Use of instructional material in universal teleteaching environments

This article gives a summary of teaching and learning media which are required for the implementation of a flexible and scalable teleteaching environment. Experiences from the teleteaching project currently being realised under the auspices of the “Multimedia Teleteaching MMTT” project of the DFN-Verein (Association for Promoting a German Research Network) at the department of information systems at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg1 are used to outline a general architecture of teleteaching environments. Criteria such as variability, quality, scalability and cost effectiveness are considered in the light of a flexible teleteaching solution. The article closes with an overview of a possible future teleteaching environment in cyberspace. I. Flexible Teleteaching I.A. The Terms Teleteaching and Telelearning Telecommunication technology, such as the telephone or conferencing systems, provide the means for distance education, where learner and instructor can be spatially apart and can teach and learn at different times. Moore refers to this context as a learner-instructor-interaction, which is regarded as essential by many lecturers, and highly desirable by many learners [1]. Teleteaching and telelearning can be described in the following way: Teleteaching is concerned with the requirements demanded of the lecturer and the problems involved with this new teaching method, whereas telelearning deals with the requirements necessary for the student to access teaching materials or synchronously interact with the lecturer or other students. (learnerinstructor or learner-learner interaction). This subdivision of telelearning into synchronous and asynchronous also applies to teleteaching, where the lecturer on the one hand has to prepare the lecture content and has to decide on the use of different kinds of learning media. On the other hand he or she 1 The project is undertaken in co-operation with the RRZE (Regional Computing Centre Erlangen) and IMMD IV (Chair of Computer Operating Systems) has to synchronously interact with the remote participants using all the available teaching materials and techniques. The following paragraphs are primarily concerned with the synchronous form of teleteaching, which by technical necessity were not included in the traditional definition of distance education as given by Peters [2]. I.B. Definition of Flexible Teleteaching The term flexible distance learning is defined by Brand as a form in which the learner can decide by him or herself what to learn (he or she can define, what learning represents), when to learn (time, duration, frequency), how to learn (models of learning, learning media) and where to learn (location) [3]. Analogous to flexible distance learning, with flexible teleteaching the teacher can determine where to teach (location) how to teach (selection of models and learning media) when to teach (frequency, time, duration) whom to teach (participating students) and what to teach (what information about a presented subject is given to the students). Depending on the learning environment, this flexibility may be curtailed for instance by curricula, timetables and other regulations. I.C. Benefits for Educational Institutions There are many situations where direct contact between instructor and learners can lead to financial and time savings as well as an improved knowledge transfer. The former refers to a situation where expert knowledge is presented to users and interested parities, using teleteaching methods rather than written documents which would require more preparation time and effort for the expert to produce and which may not efficiently communicate the essential information. The possibility of interaction leads to a more learner centred instruction resulting in a more efficient knowledge transfer and a shorter learning process. The application of flexible teleteaching methods in educational institutions, as described later in the Universal Teleteaching Environments Proceedings JENC8 R. Grebner 421-2 article, can lead to substantial savings and improvements in cost effectiveness without compromising the quality of instruction. A university could, for instance, reduce the number of lecture theatres, that have to be maintained, if students were able to follow lectures from home. Savings in staff education programs within corporations are realised through reduction in travel time and cost. II. Media Used in Education Each individual teaching media contributes to the subject of the lecture; each offers the student other advantages or requires other skills, not one of them can achieve everything alone [4]. This insight and the requirement for multiple channels of reception, as postulated by Vester [5], is satisfied by a large variety of teaching media. With the diminishing utilisation of conventional teaching media (e.g. handouts or overhead transparencies) and increasing use of multimedia presentations in lectures, these can subsequently be made available easily and quickly for teleteaching purposes. However, in a teleteaching environment it is essential that all teaching media retain their pedagogical value. II.A. Conventional and Electronic Media Conventional teaching media can be subdivided into five groups. The first group consists of unmediated speech, gestures and social interaction. The second contains further audible media, such as sounds and music, the third holds printed media, namely books, lecture notes and assignment sheets. The fourth media group includes blackboard and transparencies, which are used in lessons to present text and graphics. Real materials or living creatures, representing the fifth group, are very seldomly used media often utilised only in primary schools. The use of audio and video material can help illustrate and explain, through authentic sounds and images, certain complex subjects which otherwise would be too difficult or exhaustive to explain. Computer generated multimedia content provides the advantage, that it can be prepared before a lesson and interactively annotated or refined during the presentation by the teacher and the students. Hyperlinks in electronic media can not only be used to enrich a subject through additional, supporting or related information but also provide the means for fast and easy navigation between different sources and types of information. Finally this kind of media allows for easy editing, reproduction and repeated use of teaching material. II.B. Levels of Teaching Media The subdivision of teaching media into three levels furthers the understanding of their application in teleteaching environments. The first level, which also forms the base of this model, consists of knowledge and information presented, for example, as speech, text, graphics or gestures. The second level includes all types of storage media, or devices used to illustrate the taught context, such as computer models, blackboard illustrations, handouts or audio/video recordings. The third level comprises all tools which are used to distribute the stored information in a teleteaching environment to remote students. • Methods for conveying information (first level teaching media) Information concerning the taught subject can be conveyed to the learner using speech, gesture, social contact, text, images, sound/music, moving images and (living) objects. These methods for conveying information are referred to as first level teaching media, since they are perceived through the sense of vision, smell/taste, hearing and touch. • Storage and presentation systems of first level media (second level teaching media) First level teaching media can be stored and presented using a variety of technical systems. Glöckel refers to such devices as a teaching aides [4]. In the graph below blackboard, overhead projector, handouts, audio-video recordings, computer applications and models of real objects are part of this type of medium. The instructor is also part of this category, since he or she also represents a source and presenter of first level media. However the instructor has the special role of co-ordinating the use of all other devices in this category. • Systems for distributing stored information (third level teaching media) In a teleteaching environment several distribution media are used, among others video conferencing systems, whiteboard applications, document servers, audio/video servers, sharedapplication systems and networked virtual reality systems. Figure 1 shows the three levels of teaching media. Second level media are related to first and third level media in three ways. The relationship “supports completely” means that a higher level medium can store/distribute the information contained within a lower level medium with no loss Universal Teleteaching Environments Proceedings JENC8 R. Grebner 421-3 of educational value. The relationship “supports partially” implies that the distribution of a medium cannot take place without the loss of relevant information. In the case of a video conferencing system, social contact cannot be conveyed by the medium. The third type of dependence, namely “substitutes”, infers that a medium on one level is made redundant through a higher level medium, acting as a substitution for the lower level medium, for example if a whiteboard tool is used instead of the overhead or blackboard. The requirements which have to be met when realising teleteaching sessions are touched upon in section IV. The fact that the instructor cannot be substituted, even in virtual reality systems, which are capable of substituting all other second level teaching media, is a prominent feature in the network of interactions shown in figure 1.