Evaluating Distance Learning in Graduate Programs: Ensuring Rigorous, Rewarding Professional Education

Internet-based distance learning programs make it possible for technical communicators located anywhere in the world to participate in graduate courses in their field. But are these graduate programs as rigorous as those offered through traditional educational venues? Do they provide opportunities for participants to learn from professors and their fellow students that are as rewarding as those provided in traditional graduate seminars? This paper reports the responses of students in two such classes to a series of questions probing these issues, and offers conclusions and recommendations that may help others who plan such courses to structure them more effectively.

Hayhoe, George F. IEEE PCS (1998). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

Evaluating Online Tutorials on Software Applications

Nowadays, there are a lot of software applications designed to meet the need of end users to simplify their work. These software applications usually come with supporting tools to help users with system setup and requirements, installation guides, troubleshooting, or getting-started tutorials. When looking for more information on a specific topic or “how to” on a software application, users usually tend to look first on the manufacturer’s Web site. In reality, however, the result doesn’t always answer our questions, because the manufacturer may have a wide variety of tutorials that may confuse us, the manufacturer’s tutorials may be intended for experienced users, or tutorials may be incomplete because the manufacturer only goes through the basics of the software application.

Lumenta, Agnes. Techniques (2003). Articles>Education>Tutorials>Online

Experience-Enabling Design: An Approach to ELearning Design (I)

This paper draws inspiration from diverse media to understand what constitutes experience. In doing so, it seeks directions for building experience into design of elearning products.

Krishnan, L. Ravi and Venkatesh Rajamanickam. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

Experience-Enabling Design: An Approach to ELearning Design (II)

Layout decisions like the course structure, navigation, media, etc., affect the experience of the product. For a learner, the ease and intuitive way of getting in, moving around and exiting are the experience factors. How do we bridge this gap between layout and experience?

Krishnan, L. Ravi and Venkatesh Rajamanickam. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

Exploring Burnout among University Online Instructors: An Initial Investigation  

Burnout has been identified as a significant issue among those in instructional positions. The purpose of the present research was to identify and describe the status of burnout among higher education online instructors. The population for this study included responses of 76 online instructors employed by baccalaureate granting institutions within the United States. A demographic survey and the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES) were used to collect data from respondents. Data analysis revealed online instructors possessed an average score on the emotional exhaustion subscale, high degree of depersonalization, and low degree of personal accomplishment.

McKnight, Mark A. and R.L. Hogan. University of Southern Illinois (2007). Articles>Education>Online

Facilitating Interactivity in an Online Technical Communication Course    

Several researchers have discussed the important role of interactivity in promoting student learning and socialization, especially in online courses. Facilitating interactivity in an asynchronous, web-based course, however, presents a number of challenges. Such a course, in technical communication, was developed at Florida State University incorporating three interactive components: threaded class discussions, peer editing groups, and collaboration on a group project. Lessons learned from the development and implementation of this course may assist other instructors in developing and teaching online technical communication courses.

Latham, Don. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

Faculty Integration of Technology into Instruction and Students' Perceptions of Computer Technology to Improve Student Learning  

There has been a remarkable improvement in access and rate of adoption of technology in higher education. Even so, reports indicate that faculty members are not integrating technology into instruction in ways that make a difference in student learning. To help faculty make informed decisions on student learning, there is need for current knowledge of faculty integration practices. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the nature of the relationship between faculty integration of technology into classroom instruction and students' perceptions of the effect of computer technology to improve their learning. A sample of at least 800 undergraduate students at a participating medium-sized midwest public university was selected using a stratified random sampling technique. The researcher delivered and administered the surveys to the participating students and collected them after completion. 98% of the questionnaires were complete and retained for analysis.

Keengwe, Jared. Journal of Information Technology Education (2007). Articles>Education>Online>Assessment

Fair Use and Distance Learning in the Digital Age  

At Wharton Executive Education we use technology to deliver up-to-the-minute information to students on campus and on line. As part of my job as systems coordinator, I set up electronic course material reserves for The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania's well-known and highly respected executive programs. Most of the programs are campus-based over a few days or a few weeks, but some are distance-education courses that can last several weeks. I also secure permission to store materials and allow access through a secure Web site for the students. However, because we use technology in innovative ways, we sometimes cannot deliver the latest information as quickly as we would like.

Smith, Millison. Journal of Electronic Publishing (2000). Articles>Intellectual Property>Education>Online

FAQs About Your First CBT  

A comprehensive overview of computer-based training for technical communicators new to the subject.

Wokosin, Linda. Intercom (2004). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

From Courseware Cosmetics to Human Cognetics: A Pragmatic, Innovative Pedagogy for Distributed Learning Design and Development  

Commercial courseware management systems efficiently distribute expository instructional shovelware without regarding how adults actually construct knowledge or develop practical skills. Critical, unaddressed instructional problems increasingly face the commercial and academic distributed learning community and require thoughtful, boldly pragmatic instructional design solutions to this salient issue. Alternative, innovative pedagogical approaches more appropriate for 21st century communications technologies need to be systematically explored, developed, validated, and creatively implemented. One promising perspective is to focus emerging technology systems on the design of cognitive learning environments based upon what we know and what we are discovering about how people actually learn, develop performance skills and heuristic competencies, and construct meaningful, transferable knowledge throughout their lifetimes.

Lasnik, Vincent E. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Online

Fulfilling the Promise of Open Content

Unfortunately, the movement to use open educational resources in higher education hasn’t yet realized the full impact that its founders anticipated. Open content is still in its infancy and faces some technical and cultural challenges that affect its widespread adoption.

Petrides, Lisa. Inside Higher Ed (2008). Articles>Education>Online>Open Source

Gauging the Value of Online Grade Posting: An Inquiry into Full Disclosure  

With the continued development of the Internet, distance learning initiatives and Web-based mechanisms designed to support traditional classroom pedagogies are here to stay, and traditional notions of teaching are forever changed. Online colleges and universities like the University of Phoenix already boast burgeoning enrollments, as students flock to a curriculum that will gladly meet them on their own terms and in their own homes and offices. On the Web, teaching moves from brick and mortar classrooms with thirty students entering and leaving every hour, on the hour, to a compendium of synchronous and asynchronous experiences characterized by bulletin board posts, downloads, real-time chats, file transfers, and video and audio files. Web-based approaches to teaching writing and rhetoric are, generally speaking, multivalent, offering new and important capacities that surpass some of the dimensional and practical constraints of the traditional written page. Moreover, many of the practices common in Web-based pedagogy are well supported by theories of dialogism and negotiated learning, and those in the computers and composition community have long trumpeted these benefits.

Knievel, Michael. Kairos (2001). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

Genre Theory, Engineering Education, and Circumventing Internet Bandwidth Problems  

A growing body of empirical research has implied that media seem to make little difference in education. In contrast, in the article “Distance Education Horror Stories Worthy of Halloween,” David Hailey, et al. argue that Internet-based education can be dangerous to the point that it can “sometimes threaten a teacher's career.” Although this might seem troublesome for researchers who maintain that media make no difference, we believe that it points to a different issue. The problems we found stem from genre rather than media choices. The point in this paper is that while media choices may matter little, genre choices are critical – substituting an essay for a lecture or an instruction set for a demonstration can have pedagogical consequences that can improve or disrupt learning.

Hailey, David E. and Christine E. Hailey. Frontiers in Education (2002). Articles>Education>Online

Going the Distance: Online Teachers' Perspectives on the Usability and Sustainability of Teaching Writing Online  

Distance education research tends to focus on students' experiences in the online classroom because students are the bread-and-butter of distance learning programs.

Kitalong, Karla Saari. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Online

Graduate Research in Technical Communication: Preparing Students to Use the National Information Infrastructure  

Graduate researchers in technical communication help prepare other students for using the National Information Infrastructure, known as the super information highway. Here graduate students report recent research on the importance of logical screen sequences in hypertext, eight types of information to include to make proposals persuasive, and a profile of surveyed university computersupported writing facilities to point out needs such facilities have.

Battle, Mary V. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Education>Graduate>Online

Heuristics for Sustainable Distance Education  

Discusses eight conditions for technological change that can support innovation in educational settings. These conditions, which were first directed toward library contexts and then studied in a variety of education-related contexts, encapsulate the majority of sustainability issues associated with distance education. These eight conditions are not exhaustive, but programs that achieve many of them will probably experience a high degree of sustained success.

Selber, Stuart A. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

Hither, Thither, and Yon: Process in Putting Courses on the Web      

Educational institutions are employing a variety of processes to support Web-based courses.  In our efforts to help faculty mount such courses, we found it helpful to divide course material into knowledge-based versus skill-based elements, and to develop activities that capitalize on the unique environment of the Web.  In this article, we discuss our successes and failures, and cover some legal issues we discovered that affect how we use both preexisting and student-produced materials.

Thrush, Emily A. and Necie Elizabeth Young. Technical Communication Quarterly (1999). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

Hybrid Classes: Maximizing Resources and Student Learning

Hybrid courses are courses in which significant portions of the learning activities have been moved online, a combination of traditional classroom and Internet instruction. Time traditionally spent in the classroom is reduced but not eliminated. The goal of hybrid courses is to join the best features of in-class teaching with the best features of online learning to promote active independent learning and reduce class seat time. Using computer-based technologies, instructors use the hybrid model to redesign some lecture or lab content into new online learning activities, such as case studies, tutorials, self-testing exercises, simulations, and online group collaborations.

Spilka, Rachel. Durham Technical Community College (2002). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

The Impact of Web-Based Learning Supplements on Engineering Students in India: A Study with Audio-visual Aids    

The incorporation of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in the teaching-learning process of technical education programs in Indian universities is a relatively recent and gradual phenomenon. Most technical education colleges in the country still follow the traditional classroom and blackboard oriented teaching approach. This study, conducted on a group of engineering students at Agra, India, evaluated the impact of using web-based audio-visual study aids alongside (and as a supplement to) the traditional classroom teaching methodology and observed a substantial improvement in the students' academic performance.

Sinha, Madhulika. International Journal for Technical Communication (2007). Articles>Education>Engineering>Online

Implementing the Online Classroom: Curriculum Development, Tutoring, and Teaching Initiatives  

Three facets of implementing the online classroom at University of Maryland University College have yielded promising results. The first facet, Curriculum Development, involved remaking a popular writing course. Humanities 390, Writing for Managers, was redesigned for online delivery with a new Course Guide, a revised syllabus, and new assignments, activities, and presentation strategies. The second facet, Tutoring, was realized in a project to match student users with online tutors for basic writing instruction. The third facet, Teaching, has provided training and support for online faculty -- including computer conferencing on Writing and faculty workshops for 'going online.'

Burke, Kathleen M. and Susan Nickens. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Education>Online

Integrating the Web into Education for Technical Communication Majors: A Process-Oriented Approach

As the work of professional technical communicators has broadened in scope, so has the challenge of integrating this broader range of concerns into everyday practice.Within the academic world, the response has usually been separate courses.  Many undergraduate and master's programs in technical communication sport courses in usability testing, visual communication, project management, and technical writing and editing.

Carliner, Saul. Saul Carliner Studio (2002). Articles>Education>Online

Interchange Keynote Presentation: E-Learning

In today's market, corporations consider 'cost avoidance' a top priority; nonetheless, complex products and tasks still demand training. Therefore, organizations look for efficient and effective training methods. E-learning answers that search.

Gruener, Bill. Boston Broadside (2001). Articles>Education>Online

Internationalizing Online Training  

Online training is becoming increasingly popular; however, geographic and cultural distance can work to your disadvantage. St.Amant outlines how to set up a training program that both attracts and benefits communicators in locations around the globe.

St. Amant, Kirk R. Intercom (2006). Articles>Education>Online>Localization

Iolis Authoring in a Web Environment  

Recently, there has been increasing focus on the acquisition of research skills by law undergraduates. One reason for this interest is a belief that many such students do not acquire an adequate level of research skills by the time that they graduate. Reflecting this concern, the Law Society/Bar Council's Joint Statement on Qualifying Law Degrees and the Quality Assurance Agency's Benchmark Standards for Law both place great emphasis on the need to improve research skills training at University level. In the light of these developments, Durham University's Centre for Law and Computing was asked to develop a self-paced learning package providing more advanced training on the skills necessary to do legal research projects. It was envisaged that the learning package in question would take the form of an Iolis style workbook. Rather than use traditional law courseware authoring tools, however, the Centre chose to experiment by attempting from the outset to develop the workbook as a website comprising interlaced text and interactions. If successful, such an approach would have the benefits of producing a prototype that was: (i) readily accessible across the Internet, or a campus intranet; (ii) customisable to the needs of individual law schools; (iii) flexible enough to reflect more of an author's own personal approach; and (iv) massively interconnectable with campus intranets and with the Internet at large.

Widdison, Robin. JILT (2002). Articles>Education>Legal>Online