Web-Based Education: Learning from Experience, by Anil K. Aggarwal

The effective design and application of Webbased learning and teaching environments is a challenge that confronts educators who have received no formal training in this discipline. Experience-based reports comprehensively examine the virtual nature of education from the perspectives of faculty, students, and technical personnel. References to eManagement and ePreparation are reminders that these practices may be different than non-Web-based practices because of the dynamic environments of which they are a part.

Information structure framework (ISF), in the context of five fundamental categories of learning theory (objectivism, collaborativism, constructivism, cognitive information processing, and socioculturalism), provides an appropriate mechanism to foster information literacy and thwarting information overload. Theoretical diversity drives comprehensive instructional design.

New ethical issues arising from e-education show the need for systematic revisions as the mass production of education becomes standard in many institutions of higher education. The book presents ethical issues associated with knowledge processing, interaction, and knowledge assessment. Educational management promotes the use of virtual libraries. Authors claim that the use of virtual libraries will increase as students read fewer conventional books and articles. Moreover, quality and content issues become an important consideration when hyperlinks increase the complexity of knowledge acquisition. The authors argue for a pillar of ethics for e-education as they present and discuss ethical considerations for the stakeholders.

The dynamics of change encountered in WBE experiences is driven by learners as they move in and around it to suit their needs. For faculty, the challenges of a rapidly changing educational environment can become overwhelming, given the need to adapt to learner needs. Learner-centered instructional design includes a comprehensive understanding of content and technology. Knowing technologies change quickly, faculty members need to understand what learners bring to the experience. A metaphor of online education experience and delivery platforms as a stage helps instructional designers and faculty (often one and the same) provide learners with a memorable learning experience.

The way transnational corporations communicate and educate provides an interesting model for academia. Models using high degrees of coordination with low control provide lessons for instructional designers and faculty as they develop pedagogically sound instruction. Understanding the culture of online education in the era of globalization provides a model for the structure of a welldesigned online course. Contributions to integrated worldwide operations are made by participants in transnational education models. This model is a compromise between local autonomy and centralized decision making which may be problematic for some academic institutions with multiple campuses competing for enrollments. These models tend to give learners the ability to acquire knowledge beyond books by fostering participation in peer-to-peer knowledge exchange and participation in collaborative, group projects. The axis of differentiation with this kind of educational model is defined by top-down lectures delivered by professors who are constrained by schedules and personal responsibilities.

As the emphasis on interactive learning utilizing multimedia becomes more focused and instructional designers shift from discovery and exploration, Web-based educators are developing new standards and procedures. Designs utilizing multiple pathways of learning require effective use of layering. educational products such as Virtual Language University (VLU) employ learning strategies that require multifaceted interaction and require copious up-front work in the conceptual and scriptwriting stages. The VLU is a multimedia-enhanced course that teaches the English language.

Course designs for effective uses of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks employ constructivist pedagogical constructs. The structure of such courses is grounded in the principle of coordinated autonomy. Using handheld computing devices in a P2P network, learner independence is fostered, thereby supporting a constructivist model. Such distributed networks are becoming more commonplace as institutions struggle to find new ways to deliver learning experiences that provide meaning and authentic outcomes. Current trends in the production of technologies enabling P2P networking may lead to the use of cell phone technology as a delivery medium.

Internet technologies connect different resources that perform information exchange to support effective educational enterprises. Such technologies as push, remote file servers, database servers, telnet-based chat servers, and external content providers give a modular framework for a robust educational experience. All of these modules are synchronized to a single-student profile housed in a central repository that is replicated to all clients of the student.

Faculty report that group training provided by administrators is less effective than individual sessions. Cadres of student-trainers developed in courses to train the trainers provide authentic outcomes as students train faculty in individual sessions. Many faculty object to using Internet technologies for teaching, however, when offered training on an individual, as-needed basis as clients of students trained as trainers. Objections are overcome as they observe the successes of peers. These discussions of faculty acceptance of Internet use for teaching based on individual training sessions were most useful from my perspective as a faculty trainer.

Participation or lack thereof is often the bugaboo of online instructors when peer interaction is mandated in a course. Different forms of vicarious interaction exist that may be as important as high interpersonal interaction. A taxonomy of participation in online courses represents interaction at different levels. Important descriptions of invisible learners categorize them as learners or nonlearners.

Employers currently demand that recent graduates competently perform assigned tasks. Authentic assessments require students to use knowledge and skills to solve problems, and it gives students an opportunity to try out realworld problem solving before entering the workforce. The authors argue that other types of assessment are a disservice to students, such as multiple choice exams or other types of assessment requiring rote memorization rather that employing assessment instruments requiring problem solving using critical thinking skills.

Web-based mentoring systems are identified as a way to increase mentorship. These systems provide online students and corporate trainees with an efficient online support system, thus removing some of the need for corporate resources to respond to dynamic training requirements. Such systems, when properly designed, provide a structure to overcome the classroom’s physical barriers.

Formal and informal systems for meeting the communication needs of students need to be identified through formal research. The demands for communication support exist across the spectrum of various teaching and learning scenarios such as synchronous, asynchronous, and hybrid models. The abilities of students to organize flexible exchanges of ideas and information may determine the success of online courses.

Support systems such as instructional design, technical, library, reference, and student programs are important for the success of e-learning. With comprehensive support systems in place in e-learning situations, faculty can focus on teaching. New policies need to be developed to deal with problems encountered by faculty and students who are worldwide participants.

Programming for visualization in Web-based courses is a new and burgeoning area where application exercises for students rarely exist. Digital libraries containing exercises to integrate theoretical explanations, and algorithm animations become part of the structure of a dynamic Web-based digital library in the future. Typically, there are very few Webbased experiences in applications for program execution for programming courses. These applications are complex and are further complicated by Web-based architecture and changing user interfaces. A few research efforts exist to create dynamic electronic books containing dynamic content and virtual laboratories for programming that incorporate interfacing and programming tools.

Online discussions may be a predictor of success in an online course. If online discussion skills are developed before a course starts, student performance may be enhanced. This important research gives some insight into how online discussion plays a role in giving students the ability to further their understanding through interaction in future courses and in postgraduate business communities.

Another chapter reports 48 credit hours being compressed to fit into a 13½ month time frame in an MBA program integrated with an MIS program. Hybrid courses were developed to allow students to acquire knowledge at a much higher rate than a traditional face-to-face class. Creative course design utilizing IT made it possible for students to finish at an accelerated rate.

One chapter reported on a Web-based course with a community project-based outcome. The tools used contributed to students’ communications, independent research, requirements analysis, project planning, and management. The critical learning approach utilized by the students developed their abilities to think critically and develop research and writing skills. This alternative learning approach directed the students toward a lesstheoretical knowledge acquisition model into a more practice-oriented project-based outcome.

Another chapter discusses how virtual science centers can become a way for bricks-andmortar institutions to deliver nonformal science learning environments. Through Webbased delivery combined with the ubiquity of the personal computer, these science centers foster greater public understanding of science.

Authors Sherif Kamel and Khaled Wahba report on a hybrid model created to combine face-to-face lectures with virtual tutoring, study, and exams. This model provided increased enrollments in place of a similar course that was online only. The message for the future is that institutions need to become reflexive in designing courses that respond to customer needs.

This book is in useful in the sense it provides a wide variety of descriptions of WBE for study. Some articles are repurposed descriptions of WBE aspects that have been around for years. The strength of the book is that it provides an insight into international e-learning practices in academia and business settings. A weakness is that some of it is old information. For example, determining if WebCT is a suitable tool for learning has been discussed since the creation of learning management systems and engenders somnambulistic tendencies for experienced scholars of Web-based learning practices. On the flip side of the coin, old information can reflect a solid theoretical base which may be useful to new students. Most of the articles reflect the author’s solid grounding in the theoretical foundations upon which the content rests. There is little fluff in this book, although at times I wondered if the editor had searched widely enough to find articles that are considered interesting and current in the context of the section categories.