Understanding Virtual Universities

Roy Rada

Description

All those involved in Higher Education are under pressure to familiarise themselves with the newest developments in Information Technology, and to understand the ways in which they can make use of these resources. The purpose of this book is to help academics from all disciplines to take full advantage of IT. Anticipating a future in which distance learning and virtual reality tutoring systems play a central role in university teaching, Roy Rada provides guidelines for making use of such technological opportunities. The chapters cover:

• distance learning for individual students

• groups in classrooms - focusing on interactive technology

• the university as a whole

• emerging market forces in Higher Education and training for industry

Unlike competing books that focus on specific aspects of the subject, Understanding Virtual Universities combines managerial, social and technical issues, to provide a comprehensive approach to Information Technology for Higher Education.

Preface

Introduction

Learning and Content

Teaching and Class

Administering Universities

New Marketing Opportunities

Conclusion

Exercises and Answers

Sujets

• Sciences appliquées
• Ingénierie
• Sciences appliquées
• Sciences appliquées
• Ingénierie
• Distance
• Cultural Studies
• General
• Engineering
• School
• Technology
• General officer
• Level
• Higher
• Sciences et techniques
• EDUCATION
• COMPUTERS

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841508139
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Understanding Virtual Universities
Roy Rada
Hardback Edition First Published in Great Britain in 2001 by
Intellect Books , PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
First Published in USA in 2001 by
Intellect Books , ISBS, 5824 N.E. Hassalo St, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644, USA
Copyright 2001 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
Editorial Consultant: Masoud Yazdani Copy Editor: Holly Spradling Production: Sally Ashworth, Robin Beecroft

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Electronic ISBN 1-84150-813-6 / Hardback ISBN: 1-84150-052-6
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Wiltshire
Contents
Preface
Contribution and Use
Audience
Knowledge Base and Author Experience
What is Covered and What Not
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Education in Cyberspace
Integration across Levels
The Culture of Universities
Learning and Content
Introduction
Learning and Pedagogy
Taxonomy of Learning Types, Learning by Doing, Pedagogy
Delivering Interactive Content
Historical Snapshot; Multiple-choice Questions; Directions in Testing; Intelligent Tutors; Virtual Reality Tutors; Meta-analysis; Hypertext versus Paper; System Standard
Producing Interactive Content
Regional Effort; Organizational Issues; Course Architecture and Life Cycle
Summary
Teaching and Class
Introduction
Groupware
Communication
Video Conferencing; Group Hypertext; Bulletin Boards; Multiple Channel
Virtual Classroom
System; Student Experiences; Teacher Costs; Other Cases
Studio Course
Studio Course Structure; Results
Efficiency and Peer-Peer Assessment
1996 and 1997 Version; 1998 Version
Meta-analysis
Conclusion
Administering Universities
Introduction
History of Universities and Technology
Medieval Times; 17th through 19th Century; 20th Century; Libraries and the Internet
Delivering Degrees
Distance Education Survey; Trends by Discipline; Trends by Date; An Online Degree; Open University; University of Maryland, College Park, USA
Running a University
A Model of Change; Budgets; Unbundling the Product; Quality Control
Producing University Information Systems
Generations; Different University Needs; All Purpose; Limited Systems; A Historical Example; A Common Architecture of Components; A Structure/Function Model
Digital Nervous System
New Marketing Opportunities
Using the Internet to Advertise
Educating Employees and Customers
Global Giants; Industry Patterns; Associate of Arts Degree in Telecommunications; Customers are Students
Brokers
The Model; School Company; Teacher Student; Catalogs and Auctions; Franchises and Consultants
Publishers
A Diverse Conglomerate; Specialty Publisher
Conclusion
Conclusion
Summary
Five-year Future
Thirty-year Future
Dialectics
Friction-Free Education
Epilogue
Exercises and Answers
Learning and Courseware
Learning and Pedagogy; Courseware Types; Courseware Production
Teaching and Classrooms
Groupware; Communication Channels; Asynchronous Classroom; Studio Course; Efficiency and Group Roles
Administering Schools
History; Delivering; Systems; Quality Control
New Marketing Opportunities
Employees; Brokers; Publishers
Conclusion
References
Index
Preface
Faculty and administrators in higher education need to convey clearly what they want information technology to do. Only after the appropriate models of education at various levels are adequately placed in the computer, can the computer help the people. Only faculty and administrators know what these models are. Educational activities might be conveniently divided into levels relating to students, teachers, administrators, and society. However, these levels have critical interactions with one another. All faculty and administrators live through these interactions routinely but tend to under-appreciate that computer support for education must also work across all levels. This book emphasizes this integration as no other book does.
On the one hand, the book is a design for a particular kind of change. This change involves reaching students online and helping faculty and staff to manage the educational process. Technology-enhanced education can change relations among students, teachers, administrators, and society. Space, time, and organizational boundaries assume a different character. Faculty and administrators need to understand what can be done online and how the integration of levels of activity is vital to long-run impact.
On the other hand, the book reviews how technology might be used in universities. The range of tools and methods that are germane to the academy is wide. What tools are appropriate for what problems in higher education?
The purpose of this book is to help academics take advantage of information technology. The book analyzes key issues in the relationship between information technology tools and higher education. Readers will learn what has happened and what is likely to happen and should be better able to make decisions about directions to take on the information superhighway.
Contribution and Use
The unique contribution of this book is its integration of the issues facing faculty and administrators. What knowledge in the computer will support the work of the academy? What can information technology do with this knowledge? The history and current activities are reviewed in order to predict the direction to be taken over the next ten years.
Readers might use the knowledge gained from this book to improve higher education. For the teacher this may mean contributing to the growing body of electronic content for students. The teacher may also want to adopt new tools and methods for managing classes. The staff of the university should be better able to support the work of teachers and to create an information infrastructure and process for the university that helps students and teachers.
Audience
The intended audience is university academics whether involved in teaching directly or in the support of teaching. The reader needs no particular background knowledge. Readers from all disciplines - humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, engineering, and the professions - could benefit. Teachers might be expected to want to improve their teaching, and staff might be concerned with the broad impact of information technology on their part of the organization. Staff could come from all service units or any academic department.
In addition to the audience of faculty and staff in higher education, this book could serve audiences interested in higher education but outside the academy itself. Publishers and information technologists have clients in higher education. Concerned citizens, government officials, and employers should know the policy issues. Higher education is mandated by society to perpetuate the culture of that society, and in the end all members of society have a vested interest in how higher education works.
Knowledge Base and Author Experience
The knowledge base for this book includes the vast literature on the subject. Material from various journals, magazines, books, conference proceedings, newsletters, and reports are reflected in the chapters. Most importantly, the Web has become the source of information for this book.
The author has degrees in psychology, medicine, and computer science. His research has focused on educational technology, and his research publications on this topic are extensive. Furthermore, the author has served in various administrative capacities in higher education, to include titles as Virtual University Academic Officer, Co-Director of a Center for Distance Education, Director of an online Master s Degree, and director of a project on faculty empowerment through common tools. The author is also a columnist for one educational technology journal and editor of another.
What is Covered and What Not
The book covers individual students learning, groups in classrooms, universities as organizations, and emerging market forces:
The chapter on individual learning relates theories of learning to content delivery and anticipates a strong, long-term future for intelligent, virtual reality tutoring systems.
This chapter on learning is followed by a chapter on teaching and the classroom. The new classroom will increasingly help students and teachers promote person-to-person mediated interactivity.
The chapter on universities concerns the delivery of degrees. Models of universities are advanced and related to the information technology that supports them. Quality control can be further supported in online universities.
The chapter on new markets focuses on the evolving marketplace, as reflected in employers of companies and brokers, such as publishers.
Each chapter calls for refined and extended models that are broadly accepted across the academy. Such models might also be called standards and support the development of information technology applications in education. The reader should see that ultimately the models must integrate individual learning, classroom teaching, and school administration. This book focuses on higher education. While training can be included under the heading of education, this book pays much less attention to skill-based training than to concept-oriented education. The book is relevant to education at the elementary, middle, and high school level, but the peculiar needs of kindergarten through high school education are not studied. This book is not intended as a thorough review of the relevant disciplines, such as computer science or pedagogy. Nor is a survey of existing commercial tools offered. Rather the book is intended to help people appreciate the importance of clear models and the interactions a