Introduction
The past two decades have ushered in a very pronounced gravitation toward a constructivist approach to teaching and learning in all realms of society and most particularly in the online distance education environment. Augmenting communication in and among those in the academic, business, and military communities, the exponential advancement of science and technology has availed vast amounts of information to virtually millions of people around the globe. In conjunction with this knowledge explosion has been a growing concern for the democratization of the learning process, with constructivism driving much of the educational agenda. This article examines the resurgence of this approach to teaching and learning, its convergence with rapidly changing technological advances, and how it forecasts future trends in online pedagogy.
background
While the constructivist method has been highly emphasized in the more recent literature (Jonassen, Davidson, Collins, Campbell, & Haag, 1995; Rovai, 2004; Tenenbaum, Naidu, Jegede, & Austin, 2001), it is not a new approach to learning. Presenting an early example, Socrates facilitated discourse with students asking directed questions to assist them in realizing the weaknesses in their logic and critical thinking. This enabled them to share in the responsibility of their learning through active participation while negotiating meaning in the creation of shared understanding. In contrast, over time, most professors in Western culture often served as primary repositories of information along with the scrolls and velum texts found in the limited number of physical libraries available to educators. This role included the important function of disseminating information, as well as assisting students in shaping and forming that knowledge. The lecture served as the quickest and easiest way to reach both small and large groups of individuals.
Figure 1.
While the lecture method was the norm of information delivery for centuries in Western culture, the knowledge explosion of the 20th century demanded more active learner participation. In light of this constant and rapid flux of information and knowledge, students became lifelong learners compelled to use metacognitive skills to constantly evaluate and assimilate new material into their respective disciplines. As this implies, knowledge was no longer viewed as a fixed object; rather, learners constructed it as they experienced and co-created an understanding of various phenomena by collaborating and working with peers and professors as well as with the information. Based on the work of Kidd (1973), Long (1983), Moore (1989), and Palmer (1993), Grooms' (2000) Learner Interaction Model (see Figure 1) illustrates that in the constructivist culture, the learner perpetually interacts with these three components of learning.
Now, rather than strictly acquiring information, Duffy and Cunningham (1996) explicated that " learning is an active process of constructing...knowledge and...instruction is a process of supporting that construction" (p. 171). Critical in this process is recognizing the shifting role of the professor who becomes the guide on the side or content facilitator and is no longer the proverbial sage on the stage or content provider. The student's role also has changed from being a passive receiver of information to an active participant in the knowledge-making process (Weller, 1988), aligning with Bandura's (1977, 1994) concept of the autonomous learner, an important dimension of the constructivist model. Table 1 delineates these two approaches to learning.
Of special interest in Table 1 is the role of community.
The constructivist approach recognizes that students do not learn strictly within the limited confines of an educational institution, but rather within the broader context of their personal lives. Consequently, the boundaries between the educational institution and the larger community become blurred, creating a unique set of challenges.
As people work collaboratively in the learning activities, they bring their own worldviews and experiences to each situation, often creating a plethora of perspectives. During this collaborative learning process, they must negotiate and generate meaning and solutions to problems through shared understanding. Thus, education moves from a single, solitary pursuit of knowledge to a collaborative learning community that shapes and informs responses to the environment. As noted by Fuller and Soderlund (2002), this challenges the common metaphor of the university as a self-contained village.
Rapidly changing distance learning technologies
Over the years, educators have experimented with and successfully employed multiple media for distance learning. As early as the 18th century, print material was used and even today still serves an important role in distance education.
Table 1
| Approaches to Learning | ||
|
| Traditional | Constructivist |
| Professor | Sage on the Stage | Guide on the Side |
|
| Content Provider | Content Facilitator |
| Learner | Passive Recipient | Active Participant |
| Knowledge | Fixed Object | Fluid |
| Organization of Learning | Ordered & Structured | Open & Often Chaotic |
| Communication | Uni-directional | Multi-directional |
| Primary Resource | Text & Professor | Multiple Sources |
| Method | Lecture | Active Process |
| Media | | Blended |
| Format | Individualized | Collaborative |
| Activities | Goal-oriented | Problem-centered |
| Focus of Learning | Knowledge & | Application, Analysis, |
|
| Understanding | Synthesis, & Evaluation |
| Assessment | Recall | Alternative Assessment |
| Community | Educational Institution | Integrated with Life |
After the 1930s, other media became significant with audio, including radio and audiotapes, and video, including public broadcasting, satellite, and cable, dominating much of the 20th century.
Much of this education was one-way based on a mass communication or one-to-many educational model. Basically, it was a rigid structure with information flowing in one direction, from the powerful and knowledgeable instructor reaching to a large group of students. It included elements of limited feedback through the use of such things as the penny post in the 19th century and the addition of telephone and fax in the 20th century. Limited opportunities for face-to-face interaction were also incorporated with some programs. Thus, much of distance learning during these times remained mainly non-interactive.
By the 1990s, the advent of the Internet presented new opportunities in distance education. The result was the evolution of a new type of collaborative learning, in which the potential for interaction between the professor and the learner increased exponentially with wide-area networks accommodating synchronous and asynchronous communication. While exploring computer-mediated activities of the online learning environment, Santoro (1996) highlighted three broad categories: (a) computer-assisted instruction, which allows the computer to serve as teacher by structuring information delivered to the human user, (b) computer-based conferencing, which includes e-mail, interactive messaging, and group conference support systems, and (c) informatics, which refers to online public access libraries and interactive remote databases. This proliferation of the Internet unlocked the door for educational institutions to reach beyond their four walls, making services accessible to students around the world through online activities.
In their work with the U.S. Department of Education, Waits and Lewis (2003) reported that in the 2000 to 2001 academic year, 56% of the nation's degree-granting 2- and 4-year institutions offered courses at a distance with another 12% planning to do so within the next year. Although the communication technologies of the 21st century—print, audio, video, and the Internet—cover a broad spectrum of distance education mediums, this exponential growth in science and technology has catapulted the Internet into rapidly becoming the preferred delivery platform. Researchers such as Cotton (1995) and others who have been tracking this information over the last decade along with scholars such as Bocarnea, Grooms, and Reid-Martinez (2006) continue to explore not only the trends in distance education, but also the understanding of and the issues involved in aligning the environment with student needs. Typical factors include (a) the characteristics of the discipline, (b) the degree of interactivity sought in the distance learning process, (c) learner characteristics, (d) instructor traits, (e) the expansiveness of the distance education initiative, (f) the desired level of accessibility and flexibility of the delivery platform, (g) the availability of technical support, and lastly (h) the potential for growth.
In addition to the global reach of the Internet, the lines among communication technologies have swiftly blurred. Today, in the convergence of technologies, computers, telephones, and cameras are no longer distinct entities, but can be found bundled into one small handheld gadget through the fusion of technology (McCain & Jukes, 2001). Through this fusion, communicating with students and colleagues has become more integrated, vastly expanding the means of feedback.
With such rapid technological advances, today's educators are dropped into what Jacque Ellul (1964) described as the intersection of tension between humanity and technology. This struggle with the latent and manifest, and intended and unintended consequences of technology exists as students and professors wrestle with new Web-enabled devices that seem to expand learning media at exponential rates. These include, but are not limited to, online courseware and portals, interactive media (edutainment), video and telephone conferencing, podcasting, vodcasting, phonecasting, instant messaging, blogging, moblogging, linklogging, vlogging, and photologging.
This new technology facilitates greater flexibility and customization in the learning process. For example, combining metatagging and object tagging with some of these media automates the process in highly specialized ways that create cost and human resource efficiencies. Other advances supporting increased efficiency in communities of practice include knowledge management, learning objects, and electronic performance support systems (EPSS).
Instructional designer Don Morrison (2004) demonstrated how the aforementioned learning channels can be established within parameters and policies that most appropriately align with the primary strengths and weaknesses of each medium. He noted that among others, cost, time constraints, delivery speed, and infrastructure help determine appropriate application. Morrison's work also pointed to ways in which educational models can be designed to marry traditional and online means of moving from the simple to the more complex methods of learning.
Citing that the mix of traditional and online learning depends upon the student, the context, the available channels, and the time constraints in which the education takes place (Morrison, 2004), one such marriage is blended learning. Although the typical example of blended learning evokes images of traditional classes combined with an online component, this is not the only alternative. While images of the traditional precipitate thoughts of coaching and mentoring, collegial relationships, seminar participation, and workshops, and the virtual environment conjures visions of referencing manuals and online communities, any combination of these means constitute blended delivery.
From blended to distance learning, these new electronic forms of communication have forced a paradigm shift in education. This move is most avidly seen in distance learning, where even the terminology has shifted from distance education to online or e-learning. This new term more clearly indicates the way in which learners can use computer-mediated hypertext multimedia communication to easily collaborate in a continuous integration of knowledge and social capital.
future trends
As previously discussed, the rapid growth of technology continues to herald unprecedented opportunity for distance learning, and when wed to a constructivist approach, it presents opportunities for online pedagogy that can transcend traditional modes of education. From this marriage emerges three primary factors that define the new online pedagogy: (a) community building through networks that cross time and geographic boundaries, (b) structure through technology that manages, and (c) collaborative opportunities for shared knowledge and wisdom in response to the complexities of a global society (Reid-Martinez, 2006).
community
As Bocarnea et al. (2006) note, today's technologies launch a new paradigm of online learning and pedagogy, which has the potential to be communal in nature. Primarily, these technologies allow for interaction between students and professors, students and peers, and the broader community in unprecedented ways. For example, Wojnar (2002) and Young (2002) confirm that students in Web-based courses have greater instructor access through e-mail and e-learning platforms than they would often have in traditional lecture halls.
In fact, Young (2002) highlights the differences between the boundaries embedded in his traditional face-to-face class and that which he encounters online. This suggests that guidelines and boundaries following good business practices are essential to prevent online instructors and students from feeling overwhelmed by the 24-7 opportunity for interaction. As this suggests, these technologies provide opportunities for networking and building strong virtual learning communities that can transcend geographic boundaries and extend far beyond the duration of the student's formal education.
In addition, this communal nature of the virtual learning environment provides opportunity for students to bring their local community context into the learning experience in direct ways as well as immediately allowing them to apply what they have learned through their study. For example, students in leadership programs can be employed full-time in leadership positions and take their learning experiences directly into their work environment through well-designed course assignments. The professor is no longer someone whom the student must wait to see in class later in the week, but rather is readily available in the e-learning platform to serve as consultant and mentor as the student applies the principles studied that week. The professor has become the "guide on the side." This triangulation of student-professor-content points to the need for well-designed learning experiences developed from a constructivist perspective to meet the challenges and needs of today's students. Indeed, uniting the new technology with this approach appears to be a marriage made in heaven for contemporary students working in a rapidly changing and highly demanding global environment.
Unfortunately, this opportunity for such rich learning experiences is not always the case. For example, Schweizer (1999) noted that many online courses have been cited as unsound, lacking pedagogical clarity and adequate design. While some scholars such as Wang and Newlin (2002) make certain that pedagogy guides the design of their online courses, all too often technology rather than pedagogy has driven the computer-mediated learning experience instead of simply serving as the delivery mechanism.
In fairness to contemporary educators, the rapid advancement of technology creates a moving-target challenge for course developers who often find themselves reacting to the technological advances rather than proactively establishing the technology's relationship to the learning process. As Bocarnea et al. (2006) observe, theory typically "follows technology in desperate attempts to describe the impact of an already existing and rapidly fading.technological reality" (p. 385).
This suggests that staying focused on strategy and content design remains the dominant challenge for curriculum developers. Online pedagogy, the science of and about online education, provides perspective to assist the developers in focusing and maintaining the balance necessary for creating excellent online learning experiences. Furthermore, online pedagogy allows designers to be proactive as they can be in constant reflection and introspection about the technological processes involved in online learning.
Structure
Heralded just over 14 years ago by Negroponte (1995), the information age is collapsing on itself as the amount of online information is becoming unbearable. After the scramble to have everything digitized, the primary challenge today is how to create meaningful knowledge from such massive amounts of data. The quality of knowledge in contrast to quantity drives the heart of this concern. In light of this overload, structure is essential to online knowledge development.
Related to the structure is the development of open-source initiatives. While most often understood as software that is open for use and modification by the public, the phrase has become a recognized attribute ascribed to multiple endeavors, such as knowledge-building. The open-source nature of online initiatives pushes a new model for managing learning and knowledge-building through the communal process. It allows diverse individuals from various locations to combine information from multiple sources into distributed knowledge networks. Through this open-source structure, participants interact to share experiences and knowledge, thereby expanding their awareness of new concepts and differing approaches to problem solving as they modify the information in the open-source environment and redistribute it back to fellow participants (Bocarnea et al., 2006).
As this suggests, through interaction, participants build complex webs of knowledge in the open-source cyberspace. The technology provides the structure to create and maintain webs of knowledge, and it also grants ease of access globally to those in the public interested in that knowledge. In the process, knowledge is given away to others who in turn begin to use it in multiple ways while beginning the next evolution of knowledge development as they add to and transform the knowledge base they accessed through the open-source structure. With this transformation is the transference of power and control that becomes less centrist and more distributed globally.
Collaborative Knowledge-Building
As noted above, interaction is the key for the development of open-source knowledge-building. While scholars such as Cederblom and Paulsen (2001) posit learning as a behavioral change, others hold that it is simply when learners meet needs and establish goals for attaining knowledge (Ponton & Carr, 2000). Referring to this process as an implied contract, Keirns (1999), along with the above scholars, suggests that if online learning is used, structure is critical to allow students to advance in their knowledge.
The design of the online course becomes the principal structure to assure learners' goals are achieved. In that course design, structured interaction must be at the core. Not only does this interaction provide for knowledge development, but Blair (2002) claims that online threaded discussions can serve as primary places for faculty to prompt students' critical thinking. Furthering this thought in comparison with on-campus courses, she cites that online learners exemplify a greater degree of reflection and depth in their questions. This is likely because in most cases, online learners have more time to process and research their responses. Moreover, the delay in feedback in the asynchronous learning environment also allows learners to be less inhibited, to take greater chances, and thus to offer more in-depth analysis (Smith, Ferguson, & Caris, 2002).
One way of establishing structured interaction is through required dialogue participation (Klemm, 1998). As earlier noted, the online classroom creates greater access for participation (Cummings, 1998; Wojnar, 2002; Young, 2002), which Blair (2002) suggests often forges stronger relationships due to increased interaction frequency. This increased interaction also relates to higher learner commitment due to the socialization the learner goes through to be a participant in the knowledge-building process. Thus, learner perception of the degree of interaction plays an important role in student achievement, satisfaction, and course quality (Roblyer & Ekhaml, 2000).
Again, in the collaborative nature of the constructivist online culture, interaction perpetually occurs between learners and content, learners and instructors, and learners and peers, with each type of interaction reinforcing and fostering collaborative knowledge-building for both the learner and the faculty. With this in mind, online course designers must decide how to best structure courses capitalizing on this collaborative interaction.
conclusion
As the above suggests, the advent of online learning as a new form of distance education has not just provided opportunity to disseminate information in a new medium, but it has radically adjusted the distance learning paradigm in terms of distribution methods, community-building, and pedagogy. The use of 21st century technology is rapidly closing the gap of the communication immediacy essential in developing communities of practice for knowledge-building. With their open-source networks, these new technologies encourage and actively support constructivist pedagogy in the new distance education paradigm. Most of all, distance education can now fulfill its greatest potential, which is to reach every learner who desires to participate in the knowledge-building process. The result is a democratization of education not previously seen, allowing for shifts in power and control throughout societies.
key terms
Autonomous Learning: The process in which individuals take responsibility for their learning.
Collaborative Learning: The process in which individuals negotiate and generate meaning and solutions to problems through shared understanding.
Computer-Assisted Instruction: The computer serves as the "teacher" by structuring information delivered to the human user.
Computer-Based Conferencing: E-mail, interactive messaging, and group conference support systems.
Constructivism: An approach in which students share responsibility for their learning while negotiating meaning through active participation in the co-creation of shared understanding within the learning context.
Distributed Knowledge: Information dispersed throughout a community of practice and not held by any one individual.
Informatics: Online public access libraries and interactive remote databases.
Interaction: Mutual communicative exchange between individuals.