When you hear the words “DVD set for an educational course,” the first thing that comes to mind is that this is material for distance learning. However, increasing numbers of educators from traditional schools and programs experiment with hybrid courses that include both in-class and distance learning components (Ehmann & Hewett, 2005).
“Analysis and Interpretation of Statistical Data in Education” is an introductory course in quantitative methods as they are applied in educational research. This course has been taught by the same instructor using a traditional lecture format to a broad range of students at the Pennsylvania State University for over 25 years. The first author taught this course using a new format for the first time during the Summer Session I, 2006. The core of the new course is a set of nine DVDs that contain videos of lectures as well as important nonvideo material. The nonvideo material includes a Java-based statistical software package, links to relevant Web sites and research papers, as well as online quizzes and the traditional PowerPoint slides that are used to outline the lectures. The DVDs also link to Web forms where students indicate when they complete viewing and reading assignments, and their level of understanding that material. Each DVD also includes an e-mail link so that students can e-mail questions to the instructor at any time. A textbook, and a manual that includes several examples of examinations that have been given in the course, supplement the DVDs. Using this material, the class has changed from the traditional lecture format to technology-mediated instruction.
There are certain advantages inherent in “technology-mediated instruction,” as noted by DeLacey and Leonard (2002). Among these advantages are: (1) taking learning out of the classroom, (2) prefram-ing the debate, (3) the creation of experiential learning environment, (4) better accommodation to less verbal students, as well as others. In this course, the new format has completely eliminated in-class lectures. Students arrive at the regular scheduled class period after completing their learning assignments using the DVD and texts. They have listened to the lecture (often repeatedly), read the textbook, and taken a self-evaluation quiz before they come to class. Thus, class time can be used to explore more complex facets of the topic at hand, answer individual questions, and apply this new knowledge to solving specific problems posed by students. The student’s knowledge, which is now discussed face-to-face, has enhanced the classroom experience. This new format has engaged students and encouraged them to learn from a vast set of resources available not only within the courseware, but outside it as well. Using the DVDs, it is easy to take students directly to relevant outside Web sites, directly load PDF and MS Office documents into their computers, and send information directly to the instructor using e-mail and PHP forms.
These opportunities and advantages do not come without significant challenges that must be faced by both instructors and students. These challenges are discussed in the remainder of this article.
Instructional Design
To effectively design a distance learning or hybrid course, an instructor must understand the delivery medium, as well as differences between how young and older students learn. Regardless of the learning mode you select: synchronous (such as a Web conference) or asynchronous (such as DVDs and printed materials), there is a significant difference in feedback using these newer formats compared to traditional training. Using the new formats, feedback is more controlled and verbalized and, as such, is less informative. Even experienced instructors often find themselves disoriented by the differences in feedback they receive during distance learning compared to the feedback they became accustomed to in a regular classroom. One of the ways to mitigate this disadvantage is to address it during the course design phase. You should always attempt to provide structured explanation and clarifications. At the same time, you need to allow plenty of opportunity for feedback and questions. These opportunities can be made available to students through the use of e-mail, electronic bulletin boards, or other means.
Courseware Preparation and Production
At the present time, there are few, if any, course materials designed specifically with hybrid or distance learning models in mind. Chances are, you will need to design these educational materials on your own. If you can significantly alter some existing courseware to fit this delivery model, you will save yourself some development time. On the positive side, technology allows you to easily incorporate existing material such as relevant video, Web sites, and research papers into your course. Please be careful with copyright issues here. Educators cannot rely on “fair use” policy today as much as they have done in the past. It may be best to provide links to those existing materials as opposed to directly including them on your DVD. If you include someone else’s work on your DVD, you will need permission of the copyright owner. Depending on your experience and willingness to experiment with technology, you may elect to create all the courseware, including video and Web pages yourself, or you might contract with a specialized company to assist with the technical parts. To start building a hybrid course, we recommend the following:
Taping lectures might be a first step in creating your course. A well-developed course, however, includes more than just videotaped lectures. You probably want to develop interactive DVDs. We have had great success on both the PC and Macintosh platforms using DVD@ccess to make interactive disks. If your DVD is interactive, you can incorporate streaming videos, PDF and MS Office documents, links to relevant Web sites and online examinations, electronic bulletin boards, and a Frequently Asked Questions section for your course. You should definitely incorporate some of all of these types of assets into your material.
Be prepared to modify your courseware often. Just as you would add or remove something when teaching a traditional course, a hybrid or distance learning course will require frequent modifications. One of the disadvantages of including relevant Web links on your DVD instead of incorporating the material directly onto the DVD, is that this leaves the stability of your course material in the hands of those people who maintain the other Web sites. You will need to check these outside links frequently to make sure they are still active. You may want to have your own Web server where you can write pages linking to outside information and maintain those pages yourself. Thus, if an outside Web page goes missing, you don’t need to change the DVD, you simply rewrite your Web page to take care of this change. Correspondingly, the company producing your manuals, DVDs or other materials must be able to produce them on-demand, and modified according to your schedule.
Unless you want to get into the business of manufacturing and distributing courseware, the courseware provider should be able to both produce on-demand and fulfill orders. This also means that your courseware provider does not necessarily need to be a local vendor. Today, students are quite comfortable with ordering materials online and having them shipped. In fact having an online ordering system is a benefit even when your provider is local. In an on-demand production situation, this saves students a trip to the store.
The challenge of supplying students with all the necessary courseware in a timely manner means that you must schedule, notify, and enforce a timeline for both the courseware provider and the students. It is advantageous to contact students enrolled in classes before the first meeting to alert them to the way the course will be taught, and to let them know how to get their materials ordered. Typically an instructor can send out a form e-mail to all the students enrolled in the course with this information before the first class meeting. It is also important to notify the courseware producer, letting them know about how many units they can expect to be ordered, and when the class will begin. With this information, the courseware producer can better manage their time in the shop.
Along with the innovative approach to teaching this course, we tested a new training management system offered by Delta L Printing. Delta L Printing is a media production and software company located in State College, Pennsylvania. The few bugs that were discovered in the materials during the summer session were fixed as they were found. For the fall semester, these newly corrected materials were manufac-tured—a feat that would be impossible with the traditional courseware manufacturing process.
Technical Support
Both the instructor and students will encounter technical problems. In our culture, instructors are socialized to have answers to all students’ questions, and students are socialized to turn to the course instructor for answers to all course-related problems. In distance and hybrid learning this socialization may lead to disastrous results. Both students and instructors should be re-educated to understand that only subject-related questions should be addressed to the instructor. All technical questions are then addressed either to technical support (courseware malfunction/computer/Internet etc.) or to administrative support staff (course requirements/ dates etc.). If this advice is not followed, you run the risk of instructors spending most of their time trying to fix somebody’s computer or DVD player without the skills needed to do so. Your courseware provider should be able to offer technical support to your students. Technical support staff should be available to students via e-mail, bulletin board, and over the phone at reasonable times to help with technical questions. Having bulletin board communication and a Frequently Asked Questions section on your course Web site will help communicate with your students and save a lot of time, effort and frustration for both students and technical support staff.
Compared to distance learning classes that generally attract a more mature audience, resident students are typically more comfortable and have noticeably fewer problems using technology. Our experience with distance learning suggests that it is not uncommon to have 1 to 4% of the distance learners who are in nontechnology courses to be unfamiliar with using technology in their learning. They will often be initially frustrated in their efforts to learn using the new formats. For example, it is common for some students to attempt to play DVDs in their CD drive. In our experience, technical support should be ready at the beginning of a course to solve these problems. With younger students, the use of technology has been more familiar, and its use has essentially blended into the background, letting the course subject matter occupy center stage. It should be noted that in a regular classroom, a significant amount of technical support takes place informally through peer-to-peer interactions. Therefore, students in a hybrid course in which distance education materials are combined with classroom contact have an advantage compared to pure distance learning students.
Conclusions
This new format worked quite well. As one of the students in the Summer Session stated: “It’s good to be able to rewind the teacher.” Thirty-one students took part in the first class offered using the hybrid format. On average, they earned higher grades than the students who completed the course using the traditional lecture format. Subjective observations certainly support the idea that these students liked the new model and were quite happy with the format. There was not a single negative comment on the end-of-semester course evaluations from the students concerning the new format. Indeed, every comment concerning the hybrid format was positive. Enrollment in the course for the fall 2006 semester is around 150 students. As we near the fourth week of the semester, all student comments about the format have remained positive.
In certain aspects, today’s academia differs only slightly from its medieval beginnings. Lectures and quizzes still make up the bulk of the educational process. Today, many schools and training companies look for opportunities to offer distance learning and hybrid educational classes in an attempt to expand their reach and to provide better learning experiences to students. We owe it to ourselves and to our students to explore the prospects offered by this format.
