… push back constraints, and work to have demands relaxed, thereby increasing the quantity, improving the quality, and expanding the types of choices available to them. (Donaldson 1990, 11).
Constraints. There are many constraints that limit the opportunities for online utilization. Among these are the type of institution, geographical issues, equipment, resources, course time frame, course workload, communication pattern, and the financial health of the program provider. The program must comply to the rules, regulations, and policies of the institution and these may vary considerably from a private to a public institution and from secondary education to universities. A program is often confined to a certain geographical area such as a campus, a community, a state, or a nation. With regard to online programs, these restrictions are more often due to policies and legislation than to technical limitations. Lack of computer resources, such as hardware, software, and communication networks, is though, an important limitation for many online programs. The institutions time tables could pose several restrictions on an online course. It is not always convenient for an online course to follow a university semester or term plan. In the same way, requirements of a weekly course load could constrain a program. Some institutions may also require some sort of synchronous communication that further constrain a program.
Demands. National legislation and parent organizations form policies and procedures that cannot be ignored. There are demands for flexible learning, quality programming and healthy finances. Employers may have changing expectations regarding technology based learning and students may have changing learning preferences as they begin to have experience with online courses in non-instructional environments. Further, the local community, faculty, staff, and students all have demands to the program. These demands may, of course, be more or less rigid, but together they are an important element of the system environment.
Administrative choices. The administrative choices define
the context in which the teaching takes place and set the premises
for instructional design and teaching techniques. Bååth
(1983, 272) identifies five factors to be considered in distance
education courses:
Harasim et al (1995, 141) state that designing "an online educational environment involves structuring conferencing by type of task, size of group, duration of task, and scheduling of task." Building on Bååth's factors and Harasim's design issues, this study suggests that the administrative choices presented and discussed below are crucial to the teaching context.
Table 1. Administrative choices to be made in teaching systems
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Choice of target group. The use of teaching techniques may depend on the program's actual target group. Important target group characteristics are age, educational level, and student aptitude. The target group could be on primary level, secondary level, undergraduate level, graduate level, training level, and professional development or continuing education level. With regard to student aptitude, the group's knowledge, motivation, financial status, and experience with computer-mediated communication (CMC) and computers may vary considerably.
Choice of subject nature. Important aspects of the subject nature are the program discipline and subjects, such as science, arts, or business related subjects. Of further importance to the program objectives is the formal character of the program, it may be a diploma course, a credit course, a vocational course, or a purely informational program.
Choice of enrollment scale. The group size may vary from one to more than one thousand participants, but very few online courses have more than fifty participants. So far, we have very limited knowledge about how computer conferencing can be applied to mass education. We know, however, that computer conferencing systems can handle thousands of users.
Peters' (1983) applications of industrial theory led him to conclude
that the structure of distance teaching is determined to a considerable
degree by the principles of industrialization, particularly by
those of rationalization, division of labor, and mass production;
the teaching process is gradually restructured through increasing
mechanization and mass production. At first sight, the theory
of industrialization does not seem to apply to computer conferencing.
Bates (1991) states:
Third generation technologies (computer conferencing) are particularly valuable where relatively small numbers of students are concerned, since they avoid the high fixed production costs of the industrial model, but they do not however bring the economies of scale of the industrial model, unless the opportunities for interaction for an individual student are dramatically curtailed. (p. 13)
Choice of study location. The first of Keegan's (1988, 30) major elements for defining distance education dealt with the separation of teacher and learner. This separation does not necessarily imply much freedom of study location. Many distance education programs, for instance those taught by videoconferencing, require students to attend classes at fixed locations. Further, Keegan concludes that distance education may include occasional face-to-face meetings. Distance education programs may let students choose where they want to study. Some may want to meet in a classroom with their peers while others prefer to study at home, at work, or wherever a busy life situates them.
Choice of communication mode. In computer-mediated communication (CMC), one must distinguish between synchronous and asynchronous communication. In asynchronous communication, the message is stored in the communication medium until the receivers find it convenient to retrieve it. Synchronous communication, on the other hand, is inflexible, but allows people to communicate in real time, as they do face-to-face or on the telephone. Scheduling of synchronous communication varies in flexibility. A telephone conversation can be initiated without any prior schedule, but a videoconference must often be scheduled months in advance.
Distance education programs may allow students to communicate whenever it is convenient for them. Students may prefer to study during the weekends, after their children have gone to bed, during regular work hours, or whenever they have time available.
CMC could be completely independent of time. Ideally it is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It gives instantaneous access to information whenever it is convenient for the user and there is no need to synchronize the operation among communication partners.
Choice of scheduling. Pacing implies meeting deadlines
for starting a course, for examinations, and for assignments.
Deadlines, however, can be flexible or rigid. They are flexible
when students can set the deadlines, or select one of several
deadlines. One example of extreme pacing flexibility is seen in
correspondence courses that allow students to start and finish
at any time. A more moderately flexible example is a course with
multiple starting dates that allow students to enroll at a convenient
time. Shale (1987, 32) asserts that "...standardized treatments
(of pacing) could be applied to all students on an individual
basis." He also suggests possible justifications for rigid
pacing:
Based on a study of students who took the same course either by correspondence or by computer conferencing, Rekkedal concludes that "the correspondence students consider individual pace of study to constitute a large advantage of correspondence studies, while the EKKO (computer conferencing) students give more varied viewpoints" (Rekkedal 1990, 91).
A distance education program could allow students to choose the pacing they prefer. If they resent rigid pacing, they should be allowed to spend the time they require to complete a course. Other people would like to choose when to start a course and how fast to progress in it.
Wells (1992) identifies three pacing techniques available with CMC. The first is group assignments that urge coherent pacing within groups. The second is gating, a technique that denies students access to information before they have completed all prerequisite assignments. The third technique is limited time access to services such as conferences, databases, and guest speakers.
The previous discussion shows that computer conferencing courses can be paced to a greater or lesser extent. Meaningful group communications, perhaps computer conferencing's major advantage, may, however, be hard to accomplish in an unpaced mode.
Choice of media. Distance education programs could provide students with access to several media or sources of information: print, video, face-to-face meetings, computer conferencing, etc. This approach will support different learning styles and prevent exclusion of students lacking access to or knowledge of high technology media. CMC can easily and favorably be supplemented by or integrated with textbooks, audio and video conferences, computer-aided instruction, etc. and it is to some extent an administrative choice to decide how much a course should rely on CMC for communication and content delivery.