Transcript of the live chat session that took place Thursday, December 18, 1997. These sessions are normally scheduled for 12 noon-1 PM Eastern Time (GMT -5) every Thursday.
These sessions are hosted by Richard Seltzer. If you would like to receive email reminders of our chat sessions, simply send a blank email message to businessonthewebchats-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/businessonthewebchats and sign up there.
For transcripts of previous sessions and a list of future topics, click here .
For an article on how to make "business chat" work (based on this experience), click here .
Since the chat itself happens at a rapid pace, it's often difficult to note interesting facts in particular URLs as they appear on-line. Here's a place to take a more leisurely look. I've rearranged some of the pieces to try to capture the various threads of discussion (which sometimes get lost in the rush of live chat).
Please send email with your follow-on questions and comments, and suggestions for topics we should focus on in future sessions. So long as the volume of email responses is manageable, I'll post the most pertinent ones here for all to see.
Richard Seltzer -- Welcome Kathleen, Fatty Moon, and nbrown Kathleen Gilroy -- Hi Richard. Hi everybody. As OTTER (Online, Training, Technical and Educational Resources) is in the distance learning business, I am very much looking forward to this chat.
Fatty Moon -- Fatty Moon present and accounted for. Ummm, I was told the chat would start at 9 a.m. Pacific time. That right?
Richard Seltzer -- Yes, we are starting now -- noon Eastern Time, 9 AM Pacific Time.
Fatty Moon -- I'm here at the invite of Heather Duggan (who should be here soon.) I host Electric-Learning for teachers/parents at http://www.electric-learning.com. I'm just an interested onlooker.
Sudha Jamthe -- Hi Richard, How are you doing? I am interested in hearing people's thoughts on how the online experience will be transformed by increasing online class and success stories in it.
Tracy Marks -- Hi everyone. I'm Tracy Marks, an Internet trainer. I've taken about 10 courses online, including a course on Teaching Online, and have done a minimal amount of online teaching.
tony -- Hi everyone, my name is Anthony from Acunet.net
nbrown -- Hi Richard, Thanks for the opportunity to chat! I teach business writing on the web for UMass Lowell with their cybereducation program. I also have a small business, Write for Business since 1989, where I do professional resumes and writing consultant work for companies. Nancy Brown
Janet Nichols -- Hi I'm Janet Nichols education coordinator for Web-net.
Sudha Jamthe -- Hi Janet: Good you could make it. Richard: Janet has been organizing online classes for Web-Net and has lots to offer from practical experience of what works and some limitations.
Tom Dadakis -- Hi I'm Tom Dadakis. I am the web manager for a major Wall Street investment bank who is committed to putting all of their training online in the next three years. I am facilitating the effort.
Tom -- I'm Tom Yocom, a member of the Distance Learning group within Sales and Marketing training at DIGITAL.
Sophie -- Hi this is Sophie from OTTER joining in.
Richard Seltzer -- Kathleen -- Amen: the social experience, learning from one another, rather than just listening to an instructor or reading texts. And this social experience need not be limited to the Internet. The Internet is just one component. The point is that with the Internet distance should not matter. So the same learning techniques should/could be effective when combined with live face-to-face instruction or instruction delivered by satellite and other means. To me, what matters is the approach, with the Internet environment fosters -- the people-to-people piece.
Sudha Jamthe -- Richard: Do you see the web will facilitate certain subjects of education , bearing in mind the social experience of learning that Kathleen brought up?
Kathleen Gilroy -- Sudha, Our focus is also international, and I just checked out the translation service for babelfish. It blew my mind because it would enable students in Brazil, for example, to ask questions of faculty in the U.S. and clearly understand one another. I see us building this feature into our "virtual university" web site. Richard, do you know when Japanese may be added?
Richard Seltzer -- Kathleen -- yes, for courses to be truly international, we need ways to break through the language barrier. It isn't enough to assume that the world speaks English. AltaVista's new translation service (free) could be a very important element here. Right now they translate from French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portugues to English, and from English to all those languages. They haven't announced plans for other languages yet; so I can't give you a time table. BUt this is enormous -- the translations come back in a matter of seconds; and you can cut and paste any text into the form, or point them at any Web page. It is handy for translating email or messages in Forums, etc. Give it a try.
Kathleen Gilroy -- Given the bandwidth limitations of the internet, we believe that not all instruction can be done over the internet. Students need to see teachers and students need to interact with one another both in the classroom and over the internet. We use satellite connections to this end.
Richard Seltzer -- This field becomes very interesting when we get to the point where the on-line experience is more effective at helping you learn than the traditional educational experience. That seems very possible. And in fact, many of the tools and techniques of "distance education" are being used today in traditional settings to enhance learning. The point is that distance doesn't matter - so on-campus or off it could still be "distance education".
Sudha Jamthe -- Kathleen and Tom: What is your model when you talk about online classes? Is it in a chat room? Or is it archive on information on the web with access to the instructor or something else? I mean, what is the communication method? What kind of learning is involved on the part of the teacher and student?
Tom Dadakis -- Richard, I think we have to define some of the different methodolgies of distant learning. Without getting technical, synchronous (everyone online at the same time) is probably the most difficult. It is kind of like this chat group but the software controls who is speaking. Asynchronous (email like) is like a newsgroup but for a specific topic. Just-in-time is like your help button. The learning modual is there right when you need it. ZD Net is like a workbook which the learning clicks past the pages. There is no way the instructor could respond individually to each learner. We hear some of their courses have over 100,000 participants. Who would want to read all that mail.
Tracy Marks -- Tom, I agree that synchronous chat is very difficult to schedule. Even in the small classes I've been involved with, our small group chats involved people across about 9 hours of time zones. We wasted an inordinate amount of time trying unsuccessfully to come up with times that everyone could make in order to do collaborative assignments.
Richard Seltzer -- I believe that the key to distance education isn't the word "distance". What we are talking about is a learning environment and learning techniques that work wherever you happen to be. We are talking about getting away from static or even automated teaching methods to environments where students and teachers interact directly with one another and learn from one anotoher to a degree that previously was impossible. I believe that the people piece is essential here. How do we structure the experience to make it as effective as possible? What are the roles that need to be played to make this happen? Not just the instructor (who is the person responsible for the content and direction of the course), but such people as tutors or facilitators or moderators -- to get the dialogue going, to make the personal contacts that are necessary, to make sure most of the students are truly involved. I believe that it is through activity, involvement, and interaction with others that you really "learn" -- not simply by reading and listening. Can any of you point to specific examples and tell us how effective distance education courses are structured from a people point of view?
Tracy Marks -- Richard - zdu has separate sysops assisting the instructor, attending to all the technical problems. This can be essential, as many students have technical problems, particularly when accessing moos, chat rooms, doing irc, or using any kind of special software...
Richard Seltzer -- Tom Dadakis -- yes, the technology matters and synchronous vs. asynchronous is a good distinction. But I would start with the assumption that both of those are needed -- we need to have some methods that are real-time and compelling, like chat, that draw people together at particular times; and we need other methods that allow more thoughtful consideration and threaded discussion. And I would judge/select the technology based on the quality of the people-to-people interaction that results.
Tom Dadakis -- Richard, I think the phrase "Anytime, Anywhere Learning" will replace distant learning as people understand the concept. The unstated phrase is that we are all becoming 'lifelong learners', just like we are all beta testers now a days.
Tom Yocom -- I'm seeing an interesting mix of wanting "Anytime, Anywhere" learning opportunities but a resistance to the web as a result of response time; this an interest in "downloading" modules abd supplementing them with chat, concalls, etc. Even downloading of modules is being met with resistance and we are looking using BackWeb to deliver (push) the modules during "unused" network time using the "polite protocol".
Tom Dadakis -- Tom, sounds like you have a mobile workforce too; which does not help sychnronous learning.
Tom Yocom -- Tom Dadakis, Yes our workforce is rather mobile -- many reps do not have offices at DIGITAL -- they work out of their homes and have laptop computers. On top of that, they are spread around the world.
Richard Seltzer -- Tom Yocom -- Perhaps we need to distinguish among styles of teaching/learning. For some instruction the traditional two-tiered sytle (instructor who knows all and students who know little or nothing) is appropriate. Then the emphasis is on making the instructor and his/her words and images readily available to the students, with opportunities for questions and testing. In the learning community kind of environment, (more like a graduate business school or an executive training session than a beginner's course in college), it is presumed that all the participants have something to offer to one another -- their experience, insights, etc. In that case, it is important to make the everyone-to-everyone connections, in a more peer-to-peer manner.
Kathleen Gilroy -- I think the fantasy is that with distance education, you can take people out of the formula. I have heard training directors say that now we can get rid of all those pesky people. But the issue is that the students want to be taught and want to interact with other human beings. That is where the learning occurs. In our courses students value this more highly than the instruction.
Tom Yocom -- Richard, we see and example of the split that you describe in our recent DIGITAL Solutions training sessions where the people attending seem more interested in networking than in "learning" from the presentations. This isn't too much of a surprise and shows that the face-to-face time would be better used for the people to people exchanges than for "presenting" information which could be done using other formats compatible with anytime, anywhere.
Tom Dadakis -- Kathleen, the training dept is not trying to get rid of those pesky people but rather eliminate the reasons on why they can't attend training. Cost & time are the drivers. Tracy since I deal with inhouse training I don't have those competitions although we are investingating contracting some our self paced learning to outside providers like a ZDU.
Tracy Marks -- Heather - The most effective online courses I've been involved with were about 8 weeks, and students at various times worked in groups of 4-6....There was a mailing list OR a forum, and chats scheduled at least once week. Twice a week is probably better, given scheduling difficulties. (BTW Heather I'm also in the Net Gain business community class, but missed much of it since I was out of town...Anything you can say about it relevant to the topic today?)
hduggan -- Tracy - Thanks for the tips on configuration. On the Net.Gain class. That class would benefit from being broken into smaller workgroups, with each workgroup assigned a different problem they reported back on towards the end of the class. With more then 40 people posting regularly, it's impossible to direct attention.
Richard Seltzer -- I believe that the two-tier teaching model where the teacher is on stage is well suited to multi-media, a la placeware.com But a peer-to-peer learning environment seems better suited to text today. One exception -- one-to-one teaching, which is one of the choices of on-line instruction at the U. of Phoenix (though without the multi-media today).
hduggan -- Richard, What distinguishes a peer-to-peer learning model from any of the multitude of free discussion groups available on the web? For someone marketing a course, what distingushes the two?
Richard Seltzer -- Basically, I consider this weekly chat as
a free form of distance education. We gather here to learn from one another
on a peer-to-peer basis. (I know I learn a lot from both the live interaction
and also the followup messages.) What this lacks is
-- a pre-planned structure/curriculum
-- people dedicated to carrying out specific roles (like facilitator,
moderator, tutor, etc.)
Barry Rosen -- The DL models which I saw espoused recently at a conference at which the Western Governor's University presented force a certain amount of structure by requiring the enrollees to take part in an on-line forum of some type periodically. I imagine that is how they address the "class size" issue which Tracy surfaces. [They also limit class sizes.]
Richard Seltzer -- Tracy, I believe that the human tendency to procrastinate and the ease of putting off work when the only link is on-line leads to the need for more than just an instructor (for many courses). You need to have people available to directly contact the folks who haven't been active, to prod them, to engage them, to get them involved. Only if they become involved are they likely to learn.
Tracy Marks -- Richard, some of the intensive small classes I've taken online have involved students in Israel, Abu Dhabi, Japan, Australia. Two problems: in one case, the INSTRUCTOR didn't speak English well, which led to a lot of miscommunication. Also real-time chat was impossible time-zone-wise with a lot of international students....
Tracy Marks -- Actually, Richard I haven't taught about teaching online...only taken a course on the subject at http://www.cybercorp.net ... Some things I think are important are creating opportunities for students to ask a lot of questions, share assignment and insights, interact with each other. One also needs to respond immediately to student issues....I'd like to hear from Janet and others about how they handle a high degree of interactivity.
Sudha Jamthe -- Janet: As a 'real' teacher and organizer of online classes, what are some of the differences you see in online education taking off as it should?
Janet Nichols -- Tracy, We are still learning. Susan Joyce taught a Intro to HTML for us and we found most students did not participate in the live chat sessions. Yet those of us who did found them very useful. We haven't tried it but I am intrigued by the idea of using a class dedicated bulletin board.
Tracy Marks -- What I've found effective is a combination of forums or a mailing list and online chat....with opportunity to post assignments on the web and get feedback from other students. http://www.zdu.com where I've taken a lot of classes has a classroom and a cybercafe -- in the cafe students can socialize and share information, thoughts etc. that aren't directly relevant to the assignments, as well as network. A lot of learning can occur from reading questions and answers between instructors and other students too.
Sudha Jamthe -- Tracy: I find mailing list and chat serve two complimentary purspose. Mailing list allows for lots of 'Push' which can be at your convenience, while chat requires you to be there at the right time with quick fingers to type. Maybe its serves two different types of students, like introverts and extroverts in a class.
Tracy Marks -- Richard, you asked about increasing interactivity. I think it helps to have a variety of forums or bulletin boards, each on a stimulating topic, and for students to be able to create their own threads, to make the class as relevant to them as possible. Also having a cybercafe for "socializing" which gives students an opportunity to introduce themselves to each other personally and learn about their common interests help. Having a sense of the others as human beings contributes to involvement...
Janet Nichols -- Tracy - I find your comment very interesting. I've had alot of trouble trying to recruit people to teach for Web-net on a volunteer basis. Maybe it just requires too much effort.
Tracy Marks -- One thing I'd like to know is how to attract students who are willing to pay more than a few dollars for a course. It seems to be help if one gets college credit or ceus credit like at www.ceus.com or if the subject is a special-interest course that isn't offered anywhere for a low fee. The Teaching Online course at www.cybercorp.com (recommended) cost about $225 and has about 40 students a terms. Now that is viable for instructors and students...
Tracy Marks -- I'm curious about how those of you who teach online recruit students....how do you find them? Is it a matter of mostly posting announcements on the Web, on lists, on your site...? What motivates students to pay to take your courses...and again, to pay more than a few dollars per course. (It's tough when you compete with Virtual University and zdu.com and other $5 a course centers).
Sudha Jamthe -- Tracy: About your question about how people will pay for online classes: I think people will go for alternate regular classes if they can find one if they need to pay a couple of hundred dollars. So, you target customers are people who can't find such classes nearby and feel the pain to learn immediately. Like a regular school, if you attach job opportunities by an allaince with a search firm, it might help. Or, if you target businesses who would pay to offer the courses for their employees, you separate the customer from the consumer and it might help.
Tracy Marks -- Yes, Sudha, a unique class that costs a few hundred dollars and is limited to 15-25 people, with a lot of personal attention and interaction seems the most viable. So people don't get lost in the crowd.
hduggan -- Tracy, From a student's perspective, I would be motivated to pay more for a course if I were offered a high level of personal attention. Something beyond what I could get from an online discussion group.
Kathleen Gilroy -- Tracy, We have been very effective at delivering large numbers of students to our courses. It's really plain old marketing--sourcing the right courses, identifying the channels (a mix of direct, resell, and electronic) and spending money on marketing. Right now it's tough to get attention just on the web.
Sudha Jamthe -- Tracy: A unique class with personalized attention is going to have lots of fixed cost in terms of preparation time. It will be economical for you when you have made many such classes and can reuse the material and build upon the prev. class. If you want to make a customized new package each time, obviously it is a different product than the zd classes and it people shd be willing to pay more once you differentiate yourself.
Tracy Marks -- There tends to be HUGE dropout rate in online courses. Most teachers simply ignore students who drop out, but I find it troublesome and would like to be able to create a class in which dropout is minimal. I think it requires a great deal of self-motivation and time-management for students...
nbrown -- Tracy, I have at least 1 person drop out each session. On-line courses do demand a lot of commitment and motivation!
Tom Dadakis -- Tracy, we have the same problem with coordinating schedules and dropouts. We find a combination (fruit salad) seems to be the direction but ultimately will end up in some form of cross time-zone collabration.
Kathleen Gilroy -- Here at OTTER we worked with Peter Drucker this year who has done a lot of thinking about these matters. He told us that the drop-out rate for all computer-based programs (as well as the Open University) is very high. Students don't want to interact with their computers and with static text, nor do they want to watch passively as the teacher lectures. Our model therefore has intermediaries who work with the students more closely. It is based on a 1:15 teacher/student ratio. And these people really are the business. We have done very large seminar classes (with 10,000 students) and with these intermediaries, we make it work. But we have to charge competitive prices for this model to work financially--between $500 and $1,500 for a 20 hour course.
Tracy Marks -- Yes, partnering really works, providing one's partner is cooperative and does the work. Teamwork with group assignments can also be effective....
Sudha Jamthe -- nbrown: Business writing seems to be the toughest subject to teach on the web.
nbrown -- Sudha, Yes, business writing is difficult to teach, but I think the way we do it is successful. I've had a positive response from students at least! (My user name can be Nancy)
Tracy Marks -- About workgroups, Heather..In the classes I've been involved with, they were sometimes problematic because some students didn't do their share or didn't post for a week...and one person usually ended up doing much of the work. A class workgroup needs to be large enough to account for students who will NOT be active or responsible, but not too large to make cooperation difficult. It's a tough balance.
Sudha Jamthe -- Tom: We tried Placeware Online Auditorium for an online meeting with speaker presentations and audience interaction all from a web browser interface with audio and chat interface. That can help in training across your company world-wide. Check placeware at http://www.placeware.com
Tom Dadakis -- Sudha, We are testing Placeware which has possibilities. We have some homegrown solutions but this field is evolving so fast that just keeping current is a full time job.
Richard Seltzer -- Tom Yocom -- Please share with us your experience in computer-based training at Digital? What are the main issues and challenges?
Tom Yocom -- For some sales training, where the use of slide presentations has been the norm, we are looking at Contigo Software's Itinerary product http://www.contigo.com which enables a presenter to control the web pages seen by all of the downstream students. We run a concall in parallel for the audio and the product included chat. The audio, concall, while expensive, enables extensive interaction with the presenter. We're also looking at NetPodium using a RealAudio stream for less interactive sessions where chat may be adequate for the path back to the presenter.
Sudha Jamthe -- nbrown: Happy holidays to you too. Tons of emails is something I face. You can follow Richards philosophy and post common answers on your web site instead of writing back to each of them. I believe that new emails bring new opportunities but the trick is to how to spend min time to weed out the good ones from the rest.
Richard Seltzer -- nbrown -- you could also use Forum (bulletin-board, notes-file style) software to let people post their questions and answers where everyone can see them (and thereby avoid duplication).
Sudha Jamthe -- hduggan: Do you have URL we can look at? I'd like to find out more about virtual workplace experiences. Virtual rooms and chats seems to be working on external sites. There might be different issues in getting it to work in a work setting. We have just started looking at it to use with our intranet to see if we can hold meetings from the office of people and connect our international offices too.
hduggan -- Sudha: Yes, I have a link to the discussion space at http://www.bigbangworkshops.com. We've been visiting different virtual workspaces and posting our reports there.
Sudha Jamthe -- hduggan: Thanks. I'll check your site.
Richard Seltzer -- All -- I'd particularly like to hear of international examples. That's part of the promise of this approach -- that people all over the world will be able to learn from experts all over the world (and from one another). Is that happening? Are the most successful programs attracting students from outside the US?
Richard Seltzer -- All -- following up on Tracy's questions about prices, please send whatever info you have regarding what is being charged for what kinds of courses, and what the student gets (a skill, credit toward a degree, etc.). Also, pointers to articles with such information would be very helpful.
Sudha Jamthe -- Another good chat. Happy Xmas, Bye Richard.
Tom Dadakis -- See you in the new year. Enjoy the Holidays, surf!
Tom Dadakis -- Richard: There are a number of experts in online/webbased learning. Two that we follow are Elliot Masie (http://www.masie.com) and Brandon Hall (http://www.brandon-hall.com)
Did you see Cnet's excellent article this month on building online business communities...about 25 pages, with case studies and tips? http://www.cnet.com/Content/Builder/Business/Community/index.html?bb
Tracy Marks tracy@marks.net http://www.windweaver.com/
Here are some of the upcoming classes at http://www.zdu.com (only $4.95 for all...) http://www.zdu.com/zdu/catalog/business.htm
I've taken about 8 classea at zdu, and 6 of them have been excellent.
FROM THE BUSINESS CATALOG --
Internet Advertising, Part 1 Jan. 19, 1998
Internet Advertising, Part 2 Feb. 23, 1998
Intro to HTML: Build a Small Business Web Site Dec. 22, 1997
Building an Online Community Dec. 1, 1997 (still open to auditors)
FUTURE CLASSES FOR EARLY 1998
Building an Online Community Mailing List
Exploring Electronic Commerce
How to Build an Online Store
Marketing Your Web Site
ALSO - My Windweaver Amazon associate Internet Search Resources bookstore is now open at http://www.windweaver.com/booksrch.htm Over 55 books on Internet search skills and and best sites in dozens of fields....20% discount on many....
Tracy Marks, M.A. tmar@tiac.net http://www.windweaver.com
Richard, this is probably overkill but it may prove useful to you. Happy holidays. John
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 1997 15:32:17 -0400
Sender: DEOSNEWS - The Distance Education Online Symposium
===========================
DEOSNEWS Vol. 7 No. 12, ISSN 1062-9416. Copyright 1997 DEOS - The Distance
Education Online Symposium. DEOSNEWS has 4,376 subscribers in 79 countries.
The American Center for the Study of Distance Education (ACSDE)
The American Journal of Distance Education (AJDE)
The Pennsylvania State University
110 Rackley Building
University Park, Pennsylvania 16802-3202, USA
Telephone: +814-863-3764. FAX: +814-865-5878.
Internet: ACSDE@PSU.EDU
Web site: http://www.cde.psu.edu/ACSDE/
Director of ACSDE and Editor of AJDE: Dr. Michael G. Moore
DEOSNEWS Editor: Margaret A. Koble
To subscribe to DEOSNEWS and DEOS-L (a discussion forum), post the following commands to LISTSERV@LISTS.PSU.EDU:
SUBSCRIBE DEOSNEWS skip one space, and type your First and Last names.
SUBSCRIBE DEOS-L skip one space, and type your First and Last names.
EDITORIAL
"This issue of DEOSNEWS presents the abstracts of articles from Internationalism in Distance Education: A Vision for Higher Education published by the American Center for the Study of Distance Education in 1996. This publication, No. 10 in the ACSDE Research Monograph Series, comprises eighteen selected papers presented at the first International Distance Education Conference (IDEC) held at The Pennsylvania State University in June of 1994. The theme of the conference was "internationalism in distance education," and the revised papers published in Monograph No. 10 focus on the practice of teaching and learning across national borders. The papers of twenty-three authors representing nine different countries discuss the techniques of successful international distance instruction, the challenges of administration, the development of policy, and the problems and potentials of accelerating exchanges between different cultures around the world. Monograph No. 10 is edited by Melody M. Thompson, with an introduction by Michael G. Moore. For further information about this and other publications available from the Center, please see the information above."
Previous transcripts and schedule of upcoming chats -- www.samizdat.com/chat.html
To connect to the chat room, go to www.samizdat.com/chat-intro.html
The full text of Richard Seltzer's books The Social Web,
Take
Charge of Your Web Site, Shop Online the Lazy Way, and
The
Way of the Web, plus more than a hundred related articles are available
on CD ROM My
Internet: a Personal View of Internet Business Opportunities.
Web
Business Boot Camp: Hands-on Internet lessons for manager, entrepreneurs,
and professionals by Richard Seltzer (Wiley, 2002).
No-nonsense guide targets activities that anyone can perform to achieve
online business
success.
Reviews.
a
library for the price of a book.
This site is Published by B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West
Roxbury, MA 02132. (617) 469-2269. seltzer@samizdat.com
Return to B&R Samizdat Express
| Internet Business Showcase: | ||
|
|
|