Comparability: An institutional strategy for assuring quality in online and hybrid courses by insisting that the content and, sometimes, the assessments be “comparable” to courses already offered on campus.
As a standard, “comparability” sounds reasonable enough. After all, this sameness makes it possible to compare the quality of learning outcomes without regard to delivery method. So long as the distant learners get test scores that are comparable to the students on campus, all is well and no further thinking or oversight are needed.
In a similar vein, Richard Clark argued in a classic article that the quality of learning is unrelated to the technology used for teaching. For example, Clark summarized previous meta-analyses of huge numbers of studies of ‘presentation’ (i.e., information from a single source is made available to many students). These studies showed that students who are taught by presentation all learn about the same amount, no matter what the medium of presentation. It does not matter whether they get the presentation via live lecture, videotape, streaming video over the Internet, or textbook. Clark also pointed out that the activity of self-paced instruction (SPI) produces substantial learning gains over the activity of presentation. But SPI implemented using paper produces almost as much learning as SPI using computers. According to Clark, using technology for teaching is analogous to a vehicle delivering your groceries to your home. The quality of milk is the same, whether the delivery truck is made by GM or Ford. Technology and quality are completely unrelated, he argued (Clark, 1983).
But Clark’s analogy is misleading, and his conclusion is the problem with the standard of comparability as well. It is true that any teaching/learning activity can be implemented with a variety of technologies or facilities. However, for any particular teaching/learning activity, some facilities or technologies are a better fit than others. For example, SPI can be done far more easily and inexpensively with digital technology than with paper; that is why such tutorials have become more common as computers have become more common and why paper versions of SPI have become almost extinct. The process approach to writing, a pedagogy, spread once computers became common because rewriting is easier with computers. Course activities involving analysis of video (e.g., video recordings of science experiments in action; film clips) became more common when individual manipulation of video became inexpensive and easy.
Once the medium or tools of learning change, it also becomes easier to change who is involved in the course. Obviously distance learning makes it possible to involve not only more students but also students with specific kinds of backgrounds or needs. Equally important, the institution can make different choices about who to use as instructors, or assessors of student work, when those activities can be done online.
Changes in learning spaces and tools can also enable improvements in assessment: self-grading assessments can be administered more readily online, for example.
And the dominos keep falling. When changes in learning spaces and tools enable improvements in the activities, assessment and people, the content and goals of the course, or course of study, can be improved, too. In the early 1980s, for example, Professor Marvin Marcus of the University of California Santa Barbara, was able to use a new computer lab in mathematics to begin offering the math department’s first minor in applied mathematics, consisting of several on-campus courses and an off-campus internship program in which students applied their skills to solving problems faced by community agencies. A more recent example: the Internet and cheaper international communications have helped Worcester Polytechnic Institute make research abroad become so easy, inexpensive, and common that applications research abroad has become a signature activity of that institution.
When universities change technologies and/or facilities (e.g., from campus-bound to hybrid), faculty ought to take a fresh look at learning goals, content, teaching/ learning activities, and assessment. The change of facilities will make some goals harder to pursue than before, others easier; some teaching/learning activities easier, others harder; and so on. The problem with comparability as a standard is that it discourages faculty from thinking about how they might take advantage of new learning spaces and tools in order to offer more valuable hybrid or online courses of study.
Remember the old tale about the tiger that had been caged since birth. It would roam its cage ceaselessly. One morning it awoke. The bars had been removed. But for a long time, the pacing tiger did not notice. It continued to pace within the boundaries of its vanished prison.
Where should we look to find opportunities to make courses of study more valuable by taking advantage of the distinctive strengths of hybrid and online learning? Here are nine directions for breaking out of the box of campus-bound thinking:
Content and Resources
Curricular options or tracks, instead of forcing all students to learn the same things at the same time. Students in the same class may have different interests or preparation. Ideally, a faculty member might want to engage them by giving them somewhat different readings, assignments, and topics for discussion. In a campus classroom, this is virtually impossible: the instructor can't lecture on two topics at once, or monitor several discussions simultaneously. In contrast, in an online space, it is much easier for an instructor to divide time among two or more groups of students. Note: in order to develop multiple options or tracks, it can make sense for faculty to team up, even across institutional boundaries, to split the work of developing materials.
Incorporating more direct, off-campus experience into the course. Courses may assign students to different internships or community experiences (e.g., rotations in a medical course) off-campus, while also gathering students and an instructor face-to-face to analyze their experiences. When students are working off-campus in clinical assignments or internships, online media can help them interact with others in their community and even take courses or modules as needed.
Increase the specialization of the program. Because a hybrid or online program can reach out for staff with unusual specialties and to students with unusual interests, the program can potentially offer much more specialized programs than would be possible if restricted only to local faculty and students to specialized content than would be possible if only local faculty were teaching and if the program were marketing only to local students. Note: by “specialized” we do not mean narrow or constricting. Students can focus their learning mainly on highly specialized topics while also developing skills that enable them to respond to future changes in their focus.
Discussion
Expanding the visual dimension of interpersonal interaction. Imagine you are teaching a class of 40 students who have each been studying a wide range of images (e.g., X-rays, paintings, engineering drawings, etc.) or videos (e.g., in a film course or in science courses studying videos of experiments). It might occur to you to have students each select a pair of images (or video clips) and discuss them in a small group, pointing to elements of the image as they compare and contrast. However, if you were teaching in a campus classroom, you would probably stop that line of thought instantly: after all, how could students call up such images and talk about them in your classroom? In contrast, this sort of selection, discussion, and annotation of images is easier and often cheaper if students meet online using conferencing software such as Adobe Connect Pro, Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate Live) or VoiceThread.
More thoughtful pace of discussion. Traditional classrooms for large classes offer few opportunities to ask or answer questions, or to discuss issues. In contrast, online discussion (e.g., threaded discussions on Blackboard) gives all students a chance to talk, both with each other, and with faculty. The time delay gives students a chance to think about what has been said, and to think about what they want to say. (Smith, 1990).
A more level playing field for instructor(s) and students with different native languages. Text-based, asynchronous conversation makes it easier for people to cross language barriers—there is time to think about (or even translate) what has been said to you and to compose a reply (Hiltz, 1988).
Including outsiders in course discussions: Online discussions are more easily expanded to include significant others outside that group: outside experts, students who differ from those in class, members of the public. This facet of hybrid or online courses can enable faculty to alter the content of a course by bringing in experts who are not available on campus.
Assessment
Online assessment and ePortfolios. Faculty can offer individualized online quizzes that feedback to students and help them from becoming stuck. Online discussions provide faculty with more evidence of student understanding. Students can create ePortfolios that exhibit their work, and include discussions of how that work provides evidence of what they can do; these ePortfolios can be assessed online by other students, by outside experts, and by the instructor: once again, the location and schedule of the assessor is not an issue. Note: while ePortfolios can also be used in campus-bound courses, digital tools are, by definition, almost always at hand for students in hybrid and online programs.
Just in Time Teaching (JITT). These kinds of online assessment make it easier for faculty to get insight about what students understand and do not understand—and where they agree or disagree—and use those insights to plan class sessions that build on student mastery and target topics or skills that students have not mastered through their work outside the classroom (Novak, Christian, Gavrin, & Patterson, 1999).
To sum up: when planning hybrid or online courses, faculty ought to consider rethinking the goals and teaching/learning activities. With the new possibilities offered by online and hybrid learning, what are the most valuable goals now within reach? The best teaching/learning activities and resources to help all students attain those goals? Are there any older goals or activities that are harder to do in hybrid or online activities? Should they be deemphasized (perhaps to free time for work on more important things?)
If comparability should not be used to provide a quick and easy method of quality assurance, what should we do instead?
Our answer is simple: we should evaluate online and hybrid offerings in the same way we ought to assess campus-bound offerings:
Are we doing the right thing? Use internal and external points of reference to discuss whether the goals are valuable. This will almost always involve comparing “apples and oranges,” so it is important to think carefully about what points of reference to use.
Are we doing the thing right? Ask whether there is a good alignment between that goal, the teaching/learning activities proposed, and the facilities and technologies to be used to support those activities.
Does your institution use the standard of comparability for quality assurance of online or hybrid courses? If so, should you abandon that standard? Would you alter or add to our list of examples of teaching/learning activities that are often taught more readily or effectively in hybrid or online environments? How would you evaluate and compare the impact of these various activities? Please send your comments to us at Distance Learning. If we hear from enough of you, we will summarize your ideas in an addendum to a future column.
