Students at SI give a class presentation while at the University of Illinois,
students watch and listen. Students in Ann Arbor can also
see the Illinois students on classroom monitors.
Two courses experimented with distance-independent learning, the concept of instructors and/or students being in separate places but sharing the same academic experience. Using different approaches, Associate Professor Maurita Holland and Visiting Associate Professor Howard Besser (who has since left the School) implemented distance-independent learning environments in SI. The distance-independent learning classes were made possible through grant support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Holland's course, SI 529, "Sources of General Information," teamed up with its counterpart at the University of Illinois. SI alumna Judy Weedman, Ph.D. '87, shared the teaching responsibilities from the University of Illinois campus.
Each instructor had 20 students in her class, and each group of students and the instructor were able to see and hear the other. Videoconferencing and collaboration software were used at both locations. The interactive approach allowed all participants to ask questions of each group and hear responses.
Holland says these tests of distance learning are important to evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching method. Someday it may be possible for students to visit local libraries to "join" a class through television, or possibly have similar equipment installed at their own homes. "Our goal is to replicate this information and technology at a reasonable cost anywhere else, around the state," Holland says.
Students will had the opportunity to work jointly on projects with their Illinois counterparts. "More and more, our students will be asked to work in collaborative environments," Holland says. In addition to the audiovisual technology, the instructors used Macintosh computers to illustrate Internet information retrieval. Through a commercially available software program called Timbuktu, Holland and Weedman illustrated their points on their own classroom computers and took control of the computer in the remote location, also. Using lecture notes and data from each professor, students shared their own projects and held their own conferences over the Internet.
Holland notes that another benefit for students is the ability to bring in guest speakers at each campus for students at both schools to see and hear. The same technology can be used in other instances, such as having a guest lecturer at a third location make a live video appearance to the classes. Holland has also created several course modules in CD-ROM lecture format. "Our plan is to consider a modular approach to instruction where desktop and full-room conferencing, WWW documents, collaboration tools and E-mail are used as appropriate for the tasks," Holland says.
While distance learning, especially through real-time computer audiovisual technology, is a novel way to bring disparate groups together, it is not viewed as a replacement for actual onsite classes. "We have a concern for the users and how they will react to less direct personal contact," Holland adds. "We're limited only by our imagination, though, and through the evaluation of the distance learning concept, we'll also learn about human nature."
Besser asks that ILS professionals, and students, remember the social consequences of technology, such as how it affects rights to privacy and equal access to information. Equally important, he added, is ensuring that the unique needs of individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds are met.
During the winter 1995 semester, Besser brought those messages to students in SI 609, "Impact of New Information Resources: Multimedia and Networks." In another example of distance-independent learning at SI, Besser broadened the classroom boundaries by including students at the University of California at Berkeley. Fifteen Berkeley students participated live via interactive audiovisual equipment. Besser taught the course by himself, but students at Berkeley still had personal contact with their instructor. Besser taught part of the course from Berkeley, which will give students in Ann Arbor a good feel for what distance-independent learning is like from the receiving end.
That itself was critically important to this course, too. Besser divided the students into six focus groups to study such issues as the impact of technology on education. The students also collaborated on other projects with teams made up of both Ann Arbor and Berkeley students. Working through the Internet, they completed the projects together.
Besser saw this distance-independent learning course as a laboratory of its own, addressing problems and situations that occur with more frequency. "Issues are not posed solely as theory," Besser explained. "The students had to deal with issues like privacy and alienation due to technology repeatedly throughout the semester. These are compelling issues that they were confronted by during the course."
The course, Besser added, was essentially a communications course that examined new information systems likely to affect everyday life from a variety of different social science perspectives: sociology, critical theory, public policy, communications theory, structuralism, political science, etc. Students learned about the new technologies and how they operated, but from the standpoint of a consumer, regulator, or social analyst rather than that of a technician.
Besser examined not only what was being taught, but the pedagogical issues involved. By defining those points, Besser said, those who follow him at Michigan and elsewhere will be able to avoid any obstacles he found. That, he added, made the distance-independent learning concept a more readily accepted aspect of information sharing.
An advantage for Besser was that he had taught the course before in Berkeley without a distance-learning component. That give him substantial background to draw on when making comparisons between the two course-delivery methods.
Besser was well-equipped to teach such a course and to make the value judgments it demands. He is one of the world's leading authorities on image databases, and a highly published author on this subject in professional journals.
He has consulted for such organizations as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, UNESCO, the Italian Association for Computing Machinery, and Francis Coppola's American Zoetrope.
Since 1992, Besser has been the Information Systems Analyst for the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, where he has been in charge of automation plans to build a museum and library for the 21st century.
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