Teaching and the Web

Web-Based Education: An Asset in a Period of Educational Change

Richard Nysse
Luther Seminary
St. Paul, Minnesota

Sin, death and the devil will not be banished by the introduction of computers in the process of education. The eschaton did not arrive with the World Wide Web. With that said, I'm finished making concessions to naysayers. Web-based technology has already facilitated fundamental change; this is not a fad and the change is not simply a marginal enhancement or a costly diversion. (Nysse 1998)

The words above opened a brief opinion piece I wrote five years ago. Today I would not change a word, except that I might add several exclamation marks. As was the case five years ago, students continually teach me new possibilities for online [1] learning and I discover new mistakes and shortcomings in my online teaching. Increasingly I recognize the latter to be personal failures, not limitations that a Web environment imposes on course design and implementation. The use of Web-based media for the interactions at the core of teaching and learning continues to unfold. The number of online courses continues to grow because students continue to enroll in those offered. The dotcom meltdown did not end the more quiet growth in Web-based education.

Faculty (and even student) resistance and objections continue to be voiced, but over the past five years I sense that a corner has been turned. Increasingly I hear colleagues express curiosity rather than direct opposition. Most may not actually be any closer to teaching online, but they no longer dismiss the phenomena as a fad. Satisfied students are telling their offline faculty advisors that they have learned much and appreciated their online classes. Online classes are now recognized as a valid option at Luther Seminary. The movement, however, is not yet part of the mainstream; in many respects it remains an add-on. As an early adopter, I admit there are still days when the pace seems glacial. [2]

In this essay, I will use my experience to depict the way teaching via the Web affects the educational system with which I am familiar.[3]The tone will be more narrative than analytical, but that is in keeping with the way I have experienced the Lexington Seminar. [4] I will compare Web-based and face-to-face education but I do not wish merely to set up a direct debate between the two. Both are too varied for a binary debate to be helpful and I happily teach in both environments. As a result of my online work, I have fundamentally changed the way I think about the face-to-face context as a learning environment. Some might say I was long overdue for the changes. So be it – but I know I would not have made the changes without experiencing teaching and learning via the Web.

Educational Change: It's More than the Web

While vigorous discussion about the nature (and quality) of online teaching continues,[5] larger shifts are occurring within higher education, seminaries included, shifts which encompass face-to-face education as well as online. From teaching methodology to learning theories to assessment practice, the focus is shifting from teaching to learning. Rather than beginning with teacher- or instruction-centered foci, the movement is toward student- or learning-centered emphases.[6] The student-centered emphasis extends beyond being personable, compassionate and caring with students. It affects the core practices and self-understanding of faculty. The pithy slogan for the change is that faculty move from being the sage on the stage to the coach on the side. That expression is too pejorative and exaggerates the contrast, but it captures the dynamic and depth of the change that is under discussion or is actually occurring in many circles in higher education. The introduction of the Web as a medium for teaching and learning is happening within this larger agitation.

One concrete manifestation of the change is the assessment practices of accreditation agencies.[7] They are asking educational institutions what they are intending to do. What is their articulation of their own mission? How do they know whether or not their intensions are actually being accomplished? Responding by citing evidence of a low teacher to student ratio with all classes taught by teachers with PhD's is no longer taken as definitive proof that the mission is being accomplished. Such teacher-centered, input-based assessment is no longer the norm. Those indicators of quality are not being jettisoned; they simply aren't being granted the same presumptive privilege. The focus is on student action. What are students actually learning? When, where and how are they learning?[8] The possibility of high quality learning is acknowledged to occur in a wider range of educational environments than was the case in the past.[9] The co-curricular dimensions of a student's learning experience are being given increased visibility alongside the explicit curriculum (AAHE et al 1998). The co-curricular is not reducible to mere support or enhancement of the classroom experience. It is part of the core that constitutes a holistic learning experience; the entire seminary is termed a learning community. Classroom-based teaching, as important as it is, is but one dimension of a larger learning environment.

For my institution, Luther Seminary, and for my denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), significant non-classroom-based components have always been present. In one form or another, Luther Seminary has for many years required students to work in congregations while enrolled in degree programs. In addition, the ELCA requires one year of internship for ordination. Traditionally internship was placed after the second year of seminary study, with students returning for a third year of study after internship. In third-year classes we struggle with how to integrate or acknowledge the learning that has occurred during internship. How do we structure differently a class on the Psalms or on the Gospel of John because of the internship experience? Would we structure the class the same way if it were offered in the first year of study? We have difficulty stating what the differences should be in actual practice. Covering content is still a powerful impulse; it is a deeply embedded default switch which inhibits our imaginations. Experiential learning still struggles to find legitimated space at the center.

In addition, despite student remarks on the deep learning, formation and self-discovery that occurs on internship, the faculty struggles with designations for internship supervisors. Are they “teaching colleagues?” In general conversations we respond affirmatively, but when it comes to drafting handbook statements the ride gets bumpy. “Voice and vote” status at faculty meetings is not widely granted. It has been hard enough for us to find the faculty “WE” that exists beyond our individual courses and subject matter domains. Now we are being asked to enter a matrix that consists of more than joining together subjects or individual courses to make a curriculum. The learning community seems nearly borderless and thus our roles as professional educators appear to be in great flux. Past stability may have been more imagined than real, but few would question that we are now in a period of acute transition.[10]

None of this stirring depends on the existence of the Web; technology is not driving these changes and transitions. If all online teaching and learning disappeared tomorrow, the shifts and debates encapsulated in expressions like “learning-centered, not instruction-centered,” or “student-centered, not teacher-centered” – all of this would continue unabated. The key issue with regard to online teaching and learning is its role in the transitions, not whether or not it is itself generating the disruptions. However, frustrations and anxiety over the transitions quickly target online teaching and learning as a major perpetrator. It is not. It simply makes the changes so evident.

Web-based Education: As Good as Face-to-Face?

Despite the turmoil in face-to-face educational contexts, online educators are still asked with a challenging, presumptive tone: Is Web-based education as good as face-to-face? Despite my desire to avoid a binary construal, the question must be addressed for at least two reasons. First, despite current reevaluation, face-to-face education has a record of considerable accomplishment which must be acknowledged, even honored. Matching its accomplishments is a significant achievement. Second, the deference to face-to-face is so high that it is the assumed benchmark in conversations about online teaching and learning, even when online teaching is not portrayed as a concession.[11]Challenging this assumed benchmark might seem to undercut the first point. But historic patterns of embodying face-to-face teaching and learning are already being questioned by the shifts mentioned above (i.e., the role of experiential learning, student-centered learning theories, and new approaches to assessment and accreditation). Again, the questions Web-based education generate about face-to-face environments are part of a larger debate. I am willing to question the deference to face-to-face, but my purpose is not to discredit it; my questioning originates from more than my experience in Web-based education, even though for me personally it started there.[12]

If face-to-face is to be the benchmark (the “gold standard”) by which online learning is to be measured, just what is that benchmark? That question loops us back to the changed character of assessment referred to in the previous section. How do we know what we claim to know about the learning that occurs in the face-to-face environment? To focus specifically on classroom-based teaching: How much of what is attributed to face-to-face teaching is actually the result of student reading and writing outside the classroom? For example, if students are expected to put in three hours of preparation/study time for each hour of classroom time (i.e., three-quarters of the total hours spent learning are at a distance from the classroom), how can we justify attributing all the learning that occurs to the face-to-face environment? There are more media at work in what we call face-to-face, on-campus, residential, or traditional teaching and learning than simply in-person exchanges in a classroom. There is more “distance” in what we include under face-to-face than we generally acknowledge; the increased distance in Web-based education may not be as novel as is assumed.

The assumption that face-to-face instruction sets the standard by which online is to be measure raises issues that run deeper that the previous paragraph suggests. For one it does not acknowledge the growing number of guidelines that have been produced to define quality in Web-based education. One such document was produced by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (2000).[13] It promulgated twenty-four benchmarks (from an initial list of over forty) as “measures of quality in internet-based distance learning.” Three of the twenty-four (Nos. 4-6) were termed “Course Development Benchmarks:”

4. Guidelines regarding minimum standards are used for course development, design, and delivery, while learning outcomes – not the availability of existing technology – determine the technology being used to deliver course content.

5. Instructional materials are reviewed periodically to ensure they meet program standards.

6. Courses are designed to require students to engage themselves in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation as part of their course and program requirements.

 

I do not assume that every online course meets these standards, but I do wish to ask how many face-to-face classes actually hold themselves to comparable standards, much less meet them. After twenty-five years at Luther Seminary, I know of no explicit, publicly available, statement of “minimum standards” for course “development, design, and delivery” for face-to-face classes.[14] We have worked on statements of “learning outcomes” (we term them “objectives”) but they have functioned more as suggestions than standards. Some, but by no means all, teachers have individually embedded these outcomes in their syllabi. They also are employed to some extent in evaluative activity when tenure and promotion decisions are made. But the faculty has not internally held itself accountable to the very outcomes/objectives it developed.

Continuing with the fourth benchmark, we have never systematically examined what constitutes the best match between learning outcomes and the technology employed in a class. Does lecture provide the best technology for a given learning objective? Are small groups better than lectures for a given outcome? We have not held ourselves accountable to each other at the level of method or technology. If, in the face-to-face environment, we do not know how to address correlations between instructional technology (a lecture is a technology!) and learning outcomes, how are we able to demand that online learning be as good as face-to-face learning environments? As mentioned earlier, online teaching and learning highlights concerns already being raised by changes in assessment practice and by the shift toward student-centered principles. Traditional forces could attempt to beat back the introduction of online education or it could use the occasion as a mirror to reflect on its own practices. The end result could be strengthened and renewed work in behalf of student learning. And to state what should be obvious, online teaching and learning is not established as better or even good just because its introduction exposes cracks in face-to-face practice, especially when the issues raised have deep resonance with the shifts, debates, and transitions generated from within existing face-to-face practices.

The two other “course development benchmarks” mentioned above introduce other factors that raise questions about our face-to-face practice. Other than perhaps a self-study for ATS re-accreditation every ten years, when is the instructional material of a face-to-face class reviewed to ensure that it meets program standards (see Benchmark No. 5 above)? Would not most faculty regard such a review as an invasion of their course? I have been unable, after repeated invitations, to get my biblical division colleagues to review my online course pages in a systematic, evaluative fashion. It seems so unnatural to critique each other at the level of “instructional materials” – as if it were a breach of faculty etiquette. But if we cannot routinely work together at that level, how can we extol the communal virtues of face-to-face education over against the supposed isolation of Web-based education?[15]

And how often are courses and programs examined and held accountable for requiring “students to engage themselves in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation” (see Benchmark No. 6 above)? In my experience programs determine which courses are to be required – what subject matter domains are to be engaged by students – but not what analytical, synthesizing and evaluative abilities students should have as a result of those courses, especially not in a way that could lead to calling into question a course that fails to be so designed (not to mention actually achieving those outcomes). Many individual faculty members do design for these outcomes and do assist student to meet them, but program directors would be viewed with great suspicion if they were to evaluate each course with those expectations in mind. It would be regarded as a sign of distrust.

The issue of community again arises with benchmarks such as these. The persistent resistance to (or suspicion about) assessment again raises questions about our commitment to community, for it can readily be construed as the assertion of individual prerogative over against communal accountability. This may be a perennial debate in the history of academic freedom, but the balance seems tipped too far in the direction of the prerogatives of those with power, in this case individual faculty. Students are generally not accorded a symmetrical privilege. The character of our educational community is shaped by how we handle the particulars of accountability.

Communal character is also shaped by how we understand the roles of student and teacher. Face-to-face education is often regarded as an ideal community of learning, with ideas freely exchanged and tested. Yes! And yet we teachers do so much of the talking! I know things and I love to inform others about what I know. I think it would be helpful for them to know what I know. And pretty soon, despite my best intentions, I am doing all of the talking and, as a result, the “exchanging and testing” of student ideas drops by the wayside. Online teaching helps to quell my dominating voice.

This is not a small matter and it is not a caricature. In May 2003 I sat with five colleagues discussing teaching and learning over a pleasantly served lunch. We had just left a session in which we discussed team teaching. As the conversation shifted to what fosters student learning, all five insisted that a charismatic teacher was the sine qua non of student learning. I dissented with oblique comments about pedagogical design variables and active student learning principles, but the insistence only grew stronger. As deeply grateful as I am for several charismatic teachers I have had from elementary through graduate school, I could only mentally respond, “ But really now, let's get serious!” The previous paragraph tells you why I did not respond aloud; my actual practice too frequently manifests the same assumption. But what does that assumption say about lifelong learning apart from a classroom and a teacher's presence? What does that assertion say about student effort and motivation? What does that say about all the learning faculty have done by reading since their days in graduate school? At a minimum we faculty need to recognize how much we learn by reading and writing and then more fully apply that process to assisting the learning of our students? If we sustain our own learning by reading and writing, why do we insist that students learn best by listening (with some allowance for their keeping up with textbook reading in preparation for listening)? Since that conversation, I have felt badly about my unexpressed judgment of my colleagues. They care deeply about their students' learning. They – we – don't really wish to be so much at the center. It's just so ingrained! Teaching online classes has helped me glimpse another way of being.

The World Wide Web will not solve all the problems encountered in face-to-face education; it should not be promoted as the one great fix. But it is equally true that face-to-face education is not a near gold standard, with all alternatives being a concession to logistical obstacles. For a significant number of students there are formidable pedagogical obstacles in face-to-face environments and online education can overcome some of those obstacles. Online education does not have to become “as good as” face-to-face education. Rather both have to be the best that they can be and both must maximize student learning. Face-to-face education needs to improve; it has not reached nirvana. Online education needs to improve; it has not reached nirvana. Online education does not cure the ills of face-to-face education and face-to-face will not cure the ills of online education. Online education is a full peer in the pedagogical stirrings in higher education. It is not the weaker sibling.

The key question is what type of learning we (students, faculty, congregations, etc.) need and want. And then the next question is how we get there given the circumstance under which we work. The issue in the end is not which mode is “better;” both face-to-face and online are “technologies.” There are bad face-to-face classes, against which a goodly number of online classes would shine in comparison. And the opposite is also true. In each case the key issue is the pedagogical practice. Thus, comparing “delivery systems” may be wrongheaded from the beginning for best pedagogical practice may require a different conception of education. It is not about delivery; it is about learning.

By now it is undoubtedly obvious that I would not wish to limit my online classes to what works best in my face-to-face classroom (assuming that I would know what the latter is). Some teachers would agree but at the same time they wish to retain as much of the classroom as possible as they enter the distance education milieu. They would be happier if Web connections could transmit more of the classroom experience. Should we wait until faster digital connections (frequently called “high bandwidth”) are more widely available? I, for one, hope that high bandwidth does not rapidly become widely available,[16] for I fear we would quickly attempt to “push” too many of our existing classroom-based pedagogies through the faster connections. Relatively slow digital connections impede the replication of the classroom and that can be a distinct advantage in commencing teaching in a Web environment. Being “restricted” by low bandwidth forces one to rethink pedagogy, stripping down the technological wish-list to the pedagogically necessary. If low bandwidth prevents us from replicating what we do routinely in the classroom, we are forced to think anew about what is pedagogically needed for assisting students to maximize their learning.[17]

As a teacher moves from classroom-based to Web-based courses, “obvious” answers to pedagogical questions about what is needed are no longer so obvious. For example, when lecturing is inhibited by low bandwidth, we can stop to ask how important the teacher's “voice” is for maximizing student learning. Is the teacher's voice actually crucial? If so, at what junctures? It may not be in the quantity or places we have assumed. Perhaps the teacher's “voice” might equally serve student learning by posing and focusing the questions to be pursued, thus guiding the learning process more than being the source of it. Low bandwidth limits the possibility of effective lecturing, but it does make possible a high degree of student interaction around engaging, open-ended questions. I know of classroom-based teachers who have tried to shift toward greater student interaction but they have found class discussions to be too superficial. Substituting the exchange of written work between students has increased the quality of the interaction, but exchanging the papers soon becomes a logistical nightmare. A threaded discussion (something that does not require high connection speeds) readily solves the logistical problem. A threaded discussion (also called a “bulletin board”) automatically produces an index of all the written exchanges between participants, allowing participants to see readily what has gone before or to add a comment at a specific point rather than only after the most recent comment as is the case with email. By removing the logistical obstacles this learning activity can be utilized frequently in a course. In short, technological limitations can lead to productive rethinking of pedagogical practice.[18]

Low bandwidth is a blessing. To repeat, it forces thinking about what is necessary before we rush to replication. And what is possible is far less limited than seems to be the case when we start from the premise that the classroom needs to be replicated. But another question waits in the wings. What about the visual, auditory, and tactile richness of a face-to-face classroom? That question tends to drag us back to the impulse to replicate the classroom. The impulse should be resisted. Instead, we need to ask relentlessly, “What maximizes student learning?” We need to ask that for every environment in which teaching and learning can be undertaken. When we do so, we may find that educational “richness” is not limited to the narrow “reach” of the physical classroom. If low bandwidth and physical & temporal distance from a classroom are givens, we need to ask how we can maximally assist student learning with those factors as givens. How can we create richness within the reach provided by the Web? That is the question that comes to the forefront.

This shift in focus is not easily attained. Historically, we have thought of face-to-face classroom as rich interaction and have recognized (conceded?) its restricted reach. Only those who can get to the classroom have access to educational richness. Scholarship and grants have been used to ameliorate the problem of restricted reach and limited access. The Web reopens the tradeoff between richness and reach. The Web dramatically increases reach! But, does it do so at the expense of richness?[19] In the past, most of my colleagues would have immediately answered with a resounding “Yes,” as would most students who had limited experience with online learning. The increased reach afforded by the Web apart from the classroom could only be imagined as the kind marketed on late-night radio and TV – highly isolated, individual learners mastering a batch of data disconnected from meaningful contexts.

The increased reach of Web-based learning, however, does not have to be at the expense educational richness. Threaded discussions, mentioned above in the discussion of low bandwidth, are a prime example of a means to attain both richness and reach. The amount of exchange and interaction between students in a threaded discussion can easily exceed what is possible with the geographical and temporal restrictions of a classroom. Exchange does not need to end when the period is over. No “bell” rings at the end of the weekly three units of 50 minutes -- the standard Carnegie seat-time units for calculating what constitutes the necessary instructional period. Face-to-face, small group discussions can be deeply engaging, but a transcript of a 50-minutes discussion would reveal how little “temporal” allotment was available for each student to offer deeply considered comments. In contrast, in a threaded discussion there is time for everyone to contribute; everyone can “hear” by reading what everyone else has stated. There is no speaking over each other and nothing is lost if there is a lapse in attention. If small groups are formed, the teacher can “hear”/see the contribution of every student. Unlike classroom discussions, there is no need to spend time traveling to one place and, even more significant, the entire exchange is fully retrievable and thus is available for later review. Students can contribute to each others' learning as they formulate for each other what they have learned in their individual preparation for contributing to the threaded discussion.[20] Richness and reach no longer need be a tradeoff.

The extension in “reach” in Web-based education is not limited to spanning geographic and temporal obstacles to student-to-student interaction. It includes reaching across learning styles and personality types. That “shy” students, for example, can more readily enter an online threaded discussion has become nearly legendary; but equally important is the reflective time that is available between comments for students who respond quickly in face-to-face discussions. Students who term themselves as “talkative” have commented appreciatively in self-evaluations that they have never thought so much before expressing their views. The increased “richness” coupled with this extended “reach” does not reside inherently in the technology of a threaded discussion. The questions discussed need to be thought-provoking and life-engaging. Once again, technology facilitates a sound pedagogy; it does not produce the engagement or learning.

Face-to-face is not as good as it gets. But one should hope for no less in Web-based courses. Online teaching and learning should be one more avenue by which we pursue educational transformation. The status quo, as good as it maybe, is not good enough to cease the pursuit of improvement; it is not yet the best that we can do.

Student Support

Thus far I have discussed issues that faculties, even individual faculty, can address. When one moves to the issue of student support, one clearly moves to an area beyond the control of a single faculty member. Student support is a formidable issue. The learning environment for a program of theological education, even for a single course, is obviously not reducible to a classroom. Classrooms exist in a matrix. Teacher and students are surrounded by a diverse set of other participants, some closer to the core activity of learning than others, but all are needed to complete the learning environment. Janitors, librarians, secretaries, registrar, grounds crew, counselors, supportive friends and family members, congregations, service organizations – the list is actually quite long – all are part of the fabric that constitutes the learning environment. These participants have considerable impact on students and are integral to their success whether or not faculty acknowledge or work closely with these co-participants.

What is the matrix that constitutes the learning environment for students learning via the Web? Maintenance personnel keep classrooms in good repair. Who keeps the web environment (servers, hard drives, software, etc.) in good repair? Surely individual faculty members ought not to be expected to do so. But there is more. Supporting students obviously involves so much more than either physical space or computer capacities. The social environment is a fundamental component of student support. Are online students severed from necessary social support? For many among faculty, administration, and students who are resistive to online education, this is a core factor in their reticence. Students, it is claimed, are too isolated in online education. The dynamism and support of the social matrix is assumed to be lost.

For online teachers this is a crucial question, especially for those who overtly acknowledge the extra-course matrix that constitutes the learning environment in face-to-face education. They recognize that they cannot single-handedly provide all the support that is needed for an online student learning to flourish. All too often, however, the de facto expectation is that they do so, especially when seminaries start tentatively with one or two pilot classes. Either the faculty member personally (and heroically) provides the extra support or students are left largely on their own. In the first scenario, the situation is unsustainable. The faculty member is likely to experience burnout and, if not that, will confirm colleague suspicion that online teaching constitutes much more work than face-to-face teaching. In the second scenario, the heroic effort is shifted to the student; the self-driven students will succeed as they do in nearly any environment and the less self-directive will drop out. The latter will report that the online education is cold and impersonal. Too frequently the result in both scenarios is to characterize online education with dismissive epithets like “electronic correspondence courses” (which, in all likelihood, employs a caricature of correspondence courses).

A defensive response to the charge that online education leaves students inadequately supported is to question to what extent faculty actually align their efforts with those of the larger matrix in a face-to-face learning environment. Too often we work in isolation from the larger learning environment. There is something disingenuous in faculty objections to online education because of the alleged lack of student support when they wittingly or unwittingly devalue the worth of face-to-face support personnel. In my early years as a teacher, I admit I regarded the co-curricular dimension of seminary life as a necessary backdrop for education, but not as a core component of student learning. It could inhibit good teaching and learning, but it was not a constitutive part of it. (There are days, I don't doubt, that staff would still say I have not unlearned that attitude.) Student experience of the learning environment of a school is not as compartmentalized as it often is for faculty. The curriculum and co-curriculum are united in a student's evaluation of the worth of their seminary education. The long and short of the defensive tone of this paragraph is that once again faculty conduct in face-to-face environments is not necessarily the gold standard against which student support in online education is to be judged.

But pointing out less than ideal conduct in face-to-face education is not an adequate response to the challenges posed by the need for student support in online education. Minimally, student support in online education needs to replicate the intensity of the support offered in a face-to-face context. “Intensity” is the key word; “replication” by itself is not the goal. Students deserve to feel equally supported; or, to state the matter another way, the presence of support needs to be experienced. The mechanisms of support – the delivery systems – may change; in fact, they will change. For example, placements services which might have been as minimal as placing notices in a three-ring binder in the Dean of Students office now need to be placed on the Web. This will require attention to web design and navigational principles. Tutoring and assistance with writing skills are other supports that need to be in place. The manner of their availability will be quite different when students are not present face-to-face with a tutors or writing center personnel. Providing these support services digitally involves a shift in administrative thinking proportionate to the shift in faculty thinking discussed in the previous section.

Chapel services might be a good illustration. The campus pastor (or whoever else oversees on-campus worship) needs to imagine ways to connect with the worship life of distance students. Whatever form that “connection” takes need not become a replacement for the local worship community in which the student participates, but it must communicate care for the worship life of students. It might require the campus worship community to connect with local worship communities. It needs to be more than video streaming on-campus chapel services, helpful as that may at first seem. The problem with video streaming on-campus activities such as worship services is that nothing really changes. On-campus worship leaders continue to do what they have always done, except that they have added a camera. To the distant student it screams, “Too bad you couldn't be here!” The distance learner is merely allowed to peek in on where the action really is taking place. It shouts “concession.” Broadcasting the on-campus environment is doing nothing more than trying to make the walls of the campus elastic, stretching them to reach across geographical distances. The Web is a new “location,” a new place of meeting, not simple a new form of broadcasting or delivering across distances. I have added a “place” for praying in my online classes, but that is hardly the limit of what could be done. Others will have to join the exploration for new form of inhabiting the Web environment. More important than a proliferation of training events is gathering support staff, faculty and students together to explore news ways of interacting in a Web environment. Our imaginations have not been exhausted!

As we develop comparable levels of support by new means, we will need to think through what core values are offered to students in co-curricular interactions – or better, we will need to have students tell us what the core values are. Means and ends need to be distinguished. Do the means of these interactions service the social needs of faculty and staff more than they do the needs of students? “Yes” is a possible answer to the question. For example, having cookies or popcorn available at the registrar's counter may create a delightful, supportive ambiance but, if a student had to take off three hours from work to drive to and from campus to fill out and sign a form, the value may be irrelevant.[21] The ambiance created by the snacks is better than being gruff, but, in truth, the staff may derive more value from the face-to-face interaction than the students, especially when the latter calculate the overall cost of the interaction (i.e., time, fuel, energy, childcare, etc.).

Faculty and staff are not the only ones who will need to rethink the value of various means to attain the goal of student support. A significant number of seminary students may have to alter their expectations for support in online education – “alter,” not lower. Past experiences in college will have shaped their expectations. Even though in every other aspect of their lives they no longer act like they did in their early twenties, they carry forward expectations for support which were shaped or scripted by prior experiences of school. Schools, seminaries included, are highly scripted social environments. We all come to seminaries with scripts both conscious and unconscious and we act upon them. Our seminaries have a remarkable number of self-directed, active learners who manifest the positives characteristics of adult learners, students who are able to draw upon their own rich, post-college learning experience. But there are also many who too readily differ to authority figures, whether teachers or staff, to tell them what they should (or are allowed) to do. That is the way it was in college, why not expect the same in seminary?

Add to that, a seminary is to be particularly caring. But “caring” is tricky word, subject to many explications. If the connotation is “being taken care of,” latent authoritarian dimensions can lurk under our caretaking. We have all been, despite our best intentions, scripted toward conformity and compliance in schooling systems. “Passive” learners are too often the result because they are, in fact, the ones who are “rewarded” by the social system embedded in the schooling. Within such a system we may seek to be genial and hospitable, but the substructure is not fundamentally altered. The scent of authoritarianism is still in the air. As a result, students may out of habit first look to the institution for their learning support. They then fail to recognize the extensive system of support they have in their own lives – friends and family outside of “school,” to name but a few. A conflict is set up as a result. Active adult learners feel constricted by the system that serves the more passive students. Faculty and staff consciously want active adult learners but unconsciously fail to surrender the prerogatives of the script they inherited and now replicate. Remove the system and the more passive students will feel cut adrift. Or, the conflict arises within a single person – a commuter student, for example, who expects the seminary to feel like a college community, but finds the rituals associated with that milieu to be a burdensome intrusion on existing family, employment and congregational commitments. These tensions were not created by the introduction of online teaching and learning.

As with so many aspects of higher education, the development of online education is occurring at the same time that profound questions are being raised about our face-to-face system. Thus, do we really want to replicate the face-to-face support system in our online system? What exactly is the face-to-face system of student support? Who is served well by it and who is not? Which of its services are vital, even crucial, and which are nice, but not necessary? These questions are raised anew as participants – providers and users – move into an environment that is unfamiliar. They must be addressed directly and immediately when designing and offering online programs and courses. Students, teachers, administration, and staff may all need to rethink and reframe standards and expectations – what is the relationship between means and ends in the full range of our interactions in learning? We end up returning to a central question: What is the core value in each of the interactions that constitute education – in teaching, learning and support? Web-based education forces us to rethink our entire system. The rethinking is, in fact, long overdue. As soon as our student body shifted to commuting, second career (often part-time) learners, we needed to take up this rethinking and reconfiguration. Web-based teaching and learning did not by itself create the need; it simply makes it more obvious.

My first glimpse of the reframing that needs to take place occurred in two conferences I attended within two months in 1998. The first was the Distance Teaching and Learning Conference held each August in Madison , Wisconsin . The reframing began with the very first workshop I attended, an introduction to standards for quality in distance education (ACE 1996). While I had gone to this conference to pick ideas to improve the Web-based course in the Pentateuch that I had begun to teach, it was soon evident that my initial interest in the conference was far too atomistic. Improving a free-standing, individual course was not sufficient. Rather the questions were about how the library, counseling services, the registrar's and business office would be present to the learners in any given course. An online course should not be offered in isolation from the support systems of the institution. But that is exactly what we were doing in my pilot class at Luther Seminary. The “school” was not online even though a course was. It is a testament to those early Web-based learners that they achieved as much learning as they did with so few support resources. Or perhaps better, I recognized more completely what students could achieve when given space to be the active adult learners that they were! Despite the accomplishments of these early students, it became immediately clear that we did not have a sustainable system for online education. We could not continue to add courses without addressing the support issues. No single teacher could adequately provide the needed support.[22] The entire seminary had to develop a Web presence. In fact, more than a presence was required; the school needed to work in a Web environment.[23]

That first conference pointed out the need. The second made it clear that meeting the need would not be easily accomplished. At the October 1998 conference of Educom (now called Educause after a merger with Cause) two University of Minnesota officials described their shift to a “one-stop” system for access to student services.[24] Student information was spread over more than 20 different database systems and was very dependent on the movement of paper. But that was only a technical problem. As large and difficult as it was, it was not the chief problem. The deeper problem was conceptual. Too frequently staff regarded their job as guarding and housing data. There was a constant “counter,” real or imagined, between the staff and the learner. There may be cookies on the counter, but that did not militate against the obstacles that the counter represented. The staff had to rethink their role, changing from guarding information and bringing it to the counter when requested to presenting information in a form that could be accessed by the student when needed, regardless of where they were. Organizing information in a navigable, digital form was the key task, not carrying it back and forth between its repository and the counter. Of course, appropriate password protections had to be set up, but again those were technical issues. The chief resistive force was at the conceptual level because of the recasting of traditional roles. In the first month of existence, the system had a few thousand hits (not particularly impressive for a large university) but within a short period of time the hits reached into the millions. Clearly there was a student desire for information that far exceeded what could be accessed in the strictly face-to-face, across the counter format.

The scale of large universities exposes proprietary compartments (often called “silos”) more quickly than is the case at the average seminary. Students shuffle from one office to the next tracking down the information and forms they need. The movement is almost invisible when the offices are all within one building or when one staff person implements several different steps. When they are several blocks apart, as they are at the University of Minnesota , everyone notices. At Luther Seminary, staff members often bridge the divides while talking over coffee. Our informality masks the inefficiencies and covers over the frustrations students encountered.

This may seem minor in a small system. In fact, digitizing the process may seem to cost more than could be saved in staff and student time, provided the students are nearby and willing to withstand the hassles. Problems already show up for programs designed around night or weekend on-campus sessions. Playing phone tag started before the Web-based education entered the scene! Gentle informality might even cover over the initial problems, but the issues are quickly exacerbated for Web-based students who don't regularly travel to campus. It is my contention that, if a seminary makes its support systems available online for distance learners, it will find that it has greatly added to its service for commuter students. Those students who are yet willing and able to commute to campus for classes but who don't live on or near campus will use the online services for routine interactions that are part of any educational system. There is nothing magical about checking on financial matters at the business or financial aid office or filling out registration forms at the registrar's office. The same holds for many of the trips students make to the library. Complaints about reduced use of the library of were heard long before Web-bases education emerged in our midst.[25] Clearly online education requires re-thinking student support, but the need for rethinking existed beforehand. The Web provides a tool for implementing needed changes. Online learners will not be the only students who benefit.[26]

Concluding Remarks

Web-based theological education, in both its teaching and learning dimensions, provides a means to address (not necessarily solve) the struggles and shifts that are occurring in our institutions and systems. No one is immune and no one can wait until everything is in place before entering into the change. Faculty cannot wait until support systems and training are perfectly in place. Administrative and support personnel cannot wait until there is money for more staff. Students cannot wait until support systems are perfected. There are colleagues and peers who know a little bit more, but not everything, for they too are learning as they go. Ask them for assistance! We'll learn together. Who knows, perhaps we will unleash a new era of collegial learning. Abandon the notion of mastery for a moment and sit down together–administration, faculty and students–and learn how the Web affords us all new ways to work together in learning for the sake of ministry in communities of faith and service in God's world.

There is so much more to say. It has been a rich, stimulating experience for me. My teaching has been renewed. Much is left to be done and even more is to be discovered. Within the above comments, I hope my enthusiasm for Web-education is obvious. I am enthusiastic but I am not euphoric. The obstacles and difficulties have been and remain hard work. Why continue to bother? The briefest and most deep-seated reason is the students I have served through Web-based education. They are gifted and they will be a gift to the church. They have blessed my life and I want to continue to work with and for them.

References

American Association for Higher Association (AAHE), American College Personnel Association and National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. 1998. “Powerful Partnerships: A Shared Responsibility for Learning.” <http://www.aahe.org/teaching/tsk_frce.htm>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

American Council on Education (ACE). 1996. “Guiding Principles for Distance Learning in a Learning Society.” <http://www.acenet.edu/calec/dist_learning/dl_principlesIntro.cfm>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

Amos, Katherine E., ed. 1999. Theological Education 36, no. 1. Issue Focus: “Educational Technology and Distance Education: Educational Issues and Implications for Theological Education.”

Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). 2000. “Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services.” <http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/ACRL/Standards_and_Guidelines/Guidelines_for_
Distance_Learning_Library_Services1.htm>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

Barr, Robert B. and Tagg, John. 1995. “From Teaching to Learning: A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education,” Change 27: 1-25. <http://critical.tamucc.edu/~blalock/readings/tch2learn.htm>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

Bellinger, Charles. 2003. “Theological Education and Distance Learning: A Working Bibliography.” <http://libnt2.lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/theo_distance_bib.htm>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 )

Boyer, Ernest L. 1997 [1990]. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate . San Francisco : Jossey-Bass .

Brookfield , Stephen D. & Preskill, Stephen. 1999. Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass.

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. <http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

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Evans, Philip and Thomas S. Wurster. 1999. Blown to Bits How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy. Cambridge : Harvard Business School Press.

Graham, Charles, Kursat Cagiltay, Byung-Ro Lim, Joni Craner and Thomas M. Duffy. 2001. "Seven Principles of Effective Teaching: A Practical Lens for Evaluating Online Courses." The Technology Source (March/April). <http://horizon.unc.edu/TS/default.asp?show=article&id=839>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

Graham, Charles, Kursat Cagiltay, Byung-Ro Lim, Joni Craner and Thomas M. Duffy. 2000. “Teaching in a Web Based Distance Learning Environment: An Evaluation Summary Based on Four Courses.” <http://crlt.indiana.edu/publications/crlt00-13.pdf>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

Hutchings, Pat, Chris Bjork and Marcia Babb. 2002. “ An Annotated Bibliography of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.” <http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/elibrary/docs/CASTL_Bibliography.pdf >. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP). 2000. "Quality On the Line: Benchmarks for Success in Internet-Based Distance Education." <http://www.ihep.com/Pubs/PDF/Quality.pdf>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP). 1999. “What's the Difference? A Review of Contemporary Research on the Effectiveness of Distance Learning in Higher Education.” <http://www.ihep.com/Pubs/PDF/Difference.pdf>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning . <http://www.iusb.edu/~josotl>. (Accessed August 4, 2003).

Jacoby, Barbara. 1996. Service-Learning in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices . San Francisco : Jossey-Bass.

Kassop, Mark. 2003. “Ten Ways Online Education Matches, or Surpasses, Face-to-Face Learning.” The Technology Source (May/June) (online edition). <http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=1059>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

Kvavik, Robert B. & Handberg, Michael N. 2000. “Transforming Student Services.” EDUCAUSE Quarterly 23:2 (online edition). <http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eq/a002/eqm0022.pdf>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

McCarthy, Jeremiah, ed. 2003. Theological Education 39, no. 1. Issue Focus: “The Character and Assessment of Learning for Religious Vocation.”

National Service Learning Clearinghouse. <http://www.servicelearning.org>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

Noble, David. 1998. “Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education.” First Monday 3, no. 1. <http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_1/noble/index.html>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

Noble, David, Ben Shneiderman, Richard Herman, Phil Agre and Peter J. Denning. 1998. “Technology in Education: The Fight for the Future.” Educom Review 33:3 (online edition). <http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewArticles/33322.html>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

Nysse, Richard W. 1998. “Technology and the Classroom: Inevitable and Better.” Word & World 18, no. 4:419, 421. [Draft Version. <http://www.luthersem.edu/rnysse/TechnologyAndTheClassroom.htm>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).]

Regional Accrediting Commissions. 2000. “Best Practices for Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate Programs.” <http://www.ncahigherlearningcommission.org/resources/electronic_degrees/index.html>. (Accessed August 4, 2003 ).

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Endnotes

[1] Online and Web-based will be used without distinction in this essay. “Online” is technically the more inclusive term, including its scope email, listservs and more, but in common usage the two terms have become interchangeable. A similar distinction could be made between the terms “Internet” and the “World Wide Web,” the former being the earlier and more inclusive term.

[2] We have used computers to automate record keeping functions and we have adapted to (occasionally even adopted) innovations in communication, but we have not transformed the way we work. We still try to do what we have always done, only faster and in greater volume.

[3] The educational institution I know best, and the base from which I write, is Luther Seminary, a seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The vast majority of its graduates serve in institutions directly connected to the church.

[4] For more analytical articles, see Bellinger (2003). Note in particular the articles listed from Theological Education (Amos 1999) and Teaching Theology and Religion (Williams 2002).

[5] One place to note the continuous debate is in the pages of The Chronicle of Higher Education . The articles span the entire spectrum from reporting wild enthusiasm (fewer of these now appear) to ones with a “sky is falling” tone. One notable debate was generated by David Noble (1998) who considered online teaching as fully and only destructive. Responses to his “sky is falling” article quickly appeared (Noble et al 1998).

[6] For a quick introduction to this shift, see the helpful – and frequently cited – article by Barr and Tagg (1995). For more extensive treatments, see Tagg (2003) and Weimer (2002).

[7] See the essays regarding accreditation in Theological Education published by the Association of Theological Schools (McCarthy 2003). In addition, eight regional agencies recently produced a joint statement on online standards (Regional 2000).

[8] “Scholarship of teaching” is a commonly used phrase for research on learning as it is occurring. The class itself becomes a research project for the teacher. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching [http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/] has had a major role in advancing this work. Convenient starting points are their “eLibrary” (Carnegie 2003) and Hutchings et al (2002). A seminal book in this movement is Boyer (1997 [1990]). See also The Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning [http://www.iusb.edu/~josotl].

[9] Service-learning is one such impetus. See Stanton et al (1999) or Jacoby (1996). For someone new to service learning, one place to begin is the National Service Learning Clearinghouse [http://www.servicelearning.org] or enter “service learning higher education” into a search engine. A significant evaluation of service-learning has been conducted by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (2000)

[10] Change has been a major factor in many institutions. Higher education has no grounds for claiming exemption. It is not, in fact, entirely surprising that the work headed by Peter Senge moved from corporate environments in The Fifth Discipline (Senge 1990) to educational institutions in Schools that Learn (Senge 2000).

[11] For some, Web-based education is fundamentally regarded as at best a concession to the conditions under which some learners must operate. For them, Web-based teaching and learning is not seen as a potential asset in the overall transitions and changes sketched above. The optimal is seen as being on campus. Thus, if distance education can match on campus instruction, then at least the assumed downside of the concession is minimized. Those of us who are engaged in Web-based education often get trapped in the concessionary construal when we too become too eager to prove that Web-based education is just as good–it's as if we need to prove it too ourselves to quiet our own inbred bias toward the way we were schooled.

[12] Occasionally an article appears with the presumption moving in the opposite direction (Kassop 2003).

[13] The study, released March 21, 2000, was commissioned by the National Education Association (NEA) and Blackboard, a course management software vendor. The recourses available for the evaluation of online education are developing rapidly. A fine example is Graham et al (2000) and (2001). Questions have been raised about the reliability of studies that have shown no significant difference between classroom-based and various distance education modalities (IHEP 1999). Interestingly, the latter study was also conducted by the Institute for Higher Education Policy. It was commissioned by the American Federation of Teachers and, again, the NEA.

[14] I don't wish to over generalize. I suspect there as seminaries that are significantly different from the portrait I draw but I also highly doubt that Luther Seminary is entirely an aberration.

[15] My own practice is to build my courses on a publicly available Web and conduct my courses in Blackboard. Thus all the course material–its design, assignments, discussion questions, etc.–are available for browsing by prospective students, colleagues, graduates, donors and congregations. If someone finds the material useful for lifelong learning or continuing education, they are free to use it. Blackboard is used to provide password protection for what students write to each other. Their exchanges are kept private.

[16] Bandwidth, the speed at which digital data is transferred, varies considerably from rural to urban areas, from institution to institution, from homes to institutions, from one country to another. While computer manufacturers routinely include 56.6k modems in new computers, that is not sufficient speed for distributing large video files, live streaming, animation or other media rich files. A significant number of students may have cable and DSL connections which are much faster, but an equal number of students will only be able to connect via phone lines at speeds that will not even attain the full 56.6k capacity of their modems. There are ways to work around this limitation, but these “work-arounds” will be disappointing if the goal is to replicate the classroom.

[17] So, is technology determining pedagogy after all? This is a common fear and there is an irony in my comments in favor of the limits of low bandwidth. Low bandwidth forces me/us out of our status quo pedagogy, but technology does not thereby gain an upper hand.

[18] Thinking about threaded discussions led me to Discussion as a Way of Teaching (Brookfield and Preskil11999). Brookfield and Preskill address classroom-based courses, but there is much that can be applied to Web-based discussions. This is an example of the productive interchange that can occur if we focus on pedagogy before technology. Face-to-face teachers might benefit from reading Facilitating Online Learning (Collison et al 2000) or E-Moderating (Salmon 2000).

[19] The interplay of “richness” and “reach” in business are discussed by Evans and Wurster (1999).

[20] Additional educational advantages include limiting faculty "censorship" of the discussion means of their body language or with their laughter or the lack thereof. Students cannot as easily vie for faculty approval. On the positive side, it is easier to provide “correction,” should it be deemed necessary, without doing so in front of peers and risking shaming. Most threaded discussions make it easy to do so via private email. Students who are having difficulty performing are quickly noticeable and assistance can be given sooner. Finally, in threaded discussions students write to peers. Writing papers for professors is often little more than jumping through a hoop because the audience, i.e., the professor, is an artificial audience. Writing to peers who will be colleagues in ministry is not nearly so artificial. This can develop a collaborative, collegial practice that is sorely needed in the contemporary church.

[21] In 1998 and 1999 I heard conference speakers describe their struggle to remove the requirement for all students to come to campus to obtain their passwords to access online courses.

[22] But teachers should not wipe their hands too quickly. For example, assisting students with small technical issues at the beginning of a course does much to establish the social tone of an online course.

[23] To grasp the need, it might be best to think of creating a second seminary, a fully online one. This would plant some feet firmly in the Web environment rather than bolting on “enhancements.” The bolt-on or add-on approach keeps it feet planted in the face-to-face environment and inevitably regards the online activity as a concession or just plain extra work and a pain in the neck. When the fully online seminary is constructed, the two institutions could flow together. New efficiencies would emerge and students in both environments would be better served. Robust hybrid possibilities would be developed. During the transition, however, it only feels like a burden to faculty and staff.

[24] For a published summary of this presentation, see Kvavik and Handberg, (2000).

[25] For one indication of the rethinking occurring in library services, see ACRL (2000).

[26] An instructive example is the project of the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications called “Beyond the Administrative Core: Creating Web-based Student Services for Online Learners” (WCET Beyond 2003). Their guidelines are particularly noteworthy (WCET Guidelines 2003).