Networked learning on the WWW and Distance Education

Abstract:

Living in this technologically information age, it is hard not to be lured by the dazzle of on line technologies. The use of these online technologies like WWW has particular significance in distance education. The WWW has an outstanding communication capability for delivering study materials and information in different forms to the distance learners. This capability greatly extends the educational opportunities of the WWW available to instructional designers and provides a wealth of possible activities for teaching and learning. The communications capabilities of the WWW are usefully divided into two main categories, synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous communications are those that occur in real-time while asynchronous communications involve some form of delay. This paper describes instructional applications for each of these modes on the WWW. This paper also provides information about realities of networked learning environments and insights into their potentials for supporting flexible teaching and learning in the Open University.

1. Introduction:

Towards the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century, the world has undergone and will continue to undergo significant educational changes as a consequence of the uptake and the application of information and communication technologies specifically the communication capability of WWW. There are some areas like flexible delivery & networked learning where the WWW provide advantage to distance education and educators. Nunn [1] describes flexible delivery as term which signifies the desirable social goals of increasing access to education and democratizingn teaching and learning process by giving greater control to students. The WWW supports many different forms of communication, which can be used in myriad of ways in student centered learning environment to support cooperative, communicative and collaborative activities among distance learners and their teachers. Language plays an important role in the learning process and forms of communication and talk are integral component for learning . With networked learning, the WWW provides a forum for communication and discussion for subsequent use. Networked learning provides a means for the organization, communication and exchange of ideas and information among learners and teachers and other parties in the learning process. Networked Learning can be described as “the bringing together of learners via personal computers through WWW, with a focus on them working as a learning community, sharing resources, knowledge, experience and responsibility through reciprocal collaborative learning .” Face to face teaching and learning on campus is now also incorporating some forms of networked learning, freeing staff and learners to work at times which suit them and to use resources, and methods of working together, that were not possible a few years ago .

WWW based applications and learning environments that are included and described by the category of networked communication include: Communication via e-mail is a form of asynchronous collaboration. People enter messages that are sent to other people who read them, and perhaps respond, at a later point in time. Bulletin boards, such as the nearly ubiquitous Usenet newsgroups, are another form of asynchronous communication, to an open audience. Listserves based on e-mail are a very similar form of asynchronous, group communication. Desktop video teleconferencing, on the other hand, allows real-time, synchronous collaboration, although bandwidth is consumed quickly with this technology. Chat sessions are a text-based version of synchronous collaboration, as are Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs), Object-Oriented MUDs (MOOs), or Multi-User Shared Hallucinations (MUSHes), where a number of people participate simultaneously in a shared conversation or activity.

Distance Educators now a days do expect to flourish and grow are asynchronous and synchronous collaboration applications between desktop computers, some of which may be hooked to a projection system so that many people in the same location can participate. All the desktops will be connected through the Internet. An instructor can sit at a desktop workstation and communicate with a "classroom" of students, each of whom has a workstation in front of him and a connection to the Internet. The students no longer have to be in the same room; they can interact with other students and teachers in different locations.

The real power of digital technologies is not yet tapped; other applications on the desktop for doing exciting and robust synchronous and asynchronous collaboration are just now emerging. We will know about different WWW based communication technologies in this paper later.

2. Impact of networked learning on distance and campus-based learners

There is good evidence that networked learning is having an impact on campus-based learning as well as on the learning opportunities available remotely. Indeed, one of the effects of networked learning is to blur the boundaries between these two kinds of learning environment. We therefore see it as important to be able to tap into the experiences of students in each of the following situations:

those students who spend the great majority of their study time at a distance from the institute they are registered (and who are significantly involved in networked learning)
comparable students who are spending the great majority of their study time at the institute they are registered and who are not significantly involved in networked learning
students who are spending significant amounts of their study time at the institute and who are also significantly involved in networked learning.
Part of the point of carrying out such comparative studies is to get a clear sense of the degree to which networked learning makes a satisfactory substitute for conventional face-to-face learning and teaching arrangements. But it is also necessary to identify some key areas in which networked learning brings educational (as well as logistical or economic) benefits: to show where it can add real value .

3. Different communication capabilities WWW
All new educational approaches place novel demands on learners and teachers. These demands can sometimes negate the educational benefits that might, in principle, be derived from the new approach. It is important to distinguish between demands that originate in the technology and demands that are intrinsic to new educational methods. The latter are the more problematic; particularly since many of the kinds of C&IT tools associated with networked learning are becoming more user friendly. The focus on students‘ approaches to learning in various kinds of communication modes, will allow us to provide a better understanding of networked learning methods and study skills The following sections describe instructional applications for each of these modes.

3.1. Synchronous Communications on the WWW

There are several discrete forms of asynchronous communication supported by the WWW. These are as follows:

3.1.1 E-mail

The WWW enables students to communicate with each other through use of a class list enables students to find out details of other students in their class and to communicate with them.

Many instructors use e-mail as a means to encourage communication between students in courses of study. Even when courses are offered on-campus, students enjoy being able to communicate electronically with their classmates. A common resource in a WWW based course in a class list proving an e-mail link to each student.

Students wishing to communicate with others in the group need simply to click on the student’s name. This action will result in most browsers returning an e-mail form addressed to the student into which the message can be entered. Most browsers also provide the facility to attach files and documents to e-mail messages which provides a means for students to exchange material as part of the communication.

3.1.2. Bulletin Boards

The provision for e-mail communication within a WWW course does not mean that it will be used. A number of course designers encourage student communication in this way by creating bulletin boards, which are used for class discussions.

Newsgroups : Some lecturers create newsgroups for their classes and encourage students to use the newsgroup as part of their course involvement. Students are encouraged to read the postings, to make contributions of their own and to reply to the postings of others. To encourage student participation, many teachers make involvement in class discussions a compulsory part of the course and grade students according to the quality and quantity of their involvement’s.

Listservs : A WWW course is using a newsgroup to support student communication.

Many courses on the WWW use Listservs as a means for public communication. The Listserv is an e-mail-based application, which enables messages to be broadcast via e-mail to all students in a class. When students respond to postings, their responses are similarly broadcast to the group as a whole.

WWW Discussion Groups : Many designers are now using software applications as part of support student communication. In such applications, students enter their responses to a discussion using forms on a purpose-built page and the WWW server automatically inserts the student comment into the discussion, as a thread or a new topic.

The use of forms and special-purpose WWW applications provides a means for teachers to create

discussion groups as part of WWW documents. A form is available at the end of each posting to enable a reader to reply. The data is entered into the separate fields and submitted to the server, where it is processed and added to the list of l software is needed by the server to enable and support this form of WWW learning activity. It is now quite common place in many sites and relatively easy to customize to suit the needs of particular courses.