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Journal of Instructional Science and Technology ISSN: 1324-0781 Editors-in-Chief: Olugbemiro JEGEDE (jegede@ouhk.edu.hk) and Som NAIDU (s.naidu@meu.unimelb.edu.au) |
Volume 1 No 4, November 1996
- - - Article 1 - - -
by
Justus H. Lewis
Justus Lewis & Associates, Singapore
Alexander Romiszowski
Syracuse University, USA
Return to Contents Page
[ Abstract | Introduction | Some Cases and Examples | Some Possible Scenarios for Indonesia | Conclusion | Appendix | References ]
The concept of the learning organization which continually updates the skills of its members and in the process, is itself transformed, has become an important idea in recent management theory, accepted in many business environments and also as a general planning concept. The reasons for this are largely due to the changes in society and in the workplace which are being brought about by the rapid impact of technology. We now have a situation where every generation of adults, through their working life, has to re-train and adapt to changing work environments and changing social contexts on an almost continual basis. This need for continuing education and updating has rendered some of the more conventional models for the provision of education and training somewhat outdated. The model of the learning organization espouses an environment in which all individuals in the organization are actively involved in both planning and participating in learning programmes adapted to the specific requirements of the changing work or social environments in which they are placed. What are the implications for those involved in distance education?
In this paper we apply the concept of the learning organization to organizations, including distance education institutions, that have embarked or intend to embark on the use of new technologies, particularly those involving networking activities through the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC). We look at a variety of developments in Singapore, Europe and the Americas, using the metaphor of the learning organization as a conceptual framework. This is followed by some speculative scenarios for the future which relate to Indonesian distance education projects known to the authors. Finally we finish with a suggested list of learnings that a distance education learning organization might consider in its efforts to learn from the experience of other users.
This section introduces the concepts of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and the learning organization.
CMC is understood as “the use of computer systems and networks for the transfer, storage, and retrieval of information among humans” (Santoro, 1995). Santoro distinguishes three broad categories of CMC: computer conferencing involving direct human to human communication which includes email, interactive messaging and group conference support systems such as listserv, Usenet and bulletin boards systems; informatics which includes online public-access library catalogs (OPACs), interactive remote databases and program/data archives; and computer-assisted instruction.
It seems likely that CMC in all the categories listed by Santoro will play a key role in the future provision of distance education. Networking applications in the sense of computer conferencing, using the computer as “transaction router” between people and to provide “simple storage and retrieval functions” are perhaps the most prominent and promising application of CMC to distance education and this is the area on which we focus in this paper. Such applications of computer networking, however, frequently involve other categories of CMC.
Senge (1990) drew attention to and popularised the concept of the learning organization. He distinguished five disciplines that are characteristic of a learning organization: personal mastery; common mental models; shared vision; team learning; systems thinking. Of these five characteristics, systems thinking (viewing the object of study as an interconnected, interactive whole to be systematically investigated) is the most important as it is the one that integrates and coordinates the other four.
Despite its origins in business, the concept of the learning organization applies by implication to schools, colleges, universities and distance education systems, all of which can be usefully studied as systems.
Mason (1993) notes that the metaphor of learning is only one of the many metaphors that have been applied to business organizations. It may be one of the most fruitful compared with other popular metaphors such as the art of war. A learning metaphor suggests possibilities of fruitful collaborative learning in which everyone benefits as compared with the concept of striving to maintain what must inevitably be a limited competitive advantage.
Mason further argues that learning may be strategic or routine. In routine learning one learns to do more of the same in a more efficient way: in strategic learning, one learns to do something different. In a learning organization it is strategic learning that makes the difference: learning which repositions the organization to take advantage of the changing environment. On this view, only some organizations qualify to be classed as learning organizations.
In this section we present a number of case examples from Singapore, Europe and the Americas of how CMC networking is being applied and discuss some of the organizational learning that is emerging.
Although Singapore is not an organization in the generally accepted sense, by virtue of its small size, unique combination of attributes, and strong economic-focussed government leadership it qualifies in macro terms as a potential candidate. There can be no doubt of a strong commitment to creating a climate for the increased use of information technology and to ensuring that its people are educated and trained to standards benchmarked against the best of the rest of the world.
A 1992 survey (NCB, pp 42-3) found that compared with 68% in 1989, 84% of organizations employing 10 or more people were then computerised and in that time (since 1989) the ratio of employees per PC had decreased from 5 to 3.8. More recently, numerous developments have been reported in the Straits Times, particularly relating to the use of Internet which has an estimated 10,000 private and business users, mostly through Singnet, as well as another 50,000 technical and educational users of Technet, the government-funded Internet Service Provider, currently being privatised as Pacific Internet (Asia Magazine, September 3, 1995).
The National Computer Board is “spearheading the IT2000 drive to link every home, office and government body though an intelligent communication network called the National Information Infrastructure (NII).” (The Straits Times, September 28, 1995, p. 2.) Eventually, Singapore residents will be able to access this system of virtual government from home. In the meantime, video-conferencing booths will be installed in town centres to enable people to carry out transactions with government departments.
The Labour Ministry has an Internet site (The Straits Times, September 21, 1995) which provides labour related statistics and answers to commonly asked questions about the terms and conditions of employment in Singapore.
A further planned development for the NII (see above) is a community network which will enable people to talk to each other and to find out what is happening in their community. The motivation behind this is “to help cultivate this feeling of belonging to a place and building up the civic institutions.”
An eight-year project, Corenet, has been started, using IT to streamline the process of designing and constructing buildings (The Straits Times, Thursday, September 28, 1995, p. 40). It will allow government agencies and professionals such as developers, architects and engineers to communicate and exchange information. Currently property prices and details of upcoming condominium projects are available online. A system for checking building plans electronically is forecast to be available by the end of 1996.
The Law Society of Singapore is encouraging its members to use IT (The Straits Times, Wednesday, August 16, 1995, p.18). Among the changes reported are
Tourism being a major industry in Singapore, travel agents are being encouraged to use the Information Super-Highway. It is predicted (The Straits Times, September 14, 1995) that the program infrastructure and information necessary for consumers to make enquires and book travel via their home television sets, will probably be in place within five years.
In education, polytechnics are generally well equipped with sophisticated networked computer laboratories. Lecturers are encouraged to use multimedia in the lecture presentations. Resources are channelled into developing software for use in the schools.
Despite the high profile given to technological applications in business in Singapore, there is a reluctance to use CMC to experiment with new approaches to teaching. The Open University (UK) courses are classroom-based. So are the many post-graduate courses offered by other foreign institutions. The foreign institutions that operate in Singapore appear to be satisfied with setting up offices and classrooms, hiring local teachers for face-to-face lectures and tutorials and flying in their own staff periodically to meet the students and ensure that standards are met.
In the experience of one of the authors, the use of multimedia in the polytechnics is focussed on the packaging of the traditional large group lecture format in more attractive ways. In one instance, a 'smart' lecture theatre has been developed that allows lecturers and students to interact electronically on, for example, answering multiple choice questions. In another instance, a new self-access language learning facility is planned around the extensive use of printed modules supplemented by audio and video tapes, and some interactive locally-developed computer packages. These have been largely developed through the individual initiatives of their authors with some management support, but are not regarded from an institutional point of view as spearheading any revolutionary new shifts in the general approach to teaching. In one of the universities, the students used the university's Notes Conferencing system to start a “Deutsch Gossip Column” (German language discussion group). When the lecturer became aware of this and was invited to participate, she encouraged the project and currently it is flourishing as an adjunct to the main classroom activities (Lewis and Morse, in press). However, the organizational implications of this use of CMC are still to be addressed.
The reasons for this reluctance may relate to the prevalent mind-set and culture and may be comparable in some respects to the IBM case discussed further on. Singapore has achieved spectacular progress using its current traditional exam-focussed educational system and although the potential of CMC is recognised, it seems likely that there is a fairly large learning curve to be traversed in using CMC in an interactive educational context. This learning needs to occur on two levels: by the individual users, both teachers and students, in using CMC as a learning medium; and the management, in taking into account the implications of this new approach to learning for the system as a whole.
In this section we look at two European projects, ELNET and JITOL, which have actively aimed to develop systems and collaborative learning approaches which make effective use of the new educational possibilities of advanced learning technologies.
ELNET, the European 'Business and Languages' Learning Network, (Davies, 1994) was a virtual learning organization based on 15 existing European educational institutions. It operated from 1990-1992 as a “multi-stranded pilot network of learning groups drawn from the United Kingdom, France and Germany” (Davies, p. 250), part of a much larger research and development program to encourage cross-European collaboration in education and training making use of advanced communication technologies.
ELNET was “ ... an organization with a complex mix of technology and formal and semi-formal agreements with educational institutions underpinned by non-formal interpersonal links ... an example of a Distributed Learning System” (p. 251). Its primary objective was to 'develop strategies for learning in groups across time and distance and culture in the business and languages domain” (p. 249). To assist users to navigate in its text-based computer conferencing environment, ELNET was structured using the metaphor of a 'virtual college' with classrooms, a resource area and an administration.
Davies identifies the learning from ELNET as deriving from a combination of new technology, the methodologies developed “to handle the new communication paths offered by these technologies” and the “access to authentic cross-European resources and interaction”. These led to changes in the curriculum and changes in the methods used to teach and learn which emphasized active learning, collaborative group learning and inter-cultural learning.
The computer-mediated communication systems (CMCS) enabled continuous feedback to be provided between learner and learner as well as the more traditional (and generally slower and erratic) feedback from teacher to students. Access to learners from other cultures through CMCS provided resources for learning the language and learning about other countries' business culture. Both students and tutors were involved collaboratively in learning groups which discussed and compared the cultural differences in business environments.
From this project, ELNET developed a checklist for establishing European Learning Links:
These factors would seem to be applicable in a wider context to other organizations and systems of distance education and particularly those which require the use of technology new to the participants. Furthermore, the example serves to illustrate the essential need for a total systems approach to planning and execution of such projects.
ELNET fits the concept of a learning organization. It was a virtual organization linking a number of institutions; its structure was modelled on a type of 'real' organization, a college; its focus was the development of strategies for learning in groups rather than individual learning and as such, much collaborative team learning was involved; there was a shared vision of intercultural learning. Also, the learning that resulted could be described in Mason's terms as “strategic”: it was not simply doing more of the same more effectively but involved changes both in the curriculum and teaching methods leading to active learning, collaborative group learning and inter-cultural learning.
The JITOL (Just-in-Time Open Learning) project (Goodyear & Steeples, 1992) targets the advanced learning technologies (ALT) industry and is a part of the European Commission's DELTA Programme.
It is an open learning as distinct from a distance education program. Goodyear & Steeples describe open learning as “learning that occurs ... where the learner has a high level of control over the location, timing, content and/or method of study” (p. 164), noting that these four variables are not necessarily correlated. They challenge the view of open learning which sees it as an activity where a solitary learner uses self-study material. These they see as by-products “of the economics and social organization of learning” (p. 165) rather than intrinsic to the concept: open learning need be neither solitary nor involve the use of self-study material.
The managers of the JITOL project have focussed on supporting interaction between people for both educational and economic reasons. Educationally, they list the value of
Economically, it is less expensive to provide a mixture of “ready-made learning resources and human interaction” rather than to maintain complete availability of high quality, up to date resources appropriate to the needs of a variety of learners. Using computer conferencing, tutors and learners can discuss and comment on available learning material and these conferences can be archived to provide further resources. Because the discussion arises out of the perceived needs of the students, it is likely to be highly relevant to students' learning needs.
Goodyear and Steeples enumerate a sequential list of tasks which they envisage learners and tutors would engage in and then discuss a variety of IT tools which they have used to support these activities. Of particular interest is their discussion of the need for a hypertext-like environment in which users can work collaboratively to write, edit and generate databases of knowledge relating to the subject. They argue that users should have to learn only one set of tools that enable them to define time, access and structuring of information. At the time of writing they were developing software that would make possible “a collaborative hypertext environment ... , a multimedia database system and then a system demonstrator which marries conferencing and multimedia” (p. 174).
The JITOL case is another example of strategic learning, in this case moving the focus of open learning from individual learners to the group. It also emphasizes the need for a collaborative team approach in which different perspectives on the same problem are shared and discussed. This new approach to learning itself creates a need for new technological developments in the form of shared software for a collaborative hypertext environment.
In North America, the training department of IBM operates as an independent company under the name “Skill Dynamics - USA” and “Skill Dynamics - Canada”. Many of the people who work in these departments are very experienced trainers and educators. They have picked up their skills “on the job”, but often lack any formal qualifications related to their profession. They have come into the training function from a variety of technical and administrative specialist areas, often because of their specialist subject matter knowledge.
The need for a more academic grounding and formal qualification for these staff was recognized. The management saw a growing need for formal qualification in the more science-based aspects of the training profession. The staff themselves saw a need to compete with recent graduates from HRD-related programmes in an increasingly tough job market. Both sides wished to address the need for higher education without having either to resign from their jobs or take extensive periods of study leave. Skill Dynamics generated a request for proposals to offer a flexible master's degree programme in “educational and training technology”, which could be studied at least partly at a distance. The proposal prepared by the Department of Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation (IDD&E) of Syracuse University was selected and in 1992 some 30 professionals from Skill Dynamics commenced their course of study.
The IBM-Canada Master's Programme”, as it has come to be called, differs little in content and structure from the regular master's degree in IDD&E offered on campus. The core courses are identical, but some elective courses have been designed specifically with the IBM students in mind. The degree requirements (number and type of course credits, exams, projects, etc.) are identical, although more use is made of experience credits with this group than is the norm with campus-based students.
The main difference is in the course delivery system. This is a mix of fairly conventional group teaching sessions and electronically-mediated distance education. The conventional classes are given on a “weekend-workshop” basis about once a month in Toronto, at Skill Dynamics, using the facilities of their training centre. During the intervening weeks, students work with a variety of teaching and reference materials, not that different from those used by the campus-based students, but they keep in touch with the instructors and with each other by a combination of electronic mail and computer-mediated group discussion.
In many respects, the project is not all that “revolutionary”. The technologies used are simple and have been available for some time. The reason for presenting this case here is to illustrate that even a company as computer-sophisticated as IBM, has to go through a process of learning in order to use CMC effectively for educational purposes.
The first “learning experience” was in the setting up of the CMC system for this project. All IBM offices in North America, and indeed all employees at the professional levels represented by this student group, are interlinked by rather sophisticated CMC systems that are used intensively for the processing of all manner of work. The IBM network and the productivity tools it supports appeared to be an ideal environment in which to conduct the educational CMC group discussion activities that the study programme required. However, it turned out that there was an insuperable barrier here: the Master's Programme course instructors and administrative staff were not IBM employees. It proved impossible to bend the bureaucratic rules that limit access to the IBM CMC systems to IBM employees, even though the project was being executed for IBM at IBM's request. Possible weakening of the security system that protects company information outweighed any arguments for “effective educational communication” that the Skill Dynamics management could muster.
It was necessary to use the Syracuse University computer system as the host site and have the IBM'ers telnet in to the group discussion sessions. Technically this was not so difficult, but in the days before the Internet was open to all manner of users, the bureaucratic issues at both the IBM and university ends that had to be addressed in order to achieve the required “connectivity” were quite formidable. We all learned that all that was being published on the topic of “global communications and connectivity” was not as feasible as the technology experts would have us believe.
From an organizational learning perspective, there is a considerable “organizational learning curve” to be traversed before organizations not only assimilate a new technology like CMC into their culture, but also accommodate their culture to be able to profit from the technology to the extent that is theoretically possible.
The second learning experience occurred during the actual courses, especially those that made quite intensive use of CMC.
The instructors and progamme administrators at Syracuse University expected that the IBM-Canada student group, being made up of regular computer users, would not exhibit some to the phobias and difficulties that were often observed among the regular campus-based students. The IDD&E programme had been using CMC as an extension of classroom-based activities for some years. Many courses expected students to undertake electronic discussions of specific set topics in the periods between one class and the next. It is typically observed that students fall into three groups: regular and intensive contributors to the discussion; occasional or once only contributors; and those who never contribute anything, although many do generally read what others have contributed. The relative proportions of these groups varies somewhat, dependent on several factors (class size, content of course, type of topic, etc.) and it has been noticed that over the years as the general “computer literacy” levels of students have increased, there has been a slight tendency for the intensive contributor group to grow in relative size.
In the case of the IBM'ers, there were several factors which led us to expect a much higher than average level of contribution: the greater maturity and seriousness of this group of students, the uniformly high level of computer skills, the daily use of CMC technologies as part of the normal work routine; the fact that this was a distance education programme and the CMC activities were not peripheral but mainstream components of the course.
It was quite a surprise, therefore, to discover that the rates of participation of this group were not radically different from typical on-campus student groups. Investigation revealed a very similar set of reasons given for non-participation: feeling uncomfortable with the asynchronous nature of the group discussion; concern with putting personal viewpoint into the relatively permanent medium of print and the relatively public access offered by the network; finding that “everything I wanted to say has been said already by someone else”. In short, the much higher levels of computer-use skills possessed by this group were not sufficient to make them comfortable users of CMC for educational purposes. As one of the students said when interviewed on this subject:
“When we started to use computer-conferencing in this course, I expected the sort of superficial chat that often passes for conferencing in our regular work-related use of CMC. But the nature of the conversation in our course is quite different. And the way to best participate in the conversation is not clear at first. I started out thinking that I would be bored by having to use the computer network for yet one more type of activity. But now I see that the way we are using it is so different from what we do in our job, that I have had to learn a whole new set of skills in order to participate usefully in the conference. I think that with all the computer expertise I have, learning to use the CMC system to effect was the biggest challenge of the course.”
The full name of this university is the “Universidad Nacional Experimental Simon Rodriguez” or UNESR. The added word “experimental” in the title indicates that this university has been singled out to be the test-bed for innovations in higher education. The university is not at all typical as, although not exceedingly large in numbers, it operates no fewer than 30 separate campuses, one in Caracas and the others in different provinces. It is therefore a “Universidad Nacional” in more than just the name.
One challenge for the university is to grow from a consortium of “local community-focussed colleges” to be a university of national stature and a leader in innovation. One strategy is to pool the resources (human, material, informational) of the separate campuses and make all of them available and usable at all campuses. This is to be achieved by the electronic networking of the separate campuses so as to effectively create one “virtual campus”. This is a major undertaking, and the technological aspects of the necessary network facilities and infrastructure are only part of the problem. Another is the preparation of the organizational climate and the development of the human resources necessary to make the project a success. As a part of the organizational development, the UNESR is sending many of its key faculty members on study internships overseas. Currently, there are 11 such interns spending a period of 10 months at the IDD&E department of Syracuse University, where they are studying various aspects of the utilization of technology in higher education. This group is the first of several that will study technology applications abroad. The IDD&E department is expecting to host some 30 more such interns over the next two years.
As the visiting scholars are being selected on the basis of their roles in UNESR and their skills relative to the “virtual campus” project, the normal intern selection criteria related to language skills are not being applied. Consequently, the group of 11 interns currently in the USA arrived with varying levels of English language ability, from excellent to nearly non-existent.
For many of the group, the first two months in the USA were devoted to intensive, full-time, English language learning. This apparent “problem” was seen as a form of “opportunity”. Although conventional language teaching methodologies were also used, a large part of the intensive and individualized programme was made available through “technology-based training”: interactive video; CD-ROM multimedia materials; the Internet.
The setting up of this English Language Learning Centre within the IDD&E was itself a learning experience for Syracuse University - not only as regards the technology-based aspects of materials selection, evaluation and integration, but even more as regards organizational aspects. It was not easy for the university to learn why this particular form of language teaching should be preferred for this particular group: that through using technology to learn English they were also achieving their primary goal as interns — to learn about the use of technology in education. It was even more difficult for the university to understand why a language teaching system was being set up and operated in the School of Education, rather than in the School of Languages and why this should be seen as an opportunity for interdisciplinary learning rather than an infringement of academic turf.
The use of CMC techniques on the Internet was a learning experience for all concerned. The particular use of the Internet was to access some of the MUD's (Multi-User Domains) and especially MOO's (MUD's - Object Oriented) that have sprung up on the Internet. A MUD is what it says: a domain or “place” in cyberspace where multiple users can congregate in real time and exchange information, viewpoints, ideas, on the subject (or domain) to which the particular MUD is devoted. A MOO is a MUD within which the users can create a form of “virtual reality” by creating “objects” that remain behind when the particular user logs off. Thus the environment of a MOO is ever changing as different people interact with what they find there when they log on and then create new things for other users to interact with. Most current MOO's are limited to text-only communication. Nevertheless, the verbal “worlds” that the users create have a form of reality that often generates a level of fascination and involvement among users that borders on addiction. There are several MOO's in existence that are devoted to language learning (or improvement). The user who logs on will typically meet other learners of the same language at different levels of ability, and also native speakers. As they interact, these users help each other to improve their use of the (written) language.
The Venezualan interns were introduced to a MOO devoted to the English language. Once they overcame their inhibitions and the novelty of interacting in real-time CMC with people they had never met, most of the interns, became avid users of the MOO. Not only those who really needed to improve their English, but also their more advanced colleagues, spent hours happily interacting in cyberspace, the more advanced ones helping the others to improve, but also often being helped by some stranger they met (maybe a native speaker) who would comment on some aspect of the communication (s)he had “overheard”. In no time, the interns (who had largely travelled alone to the USA) had involved their family members and friends back in Venezuela (those who had access to the Internet) and also some of the other UNESR faculty members who were scheduled to go abroad at a later date.
One organizational learning effect of this experience has been to motivate both the UNESR faculty members and the administration to engage in technology-based language learning activities prior to departure for an overseas internship.
The “Escola do Futuro” is not really a school as such. It is a research programme devoted to investigating the impact and appropriate use of technology in education in the future. The programme commenced some five years ago in the School of Communication and Art at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Since then it has grown to become an independent research-and-development institute within the university. It supports itself almost entirely by external grants and funded projects and supports over 100 research staff largely funded by a scholarship programme operated by the Brazilian government.
The School of the Future supports several projects that utilize and/or investigate the utilization of CMC. One of the four major sub-divisions of the programme is devoted to the use of computer networks, including but not exclusively the Internet, in education. Many of these projects may serve as case examples of how the educational institutions that get involved in the use of networks for learning must themselves pass through a learning process in order to both assimilate the technology and accommodate to it.
One lesson that is being learned in many of the projects is that once the infrastructure is in place, many of the most useful and most creative uses of networking are generated “from the bottom up” by the students themselves and their immediate teachers. The acceptance of this phenomenon is not always easy in an organizational context where it is traditional to plan education (including educational innovation) 'from the top down” by federal, state or municipal task forces who develop major funded projects to be adopted and implemented by the schools.
Many of the early CMC projects that were planned top-down involved the networking of a set of schools, often private schools owned by the same organization, and then imposing a joint project. An example may be a science study project in which all the networked schools are required to participate by performing some local research (perhaps on the weather or on local wild life) and then emailing their findings to a common database. A common problem with this form of project (observed in Europe and the USA as well as in Brazil) is that the use of the resultant database varies widely from school to school. The project almost obliges the collaborating schools to create and submit part of the information in the database, but does little to ensure that the data is used to effective educational purpose, or indeed used at all.
In contrast, many bottom-up projects of the cross-cultural communication and interchange type are born with little need for incentive from the top, provided the networking infrastructure is in place. In both types of projects, however, the schools involved must not only learn to “work the technology” but must also learn how to get some form of “added value” from their use of the technology.
One interesting project that was born “bottom-up” occurred in 1992 when Rio de Janeiro hosted the UNESCO-sponsored World Ecology Conference. At that time the School of the Future was networking a mere handful of schools in different regions of Brazil. A few of these schools, located in Rio, came up with the idea of interviewing the various dignitaries visiting the conference and otherwise “playing journalist” in order to circulate their daily news journal electronically to other interested schools. The idea was picked up by the School of the Future researchers and somewhat expanded. Rather than merely circulating the news items to the few Brazilian schools that were networked at that time, why not use the University of Sao Paulo's link to Bitnet in order to circulate the journal worldwide. After all, the conference was of international interest and importance.
The Rio children did a good job of playing journalist and on a daily basis emailed their messages to the university department of languages. There the messages were translated into English, improved editorially and the resultant daily newspaper on the Ecology Conference was circulated via Bitnet to schools in dozens of countries and read by many thousands of school children, many of whom sent back messages to the journalist team. The whole project was not supported by a special budget, and it took only a matter of weeks from the idea to the reality. Many lessons of both inter- and intra-organizational collaboration were learned as a by-product of this simple and short student-generated CMC project.
In this section we present three scenarios relating ongoing or planned distance education projects in Indonesia, that are known to the authors, with the technical potential of CMC and the theoretical construct of the learning organization.
Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia's Open University is, in terms of sheer number of students, one of the major institutions of its type in the world. Upwards of one third of a million students are registered annually. Most of the basic instruction is currently given by means of printed modules that are circulated to the students through the mail. Tutorial support is given by a variety of means, but the most common forms are face-to-face tutorials (where these are viable) and personal correspondence. The question of "viability" is critical in this respect.
Students in the large urban areas, and even more, students who are registered as a group by their employers, have the physical opportunity to gather together in groups with a tutor. Even in these favored urban locations, not all students can participate in group tutorials, as these have to be payed for, unless a sponsoring employer is covering the cost. Poorer students and all students resident in outlying areas have to rely on the distance-delivered tutorial support alternatives, the most available and most common of which is to exchange letters with course tutors. This method of tutorial support is not very effective due to a combination of factors which have been fully researched (Iskandar, 1994).
One important factor is the relatively limited number of tutors available to respond to students. Another is the often long time delay (several weeks) between a student writing to a tutor and receiving a reply (an outcome of the previous factor compounded by the slow postal service). The outcome is a sort of two-class system: the "elite" who are in a position to participate in group face-to-face tutorials, and the others who for various reasons cannot. The paradox of this situation is that it is this latter group who is particularly outside the reach of the conventional universities.
Some two years ago, a proposal to develop a solution was prepared by the Department of Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation of Syracuse University. This proposal suggested a relatively "low-technology" system of tutorial support, based on a combination of the use of the national fax system and the local Wartels (telephone offices) to reduce the communication delays, and a computer-managed system for the generation of routine feedback to students on their assignments to reduce the workload of the existing tutors and allow them to respond faster and better to more students (Romiszowski, 1993). This proposal is still under analysis, now being part of a broader proposal for a programme of research and development on alternative strategies for the application of new technologies in Universitas Terbuka (Nilan et. al. 1995).
In the meantime, access to the Internet has become more available and more affordable. In particular, current plans to make Internet access one of the standard services available to all citizens at the local Wartels are becoming a reality. When that happens, it will make a lot more sense, both economically and technically, to use the Internet services as the carrier of messages between students and tutors. The Internet also offers further opportunities for innovation. In addition to one-on-one tutorial exchange, it becomes technically feasible to direct the same message to a group. The group tutorials now restricted to certain privileged groups of students could be offered to the vast majority of Universitas Terbuka students. Furthermore, in other similar contexts where networking facilities have been made available, for example the British Open University (Mason 1989), the students have developed creative ways of using the network to form self-support and study groups. Indeed, in the British O.U. experience it was the students more than the staff who were instrumental in using the network for the benefit of the course. It was because of the students' activities that network services became an essential component of the delivery system of many distance education courses.
What does such a scenario imply for the organization? What will tutors, administrators and top management (as well as of course the students) of Universitas Terbuka have to learn in order to assimilate such changes. What will the organization as a whole have to learn in order to accommodate its structure, culture and climate so as to make it possible for the changes to take effect? How will this learning process be planned and implemented? To what extent is Universitas Terbuka today a "learning organization" as defined earlier in this paper? Or what steps have to be taken in order to transform the university into a learning organization?
For an organization the size and complexity of Universitas Terbuka, such questions never have simple answers. And the answers can only be found by the systematic application of systemic analysis, aided perhaps by the application of neural network theory. (Some discussion of the potential relevance of neural network theory to distance education systems may be found in another paper by Lewis and Tien, 1995, also presented at this conference.)
Indonesia's current 5-year development plan, which went into operation in May 1995, envisages a massive increase in small business formation as one of the routes toward full employment and general prosperity. To make this vision a reality, many thousands of new small business owners and managers will have to be formed. They will need training and support in order to develop the skills of successfully launching and profitably operating a new business - the so-called "entrepreneurial skills". The training and development department of the Ministry of Industry is in the process of planning an approach to this massive training challenge. For a number of fairly obvious reasons, distance education is being considered as an attractive alternative to conventional training systems. But what form of distance education system will make most sense in this context?
The more "conventional" forms of distance education based on printed study modules (of which there are several examples in Indonesia in the professional training sector as well as the more academic courses of Universitas Terbuka) are seen to be not fully adequate to the task. One reason is the sort of experience described in the previous scenario: the difficulty of offering effective and efficient tutorial support to trainees scattered the length and breadth of the Indonesian Archipelago. Another is the relatively low level of schooling that may be expected among some of the candidates for small business ownership, which would imply a lack of the habit of studying alone from books. A more mediated and more interactive form of distance education is seen as better meeting the requirements of the trainee population.
How should such a more ambitious distance education project be planned and implemented in the Indonesian reality? What are the technological resources and opportunities that could be economically made available for such a project? What are the social and economic forces that may restrict what is viable or affordable? Could such a system operate on the relatively "closed" model of specific programmes of courses leading to some form of "certificate of entrepreneurship" that is the hallmark of most of Indonesia's conventional education and training systems today? Or does the problem demand a more flexible solution: a more "open" system of professional training than any currently in place; more open, and open in many more senses, than the Universitas Terbuka model? How could the planned solution best use new technologies: for mass dissemination of standard information packages, or for the creation of opportunities for small business owners to help each other, and in so doing to help themselves to develop their entrepreneurial skills? As in the previous scenario, these questions indicate the complexity of the problem to be solved, and therefore imply that the answers are likely to be similarly complex (one of the principles of general systems theory: the control system must be as complex and have as many degrees of freedom as the system that it is attempting to control). In short, the application of a systems approach to the problem, within an organizational context that is willing to learn (both assimilate innovation and accommodate itself to allow the innovation to flourish), is essential in order to come up with a viable and long lasting solution.
The organizational learning process may be facilitated by the study of other similar organizations in other places or contexts that have gone through a similar problem-solving process. One of the authors of the present paper has recently been working with an organization called SEBRAE, which is the Brazilian Government's service of support and training for medium, small and "micro" businesses. This organization has been operating a relatively conventional system of entrepreneurship training for decades. Now, for reasons similar to those occurring within the Indonesian economy, Brazil is rethinking its strategy for the next few decades. One outcome of this rethinking is the concept of the "Open School" for small business entrepreneurs (SEBRAE, 1995).
The driving idea behind the "Open School" is to make it possible for the small business manager/owner to access information, either for reference or for learning purposes, at the exact time when that information is going to be of practical use. The concept of "just-in-time training" is at the heart of the Open School. With the proliferation of computers as the general purpose administration tool, even in small business contexts (see the Singapore case example quoted earlier), and the advent of universal access to the Internet (see both the Singapore case and the Universitas Terbuka scenario), the technological infrastructure that could support such an Open School is rapidly becoming available in most countries. But this infrastructure, although a necessary condition, is by no means sufficient to enable such an information/training system to flourish. Another important condition is that the potential users of the system learn how to use it effectively. In addition to acquiring new skills of self-directed study, the small business owner will have to learn how to use the Open School services. This goes beyond acquiring the knowledge and skills of operating the hardware and software. As the IBM-Canada case example illustrated, an even more challenging learning task is to master the skills of collaborative learning at a distance. And let us make no mistake - a large part of the learning in such an "Open School of Entrepreneurship" must be collaborative small group learning. The nature of the content and the objectives of a course in entrepreneurship dictate that much of the learning activity must be "experiential". This, in turn, dictates that the teaching methods must be "conversational": they must involve the interchange and critical evaluation of students' original ideas and viewpoints (a full discussion of these issues may be found in another paper by Romiszowski and Lewis, 1995, also presented at this conference). This presents the second learning challenge, and perhaps the most critical "necessary condition" for the project to succeed: the need for the host organization to go through a learning process that will enable it to assimilate the concepts and principles that underly successful distance-learning of higher order knowledge and skills and accommodate its own structure and culture so as to enable these concepts and principles to be embodied in the new system's structure and operational procedures. The analysis/synthesis process involved in the design of the new system must be truly "systemic", involving not only the proposed system (Open School of Entrepreneurship), but also the supra-system within which the new system must operate (in the Brazilian case, SEBRAE; in the Indonesian case, the Ministry of Industry and its related executing agencies) and the client-system that is to be served (the small business owners and managers who are, in Indonesia as in Brazil, geographically scattered and culturally diverse).
Perhaps one part of this essential learning process could itself be achieved through some form of collaborative-learning interchange between Indonesia and Brazil: two countries both of sub-continental size, at similar stages of industrial and socio-economical development, with many similar problems to solve, and both at this time facing the specific problems of the small business entrepreneur.
The final Indonesia-related scenario we would like to discuss is the case of the hosts of this conference: the Indonesian Distance Learning Network (IDLN). The IDLN is an organization specifically set up to help other organizations involved in distance education to learn from each other as well as from other external sources (visiting scholars and consultants, study tours to overseas institutions, conferences such as the present one). It would appear that, by definition, the IDLN is a learning organization. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that the IDLN exists as a forum and catalyst to help its member institutions become learning organizations. In this sense, it is a "teaching organization" or again more accurately a "facilitating organization".
How may we picture the position of the IDLN with respect to new technologies and, particularly, CMC? If, as many believe, CMC systems are destined to become major components in most distance education systems of the future (and we believe, most educational systems as distance education becomes incorporated into the mainstream of conventional education), then one of the major roles of the IDLN will be to facilitate the process of adoption and use of CMC by its member institutions. In so doing, the IDLN will also take an active role in teaching its member institutions the knowledge and skills that are necessary to plan, implement and manage educational CMC systems cost/effectively. In order to be able to teach its members, the IDLN must first learn. And at the present stage of development (and the very rapid rate of innovation) of new technologies and educational CMC applications in particular, this learning process will involve an active agenda of research and development: research on a worldwide basis of new developments, opportunities and the results actually being achieved in distance education applications; development in the Indonesian context, focussed on the adoption and adaptation of technologies and systems that make sense in the local context. Thus, the IDLN may be seen quite clearly as being both a "learning organization" and a "teaching/facilitating" organization. In both of these roles, the adoption of a total systems approach would appear to be essential in order to deal with the size and complexity of the (Indonesian education/training) problems being faced and the (new technology) opportunities that are presenting themselves as candidate components of possible solutions.
We have looked at a variety of “organizations”, some “real” and some “virtual” that make extensive use of CMC, applying the metaphorical concept of the learning organization, and asking what learning can be derived for distance learning systems embarking on the use of CMC in teaching and learning.
There can be no easy answers and quick fixes when dealing with an organization as complex as a distance education system. In this section we list a few observations, suggesting some items for a future research agenda, and present a Table of putative “Success Factors” for consideration.
From the foregoing, there appear to be at least two general considerations which a distance learning organization should bear in mind when considering the use of CMC. Relating to these considerations are a number of possible research directions.
The IBM and Singapore examples suggest that familiarity with CMC technology and the ability to apply it in one context do not necessarily guarantee the ability or the motivation to use it successfully in a distance learning context or indeed to integrate it in a major way into a new teaching programme. This suggests that a distance learning organization should be pursuing at least three lines of research (comparable to the three levels of technical, strategic, and policy considerations characteristic of a quality management system): how best to ensure that learners have the necessary technical skills to cope with the medium; how best to ensure that learners acquire relevant intellectual and psychological strategies to gain the most benefit from the use of CMC; and what are the cultural and motivational factors that influence the adoption of CMC technology in a teaching and learning environment.
When CMC networking begins to be used seriously, the nature of the teaching and learning environment is inevitably changed. New possibilities appear. Students relate differently to each other and to the teacher. In the Deutsch Gossip Column referred to earlier, for example, the students started to produce their own lists of German grammar and syntax and to refer each other to the relevant parts. In the traditional classroom this would unquestionably be regarded as the teacher's responsibility.
This suggests a further research agenda which could include on the operational level an investigation of the “optimum mix” of CMC and other learning activities to enhance the learning environment for students and teachers; and on the systems level, an investigation of the decision-making factors which influence the level of support given to innovations in teaching.
As a start to the learning process, we present a synthesis of some of the findings to date on the educational use of CMC. The following is a comparative list of factors identified in the reporting of a variety of CMC projects. These factors either contribute to the success or otherwise of CMC projects or are a direct or indirect benefit of using CMC. The categories we have identified are: technology-related; organizational; personal; pedagogic; cost and resource related.
Table 1. Indicators of success
| Possible Success Factors | Possible Contra-indicative Factors | |
| Technology-related | Can save time in distributing information. (But only if the informants are regularly using a computer for other functions.) | CDs are unsuitable for reading on the bus (but how many people regularly read on the bus?) |
| Can ensure that users receive timely up-to-date information appropriate to their needs | ||
| Developments should focus on methods of communicating that support sharing of knowledge in a community of learners, recognising that “much useful knowledge is held in the minds of practitioners” | Downloading & printing can take hours | |
| Developments should focus on systems that enable interactions amongst learners to be easily stored & re-accessed as new sources of knowledge by future learners. | Competition between manufacturers to produce the latest gizmo can ignore the real needs of the likely users | |
| Focus on identifying/creating communal transparent tools for creating, reading, editing & storing files | A 'good' software program can act as a benchmark to shape expectations and inhibit development of alternative approaches. | |
| Organizational | Leadership & ongoing support from senior management | Advance of technology shifts task focus and expectations. Many hours can be 'wasted' on getting a document to look right rather than on structuring the content of the document. |
| Blend of public & private involvement in developments | ||
| Creating a climate for the use of technology in learning | Lack of adequate timescale to implement | |
| Organizational leadership which supports & encourages local initiatives | Lack of detailed planning | |
| Collaborative team work which draws on a variety of experience & expertise to develop & implement agreed initiatives | Lack of formalised agreements to sustain commitment though difficulties and problems | |
| Adequate technical backup | Non-educational considerations take precedence over educational priorities | |
| Adequate initial & ongoing training for users in all categories | ||
| Adopting an “incremental elicitation of users' needs” approach | ||
| Personal | Willingness to use the technology | |
| Tolerance of problems with the interface | ||
| Access to technical help to sort out interface & other technical problems | ||
| 24 hour access to a computer with a modem & telephone line | ||
| Willingness to adopt a collaborative approach | ||
| Willingness to spend time in initial needs analysis, negotiation & front end planning | ||
| Pedagogic | Collaborative learning approach | |
| Bottom-up initiative that uses existing infrastructure | Assumption that keyboarding and cmc navigational tools can simply be 'picked up' without specific instruction | |
| Encouraging the development of learning links with other similar institutions | ||
| Providing links with Internet resources such as MOO's and MUD's | Assumption that familiarity with the technology will automatically facilitate the use of CMC as a learning tool | |
| Cost & resource-related | Can supplement interactive computer-based resources with 'live' interaction which is then archived for future use. | High cost of maintaining up-to-date computer-based learning resources |
| Can eliminate time spent in creating, maintaining & servicing mailing list by putting all relevant information, properly labelled, on a central server and allowing recipients to read & download what is relevant to them | Rate of technological innovation is faster than human capability of learning | |
| Management has committed adequate resources over a period of time | The more advanced, the more to go wrong | |
| Time spent in initial comparison of systems, planning, etc | ||
| Downtime when hardware/software has problems |
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