-out than it should.

On the other hand, if I agree to develop a course, what is the real longterm commitment of a department or institution to allow me the wherewithal and capacity to offer the course.

In short, a lack of trust will develop if any staff member has been burned or felt burnt when a fairly fully developed course is not offered.

You raise an important aspect Kevin and I am wondering to what extent the Organizational culture impacts on the effort of academia developing the online courses.

At this stage, I feel there is a real lack of consistent vision based on real planning and data as to what is to be accomplished by on-line learning and teaching. Certainly, everyone wants to get to the moon, and the rockets still go up, and often go down in flames. But where do we go to find out what we have learned? Can any one claim to have reached the moon? Do we really need to go there?

1. Lack of time.

2. Lack of institutional support.

3. A surplus of age, in my case.

I can see the advantages of online courses for the students and monitoring and analytical opportunities for the lecturer, but most of my career was spent writing with pen and paper. Yes, you can teach old dogs new tricks, but those new tricks get remembered only when immediately and repeatedly implemented ... the grey cells aren't what they used to be. I went on a Moodle training course a few years ago, and immediately forgot everything as I couldn't immediately implement it - no time, just no time, only 24 h available per day!

If I was at the beginning of my academic career instead of the end, I would be leaping wholeheartedly onto the online bandwagon, as I welcome the challenge of mastering something new. However, when already working 12 h and more per day more-or-less 7 days a week, the thought of making myself available to hoards of online students and instant messaging to support their every need doesn't appeal to me! Just call me old-fashioned, but my students like me that way!

Steve

My experience working with academics/lecturers in a university as an Educational Designer to develop online learning using a wide range of online technologies in Moodle has been very positive. My support has always been welcomed, even by those who were most cynical and pessimistic at the start. This support has mostly been one-to-one conducted in the academic's/lecturer's office. There are a few key things I think are important to have in place for universities to fully harness the potential and value of good online learning, many of which have been mentioned above in previous posts. From my experience, over more than 20 years, these include: an organisational culture driven by leadership that openly encourages and celebrates collaboration and innovation; understanding and working within academics/lecturers' time and budget constraints (hence the key importance of good project management - a skill that sadly is lacking not just in universities); respecting the classroom experience and expertise of academics/lecturers while recognising that they are also likely to be risk averse; seeking out and promoting early adopters who are willing to share openly their online resources as examples and models for others to use; having a stable and expert technical support team who, in an ideal world, are available 24 hours a day (searching on YouTube and Google for troubleshooting and step-by-step advice can also be very valuable); seeking regular feedback and input from students (all the content does not have to be academic/lecturer generated and often courses are greatly improved through the 'learning products' created by the students rather than their teachers, in particular video projects); keeping content short and relevant to what will be assessed (and signalling to students how long undertaking readings and videos will take as well as giving a reason for how these resources will help students to achieve learning and assessment); and finally follow the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) plus the 'Tell Them What You are Going to Tell Them/Tell Them/Tell Them What You Told Them approaches to learning design coupled with helping your students to plan their learning while reassuring them that there is always someone there online and/or face-to-face to help them.

When I first embraced educational technology, the lasting memory for me was attending a computer education training session where the instructor displayed a "real time" connection of his computer to a large network of other computers. He pointed to a clot of lines of code and said: "Someday soon, there will be pictures here, like in a magazine." I can't claim to be a digital native, but I can recount plenty of such anecdotes about stuff that no one knew what I was talking about -- and that still seems to be the case. I believe the divide between the innovators and the consumers remains strong -- I feel the greatest brick wall ("The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something." Randy Pausch) is that the innovating requirement factors do not evaporate when the thing gets plugged in and the switch is thrown. We are naturally uncomfortable with the essential nature of teaching and learning technology -- from the primal fear that we can be replaced, to the loss of the role of the gate keepers of content. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein should remind us that we must not relinquish the awesome responsibility of cultivating our creations, just because the next shiny new thing comes along: I firmly believe educational technology community hasn't resolved things, as much as made things more complicated by hoping the answer will ask itself the right questions. We have yet to define, recognize, and confront the myriad consequences of the last two decades.

I often think back to when I was first allowed to bring a biro into my classroom as student in primary school, a practice which for many years had been banned because it was considered by teachers to be an inferior 'technology' to pen and ink for learning to write 'properly'. Surely the debate about digital technologies will appear just as silly in a few years.

Hi Irena,

I trust that you had been granted your "pen licence" prior to using the biro. Teachers in the past have similarly been worried about calculators and group work and overhead projectors - so the potential transformative power of digital technologies is this sort of thinking on steroids. I suspect that much of the resistance to any change in education is a result of a desire to maintain the "status quo". In my experience, many educators hold on tightly to what what they know (and by extension what they can therefore control). Education is largely, and unfortunately, a bastion of conservatism.

I agree Kevin - I believe it is also about 'saving face' in front of your students. No teachers want to feel they are making a fool of themselves in front of their students when the technologies they try to use don't work (I have still have nightmares about changing blown globes in overhead projectors while giving a classroom presentation!). Like using anything, such as driving a car, having a 'licence' (or at least some training) to operate it I think is good idea but we somehow overlook the need for this with teachers. Before we can transform with technology we need to be competent at using/operating that technology. It is only when using/driving the technology is automatic (like using a pen) that we can feel truly creative and comfortable to start transforming. But it takes time, practice and having the right kind of expertise and support available 24/7. That's why I like YouTube for showing me how to use different new technologies (in a just-in-time granular format) - it's quick, on my desktop/tablet, and I can stop, replay and save the instructions to return to when I so often forget a step or process. This is how I overcome most of my 'barriers' to using technologies. But I can only take full advantage of this because I have also invested time, over many years, to develop sound basic digital literacy skills.

The question presumes that “The need to go on online for higher education appears inevitable”. I do agree that for fast retrieval of the information about the advancement in any field of higher education the use of internet is inevitable. However to me higher education deals with most advanced concepts in any field and therefore a synchronized supervised learning system is essential. On line learning is basically an open loop system without feedback unless a virtual classroom is simulated. Even if you allow feedback in an asynchronous system the high latency of the reply will not make the system beneficial for the participating students.

In virtual classroom also the absent of face to face interaction will reduce the amount of feed back necessary for dynamical modification of the presentation by a good teacher. Therefore one must first justify why at all the on line teaching should be adopted in higher education.

Research studies indicate that the implementation levels of technology into teaching and learning remain low (Cuban, 2001; Cuban et al. 2001; Ertmer, 1999 and Olsen, 2001). The purpose of much of the technology-based barrier research in education is to provide the foundation from which a technology integration plan can be started or evaluated. This is of the utmost importance because an ever increasing research pool (Anderson et al., 1998; Boe, 1989; Boyd, 1997; Caverly, Peterson, & Mandeville, 1997; Cuban et al.; Scheffler & Logan, 1999; Vaughan,2002) is demonstrating that providing access to technology is not enough; faculty or teachers require guidance and need to be trained in methods to integrate technology into their teaching.

Some of the major barriers for academics (Faculty) adopting and using technology are:

1. Faculty are unsure as to how to effectively integrate technology

2. Online learning and teaching in Higher Education: Particular Country Perspectives

3. The current reward structure does not adequately recognize those utilizing online technology

4. There are no program standards as to what is expected for teaching with technology

5. There is a lack of sufficient and efficient technology training

6. Faculty are fear about the costs and maintenance of aids.

7. There is a lack of technical support regarding the technology

8. Faculty do not have sufficient time to integrate technology

9. There is a lack of support from administration

10. Faculty lack basic technology skills.

@Nachi Muthu If adaptation of technology is inevitable for higher education then why it should be necessary to have some reward structure that should recognize those utilizing online technology.

When printed books came into existence (that was also a revolution in the field of education) I don’t think such reward structure was necessary to promote the use of the same. No one ever proposed the concept of b_Education. Books were used as a means for storage and retrieval of knowledge. No one ever claimed that b_Education would, completely or at least to a large extent, replace the conventional class room teaching. We could have raised this issue because books for self study became available. However requirement of “chalk and talk” form of teaching was never denied, rather I would say could not be denied. This is so because books can store information but when some one reads it he/she needs some skill to link them with the information that has already been acquired by him/her. For a new subject or a difficult topic this linking needs supervision. This is one of the major tasks that a teacher performs. A good teacher can even dynamically modify his/her teaching strategy to suit the need for the relevant group of students.

Advancement of Information Communication Technology (ICT) also created a revolution in the area of storage and distribution of information. Video lecture used for on line teaching is an open loop system and therefore can not perform better than class room teaching. An effort to combat this problem started. Researchers could design programs for e_Learning. Since a digital computer can perform logical decision very fast such education systems can to some extent adjust/modify itself to suit the requirement of an individual student. But such adaptation is limited to the information stored in the system and the linking mechanism that the particular e_Learning program supports. In a class room where face to face teaching is performed, there is no such restriction. A good teacher, for example, can evolve a new linking strategy that will suit the requirements of the relevant group of students. This is possibly the role of a good teacher and possibly this is the reason why a good teacher can explain a difficult topic better. Therefore conventional chalk and talk methodology should always perform better in the context of learning efficiency, measured in terms of both quality and quantity. Possibly this is the reason why a good teacher will never advocate an extensive use of on line teaching in higher education.

I will say that almost all factors reported in BECTA 2004 report on barriers to use technology among teachers also apply to faculty members. See attachment.

I have asked this question many times. A few years ago I started studying the responses of academics in a variety of situations. I have found few academics who blatantly object to the use of technology, yet I have found many who believe they are using technology effectively, but are really doing information transfer as in the old days.

Constructivism just hasn't really taken off as a teaching and learning pedagogy. Many of us are still instructionist, just don't recognise the different. We think one thing and do another.

In my research I have found that more often than not it is the fact that we are tied to an old paradigm. This is fixed in our heads because this is how we learned, therefore we teach using the same mode.

I collaborated with a group of Early Childhood Education academics on adopting a different view of online learning (now termed new pedagogies). You can access the paper on my Academia website: https://www.academia.edu/4572844/Reconceptualising_higher_education_pedagogy_in_online_learning

https://www.academia.edu/4572844/Reconceptualising_higher_education_pedagogy_in_online_learning

I would agree with your comments Stefan. As you say it depends on the situation. However, at the same time I think there are barriers to implementing technologies in non-traditional and creative ways that result in deep engagement of the users. I think these barriers are subconscious and we do not really know we have them.

I am writing a paper on the topic. I wonder if anyone in this discussion would consider reviewing it before I submit for publication?