A model for synchronous learning using the Internet

Transcription

1 nnovation in Education and eaching ntemational ol. 42, No. 2, May 2005, pp j Routledae model for ynchronou learning uing the nternet Nian-hing Chen^, Hiu-Chia Ko^, Kinhuk * and aiyu in ^National un Yat-en Univerity, aiwan; Maey Univerity, New Zealand mprovement in technology and the increaing bandwidth of nternet acce have led to an increaing popularity for ynchronou olution for intruction. Not only do they provide aving in term of time and cot, in many ituation they can alo outperform both aynchronou online intruction and traditional facc-to-face education. However, until now, the lack of a pedagogical framework for ynchronou intruction ha limited the effective ue of thi medium. hi paper decribe an online ynchronou learning model that aim to provide guideline for teacher and tudent to conduct ynchronou intruction. he model provide a broad range of cenario to uit individual requirement and cover both ynchronou lecturing and 'office-hour' mode. ntroduction raditional ditance education ha typically been contrained by the limitation of time and location, making it difficult for intructor and tudent to perform educational activitie atifactorily (auve, 2000). Recent advance in ditance education, however, provide a bridge between teacher and tudent and enable them to communicate more eaily and interact more flexibly. n recent year, nternet technologie have matured ignificantly. hee advance, combined with the nternet' inherent characteritic of information availability through unretricted time and pace, mean that it can now provide a uniform acce medium for both aynchronou and ynchronou learning. he technological advance include not only the rapid growth of information technologie but alo the increaing availability of broadband nternet acce, hence olving the problem of inufficient bandwidth. hi technological growth ha alo reulted in the development of a variety of application for online learning. For example, teacher can now ue ynchronou or aynchronou intruction method in their coure a deemed appropriate. Furthermore, one of the traditional teaching activitie, namely 'office-hour' (where tudent meet their teacher in order to get individual repone to their querie) can now be * Correponding author. dvanced eaming echnologie Reearch Centre, nformation ytem Department, Maey Univerity, rivate Bag , almcrton North, New Zealand. kinhuk@ieee.rg N (print)/n (online)/05/ <: 2005 aylor & Franci roup td DO: /

2 182 N.. Chen etal performed over the nternet, reulting in enhanced and timely learning interaction and better online claroom management. Currently, the majority of reearch decribed in the literature ha focued on the aynchronou mode of intruction, with very little dicuion on the iue related to online ynchronou intruction. he literature that doe exit on ynchronou intruction motly focue on the implementation apect rather than on the pedagogical iue. he main objective of thi paper i to dicu the pedagogical apect of online ynchronou learning. ynchronou learning model i then propoed. n addition, a new method to perform online intruction and online 'office-hour' activitie i alo propoed. Finally, two cae tudie of online ynchronou intruction and 'office-hour' activitie are dicued to demontrate the feaibility of the propoed method. Background he mode of interaction for online intruction can be categoried into aynchronou and ynchronou. ynchronou learning allow the equence of interaction between a teacher and a tudent to happen at different time. 'Reearch on the effectivene of aynchronou online learning, which include cae tudie, tudent/educator urvey, and behavioural analyi, ha indicated that there i a need for learning tool that upport ynchronou communication' (Hotcomm, 2003). ynchronou learning require the preence of both partie at the ame time for teaching and learning to take place (t-analyi, 2001). t i therefore alo referred to a 'live' or real-time intruction. Due to the limitation of network bandwidth and le complex technology involved in aynchronou learning (Hotcomm, 2003), the tool available for aynchronou learning outnumber thoe for ynchronou learning; for the latter, the implet form uually include only a variation of ome form of text-baed chat facility (cavo et al., 1998). t eem, on the urface, that ynchronou learning impoe more retriction on both teacher and tudent in the time dimenion, but it imilarity to traditional claroom interaction in both time and pychological dimenion endow it with many benefit that aynchronou learning would have difficulty in achieving. he trend of online learning i toward a blended mode combining aynchronou and ynchronou delivery, which increae flexibility. Without ynchronou learning thi blended mode would not be poible. here are till ome intance in the literature reflecting the ue of ynchronou learning method by educator. For example, ynchronou learning wa applied in the learning of probability theory in a imulation tool called Kana (canlon et al., 1997). hi provided a 2D virtual pace for all the tudent to move around and meet other, and facilitated real-time link among the tudent, uch a video, audio and hared application, o that the tudent can form group and work with each other. ynchronou learning wa alo applied in the learning of a computational cience coure uing NO (cavo et al., 1998). hi wa a Java-baed collaborative tool that included a hared brower, a whiteboard, 2D/3D chat tool, and enabled two-way video and audio treaming. ynchronou learning ha been conidered a a olution for the difficultie encountered in ditant muic education where non-verbal and ynchronou interaction i critical for the ucce of learning (Ruippo, 2002). he mot important advantage of ynchronou learning are a follow:

3 ynchronou leaming uing the ntemet 183 mmediate feedback can be provided to tudent o that they can immediately correct themelve or trengthen what they have learned. hi i epecially eential for activitie uch a group deciion making, brain torming and analyi (Hotcomm, 2003). ncreaed level of motivation and an obligatiofi to be preent and participate which in turn would increae tudent involvement in learning activitie, hence reulting in better learning experience (t-analyi, 2001). he ytem identified above upport ynchronou learning only in term of technical functionality. Kana (canlon ei al., 1997) only provided a virtual pace with ynchronou collaboration tool o that tudent could get together freely. imilarly, NO (cavo et al..^ 1998) included ome ynchronou collaboration tool to convert a large repoitory of digital teaching material to online ynchronou coure. However, ince thee ytem achieved poitive reult by the mere incluion of ynchronou collaboration tool, it i not hard to ee how the benefit of ynchronou learning could be multiplied if an appropriate pedagogical framework wa available to analye ynchronou learning ituation in different dimenion. Evidence i alo available in the literature to upport the fact that ynchronou intruction uing the ntemet not only facilitate the tak of a traditional face-to-face learning environment, but alo ha ome ditinct advantage over the conventional approache. hee advantage can be grouped into three major categorie: logitical, intructional and economic (Hannum, 2001). ogitical advantage have to do with cae of ditribution and ue. he greatet logitical advantage of online ynchronou intruction perhap i it flexible, ditributed delivery that allow learner and intructor to take part in a learning/intruction proce from any geographic location. n obviou intructional advantage of online ynchronou intruction i the ability of learner to interact with rich multimedia reource (McManu, 1996), which i virtually impoible to achieve in face-to-face intruction. Of coure, it i not neceary to have all multimedia element in all leon, but when ued appropriately, thee element enhance intruction and leaming (Bagui, 1998). n additional benefit of online ynchronou intruction over aynchronou learning i that it alo eliminate the cot related to travel and time away from home or workite (Hannum, 2001), while till providing immediate interaction among teacher and tudent. ynchronou intruction alo allow team teaching where expert from different part of the world could teach together without having to pend time and money in travel and other uch non-educationally related activitie. n the next ection, a model for ynchronou learning that can erve a a pedagogical framework i propoed. he model contain everal mode uitable for different educational ituation. model for ynchronou learning ynchronou leaming employ videoconferencing and other multimedia technique to allow teacher and tudent to interact with each other at the ame time even if they are not at the ame place. ynchronou learning management ytem (M) uch a the National un Yat-en Cyber Univerity (NYU-CU) and K12 Digital chool are now available (Chen, 1997, 2000). hee ytem facilitate variou functionalitie that are crucial to ynchronou leaming. For intance, a digital whiteboard provide many function for teacher to explain coure content, and a roll-call book help teacher mark the attendance regiter. n addition, M alo

4 184 N.. Chen el a\. provide dicuion room that allow tudent to ak quetion and hare idea online. During the dicuion period, teacher can oberve the interaction among tudent and the dicuion content of the whole cla, and give tudent appropriate upport whenever needed. n order to prevent the problem of ditraction during the coure program, teacher can alo ak tudent to anwer ome quetion by text or audio. ll uch converation along with coure program and content can be recorded uing tool uch a nicani-ive (Chen & Huang, 2002) and made available to the tudent for review either after completion of the cla or in the form of coure material for aynchronou learning. hi poibility doe not exit in traditional faceto-face teaching. ynchronou delivery can therefore provide a far greater variety of teaching mode. Depite the varied benefit of ynchronou learning, the lack of pedagogical reearch in thi area ha meant that effective online management technique are till to be developed for the variou activitie that mimic traditional intruction uch a lecture and 'office-hour'. n thi regard, an online ynchronou learning model i propoed that claifie variou poible ynchronou learning mode. By conidering how a traditional face-to-face intructional proce could be facilitated in a correponding ynchronou manner uing the nternet, five dimenion of the model can be identified. hee are: role (teacher, tudent), participant (individual, group), venue (pecific, any), interaction (one-way, two-way) and delivery (playback, live). hee are hown in able 1. n online ynchronou learning activitie, there are two major 'role' player: teacher and tudent. Both teacher and tudent are expected to ue the teaching and learning environment flexibly and freely; the only requirement for them i that they hould be uing the online claroom at the ame time. hey can be ituated anywhere, either in their own environment in any part of the world or in a pecific laboratory location provided by the educational intitution. Hence, the 'venue' dimenion can be either any or pecific. f people are ituated in their own environment, then they participate within the condition impoed by the environment, uch a ditraction due to family at home, or ditraction due to phone call and knock-on-the-door at the office. n a laboratory location, people might participate in group with phyical interaction poible with their peer. herefore, the 'participant' dimenion include individual and group. he intruction in ynchronou environment can either be one-way, jut a a broadcat of the lecture, or two-way with interaction between teacher and tudent and even communication among tudent. herefore the 'interaction' dimenion can be one-way or two-way. Finally, the 'delivery' dimenion include the way in which the coure material i delivered to the tudent: live, video-on-demand (OD) and hybrid. When teacher lecture remotely in real time, the delivery i referred to a live mode. f teacher opt to play the pre-recorded video, either of themelve or of other expert, then thi contitute the OD playback delivery mode. Of coure, teacher may alo employ a combination of thee two mode to provide better flexibility, hence the hybrid mode. able 1 ummarie the main facet of the ynchronou learning model. Each cell of thi table repreent one ynchronou learning mode. he model i intended to provide option for teacher in term of poible mode once they have identified one or more contraint in their teaching ituation.

5 ynchronou leaming uing the ntemet 185 able 1. Facet of the online ynchronou learning model Dimenion Mode Role articipant enue nteraction Delivery Key: Role:, tudent;, teacher. articipant:, group;, individual. enue:, any;, pecific. nteraction: 1, one-way; 2, two-way. Delivery:, live;, playback. n order to illutrate the application of the model, an online ynchronou live intruction mode and an 'office-hour' activity mode have been deigned. nitially, in the online ynchronou live intruction mode, teacher perform the role of teaching material editor imilar to traditional teaching. he ource of the coure material include a large variety that contain lecture that were recorded by the teacher themelve or other, material from publiher (uch a book, film and teaching manual), CD and content that i available in the public domain

6 186 N.-. Chen etal eaching content ubliher MateriaJ from expert Material from nternet and teaching unit eaclier./" Unit dditional content attern of Figure 1. eaching material editing tak on the nternet. hi approach enure the haring and reue of the teaching reource (ee Figure 1). cenario 1: online ynchronou live intruction mode During the online intruction tak, through the aitance of a ynchronou leaming management ytem and videoconferencing tool, teacher and tudent interact ynchronouly. hi kind of teaching mode i called online ynchronou live intruction ('live' becaue the teacher orchetrate the intruction proce in real-time; it i not a pre-determined equence). Beide playing the previouly edited teaching material, teacher can alo give additional explanation of the content uing annotation tool uch a free-hand writing, drawing line, circle or rectangle, and o on. fter a teaching egment finihe, teacher can either ak tudent if they have any quetion, or aign a quetion and ak tudent to dicu it in an online chat room for a brief period of time and reply back. f tudent have any other querie, teacher can give another explanation or play back other teaching material to addre tudent' confuion. Once the querie have been anwered, teacher can continue playing the next teaching material online and undertaking other teaching tak (ee Figure 2). eacher in online ynchronou intruction ituation are expected to create a leaming environment that i intereting for the learner and which uit their learning proce. he diverified and intereting nature of online ynchronou intruction not only enhance the learner' interet and involvement but alo allow them to perceive that they are not alone and that there are many other learning partner around them (uckman, 2004). he interaction with peer and tutor enable the re-evaluation of the information perceived through aociation, integration, validation and appropriation, thu allowing deep learning to take place (rmitt et al.,

7 ynchronou learning uing the nternet 187 eacher initiate teaching eacher ue material to explain or play the previouly recorded video tudent ynchronouly learn online tudent ak quetion eacher aign quetion tudent dicu online eacher repond tudent repond tudent interact with each other eacher give additional explanation tudent ak any further quetion eacher proceed to next unit Figure 2. Online ynchronou live intruction tak 2002). Hence, the tudent in the online ynchronou intruction mode benefit from intereting and high-level interaction with many online learning partner, reulting in a more participative and better-quality learning proce managed by a human teacher (Rohan, 2002). he reue and haring of teaching reource alo enure that the teaching load on the teacher i reduced.

8 188 N.-. Chert Qtal cenario 2: online ynchronou 'office-hour' activity mode raditional 'office-hour' activity allow tudent to dicu their quetion with teacher on a one-to-one bai. herefore, thi tak i a important in the online leaming environment a it i in traditional method of intruction. 'Office-hour' activity can be claified according to two dimenion: media richne of dicuion content (text, audio and video) and the role of uer (teacher,, tudent and teaching aitant). he claification i hown in able 2. hi how that there are nine feaible 'officehour' interaction mode in the model. he ymbol'' mean that interaction i by way of text; '' mean that interaction i by mean of audio however, uer can combine text and audio if they wanted to. he ymbol ' indicate that teacher, tudent and teaching aitant employ video to interact with each other but they could alo combine text and audio. Becaue of it lower bandwidth requirement, text i more acceible than audio, and audio i more acceible than video. From the network bandwidth limitation and the cot point of view, it i natural for uer to ue text more than audio and video, and audio more than video. ince teacher have intitutional equipment available, it i more likely for teacher to have higher pecification equipment available than tudent and even teaching aitant. repreented in able 2, the cenario in Mode 1 i mot likely to happen even if it i the leat deirable cenario due to the leat poible channel of interaction (only text). On the other hand, the cenario in Mode 9 i leat likely, due to the requirement of the highet pecification equipment, depite the fact that it provide the mot channel of interaction (text, audio and video). t hould be noted that able 2 repreent only thoe mode that are found feaible in our experience of running online 'office-hour' at NYU-CU for the lat five year (Chen, 1997). n the firt mode in able 2, text i ued a the way of the interaction. t i imilar to the dicuion that take place in the online chat room. he role in the dicuion room include teacher, tudent and teaching aitant. he third mode mean that the tudent employ text wherea the teacher and teaching aitant ue both text and audio for the interaction. hi mode ha more interaction than the firt one. n the fifth mode, the tudent employ text and the teacher and teaching aitant ue text, audio and video to communicate. n thi mode, the interaction among tudent, teacher and able 2. ynchronou 'office-hour' mode ued in the coure Mode tudent eaching aitant eacher ool ued Ued tatu Chat room nicam-ive nicam-ive nicam-ive nicam-ive JoinNet JoinNet JoinNet JoinNei Ye Ye No No Ye No Ye Ye Ye Key:, text;, audio (with poibility of text);, video (with poibility of text and audio).

9 ynchronou leaming uing the nternet 189 teaching aitant i more varied. For example, if tudent' quetion are of an operational nature, teacher can chooe to how the tep of the operation by ynchronouly tranmitting the image or video of the function performed in thoe tep wherea teaching aitant can follow up with audio communication. Furthermore, with the help of aitant tool, uch a Join- Net (httpiz/wvi-w.homemeeting.com/) or nicam-ive ( teacher could ue their computer a the blackboard. n the ixth mode, the tudent, teacher and teaching aitant all employ audio to communicate. n the eighth mode, the tudent ue audio and the teacher and teaching aitant ue video. Finally in the ninth mode, the tudent, teacher and teaching aitant all ue video for interaction. Now we hall decribe two concrete cae tudie to illutrate how to achieve the online ynchronou live intruction and 'office-hour' activitie in a cyber univerity environment. Cae tudie and evaluation n order to tet the ynchronou learning model decribed in thi paper, we implemented it in a Computer Network and nternet coure at the NYU-CU in aiwan ( n thi coure, we employed the online ynchronou live intruction mode and mixed many different 'office-hour' mode to conduct the coure. he intructional tool we ued were nicam-ive (Chen & Huang, 2002) and JoinNet; the function of thee tool were integrated within the NYU-CU in aiwan. he whole teaching proce wa completed ynchronouly. more detailed decription of thee two example of the online ynchronou learning model i given below. t hould be noted that the attempt here i not to generalie the reult over international tudent population but to verify the feaibility of the model. Further future tudie, focued on a divere tudent population, would be needed in order to ae the generaliation iue. Cae tudy 1: live intruction mode We deployed the online ynchronou live intruction mode uing a tool called nicam-ive (erhaart, 2003). hi tool provide many function uitable for ynchronou teaching. For example, it enable teacher to ue their computer creen a a blackboard to explain coure content and provide 'canva' function uch a a painting bruh and blackboard eraer to be ued on the blackboard. n addition, all of the coure preentation and interaction procee can be recorded ynchronouly and can be provided to tudent for review after the cla i over. he ynchronou learning environment wa implemented within the Cyber Univerity, and variou tool (uch a the camera, microphone and handwriting board) were developed in thi ytem. hen, the exiting teaching material wa converted into HM format and put into the environment o that tudent could acce it prior to the tart of the teaching. eventy tudent enrolled in the Computer Network and nternet coure. he duration of the coure wa one emeter (four month). here wa one intructor and three teaching aitant. Mot of the tudent were working adult. More detail about thee tudent are included in able 3. n order to attend the online ynchronou lecture, tudent had to log into the Cyber Univerity and enter the Computer Network and nternet coure room. he teacher could then regiter their attendance through the roll-call area at any time. he teacher then delivered the teaching

10 190 N.. Chen etal. able 3. rofile of participant (n = 70) ariable Category ercentage ender Marital tatu Maior Reidence ge Job tatu Degree Occupation Year after graduation Male Female Married ingle -related Non--related outhern aiwan Central aiwan Northern aiwan Eatern aiwan or above -related job Non -related job Unemployed Mater College Junior college Full-time tudent art-time tudent Full-time employee art-time employee Other or above eion. ll the teacher' action, uch a typing word, live image, and the teacher' voice were recorded and delivered to the online tudent' computer ynchronouly through the media erver. Moreover, if tudent had any quetion, they could dicu thee uing text chat in the dicuion room. During the ynchronou eion the teacher could navigate to the dicuion room to ee whether tudent had any querie. Overall, the teacher had control over building an intereting learning environment, including the way in which the cla hould be run and managed. Cae tudy 2: 'office-hour' he ynchronou online 'office-hour' mode that were employed in the above coure are hown in able 2. he firt mode wa employed to perform the textual dicuion. he teacher,

11 ynchronou leaming uing the ntemet 191 tudent and teaching aitant were all required to enter into the dicuion room and they were aked to pecify individual colour for the text they typed in order to eparate the divere identitie. hi made it eay to dicriminate between the quetion aked by the tudent and the anwer provided by the teacher and the teaching aitant. n Mode 2-5, the main tool ued wa nicam-ive, which allowed teacher to enable or diable hi/her live image from the CCD. Diabling the live image contituted Mode 2, wherea when the teacher enabled the live image, Mode 5 came into operation, imilar to the online ynchronou live intruction mode. n Mode 6-9, the main tool ued wa JoinNet. hi allowed online videoconferencing. n thi ituation, the teacher acted in the role of the hot of the meeting, where all tudent and teaching aitant could join the meeting to dicu quetion and hare idea. long a tudent had a CCD camera and microphone (or jut a microphone) attached to their computer, they could ak to peak. he hot could decide who hould talk at any given time. JoinNet alo enabled group of four people to dicu at the ame time. n addition. t alo provided the functionality to allow information haring, where everyone could upload their document to the whiteboard and dicu their querie and hare idea. he teacher could alo upload hi/her teaching material in order to addre tudent' querie and to give any other additional explanation. When the tudent had acce to only a microphone. Mode 6, 7 and 8 were employed. But if the tudent had both microphone and CCD camera, then Mode 9 wa employed. mentioned before, we found that through Mode 6-9, tudent howed more willingne to ak quetion and dicu their querie with other. Evaluation of online ynchronou intruction n order to undertand tudent' leaming outcome and atifaction with online ynchronou live intruction, a urvey wa conducted in the above-mentioned Computer Network and nternet coure in Out of 70 tudent, 50 tudent participated in the urvey. able 3 how the profile of the participant. he tudent were given a quetionnaire to evaluate their learning experience at the end of the coure (ee ppendix 1). hi appendix alo how the percentage repone to each quetion in the quetionnaire. tudent were alo invited to give free-form comment. ccording to the urvey reult, 97% of tudent reponded that they were atified with the online ynchronou live intruction mode and 89% of tudent reponded that the live intruction mode could provide very good interaction among teacher and tudent. Furthermore, coniderable poitive feedback wa alo found in the form of free-form comment, for example (tranlated from Chinee): can feel that all participant have a high commitment to thi live cla even when we are all logged-in NYU-CU from different location. ive intruction enable me to concentrate more; actually it i not eay to be ditracted becaue teacher could call anyone' name for repone to quetion. like thi kind of live intruction mode. he feeling i jut like went back to chool for cla. prefer live intruction mode, becaue the feeling i jut like in a real cla with the atmophere of faceto-face lecture and the opponunity for interaction i higher.

12 192 N.. Chen etal ome tudent did experience difficultie like 'my computer i not powerful enough to carry multimedia application'. ome of them were uing dial-up acce with only 50 kbp bandwidth which i impoible for the nicam-ive lecture. ometime the network traffic caued o much congetion that they could not hear the audio very clearly. ome found navigating multiple window at the ame time omewhat annoying. hee comment were taken on board while developing later verion of the tool ued in the intruction. Baed on the urvey reult hown above, we believe thi kind of online ynchronou live intruction mode and online 'office-hour' activitie provide excellent learning outcome and atifaction for online coure. Concluion ynchronou leaming i becoming more and more important with the improvement in technologie uch a broadband ntemet acce and video compreion technique. hi paper ha decribed an online ynchronou learning model which attempt to claify different online ynchronou learning mode. We have alo decribed and dicued the deign and implementation of two example of thi approach; the online ynchronou live intruction mode and the online 'office-hour' mode. n our example, we ued nicam-ive and JoinNet a teaching tool. eacher could ue any other tool they were familiar with provided thoe tool contained imilar function to upport them in running and managing the ynchronou intruction program. n term of future reearch, work i required to enhance the functionality of the ynchronou leaming management ytem (M) and build a more flexible, eay and convenient leaming environment for teacher and tudent. he effect of tudent' learning tyle and teacher' teaching tyle are alo ignificant factor that need to be conidered in order to improve the tudent' leaming procee (Kinhuk et al.^ 2001). cknowledgement hi reearch wa upported by the National cience Council, aiwan (NC l X3). Note on contributor Nian-hing Chen ha been a profeor with the Department of nformation Management, National un Yat-en Univerity, aiwan ince He been trongly involved in the development of the aiwan cademic Network (Net) for more than 14 year. Hi reearch area include e-learning, knowledge management and the ue and development of online and wirele technologie to enhance learning. Hiu-Chia Ko i a h.d. tudent in the Department of nformation Management at National un Yat-en Univerity in aiwan. Her reearch area include knowledge management, e-leaming, information ecurity and electronic commerce. Kinhuk i ociate rofeor of nformation ytem at Maey Univerity, New Zealand. He alo direct the dvanced eaming echnology Reearch Centre. Hi reearch interet

13 ynchronou leaming uing the nternet 193 include adaptivity in e-leaming and mobile learning. He i the editor of the Educational echnology & ociety journal and eaming echnology Newletter. aiyu in i a potgraduate reearcher at the dvanced eaming echnologie Reearch Centre in Maey Univerity, New Zealand. Hi reearch interet include tudent modelling, adaptive hypermedia ytem and intructional deign. He i an aitant editor of the Educational echnology & ociety journal. Reference rmitt,,, lack, F., reen,. & Beer, M. (2002) he development of deep learning during a ynchronou collaborative on-line coure, paper preented at the CC 2002 Conference, Boulder, CO. vailable online at: (acceed 30 pril 2004). Bagui,. (1998) Reaon for increaed leaming uing multimedia, Joumai of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 7(1), Chen, N.. (1997) National un Yat-en Univerity Cyber Univerity. vailable online at: cu,nyu.edu.tw/ (acceed 18 pril 2004). Chen, N,, (2000) K12 Digital chool. vailable online at: (acceed 18 pril 2004). Chen, N.. & Huang,. Y. (2002) pplying evolutionary prototyping model in developing tream-baed lecturing ytem, Joumai of nteractive Educational Multimedia, 4, Hannum, W. (2001) Web-baed training: advantage and limitation, in: B. H. Khan (Ed.) Web-baed training (Englewood Cliff, NJ, Educational echnology ublication), 13-20, Hotcomm (2003) ynchronou tool and the emerging online leaming model. vailable online at: (acceed 18 pril 2004). t-analyi (2001) ynchronou v aynchronou leaming. vailable online at: article.php?articleid=2236 (acceed 7 November 2004). Kinhuk, Hong, H., atel,., Oppermann, R, & Ruell, D. (2001) Role of human teacher in web-baed intelligent tutoring ytem, Joumai of Ditance eaming, 6(1), McManu,. F. (1996) Delivering intmction on the World Wide Web. vailable online at: (acceed 18 pril 2004). Rohan,. (2002) How one corporation got a charge out of e-leaming nternet review. vailable online at: www,cpnet.com/reprint/2002/02/eleaming.pdf (acceed 30 pril 2004). Ruippo, M. (2002) Muic tudie in ynchronou leaming environment. vailable online at: tutu/iion/aper/mattiruippo,pdf (acceed 18 pril 2004). auve,,. (2000) ue, challenge and altemative in teaching adult E (Don Mill, ON, Oxford Univerity re). canlon, E., O'bca,,, mith, R. B. & i, Y. (1997) upporting the ditributed ynchronou learning of probability: learning from an experiment, paper preented at the CC 97 Conference, vailable online at: (acceed 18 pril 2004). cavo,., Bemholdt, D. E., Fox,. C, Markowki, R,, McCracken, N. J. & odgomy, M. (1998) ynchronou leaming at a ditance experience with NO, paper preented at the C98 Conference. vailable online at: (acceed 18 pril ). erhaart, M. (2003) oftware review: nicam: developing tream baed teaching reource. Educational echnology & ociety, 6(4), , uckman, B. W. (2004) he effect of motivational caffolding on the effectivene of ditance leaming, paper preented at the ER Conference, an Diego, C. vailable online at: bttp://all.uccecenter.ohiotate.edu/reference/caffdit-rocra%20er%2004.htm (acceed 30 pril 2004).

14 194 N.. Chen etal ppendix tudent evaluation quetionnaire (originally in Chinee) tudent repone (%) tudent evaluation of ynchronou online coure D" D U 1. gained much benefit from quetion/repone raied by other tudent during the JoinNec office-hour 2. wa able to communicate effectively with teacher and clamate during the jfoitinei office-hour 3. JoittNet office-hour enabled the teacher [o more eaily anwer my quetion than in text-baed office-hour 4. t wa eaier to ak quetion by peaking than by text typing during the JainNct office-hour 5. wa able to concentrate more during nicam-ive in truction (lecture eion) than pre-recorded intruction (lecture) undertood the teacher' explanation hetter when we ued JoinNet office-hour than when we ued text-baed office-hour 7. articipating in/w/ttim-/i' 'intruction (lecture e ion) i much like panicipating in a traditional claroom 8. nicam-ive intruction (lecture eion) allowed me to make up clae mied and to review the whole intruction again and again 9. nicant-ive intruction (lecture eion) wa jut a ef- 10. articipating injom''f office-hour helped my learning 11. articipating in ^e nicam-ive lecture eion helped 12. Overall, wa atified with the quality of the nicam fective a traditional claroom intruction in thi coure my learning in thi coure ive intruction (lecture). leae alo explain your reaon in the open-ended text-area Overall, wa atified with the quality of the JO/H'^ of ,05 fice-hour. leae alo explain your reaon in the openended text-area "D = trongly diagree; D = diagree; U ~ unure (no commeni); = agree; - trongly agree.

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