12. DEVELOPMENTS IN COMPUTER MANAGED LEARNING AND THE ROLE OF ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS

 

G. ROBINSON
Department of Geography
University of Leicester

and

J.D. STANFORD
Department of Economics
The University of Queensland

 

This paper addresses the question of how a particular academic innovation in university teaching, Computer Managed Learning (CML), is introduced into active use in academic departments. In doing so the theoretical basis of the use of CML is considered and the results of CML in universities in three countries, in diverse disciplines, are examined.

We speculate on changes in the role of academic departments which will assist in the introduction of a theoretically-justified innovation, which also is practical, successful and appealing to students, especially in circumstances where financial stringency encourages institutions to move to more capital-intensive modes of teaching.

Computer Managed Learning

CML is the generic term applied to the use of computers in managing the teaching and learning process, especially where testing is an integral part. The fundamental requirements for the use of CML are careful course design, elaboration of learning objectives and construction of tests. These are consonant with good educational practice. Their placement in a CML environment entails specification of the course objectives; division of the course into modules or relatively self-contained components; allocation of learning objectives to each module; preparation of a study guide for each module; and writing items for or otherwise developing a testbank.

In practice the use of interactive software enables the making of effective choices about the design, implementation and management of a course. These choices will relate to the issuing and marking of tests; providing feedback and remedial support; analysis of learning performance; preparing reports to students and lecturers; and monitoring the progress of students through defined sequences of modular courses. An extensive list of CML functions was prepared by Leiblum (1982) after reviewing the literature that then existed.

Theoretical Base of CML

There is little specific theory of CML, although Baker (1978) made an early attempt to codify the approach. Other learning systems do however provide a theoretical base for the use of CML. Two of these are the Keller Plan and the Audio Tutorial System which have been widely popular and used in many disciplines throughout the world. Both of these approaches enjoyed a considerable vogue in the 1970s but are used less widely now. We comment on this point later in the paper.

The Keller Plan

The Keller Plan contains five major ingredients (Keller, 1968):

(a) students move through the course at their own pace;

(b) the course is divided into small units and students attempt new material only after demonstrating mastery of previous units;

(c) lectures and demonstrations are used for motivation rather than as sources of critical information;

(d) the written word is stressed in teacher-student communication;

(e) use of student proctors for repeated testing, immediate scoring and tutoring enhance the personal and social aspect of the process.

The Keller Plan approach provides that the course be divided into small units with clearly-written behavioural objectives for each unit. Students may elect to take the test for each unit when they feel ready to do so; there is no penalty for unsatisfactory performance so that tests may be re-taken until the required level of mastery is attained.

The Audio Tutorial System

The Audio Tutorial System (ATS) has been described in a variety of ways, originally as an `integrated experience approach to teaching biology', but its major features can be summarized, after Postlethwait et al (1971), as:

(a) A General Assembly Session consisting of lectures (one hour per week) given by the senior instructor of the course or by visiting lecturers;

(b) An Independent Study Session (ISS) which is the major and flexible independent study part of the ATS. The ISS provides a set of materials including audio tapes with which students can work at their own pace in order to meet the requirements of the course;

(c) An Integrated Quiz System in which students are allowed to teach what they have learnt to a small group of students.

Evaluative Research

A review of evaluative research on the Keller Plan by Kulik et al (1974) established the following points:

(a) The Keller Plan is an attractive teaching method to most students. In every published report students rate the Keller Plan much more favourably than teaching by lecture;

(b) Self pacing and interaction with tutors seem to be features of the Keller courses most favoured by students;

(c) Several investigators report higher-than-average withdrawal rates for their Keller sections. The conditions that influence withdrawal and procrastination in Keller courses have been studied and it seems possible to control them through course design;

(d) Content learning (as measured by final examinations) is adequate in Keller courses. In the published studies final examination performance always equals, and usually exceeds, the performance of students in lecture sessions;

(e) Students almost invariably report that they learn more in the personalised system of instruction than in lecture courses, and also nearly always report putting more time and effort into the Keller courses.

Similar results are reported for ATS. In an overview of evaluative research into Audio Tutorial (A-T) teaching in science Fisher (1976) makes the following observations:

(a) Evaluations of A-T teaching in college science courses suggest that it may nearly always equal, and will be often superior to, lecture methods with respect to content learning as measured by student performances in written examinations;

(b) Whether or not they learn more, students frequently believe they learn more with A-T teaching;

(c) Student attitudes towards A-T teaching tend to be strongly positive;

(d) The aspect of A-T teaching most frequently cited as being of value to students seems to be the autonomy and self sufficiency in learning made possible with independent self study;

(e) A-T instruction can be economically advantageous, though initial costs will be higher than for lecture methods;

(f) A-T instruction does not preferentially benefit students of lower ability in most studies, though two investigations reported this observation.

What is interesting about these evaluations, which are now comparatively old, is that although both the Keller Plan and ATS are liked by students, promote learning and are cost effective, they have not become integrated into university teaching.

Case Studies of Recent CML Installations

CML is well established at tertiary level in North America and Australia. Many institutions have developed their own, sometimes highly-sophisticated, bespoke systems. Nevertheless, off-the-shelf versions are more common and the most familiar of these is a Learning Management System (LMS) developed by CBTS Pty Ltd, a Canadian company now part of the Campus America group. LMS has the full range of generic functions previously outlined, developed over several versions, although actual applications range from merely delivering tests by computer to administering extensive distance-learning programmes. The community of users was large enough from 1989 to support an annual International Users' Conference.

Table 1 summarises the features of the case studies we have considered, all based on the use of LMS.

Source: 1. Donnelly (1989); 2. Burke et al (1989) and pers comm; 3. McGeachy and pers comm (1989); 4. Harrison and Stanford (1989); Stanford and Cook (1987); 6. Robinson (1991).

 

Of particular note among the conclusions we can draw from the case studies is that student performance in testing and examinations generally improved and that students almost universally like the self-pacing and test-on-demand facilities of CML. What also shines through is the variety of ad hoc expedients resorted to so that CML projects could be established. In no case did the decision to use CML evolve from a regular departmental decision-making and funding process; we know of only one university use of CML, in the School of Business Administration at Dalhousie University, which was decided in this way.

Individual initiative continues to play a significant role in developing and sustaining the use of CML. Except at the University of Limerick there was no institutional provision to see that the innovation was systematically evaluated for continued and wider use. All evaluation was a product of the project teams and, despite their generally positive results, in no case has the innovation been more widely adopted in the institution: in Limerick, following their failure to provide an adequate level of technical support and later staffing changes, the use of CML has actually ceased.

We postulate a number of reasons why CML, along with its forerunners, the Keller Plan and ATS, have failed to be integrated into university teaching. Some directly concern the innovator:

(a) the benefits of these approaches are obtained by students and the institutions but

(b) the cost of introducing them is borne by the individual academic;

(c) the approaches are introduced by genuine innovators who are not interested in continuing a successful innovation as a routine activity.

Others are of an institutional nature:

(d) university teaching is strongly orientated to the lecture approach and it is difficult to change, due to inertia and the distribution of costs incurred when a change is made. (A change involves establishment costs which are borne uncompensated by the individual academic. Incentive systems in the university which reward research reinforce the behaviour.)

(e) academic departments and institutions lack the organisational and decision-making facilities to make academic innovations on a system-wide basis but allow major scope for individual one-off innovation.

In sum there are formidable obstacles to the diffusion of successful innovations through the academic profession and institutions. Many staff still display a strong phobia towards computing, allowing the technology to blind them to the educational merits of the innovations. Nevertheless a recent report by McDonough (1991), based on a survey of UK universities, revealed widespread recognition of the increasing importance of computer-based instruction and learning.

It was noted that a significant amount of teaching software is being developed within individual universities. We ourselves however have witnessed the reluctance of the staff to accept other people's ideas - the not-invented here syndrome - and in this context observed that question banks have not readily transferred between courses developed for CML at different institutions. Lack of incentive to change, lack of agreement over standards and lack of adequate local support combine to prevent widespread adoption of a broad range of computer-mediated instruction and learning that includes CML.

Speculation and a Way Forward

Universities will continue to be faced with increasing enrolments and, if not financial stringency, at least a less-than commensurate increase in funding. In consequence, class sizes in lectures, practicals and tutorials will rise, the student/staff ratio will rise and institutions will be faced simultaneously with problems of declining quality and mounting external pressures to teach better.

In this context, a move to more capital-intensive methods of teaching are both rational and imperative. There is now a wealth of experience to show that computers can mitigate the negative effects of more students for the same number of staff. Darby (1991,a) has pointed to the clear cost benefit of increasing learning efficiency which allows courses to be shortened or content increased. Among the further benefits of replacing some lectures by computer-based learning are the widening of access to courses and the reduction of pressure to build more lecture theatres. It is also axiomatic that good educational practice is encouraged rather than threatened by these responses to external pressures.

The functions that are needed to cope with larger classes and at the same time increase the extent of self-paced learning - a computer-supported learning environment - are virtually identical to those of CML. Nevertheless we consider that its widespread adoption will be difficult to stimulate. (We note, without approval, that such a move is relatively easy to force in an organisational setting where decision making is more authoritarian and less sensitive of academic or other freedoms.) Few universities, either in UK or Australia, are facing up to the resource implications of such computer-based innovations. There is a real danger that little of the wealth of learning and teaching software now available will spread throughout our higher-education systems unless national effort is made to collect and disseminate the software. As McDonough (1991) concluded, lack of funding and lack of support remain the greatest barriers to progress.

In looking for 'carrots' rather than 'sticks' one way forward is for central funds to be provided for consortia of courseware developers. By 'courseware' we mean basic data, test banks of assessment and evaluation items, software for information processing, illustrative individual simulations, and the whole body of documentation to engineer a computer-supported learning environment for a course. The consortia would need to involve several departments in the same discipline and be set to specify, develop and test new products, to agreed standards of both academic content and technical presentation in the form of a complete course. Suitable courses to be the first targets should be of the introductory or service type where a broad consensus could be reached within the discipline, or at least the participating departments, as to the academic content and learning objectives. And, most importantly, the participating departments would need to agree to use the developed courseware for a given time. Central funding could do much in this way, as pointed out by Darby (1991,b), by getting away from the not invented here syndrome and by building up libraries of units with the same user interface and documented to a common standard, to stimulate departments in the integration of learning innovations into university teaching.

Even this however will not be enough without another organisational change to provide incentives for staff involvement. This will entail the rewarding of good teaching and the recognition of courseware development as a valid academic activity alongside research. The issue has been raised recently by Lomerson and Knezek (1991):

(CML) can probably attribute its slow growth in the United States, and elsewhere, to its inability to provide a positive net benefit to the teacher, who is the primary operator and end user of the system. (Future success) will be determined by...how equitably the transaction processing load is distributed among the potential beneficiaries of the system. (p. 23).

Acknowledgements

Support at various stages of the work reported here has been provided by the University of Leicester's Research Board, Physical Sciences Budget Centre, and Department of Geography; Commission of the European Communities (ERASMUS Contract Nr STV-88-0214-UK/M); the UK Computers in Teaching Initiative Centre for Geography; and the University of Queensland's Social Sciences Group (Academic Enhancement Grant).

References

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