An Ecological Model of e-Learning in Chinese Context

1. An Ecological Model of e-Learning in Chinese Context ---- Critical reflections of 5 years’ practice of e-learning management in IBOE Yueguo Gu Beijing Foreign Studies University The Institute of Beiwai Online Education guyueguo@vip.sina.com To appear in Journal ofStudies in Continuing Education, No. 2, 2006

2. Main Headings • Preamble • IBOE setup • Courseware design samples • Why sound theories, but performances below expectations? • An ecological model of e-learning

3. 1 Preamble

4. IBOE: birth and state of the art • It was officially set up in 2000. • Now its registered students: 15,000 • Full time staff: over 140; • Part-time staff: over 400; • Local F2F tutorial centres: over 47 all over China • Top 5 in years 2002-2004 • The top in 2005

5. MA 16 Resource Dev. 17 Classroom research 18 Dissertation 13 Orientation (3) 14 Foundation 15 L. Awareness BA 10 ESP (adv.) 11 Thesis 12 Common (adv.) 7 Orientation (2) 8 GE Advanced (2) 9 Culture and Literature Diploma 4 GE Advanced (1) 5 ESP (inter) 6 Common (inter.) 1 Orientation (1) 2 GE Elementary 3 GE Intermediate IBOE’S Programmes

6. Issues • What have we learned from the five years’ experiences? 2. What are our “regrets” if any?

7. 2 IBOE SETUP

8. Background: The global context The Chinese educational environment towards the end of the 20th century • the mass illiteracy problem ---Too many people with too little education • the inadequacy problem –Too many people with inadequate education • “Too many monks with too little porridge” problem • the iron rice bowl-broken problem

9. Background: CALL as Panacea and Some Fresh Problems Arising from the Initiatives • The instant return problem • The fallacy of transferring traditional materials to online delivery verbatim • The fallacy of equating online learning behaviour to online education • The fallacy of technologicalization of instructional resources • The fallacy of over- or under- estimation of the ICT’s role • A critical retrospection of the existing practice and attitudes badly missing

10. The 6-keyword conceptualization (RSPMQO). • six keywords in English, or twelve Chinese characters (the Twelve-Character Guiding Principle). • They are: • Resource (资源), • service (服务), • process (过程), • monitor (监控), • quality (质量), • outcome (效益)

12. Conceptualization of sub-systems • Learner support system: a whole person • Tutor support system: three “new”s campaign • QA for admin: three ‘-zation”s: proceduralization, standardization and optimization. • QA for students: process and formative records  TA’s and term exams

13. Conceptualization of quality(cf. Unhelkar 2004: 15)

14. 3 Courseware Design Samples

15. Design 1: Print-textbook transfer design Figure 1: Print-textbook transfer design Web-page redesign of the major headings or tasks of the print textbook Web-page redesign of the table of contents Verbatim transfer of the content from the print textbook.

16. Design 2: Audio-supplemented Icon linking the audio clipping Audio player controller Figure 2: Audio-supplement design

17. Design 3: Video-supplemented Figure 3: Video-supplement design

18. Design 4: Classroom teacher-modelling Figure 4: Classroom teacher-modeling design

19. Design 5: Multimedia and hypermedia -rich Figure 5: Multimedia-rich design

20. Design 6: Learning process-modeling Figure 6: Learning process-modeling design Space for key concepts, ideas, still images, and animations. Full text scripts can be activated Students’ study group, and their activities Access to learning activities and tasks with learning progress automatically monitored. Access tools for synchronous and asynchronous online activities are integrated

21. 4 Why sound theories, but performances below expectations

22. “Evils” of traditional classroom against a virtual classroom • … the classroom poses many constraints to learners’ interaction such as teacher’s dominating the classroom talk, interrupting the students, stealing their turns, giving feedback usually on form, asking display questions and showing intolerance of silence. It seems, however, that virtual classroom interaction can offer an environment free from most of those restrictions. (Paiva, 1999： 253)

23. Virtues of Web-based learning • can broaden interaction among learners and teachers by providing them a channel of communication free from the restrictions of time and distance. Learners can access a wide variety of teachers – and other learners, both native and non-native speakers of the target language – throughout the world. (Hoffman, 1996:55)

24. Virtues: study while working • The Web-based e-learning is generally claimed to have another advantage, namely that those who are doing full-time jobs are able to remain employed while studying.

25. Learner autonomy • There are two major implicit assumptions behind the criticisms against the traditional class, and the praises sung for the virtual Web-based class. • One is that the more autonomy learners are allowed to have, the better they will perform.

26. More resources and more opportunities • The other is that the more resources learners are free to have access to, and the more opportunities they are given to interact with one another, the better they will learn. People working in ELT will readily accept their soundness, so did I.

27. Glossy surface ? • IBOE’s performance in general has been extremely good, and has been ranked by an independent assessing organization among the top five institutes all over China for the past three years on end. It was ranked as the top one in 2005

28. Failures • However, we find the Institute’s performance extremely unsatisfactory in one particular aspect, i.e. learners’ failure in making the best use of Web-based resources, and their low participation in Web-based group interactions such as synchronous forums, VOB discussions, etc.

29. Why lying wasted? • It is disheartening for resources providers to find that the heavily invested resources are being laid in waste. • It is everyone’s instinct to ask a question of why such e-learning programmes, being resources-based, and support-led, all high-tech, in many ways arguably superior to that delivered in a teacher-led classroom, have failed to meet our expectations?

30. The more learner-centred, the better? • In ELT, there is another God’s assumption, as it were, namely that more learner-centred, the better. • What we have failed to take into serious consideration about learners, at least I have failed to do so, is that there is an ultimate limit to any learner, the limit set by the human body and mind.

31. If we look at a learner by adopting an ecological perspective, a learner-centred educational programme will start from this simple arithmetic formula about daily resources expenditure. • Learner’s daily learning resources = Learner’s total limited resources – existence resources – maintenance resources – workload resources

32. An Ideal Educational Environment • An ideal educational environment, traditional campus or virtual e-learning alike, will be such that it will make the best use of the daily learning resources and at the same time it is energy-saving, or energy-renewable. The daily learning resources formula is the general circumstances for us to examine “the more … the better” assumptions

33. 5 An Ecological Model of E-Learning

40. Web-based CALL Teacher Training Design

42. The ecological model provides a general guiding principle for critically evaluating and optimizing the operations of an e-learning institute. • In China, and perhaps also in the world, the three eco-environment systems have never been integrated and assessed under one general framework. • Mismatches of conceptions, misunderstandings in communication, and conflicts of interests are not uncommon. • The ecological model enables educational authorities at various levels to reflect upon the institutional setup in terms of its framing and enabling functions against the learner’s learning resources for adaptive and active learning.

43. With regard to learner autonomy it can be argued that the less framing effects the eco-systems exert on the learner, the more effective learning becomes. • In practice this is not the case. Our annual field studies consistently indicate that the framing function of the micro sub-ecosystem of administration should be maintained at a fairly high level. • Although this increases the demand on the learner’s resources to be spent on adaptive learning, it has a payoff of increased self-discipline, a property which is extremely valuable to learners with diversified commitments.

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