25 Years of Instructional Design in Distance Education: PLATO to Online

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1 25 Years of Instructional Design in Distance Education: PLATO to Online Rick L Shearer Director World Campus Learning Design The Pennsylvania State University Over the past twenty-five years, instructional design in distance education has been exciting, challenging, and sometimes frustrating. It has been exciting, as we have had several shifts in technologies and the introduction of new models like the Community of Inquiry. Challenging as every day in the past 10 years there has been a new tool, and frustrating as in the mid to late 90 s it felt like we had somehow started over, as the literature seemed to ignore the history of the field. However, across the past 25 years the basic tenets of instructional design have remained. We have looked to the ADDIE model, Gagne s (1992) nine events of instruction, Keller s (1987) ARCS model, and other theories to drive our designs. We have used the theoretical background of instructional design to assure students knew what the stated learning outcomes/objectives were, that solid instructional strategies and activities were in place that supported the learning objectives, and we assured that assessment activities matched these objectives. What has changed across the past 25 years is a move towards a more constructivist and authentic type of learning design, and the technologies we employ in our designs. Further, factors such as access, cost, scalability, and who creates content have changed over the years as the new technologies have emerged, and how we view distance education has changed from an independent model to a cohort group-based experience. This paper will briefly explore key technologies across the past twenty-five years and how they have impacted our designs for distance education. PLATO and Computer Based Education Twenty-five years ago the PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations) learning management system had a substantial installed base of users from higher education and K-12, governments, and utilities like the nuclear power providers. However, in the late 80 s use of the system started to fade as the field explored CD-ROMs, two-way interactive video, addition of listserves, and then in the mid 90 s the World Wide Web. In retrospect PLATO was a forerunner of our current learning management systems. The system provided for the inclusion of pre-written content, integration of quizzes and exams that were easily written by the faculty or designers, and included group discussion space and a synchronous chat tool which could be used by the instructor. Other tools included a grade book, announcements, and rostering capability. PLATO provided flexibility to faculty, who wanted to organize the content for their course(s), by providing a vast library of content written by experts in their field and contracted as work for hire. However, within PLATO it was complex to create your own content through the programming language Tutor. So with all the tools integrated into PLATO why did the field move away from the use of the product? First, PLATO in the mid-80s was still a mainframe based solution and was either a hosted solution or one installed on CDC mainframes. Both were expensive solutions. Second, in the late 80 s CDC (Control Data Corporation) was experiencing troubles and the future of PLATO was in question. Third, PLATO worked on a closed network system, and was a system that was location bound in terms of students needing to go to learning centers that had dumb terminals connected to the network. Also, by the late 80 s and early 90 s the technology focus had moved to new cutting edge technologies such as CD-ROMS, the new two-way interactive video systems, and a product that had instructional systems and educational technology programs a buzz, HyperCard. It was a time of exploration, a time to explore new technologies Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 1

2 for design, and a time where we had multiple delivery environments at our disposal. Some were location bound for students, like two-way interactive video, some were stand alone like the CBT and CBE environments, and others were an integration of these technologies and new communication tools like FirstClass. HyperCard, SuperCard, and Authorware In the late 80 s there was great excitement around a new product that the Apple Corporation had introduced HyperCard. HyperCard was magical for it s time as it allowed for easy integration of text, audio, video, and graphics; and allowed for hyperlinking between pages or HyperCard stacks. Content presentation was no longer linear and we could explore new design strategies that allowed us to map our designs to how we thought students might make a mind map about a topic. It also allowed us to integrate branching into our designs based on response patterns. HyperCard spawned similar tools like SuperCard and to some extent Authorware, but the downside to HyperCard and these other tools was: they were stand alone, single user experiences in most cases, and lead to some bad designs as people over used the new features such as hyperlinking. However, like all shiny new objects HyperCard lost it s luster as corporations introduced a tool that was to revolutionize learning and be a panacea for education Video-Teleconferencing. Two-Way Interactive Video Two-way interactive video or interactive video conferencing appeared on the scene in a big way around Universities across the nation and around the world were buying these expensive systems with the hope of being able to connect learners at remote locations to bring multiple sites into a single highly interactive classroom experience. However, as with any large class over 75 students the experience became a lecture and with over five sites it was almost impossible to manage the experience as an instructor. Further, it took a skilled instructor to make the learning experience really work and not have students at the remote site feel they were simply watching a truly boring television show. A downside to video conferencing in the early days was cost. The units at the low end could run $75,000 and they required ISDN lines (one or three depending on video quality) that were expensive to install and cost $0.50 to $1.50 per minute in the United States. Also, video only ran at frames per second so the quality was low, but workable as long as there wasn t a lot of motion at the instructing site. The systems also required very expensive video bridges or payment to bridge providers if an institution wanted to connect more than two sites at the same time. The upside for many was a class could occur with multiple sites and a single instructor with little change to how the faculty normally taught face-to-face. However, designers had to consider distribution of materials to the other sites, back-up plans for when the networks would have trouble (which was often), and they needed to work with the faculty to discuss ways to keep the remote students engaged in the learning event. Two-way interactive video had a substantial installed base in universities across the nation by the mid 1990 s, but it seemed by 1997 it was almost abandoned overnight when the first Learning Management Systems like WebCT hit the scene and we all turned our attention to how to use these new tools for distance delivery of our courses. While video conferencing is having a bit of resurgence, as costs have dropped below $10,000 for systems and transmission is free over IP networks, it still is not seen as a primary tool in the United States for distance education. Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 2

3 FirstClass and Listserves While we don t often think of Listserves and products like FirstClass as major distance education technologies they are important in the evolution of our course designs over the past 25 years. These tools were the precursor to our discussion forums and threaded discussions we rely on today in our online courses. They allowed us to think about the integration of dialogic discussions in our courses, different assessment strategies, and provided a wonderful addition to our video courses, print-based courses, or CD-ROM based courses. In many ways these tools broadened access for students and empowered them to agree, disagree, and reflect on other s thoughts. WWW and Learning Management Systems With the introduction of the World Wide Web in the mid 90 s we were drawn like flies to the blue glow of a bug light to a new integrated environment that worked on an open network. We quickly moved away from many of the tools we had been exploring and focused on the new learning management systems and in some ways behaved like distance education was new. Learning management systems over the past years have not changed dramatically. They provide the ability to present content in the form of HTML pages that can incorporate text, graphics, and video; they provide drop boxes for submission of assignments; they provide discussion forums; they provide quizzing/testing engines; and they provide grade books. However, if we look beyond these features what the learning management systems truly do is manage the student s in terms of rostering and in regards to how they move through the course. It could be argued that they are student management course systems and do not really manage learning on an individual basis. In the early days of the web and the LMS we tended to treat these systems as massive page-turners of electronic text. In many ways designers acted like we knew nothing about how to present content electronically and we tended to ignore past lessons learned about white space on the screen, font characteristics, and navigation and control as we overused the idea of hyperlinking. Also, over the years designers had been chastised for simply creating electronic page-turners that emulated print, but these lessons seemed to be ignored as we approached design in the learning management systems. However, the web and the learning management systems changed some fundamental aspects of distance education in terms of cost to end user for course materials and access to the courses by learners. It also changed the scalability part of the distance education equation (Shearer, 2004) as the new learning environments allowed for interaction with the instructor and other students, beyond what Holmberg (1983) viewed as guided didactic interaction with the written word. This change in scale meant that an instructor could only handle a relatively small number of students in a dialogic environment. This was very different from the print-based independent model that was built on large economies of scale to recover costs. The new environments also allowed an easier way for faculty to modify their content between semesters. Thus, the cost equation of distance education changed dramatically with the introduction of the web and learning management systems. While learning management systems have evolved slowly, it is only in the past 3 4 years that we have seen them come under fire as new social networking applications have hit the scene. In some ways these new systems have relegated the learning management systems to rostering, quizzing, and grade reporting tools as content has moved outside of the learning management systems. Web 2.0 Tools In the past few years with the explosion of what has been termed Web 2.0 applications or Social Networking tools designers, faculty, and students have had both new ways of presenting content and Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 3

4 interacting with the content, and new questions about how to best use these tools in their courses. Further, questions exist about which BLOG, Wiki, or video tool to use, and about issues of student privacy. These new tools hold interesting possibilities for the creation of content and learning environments, and have forced instructional designers to rethink our course designs, the place of the learning management systems in our course designs, and copyright and ownership issues. These new tools have lead us to the question of what is a course in the new world of distance education? Is it a structured event, is it a loose collection of course artifacts, or is it something where learning is constructed as a group experience with little structure at the beginning of the course. And most importantly what do students want in terms of a course and in terms of interactions with the instructor? These are all questions that are unfolding for instructional designers in distance education. What s Next? So what s next? In many ways we have come full circle and are back to some of the strengths that PLATO offered, in terms of the ability to select content from repositories hosted by education providers and publishers. We are exploring the idea of flexible design, that will give the faculty much more control over the learning environments, we are looking to develop content that is modular and available through OER systems, and we are looking at how to better integrate social networking tools. As we move towards the end of the first decade of the 21 st century we are on the verge of once again exploring better ways to meet the needs of our learners and faculty we serve, as instructional designers, through the integration of multiple technologies. As we move to a flexible design model we are once again changing the idea of cost around distance education in terms of course design and development. Flexible design and the new tools allow the faculty to take a more active role in the development of the course as the instructional designer becomes a guide to best practices and a guide/resource for how theory informs the practice of course design for distance education. The instructional designer is seen as less of a person that makes the web pages and sets things up in the learning management system, and more of a colleague in the design experience. Thus, the faculty may take on more of the actual development work and the courses may become much more dynamic, where sequence is modified as the course unfolds over the semester, where readings are added and deleted as new information comes to light, and where assessment strategies change to meet the needs of the students or perhaps an individual student. Key to the flexible designs is an increased level of interaction and engagement by the instructors, as there may be less pre-programmed guidance and advanced organizers built into the courses at the start. Also, similar to face-to-face courses until students gain access to the course they may known little about the course in terms of readings, number of exams, and types of assessments, as each course section may be different each semester. The new way we view instructional design and courses in distance education will not be the traditional course in a box approach, so aspects of cost, scalability, and access will change. Models of distance education like those presented by Keegan (1996) and Peters (1988) may no longer apply and may need to be challenged. New models in the literature will need to evolve and theories like Moore s (1980, 1993) Theory of Transactional Distance need to be tested to see if they still hold up to the new designs. References Gagne, R. M., Briggs, L.J., & Wager, W.W. (1992). Principles of instructional design (4th ed.). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers. Holmberg, B. (1983). Guided Didactic Conversation in Distance Education. In D. Stewart, D. Keegan, & B. Holmberg. (Eds.) Distance Education: International Perspectives (pp ). New York: St. Martin's Press. Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 4

5 Keegan, D. (1996). Foundations of distance education (3rd ed. Vol. 1). London: Routledge. Keller, J. M. (1987). Strategies for stimulating the motivation to learn. Performance & Instruction, 26(8), 1-7. Moore, M. G. (1980). Independent study. In R. D. Boyd, & J. W. Aps & Associates (Eds.), Redefining the Discipline of Adult Education (Vol. 5, pp ). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Moore, M. G. (1993). Theory of transactional distance. In D. Keegan (Ed.), Theoretical principles of distance education (Vol. 1, pp ). New York: Routledge. Peters, O. (1988). Distance teaching and industrial production: A comparative interpretation in outline. In D. Stewart, D. Keegan, & B. Holmberg (Eds.), Distance education: International perspectives. London: Routledge. Shearer, R. L. (2004). The distance education balance sheet: What are the measures of success for Institutions and Students (Special Report, Vol. 2, No. 2). San Diego: Distance-Educator.com. Author Summary Rick Shearer has been involved in the field of distance education for over 25 years. In his administrative and instructional design roles he has developed distance education courses for computer based instruction, educational television, traditional print correspondence courses, two-way interactive video, and the internet. Mr. Shearer has published several articles and book chapters on the field of distance education and presented at numerous conferences. In his current role Mr. Shearer is responsible for overseeing the design and development, project management, budgeting, and resource allocation for courses developed and delivered through Penn State s World Campus. Address: 225H Outreach Building University Park, PA rxs57@psu.edu Phone: Fax: Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 5