The time needed to develop a distance education course should be carefully considered. The Association recognizes that evidence documenting the amount of work required for distance-education courses remains largely anecdotal… In the absence of more definitive data, workload provisions should take into account the anecdotal evidence that distance education course development is taking two to three times as long as comparable courses taught in the traditional manner.
American
Association of University Professors (AAUP). Report of Special
Committee on Distance Education & Intellectual Property Issues to the
Collective Bargaining Congress, December 1999.
A survey or report is a snapshot in time. The data used to create the AAUP report were collected almost half a lifetime ago in the history of Internet-based distance learning. Nowhere in the report was it evident that data were sought as to the number of online courses faculty had developed, or how the faculty in question related their comfort level with the technology before undertaking the process, or even the number of instances of development upon which their comments were based. These three factors are essential considerations if we are to arrive at an accurate picture.
Join me in a giant
step backward to my first teaching experience at the postsecondary level. I had taught in different K-12 settings,
served as a public speaker for several organizations and had conducted an
accounting clinic in the community college in which this first adult-teaching
experience was to take place. The course was called Introduction to Data
Processing and was offered through the Department of Business. The learners were traditional community
college students and people who were interested in the growing use of computers
in society; the year was 1977. Some of
the adult students had previously earned Masters’ degrees in various subjects
and others were not yet high school graduates. This widely diverse population
was a new and challenging audience.
The course met for
two, 75-minutes sessions, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Beginning about three weeks before the start
of the term and continuing throughout, the better parts of Monday through
Thursday were invested in developing the course, preparing lecture materials,
visual support materials, and examinations.
Why did it take so long? First,
my comfort with the content was lower than it had appeared to me or to the
chairperson who hired me as an adjunct.
Second, I was not at all familiar with the environment and methodology
of teaching adult learners. Each subsequent course took considerably less time
to develop. By the time I had prepared
all the courses in our newly formed Computer Studies department, in which I was
on an assistant professor tenure track, my week’s work consisted of 15 hours of
teaching and five in the office.
As our readers probably
are aware, we, at the Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences
(GSCIS), offer a partially online, doctoral level course called Instruction
Delivery Systems (IDS), in which students become immersed in the theoretical
and practical aspect of teaching and learning online. Students teach three-week online lessons and participate as
online learners in at least three other lessons. Lessons, or mini-courses, must require asychronous online
discussion and may not be
skills-building
experiences. Working on a solid
foundation of current literature related to online teaching and learning, each
student must develop and teach an instructionally sound, intellectually
demanding online lesson. Individually and collectively, we read and analyze,
teach and learn, critique and brainstorm using the online environment as our
classrooms. The overwhelming majority of the students are teachers or trainers
in schools, industries and government. Many of the teachers and all the
trainers work in postsecondary environments, often in computer-related
fields. Others are elementary and
secondary teachers. A surprisingly
large number work in allied health care fields and there are always a few
program administrators in our ranks. A
masters’ degree in a related field and self-assessed comfort with online
technology are prerequisite for participation in the program called Computing
Technology in Education (CTE).
Following the
publication of the AAUP report quoted above, we have been testing the report
findings against our experiences.
(Development time is addressed here but different aspects of the report
will be examined in future columns.)
The most interesting finding is the consistency of reporting from the
different teaching/training populations across the years. Elementary and
secondary school teachers with a background of curriculum development and
instructional design found that the time needed to develop an online lesson was
very similar to that required for a classroom-based experience. Trainers and administrators, many who had
never before developed lessons or courses, had to invest the largest number of
hours in preparing to deliver the lessons.
They, however, attributed the time needed to what they described as the
“education” aspects such as defining measurable learning objectives,
establishing relevance between the readings and the lesson, and developing
assessment instruments. College instructors, probably the largest group
represented, were split in their analyses.
The most frequently occurring remarks about development time constraints
dealt with the need to prepare the entire course quickly before the beginning
of the term.
The biggest
difference between the GSCIS population and that of AAUP relates to attitude
toward technology. To arrive at
accurate comparative numbers, the question of the time it takes to develop an
online course really needs to be rephrased: Given a self-assessed comfort
level with online computing and communication, how long does it take to develop
an online course compared to developing a classroom-based course? Discussion of this question inevitably
raises another: Is it advisable or
possible to develop and teach an online course if one has never taught the
equivalent course in a classroom? Interestingly,
answers to this sub-question are generally based upon the age of the
responder. Younger students (those
under 40) tend to feel absolutely no need to teach the course in the classroom
first. Older students are less
certain.
Here are our observations on development time for distance learning:
This editorial began with a quote from AAUP and ends with another: No member of the faculty should be required to participate in distance education courses or programs without adequate preparation and training, and without prior approval of such courses and programs by the appropriate faculty body. To this statement, we add, No member of the faculty should be required to teach in an uncomfortable environment if alternate environments are available within the institution. The increasingly large numbers of us who are enchanted by the possibilities offered by online learning at the postsecondary level are more than sufficient to meet institutional needs.