CONTENTS

AUTHORS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

CH:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Part
1:
Role and Function
of Theory in
Online Education Development and
Delivery

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About the author

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Attributes of Learning

Affordances of the Net

The Role of Interaction
in Online Learning

A Model of E-learning

Online Learning and
the Semantic Web

Toward a Theory
of Online Learning

Conclusion

References

Chapter 2

Toward a Theory of Online Learning

Terry Anderson
Athabasca University

It is the theory which decides what we can observe.
~
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

There is nothing more practical than a good theory.
~
James C. Maxwell (1831-1879)

Introduction

Theory has both been celebrated and condemned in educational
practice and research. Many proponents have argued that theory allows—even
forces—us to see the “big picture” and makes it possible for us to view our
practice and our research from a broader perspective than that envisioned from
the murky trenches of our practice. This broader perspective helps us to make
connections with the work of others, facilitates coherent frameworks and deeper
understanding of our actions, and perhaps most importantly allows us to transfer
the experience gained in one context to new experiences and contexts. Critics of
theory (Wilson, 1999) have argued that too strict an adherence to any particular
theoretical viewpoint often filters our perceptions and blinds us to important
lessons of reality. The intent of this chapter is to look at learning theory
generally, and then focus on those attributes of the online learning context
that allow us to develop deeper and more useful theories of online learning

Wilson (1997) has described three functions of a good educational theory.
First, it helps us to envision new worlds. Few of us need help envisioning new
worlds in the midst of the hype and exuberance of online learning proponents
that flood the popular press, but we do need theory to help us envision how
education can best take advantage of the enhanced communication, information
retrieval, and management capability provided by the Net. It is all too easy to
consider new innovations in a “horseless carriage” manner, and to attempt to
develop new actions based on old adaptations to obsolete contexts.

Second, a good theory helps us to make things. We need theories of online
learning that help us to invest our time and limited resources most effectively.
There are many opportunities, but always a critical shortage of resources, a
situation which demands that we maximize the efficiency of our development and
delivery efforts. This book contains a number of chapters with particular
recommendations and suggestions for online course development and teaching. It
is hoped that this chapter provides a theoretical “big picture” that will help
make sense of these specific recommendations.

Third, Wilson argues that a good theory keeps us honest. Good theory builds
upon what is already known, and helps us to interpret and plan for the unknown.
It also forces us to look beyond day-to-day contingencies and to ensure that our
knowledge and practice of online learning is robust, considered, and ever
expanding.

This chapter begins with a general assessment of how people learn that is
based on Bransford, Brown, and Cocking's (1999) work. It then assesses the
unique characteristics of the Web that enable it to enhance these generalized
learning contexts; that is, the Web's “affordances.” The chapter next discusses
the six forms of interaction and their critical role in engaging and supporting
both learners and teachers. It then presents a model of e-learning, a first step
toward a theory in which the two predominant forms of e-learning—the
collaborative and independent study modes—are presented, with a brief discussion
of the advantages and disadvantages of each. The chapter ends with a discussion
of the emerging tools of the “Semantic Web” and the way they will affect future
developments of the theory and practice of online learning

Attributes of Learning
top

As many theorists have argued (Garrison & Shale, 1990), and as practitioners experience for
themselves, online learning is a subset of learning in general; thus, we can
expect issues relevant to how adults learn generally to be relevant to how they
learn in an online context. In an insightful book on the “new science of
learning,” Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (1999) provide evidence that effective
learning environments are framed within the convergence of four overlapping
lenses. They argue that effective learning is learner centered, knowledge
centered, assessment centered, and community centered. Discussing each of these
lenses helps us to define learning in a general sense, before we apply this
analytical framework to the unique characteristics of online learning.

Learner Centered

A learner-centered context is not one in which the whims and
peculiarities of each individual learner are uniquely catered to. In fact, we
must be careful to recognize that learner-centered contexts must also meet the
needs of the teacher, of the institution, of the larger society that provides
support for the student and the institution, and often of a group or class of
students. For this reason, I have argued elsewhere (Anderson, in press) that
this attribute might more accurately be labeled “learning centered,” than
“learner centered.”

Learner-centered learning, according to Bransford et al., includes awareness
of the unique cognitive structures and understandings that the learners bring to
the learning context. Thus, a teacher makes efforts to gain an understanding of
students' pre-existing knowledge, including any misconceptions that the learner
starts with in their construction of new knowledge. Further, the learning
environment respects and accommodates the particular cultural attributes,
especially the language and particular forms of expression, that the learner
uses to interpret and build knowledge. Learner-centered activities make
extensive use of diagnostic tools and activities, so that these pre-existing
knowledge structures are made visible to both the teacher and the student.

Online learning can present challenges to educators, because the tools and
opportunities for discovering students' preconceptions and cultural perspectives
are often limited by bandwidth constraints that limit the view of body language
and paralinguistic clues. Some researchers have argued that these restrictions
negatively affect the efficacy of communication (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976). Others have argued that the unique
characteristics that define online learning (most commonly asynchronous
text-based interaction) can actually lead to enhanced or hyper communications
(Walther, 1996).

We have found evidence of significant social presence in computer
conferencing contexts (Rourke, Anderson, Archer, & Garrison, 2002; Rourke
& Anderson, 2002). Nonetheless, it is fair to say that the challenges of
assessing student preconditions and cultural prerequisites are often more
difficult in an online learning context, because teachers are less able to
interact transparently with students—especially in the critical early stages of
the formation of a learning community. It is for this reason that experienced
online learning teachers make time at the commencement of their learning
interactions to provide incentive and opportunity for students to share their
understandings, their culture, and unique aspects of themselves. This sharing
can be done formally, through electronically administered surveys and
questionnaires, but is often accomplished more effectively by virtual
icebreakers, and by the provision of an opportunity for students to introduce
themselves and to express any issues or concerns to the teacher and the
class.

The online learning environment is also a unique cultural context in itself.
Benedikt (1992) has argued that cyberspace “has a geography, a physics, a nature
and a rule of human law” (p. 23). Many students will be new to this
context, but increasingly, students will come to online learning with
preconceptions gathered from both formal and informal experience in virtual
environments. They will exercise their mastery of communication norms and tools,
some of which will not be appropriate to an educational online context.
Researchers have attempted to quantify this proficiency and comfort with online
environments through the use of survey instruments that measure a learner's
internet efficacy (Eastin & LaRose, 2000). They
have argued that it is not Internet skill alone that determines competency;
rather, a strong sense of Internet efficacy allows users to adapt effectively to
the requirements of working in this environment. Thus, the effective online
learning teacher is constantly probing for learner comfort and competence with
the intervening technology, and providing safe environments for them to increase
their sense of Internet efficacy. Learner-centered online-learning contexts thus
are sensitive to the cultural overlay acquired in offline contexts, and the ways
in which it interacts with the Web's affordances.

Knowledge Centered

Effective learning does not happen in a content vacuum.
McPeck (1990) and other theorists of critical thinking have argued that teaching
generalized thinking skills and techniques is useless outside of a particular
knowledge domain in which they can be grounded. Similarly, Bransford et al.
argue that effective learning is both defined and bounded by the epistemology,
language, and context of disciplinary thought. Each discipline or field of study
contains a world view that provides often unique ways of understanding and
talking about knowledge. Students need opportunities to experience this
discourse, as well as the knowledge structures that undergraduate teaching
affords. They also need opportunities to reflect upon their own thinking:
automacy is a useful and necessary skill for expert thinking, but without
reflective capacity, it greatly limits one's ability to transfer knowledge to an
unfamiliar context or to develop new knowledge structures.

In comparison to campus-based learning, online learning neither advantages
nor disadvantages knowledge-centered learning. As I discuss below, the Net
provides expanded opportunities for students to plunge ever deeper into
knowledge resources, thus affording a near limitless means for students to grow
their knowledge, to find their own way around the knowledge of the discipline,
and to benefit from its expression in thousands of formats and contexts.
However, this provision of resources can be overwhelming, and the skillful
e-teacher needs to provide the “big picture” scaffolding on which students can
grow their own knowledge and discipline-centered discoveries.

Assessment Centered

The third perspective on learning environments presented by
Bransford et al. is the necessity for effective learning environments to be
assessment centered. In making this assertion, they do not give unqualified
support for summative assessments (especially those supposedly used for national
or provincial accountability), but rather look to formative evaluation that
serves to motivate, inform, and provide feedback to both learners and
teachers.

Quality online learning provides many opportunities for assessment: not only
opportunities that involve the teacher, but also ones that exploit the influence
and expertise of peers, others that use simple and complex machine algorithms to
assess student production, and, perhaps most importantly, those that encourage
learners to assess their own learning reflectively. Understanding what is most
usefully rather than what is most easily assessed is a challenge for the
designers of online learning. Developments in cognitive learning theories and
their application to assessment design are helping us to devise assessments that
are aligned with the subject content, and that assess cognitive processes as
well as end results. For example, Baxter, Elder, and Glaser (1996) found that
competent students should be able to provide coherent explanations, generate
plans for problem solution, implement solution strategies, and monitor and
adjust their activities. I am continually disappointed when reviewing
assessments that my own children are subjected to in school and at university to
note the very high percentage of recall questions and the lack of assessment
strategies that effectively measure the four sets of competencies identified by
Baxter et al.

Can we do any better in online learning? The diminution of opportunities for
immediate interaction between learners and teachers might reduce opportunities
for process assessment; however, the enhanced communications capacity of online
learning and the focus of most adult online learning in the real world of work
provide opportunities to create assessment activities that are project and
workplace based, that are constructed collaboratively, that benefit from peer
review, and that are infused with both the opportunity and the requirement for
self-assessment.

A danger of assessment-centered learning systems is the potential increase in
the workload demanded of busy online learning teachers. Strategies that are
designed to provide formative and summative assessment with minimal direct
impact on teacher workload are urgently needed. There is a growing list of tools
that provide such assessment without increased teacher participation,
including

•   the use of online computer-marked assessments that
extend beyond quizzes to simulation exercises, virtual labs, and other automated
assessments of active student learning;

•   collaborative learning environments that students
create to document and assess their own learning in virtual groups;

•   mechanisms, such as online automated tutors, that
support and scaffold students' evaluation of their own work and that of their
peers;

•   student agents who facilitate and monitor peer
activities to allow students to assess and aid each other informally;

•   the use of sophisticated software tools, such as
latent semantic analysis (LSA) or neural networks,
to machine-score even complicated materials, such as students' essays.

Thus, the challenge of online learning is to provide high quantity and
quality of assessment while maintaining student interest and commitment. These
goals are often best achieved through the development of a learning community,
to which we turn next.

Community Centered

The community-centered lens allows us to include the critical
social component of learning in our online learning designs. Here we find
Vygotsky's (1978) popular concepts of social cognition to be relevant as we
consider how students can work together in an online learning context to create
new knowledge collaboratively. These ideas have been expanded in Lipman's (1991)
community of inquiry and Wenger's (2001) ideas of community of practice to show
how members of a learning community both support and challenge each other,
leading to effective and relevant knowledge construction. Wilson (2001) has
described participants in online communities as having a shared sense of
belonging, trust, expectation of learning, and commitment to participate and to
contribute to the community.

Although there are many online learning researchers who celebrate the
capacity to create learning communities at a distance (Harasim, Hiltz, Teles,
& Turoff, 1995), there are also those who note
problems associated with lack of attention and participation (Mason & Hart, 1997), economic restraints (Annand, 1999),
and an in-built resistance among many faculty and institutions to the
threatening competition from virtual learning environments (Jaffee, 1998).
Ethnographic studies of the Net (Hine, 2000) illustrate how the lack of
“placedness” and the complications of anonymity attenuate different components
of community when the community is located in virtual space. In short, it may be
more challenging than we think to create and sustain these communities, and the
differences—linked to a lack of placedness and synchronicity, that is, mutual
presence in time and place—may be more fundamental than the mere absence of body
language and social presence.

I have been struck by the wide variation in the expectations of learners
about participation in a community of learners. Traditionally, distance
education has attracted students who value the freedom from constraints of time
and place that is provided by independent modes of distance education. Contrary
to popular belief, the major motivation for enrollment in distance education is
not physical access, but rather, temporal freedom to move through a course of
studies at a pace of the student's choice. Participation in a community of
learners almost inevitably places constraints on this independence, even when
the pressure of synchronous connection is eliminated by use of asynchronous
communications tools. The demands of a learning-centered context might at times
force us to modify the prescriptive participation in communities of learning,
even though we might have evidence that such participation will further advance
knowledge creation and attention. The flexibility of virtual communities allows
more universal participation, but a single environment that responds to all
students does not exist; thus, the need for variations that accommodate the
diverse needs of learners and teachers at different stages of their life
cycles.

These potential barriers argue for a theory of online learning that
accommodates, but does not prescribe, any particular boundaries of time and
place, and that allows for appropriate substitution of independent and
community-centered learning. To this requirement, we add the need for a theory
of e-learning that is learning centered, provides a wide variety of authentic
assessment opportunities, and is grounded in existing knowledge contexts.

Affordances of the Net
top

Effective educational theory must address the affordances and
the limitations of the context for which it is designed (Norman, 1999). The
World Wide Web is a multifaceted technology that provides a large set of
communication and information management tools that can be harnessed for
effective education provision. It also suffers from a set of constraints that
are briefly outlined in this section.

Online learning, as a subset of all distance education, has always been
concerned with providing access to educational experience that is at least more
flexible in time and in space than campus-based education. Access to the Web is
now nearly ubiquitous in developed countries. The Wall Street Journal
of February 4, 2002, reported that 54% of U.S. adults use the Web on a
regular basis, and 90% of 15-17 years olds are regular Web users. This high
percentage of users would probably include well over 90% of those citizens
interested in taking a formal education course. Access to the Web is primarily
through home or workplace machines, but placements in public libraries and
Internet cafes and connections through personal wireless devices are such that
access poses no problems for the vast majority of citizens of developed
countries. I have also been surprised by the availability of access in
developing countries, as exemplified by free use of the Net in McDonald's
restaurants in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the numerous Internet cafées, in most
Chinese cities. Access is still problematic for those with a variety of physical
handicaps; however, in comparison with books or video media, the Web provides
much greater quality and quantity of access to nearly all citizens, with or
without physical disabilities.

Access is increasing, not only to technology, but also to an ever-growing
body of content. The number of scholarly journals (see http://
www.e-journals.org),
educational objects (see http://www.merlot.org/
Home.po),
educational discussion lists (see http://www.kovacs.com/
directory),
courses (see http://www.telecampus.utsystem.edu/index.cfm),
and general references to millions of pages of commercial, educational, and
cultural content (see http://www.google.com/) is large and
increasing at an exponential rate. Thus, online learning theory must acknowledge
the change from an era of shortage and restrictions in content to one in which
content resources are so large that filtering and reducing choice is as
important as providing sufficient content.

The Web is quickly changing from a context defined by text-based content and
interactions to one in which all forms of media are supported. Much of the early
work on the instructional use of the Internet (Harasim, 1989; Feenberg, 1989)
assumed that asynchronous text-based interaction defined the medium. Techniques
were developed to maximize interaction using this relatively lean medium. We are
now entering an era where streaming video, video and audio conferencing, and
virtual worlds are readily available for educational use. Thus, online learning
theory needs to help educators to decide which of the many technological options
is best suited for their application.

The Web's in-built capacity for hyperlinking has been compared to the way in
which human knowledge is stored in mental schema and to the subsequent
development of mental structures (Jonassen, 1992). Further, the capacity for
students to create their own learning paths through content that is formatted
with hypertext links is congruent with constructivist instructional design
theory that stresses individual discovery and construction of knowledge
(Jonassen, 1991).

Finally, the growing ease with which content can be updated and revised (both
manually and through use of autonomous agent technology) is making online
learning content much more responsive and potentially more current than content
developed for other media. The explosion of Web “blogs” (Notess, 2002) and
user-friendly course-content management systems, built into Web delivery systems
such as WebCT or Blackboard, is creating an
environment in which teachers and learners can create and update their course
content without the aid of programmers or designers. Naturally, this ease of
creation and revision leads to potential for error and
less-than-professional-standard output; however, educators who are anxious to
retain control of their educational content and context welcome this openness
and freedom.

Education is not only about access to content, however. The greatest
affordance of the Web for educational use is the profound and multifaceted
increase in communication and interaction capability that it provides. The next
section discusses this affordance in greater detail.

The Role of Interaction in Online
Learning
top

Defining and Valuing Interaction
in Online Learning

Communication technologies are used in education to enhance
interaction between all participants in the educational transaction. However,
although interaction has long been a defining and critical component of the
educational process and context, it is surprisingly difficult to find a clear
and precise definition of this concept in the education literature. In popular
culture, the use of the term to describe everything from toasters to video games
to holiday resorts further confuses precise definition. I have discussed the
varying definitions of interaction at length in an earlier paper (Anderson,
2003), and so I will here simply accept Wagner's (1994) definition of
interaction as “reciprocal events that require at least two objects and two
actions. Interactions occur when these objects and events mutually influence one
another” (p. 8).

Interaction (or interactivity) serves a variety of functions in the
educational transaction. Sims (1999) has listed these functions as allowing for
learner control, facilitating program adaptation based on learner input,
allowing various forms of participation and communication, and acting as an aid
to meaningful learning. In addition, interactivity is fundamental to creation of
the learning communities espoused by Lipman (1991), Wenger (2001), and other
influential educational theorists who focus on the critical role of community in
learning. Finally, the value of another person's perspective, usually gained
through interaction, is a key learning component in constructivist learning
theories (Jonassen, 1991), and in inducing mindfulness in learners (Langer,
1989).

Interaction has always been valued in distance education, even in its most
traditional, independent study format. Holmberg (1989) argued for the
superiority of individualized interaction between student and tutor when
supported by written postal correspondence or by real-time telephone tutoring.
Holmberg also introduced us to the idea of simulated interaction that defines
the writing style appropriate for independent study models of distance
education, programming that he referred to as “guided didactic interaction.”
Garrison and Shale (1990) defined all forms of education (including that
delivered at a distance) as essentially interactions between content, students,
and teachers. Laurillard (1997) constructed a conversational model of learning
in which interaction between students and teachers plays the critical role.

As long ago as 1916, John Dewey referred to interaction as the defining
component of the educational process that occurs when the student transforms the
inert information passed to them from another, and constructs it into knowledge
with personal application and value (Dewey, 1916). Bates (1991) argued that
interactivity should be the primary criterion for selecting media for
educational delivery. Thus, there is a long history of study and recognition of
the critical role of interaction in supporting, and even defining,
education.

The Web affords interaction in many modalities. In Figure 2-1,
we see the common forms of media used in distance education charted against
their capacity to support independence (of time and place) and their capacity to
support interaction. It can be seen that, generally, the higher and richer the
form of communication, the more restrictions it places on
independence.

Figure 2-1.
Attributes of educational
media.

Figure 2-2
shows the capability of the Web to support these modalities. As can be seen, all
forms of mediated educational interaction are now supported, assuming one adds
the use of the Web to enhance classroom-based education. Thus, the capacity for
the Web to support online learning in general is usually too large a domain for
meaningful discussion until one specifies the particular modality of interaction
in use.

Figure 2-2.
Educational media subsumed by the
Web.

Interaction can also be delineated in terms of the actors participating in
it. Michael Moore first discussed the three most common forms of interaction in
distance education: student-student, student-teacher, and student-content
(Moore, 1989). This list was expanded by Anderson and Garrison (1998) to include
teacher-teacher, teacher-content, and content-content interaction. I have been
developing an equivalency theorem describing the capacity to substitute one form
of interaction for another, based on cost and accessibility factors (Anderson,
2002; Anderson, 2003). Figure 2-3
illustrates these six types of educational interaction, and each is described
briefly below.

Figure 2-3.
Educational interactions.

Student-student Interaction

Traditionally, student-student interaction has been
downplayed as a requirement of distance education as a result of constraints on
the availability of technology and an earlier bias among distance-education
theorists toward individualized learning (Holmberg, 1989). Modern constructivist
theorists stress the value of peer-to-peer interaction in investigating and
developing multiple perspectives. Work on collaborative learning illustrates
potential gains in cognitive learning tasks, as well as increases in completion
rates and the acquisition of critical social skills in education (Slavin, 1995).
Work by Damon (1984) and others related to peer tutoring illustrates the
benefits to both the tutor and the tutee that can result from a variety of forms
of “reciprocal” teaching. Finally, peer interaction is critical to the
development of communities of learning (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002) that allow learners to develop
interpersonal skills, and to investigate tacit knowledge shared by community
members as well as a formal curriculum of studies.

Student-teacher Interaction

Student-teacher interaction is supported in online learning
in a large number of varieties and formats that include asynchronous and
synchronous communication using text, audio, and video. The facility of such
communications leads many new teachers to be overwhelmed by the quantity of
student communications and by the rise in students' expectations for immediate
responses.

Student-content Interaction

Student-content interaction has always been a major component
of formal education, even in the form of library study or the reading of
textbooks in face-to-face instruction. The Web supports these more passive forms
of student-content interaction, and also provides a host of new opportunities,
including immersion in microenvironments, exercises in virtual labs, online
computer-assisted tutorials, and the development of interactive content that
responds to student behavior and attributes (often referred to as “student
models”). Eklund (1995) lists some potential advantages of such approaches,
noting that they allow instructors to

•   provide an on line or intelligent help facility, if
a user is modeled and their path is traced through the information space;

•   use an adaptive interface based on several
stereotypical user classes to modify the environment to suit individual users;
and

•   provide adaptive advice, and model the learner's use
of the environment (including navigational use, answers to questions, and help
requested) to make intelligent suggestions about a preferred individualized path
through the knowledge base.

To these advantages must be added the capacity for immediate feedback, not
only for formal learning guidance, but also for just-in-time learning assistance
through job aids and other performance support tools.

Teacher-teacher Interaction

Teacher-teacher interaction creates the opportunity for
professional development and support that sustains teachers through communities
of like-minded colleagues. These interactions also encourage teachers to take
advantage of knowledge growth and discovery in their own subject and within the
scholarly community of teachers.

Teacher-content Interaction

Teacher-content interaction focuses on the creation of
content and learning activities by teachers. It allows teachers continuously to
monitor and update the content resources and activities that they create for
student learning.

Content-content Interaction

Content-content interaction is a newly developing mode of
educational interaction in which content is programmed to interact with other
automated information sources, so as to refresh itself constantly, and to
acquire new capabilities. For example, a weather tutorial might take its data
from current meteorological servers, creating a learning context that is
up-to-date and relevant to the learner's context. Content-content interaction is
also necessary to provide a means of asserting control of rights and
facilitating tracking of the use of content by diverse groups of learners and
teachers.

A Model of E-learning
top

A first step in theory building often consists of the
construction of a model in which the major variables are displayed and the
relationships among the variables are schematized. Figure 2-4
provides a model that illustrates the two major modes of online
learning.

Figure 2-4.
A model of online learning
showing types of interaction.

The model illustrates the two major human actors, learners and teachers, and
their interactions with each other and with content. Learners can of course
interact directly with content that they find in multiple formats, and
especially on the Web; however, many choose to have their learning sequenced,
directed, and evaluated with the assistance of a teacher. This interaction can
take place within a community of inquiry, using a variety of Net-based
synchronous and asynchronous activities (video, audio, computer conferencing,
chats, or virtual world interaction). These environments are particularly rich,
and allow for the learning of social skills, the collaborative learning of
content, and the development of personal relationships among participants.
However, the community binds learners in time, forcing regular sessions or at
least group-paced learning. Community models are also, generally, more
expensive, as they suffer from an inability to scale to large numbers of
learners. The second model of learning (on the right) illustrates the structured
learning tools associated with independent learning. Common tools used in this
mode include computer-assisted tutorials, drills, and simulations. Virtual labs,
in which students complete simulations of lab experiments, and sophisticated
search and retrieval tools are also becoming common instruments for individual
learning. Printed texts (now often distributed and read online) have long been
used to convey teacher interpretations and insights in independent study.
However, it should also be emphasized that, although engaged in independent
study, the student is not alone. Often colleagues in the work place, peers
located locally (or distributed, perhaps across the Net), and family members
have been shown to be significant sources of support and assistance to
independent study learners (Potter, 1998).

Using the online model, then, requires that teachers and designers make
crucial decisions at various points. A key decision factor is based on the
nature of the learning that is prescribed. Marc Prensky (2000) argues that
different learning outcomes are best learned through particular types of
learning activities. Prensky asks not, “How do students learn?” but more
specifically, “How do they learn what?”

Prensky (2000, p. 56) postulates that, in general, we all learn:

•   behaviors through imitation, feedback, and
practice;

•   creativity through playing;

•   facts through association, drill, memory, and
questions;

•   judgment through reviewing cases, asking questions,
making choices, and receiving feedback and coaching;

•   language through imitation, practice, and
immersion;

•   observation through viewing examples and receiving
feedback;

•   procedures through imitation and practice;

•   processes through system analysis, deconstruction,
and practice;

•   systems through discovering principles and
undertaking graduated tasks;

•   reasoning through puzzles, problems, and
examples;

•   skills (physical or mental) through imitation,
feedback, continuous practice, and increasing challenge;

•   speeches or performance roles through memorization,
practice, and coaching;

•   theories through logic, explanation, and
questioning.

Prensky also argues that there are forms and styles of games that can be
used, online or offline, to facilitate the learning of each of these skills.

I would argue that each of these activities can be accomplished through
e-learning, using some combination of online community activities and
computer-supported independent-study activities. By tracing the interactions
expected and provided for learners through the model, one can plan for and
ensure that an appropriate mix of student, teacher, and content interaction is
designed for each learning outcome.

Online Learning and the Semantic Web
top

We are entering an era in which the Web is changing from a
medium to display content, to one in which content is endowed with semantic
meaning (Berners-Lee, 1999). If the format and structure of content is described
in formalized and machine-readable languages, then it can be searched and acted
upon, not only by humans but also by computer programs commonly known as
autonomous agents. This new capacity has been most prominently championed by the
original designer of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, and is named by him the “Semantic
Web.”

The Semantic Web will be populated by a variety of autonomous agents—small
computer programs designed to navigate the Web, searching for particular
information and then acting on that information in support of their assigned
task. In education, student agents will be used for intelligent searching of
relevant content, and as secretaries for booking and arranging for collaborative
meetings, for reminding students of deadlines, and for negotiating with the
agents of other students for assistance, collaboration, or socialization.
Teacher agents will be used to provide remedial tuition, and to assist with
record keeping, with monitoring student progress, and even with marking and
responding to student communications. Content itself can be augmented with
agents that control rights to its use, automatically update it, and track the
means by which the content is used by students (Thaiupathump, Bourne, & Campbell, 1999; Shaw, Johnson, & Ganeshan, 1999).

The Semantic Web also supports the reuse and adaptation of content by
supporting the construction, distribution, and dissemination of digitized
content that is formatted and formally described (Wiley, 2000; Downes, 2000).
The recent emergence of educational modeling languages (Koper, 2001) allows
educators to describe, in a language accessible on the Web, not only the content
but also the activities and context or environment of learning experiences.
Together these capabilities afforded by the Semantic Web allow us to envision an
e-learning environment that is rich with student-student, student-content, and
student-teacher interactions that are affordable, reusable, and facilitated by
active agents (see Figure 2-5,
below).

Figure 2-5.
Educational interactions on the
Semantic Web.

Toward a Theory of Online Learning
top

The Web offers a host of very powerful affordances to
educators. Existing and older education provisions have been defined by the
techniques and tools designed to overcome the limitations and exploit the
capacities of earlier media. For example, the earliest universities were
constructed around medieval libraries that afforded access to rare hand-written
books and manuscripts. Early forms of distance education were constructed using
text and the delayed forms of asynchronous communications afforded by mail
services. Campus-based education systems are constructed around physical
buildings that afford meeting and lecture spaces for teachers and groups of
students. The Web provides nearly ubiquitous access to quantities of content
that are many orders of magnitude larger than those provided in any other
medium.

From our earlier discussion, we see that the Web affords a vast potential for
education delivery that generally subsumes almost all the modes and means of
education delivery previously used, with perhaps the exception of the rich
face-to-face interaction of the classroom. We have also seen that the most
critical component of formal education consists of interaction between and among
multiple actors, humans and agents included.

Thus, I conclude this chapter with an overview of a theory of online learning
interaction that suggests that the various forms of student interaction can be
substituted for each other, depending on costs, content, learning objectives,
convenience, technology, and available time. The substitutions do not result in
decreases in the quality of the learning that results. More formally:

Sufficient levels of deep and meaningful learning can be
developed, as long as one of the three forms of interaction (student-teacher;
student-student; student-content) is at very high levels. The other two may be
offered at minimal levels or even eliminated without degrading the educational
experience. (Anderson, 2002)

The challenge for teachers and course developers working in an online
learning context is to construct a learning environment that is simultaneously
learning centered, content centered, community centered, and assessment
centered. There is no single, right medium of online learning, nor a formulaic
specification that dictates the kind of interaction most conducive to learning
in all domains with all learners. Rather, teachers must learn to develop their
skills so that they can respond to student and curriculum needs by developing a
set of online learning activities that are adaptable to diverse student needs.
Table 2-1
illustrates how the affordances of these emerging technologies can be directed
so as to create the environment that is most supportive of “how people
learn.”

Table 2-1.
Affordances of the network
environment and the attributes of “How people learn.”

Conclusion
top

This discussion highlights the wide and diverse forms of
teaching and learning that can be supported on the Web today, and the
realization that the educational Semantic Web will further enhance the
possibilities and affordances of the Web, making it premature to define a
particular theory of online learning. However, we can expect that online
learning, like all forms of quality learning, will be knowledge, community,
assessment, and learner centered. Online learning will enhance the critical
function of interaction in education in multiple formats and styles among all
the participants. These interactions will be supported by autonomous agents
working on behalf of all participants. The task of the online course designer
and teacher is to choose, adapt, and perfect (through feedback, assessment, and
reflection) educational activities that maximize the affordances of the Web. In
doing so, they create learning-, knowledge-, assessment-, and community-centered
educational experiences that result in high levels of learning by all
participants. Integration of the new tools and affordances of the Semantic Web
further enhances the quality, accessibility, and affordability of online
learning experiences.

Our challenge as theory builders and online practitioners is to delineate
which modes, methods, activities, and actors are most effective, in terms of
cost and learning, in creating and distributing quality e-learning programs. The
creation of a model is often the first step toward the development of a theory.
The model presented illustrates most of the key variables that interact to
create online educational experiences and contexts. The next step is to theorize
and measure the direction and magnitude of the effect of each of these variables
on relevant outcome variables, including learning, cost, completion, and
satisfaction. The models presented in this chapter and other chapters in this
book do not yet constitute a theory of online learning, but it is hoped that
they will help us to deepen our understanding of this complex educational
context and lead us to hypotheses, predictions, and most importantly
improvements in our professional practice. It is hoped that the model and
discussion in this and other chapters in this book lead us toward a theory of
online learning.

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