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Integration Of Educational Media in Higher Education Large Classes William Papo, South Africa

Abstracts The potential of new technologies that have been developed to support greater teacher effectiveness has increased, but, teachers/lecturers at higher education institutions do not use such technology enough in developing new methods of instruction. This is possibly because of the frustration experienced in slow equipment delivery and setting it up each time they want to use it. Too often, hardware and facility improvements are funded without the resources necessary to help lecturers make signi� cant changes in courseware and teaching methods. There is too much reluctance on the part of lecturers to use instructional media as a way of improving teaching and learning. It is further acknowledged by this paper that, today, the diversi� cation of technologies makes it possible to reach a new stage, making the integration of these new media essentials: the Internet, cyberspace, multimedia, hypermedia, and so on. The current width of this evolution, undoubtedly, calls for an urgent response to the problems raised by the use of educational media. Moreover, the particular characteristics of these new media, the digital whole, addresses new questions such as: what teaching scenarios are relevant and innovating? What is the impact of these media on methodologies and the organization of the learning and teaching institution?

L’éducation des médias éducatifs dans l’enseignement supérieur. Les nouvelles technologies ont été développées pour soutenir une plus grande ef� cacité des enseignants mais l’on constate que ceux-ci ne s’appuient pas suf� samment sur ces technologies pour développer de nouvelles méthodes et de nouveaux usages pédagogiques. Trop souvent le hardware et les services sont � nancés sans que le soient aussi les mesures d’accompagnement susceptibles d’entraîner chez les enseignants des modi� cations signi� catives dans leurs méthodes d’enseignement. Il y a donc une certaine résistance de leur part à utiliser les nouveaux médias éducatifs a� n de développer l’enseignement et l’apprentissage. L’évolution des médias actuels fait surgir de nombreuses questions telles que : quels sont les scénarios pédagogiques pertinents et innovatifs ? Quel est l’impact de ces médias sur les méthodologies, sur l’organisation des apprentissages et des systèmes de formation.

Die Integration pädagogischer Medien in der höheren Bildung Neue Technologien wurden entwickelt, um die Effektivität in der Bildung zu unterstützen. Man stellt jedoch fest, dass Lehrkräfte an höheren Bildungsinstitutionen diese Technologien nicht genügend einsetzen, um neue pädagogische Methoden zu entwickeln. Finanzielle Mittel für Hardware und weitere Einrichtungen werden häu� g bereitgestellt, jedoch ohne die notwendigen Ressourcen, die den Lehrkräften bei der signi� kanten Veränderung ihrer Lehrmethoden helfen sollen. Es existiert somit eine gewisse Abneigung seitens der Lehrkräfte, die neuen Medien zur Verbesserung ihrer Unterrichtsqualität einzusetzen. Die gegenwärtige Entwicklung der neuen Medien werfen somit Fragen wie diese auf : Welche Bildungsszenarien sind relevant und innovativ ? Welche Auswirkungen haben diese Medien auf die Methodik und die Bildungsinstitutionen ?

In this paper, an emphasis is placed on the success of reforming on-campus (large) class teaching by employing and adapting distance teaching methods relying mainly on technology. This reliance should also recognize the principles and practices employed by distance educators which involves technology, especially new technology. A broader understanding of the main reasons for the increasing importance of technology in distance education is required. Some of the reasons are:

� a much wider range of technology is becoming more accessible to potential students; � the cost of technological delivery are dropping dramatically;

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� the technology is becoming easier to use, both by students and teachers; � technology is becoming more powerful pedagogically; � distance education institutions will � nd it increasingly dif� cult to resist the political and social pressures of the

technological imperative; and � convergence of distance education and conventional teaching methods.

In recent years, many educators attached to distance education have advocated closer links between the � eld of distance education and conventional education. With new information technology, ef� cient and cost-effective distance learning programmes have also become a reality. Such developments in educational technology are important for open and distance education, but they are also gaining signi� cance in other types of post-school education such as contact higher education institutions (Kirkwood, 1996).

The distinction between ‘conventional’ and ‘distance’ education is being eroded at the higher education level as institutions diversify and adapt to cope with student numbers that are rising much more rapidly than available resources. Increasingly, media technologies are being used to support teaching and learning. At the same time, convergence in media technologies is being brought about by digitization, which makes possible the production, storage and dissemination of text, graphics, speech, sounds, still and moving pictures, in basically the same format.

Traditionally, education has been very dependent on time and space. Most students are put in one large classroom/lecture hall for lessons to be offered. With new information technologies, learning can occur not only in the student’s classroom/lecture hall or library carrel, but also at his/her home, in the dorm, at another university across town or at other sites, changing the nature of the student body.

The fact that institutions are using technology to provide continuing education, school-to-work programmes, and many other bene� cial services, does not suggest that university campuses and classrooms will become obsolete (Gates, 1996). There will always be a need for face-to-face interaction between lecturers and students. Technologies open up new opportunities for learning that are not dependent on time or place.

There are also indications that methods of teaching in distance education and mainstream on-campus education, at the university level, are beginning to converge. New technologies facilitate contact between distance education students and their lecturers more than has been possible in the past. On the other hand, traditional teaching methods are in some instances being abandoned or modi� ed in favour of a resource-based approach which de-emphasizes the lecturer as the main source of knowledge (Ross, 1993). Because of the rapid change in commu- nications and educational technology, convergence from an on-campus perspective with large classes to be taught through conventional methods to distance teaching methods is possible. The approaches or technologies that can be put into practice are stated below. Convergence can be based on the development of one or more of the following (Ross, 1993; Boylan and Hemmings, 1992):

� the introduction of interactive multimedia packages, leading to greater autonomy of students; � the use of distance education packages on campus; � remote and on-campus students having online access to the same (interactive) packages; � packages replacing (or at least becoming part of ) traditional teaching; � students (both on and off campus) having online access to databases, bulletin boards, discussion boards,

assignment and return, and academic administrative and counselling services; � an appraisal of the educational bene� ts and limitations of the various media; � an assessment of the extent to which students (and potential students) have access to media technologies,

particularly if learning is to be home-based; and � an understanding of the social and physical context within which learning will be undertaken.

Lecturers and students need to develop skills for using the various media effectively and for avoiding unanticipated outcomes. Much effort and ingenuity is needed if real learning bene� ts are to be derived. Lecturers can perceive the move proposed above differently. The reality is that most of the development projects possibly rely on external funding, and are heavily dependent on the extra effort of the enthusiasts involved. Reduced funding per student and increased enrolment are leading to increased class sizes, resulting in a marked shift towards more traditional forms of presentation. Further, costs are leading to a reduced level of (low-level) technology support for teaching, in turn resulting in lower motivation to use any planned technological presentation. Quite apart from the impact on the effectiveness on traditional tutorial supported approaches, much of the computer-mediated commu- nication relies for effectiveness on small groups and, lastly, most multimedia projects are for supplementation, not replacement, and seem to be perpetually underway.

In spite of the above, Campion and Kelly (1988), in a comprehensive review of the evolution of policy and practice relating to distance education in Australian higher education, conclude that blurring the boundaries

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between distance education and campus-based education has the potential to dramatically improve and to bring about a more cost effective and innovative system. Their view is that dual-mode universities have the advantage of � exibility in their teaching strategies and a wider range of courses to be offered. Furthermore, dual-mode universities or institutions can achieve more cost-effectiveness than their distance teaching counterparts because nearly all the teaching strategies employed by distance teaching institutions can be copied by campus-based institutions, which can solve large class teaching problems.

Another view of converging distance education teaching methods with campus-based teaching methods is given by Mugridge and Maraj (1992), who maintain that there may come a point at which there is no longer any signi� cant distance between distance education and conventional education, when university education – as indeed that at other levels too – will be conducted by different means at different times and places according to the requirements of different groups of students and the resources available to different institutions. This trend is reinforced by what seems to be a world-wide tendency towards the enrolment of growing numbers of mature and part-time students and towards a growing use of various types of educational technology. Mugridge and Maraj (1992) emphasize the point that the serving of mature and part-time students and the use of educational technology are coming to be seen as legitimate activities for all institutions rather than merely for open universities that pioneered the more advanced kinds of distance education.

Dawkins (1988) contends that all institutions should have access to accepted national external course materials, and supporting technologies, for use in the courses provided for their on-campus students whose classes are getting larger, where technology is becoming more sophisticated, and old teaching strategies are not meeting their needs. It is further approved by the South African Ministry of Education that distance education based on the principles of open learning can lead to the development of a system which is organized for use by learners at different times, in different ways and for different purposes at various stages of their lives and careers which means that, the quality and success of teaching are not dependent upon staff levels rising in tandem with increased enrolments (Green Paper, 1996).

Distance education as an improvement to conventional teaching methods Distance education materials have the potential to supplement or replace aspects of conventional on-campus teaching in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Through a mixed-mode format, distance education has the potential to cater for the needs of a range of students who cannot easily attend campus for formal teaching periods because of location or other constraints. There is also the potential to facilitate the further development of approaches such as co-operative education. Staff in conventional institutions who are faced with large classes adopt teaching methods based upon computers in facilitating independent study by their students. The reasons for this adoption are that the technology is constantly getting easier and cheaper to use, and (Johnson et al., 1992) many students have access to a computer, either at an access centre or at home.

The � nest, most effective learning materials, in whatever medium or combination, prepared by the most imaginative and knowledgeable people, can be provided to very large numbers of students at marginal cost per student. In this instance, the bulk of the cost goes to the production and, therefore, the more students who use the materials, the more that cost diminishes per student. Furthermore, it may be that these methods can lead to a reduction of other on-campus costs. The central objection by academic staff to using teaching materials developed by other institutions or even by colleagues in their own institutions, rests upon issues of the rights and responsibilities of individual staff to control the teaching process at subject level (Evans and Nation, 1993). In order for institutions to engage themselves more fully in using distance education materials, methodologies, and technologies, Beazley (1992, 1993), recommended that different expenditure patterns and other structural changes that might be required to enable institutions with large class problems to improve teaching should be investigated. This enquiry will also enable such institutions to address some of the dif� culties associated with the employment of academic labour and speci� cally those related to the institution’s conjunction with investment in technology. This may possibly provide an alternative to student contact hours as a teaching effort.

It should be apparent to educators that education is rapidly changing and that the familiar model based on the lecturer–textbook–blackboard trio is rapidly fading from prominence. This change is due both to social challenges (large classes, for example) and to opportunities provided by rapidly advancing distance education technology. Further, David (1997) states that ‘to simply reject technology would have a similar effect to completely embracing it – universities would be determined by it, and would just be onlookers or catalysts’. However, if university lecturers engage with it and try to make it work in ways which give autonomy to themselves and learners, rather than the technology itself, then they probably stand a chance of exerting some element of their collective teaching wills over the future of higher education. From this perspective, the empowerment of higher education lecturers

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and learners through technology is one of the most important and signi� cant enterprises in education today. Some of the challenges that educational institutions face today in teaching large classes are serious resource limitations and cutbacks, soaring costs of classroom instruction, greater diversity in student populations, and competition for students through courses delivered from other institutions via distance education (Price, 1996).

Institutions with large class conventional teaching methods should choose either to use educational technology as a lever to change the range of educational services offered, to reach out to new markets or to transform the traditional metaphor of the teaching and learning process to one more in tune with the information age. Kershaw (1996) is of the opinion that institutions contemplating such changes should remember that technology is seductive. Its siren call can tempt people to focus on the means of change rather than the end, on the technology itself rather than the people who will use it. Effective change of traditional methods of teaching is not about introducing this or that technology; it is about encouraging people to change the way they do things and the way they think about their roles in the institution.

Educational institutions embarking on the introduction of educational technology with the purpose of bringing about institutional transformation should be clear about why it is being attempted. A focus on the uses of technology, not on the attributes of technology itself, is important. More often than not, however, decisions about the use of various media are driven to a greater extent by the desire for a technological solution to increased student numbers, rather than by any educational analysis of the teaching/learning problems or needs. In the clamour to ensure that a presence on the technological bandwagon has been achieved, it is easy to forget that media and communication systems are just a means to an end – they are not panacea for the problems and challenges facing education and training at the end of twentieth century (Kirkwood, 1996), no matter what their champions proclaim they are. When their potential for distance learning is being considered, it is the educational purpose that should always come � rst, not the technology. Questions such as ‘what educational purpose do we want to achieve?’ need to be asked � rst, rather than ‘how can we use this medium?’ Simply putting materials on CD-ROM or connecting people to the Internet will achieve very little unless there is a clear rationale for doing so, derived from a well thought-out teaching or learning strategy. It is easier to use the new media technologies to replicate bad or inappropriate teaching practices than it is to reassess the teaching and learning aims and processes for particular courses.

Connection of the Internet, for example, into conventional large class teaching is creating a surge in access to learning new resources and opportunities. In effect, the real world is brought into the classroom more vividly and powerfully than ever before. In a traditional classroom setting, lecturers and textbooks are the sole sources of dealing with and educating large classes, and the classroom is physically and � guratively isolated from the real world in networked classrooms (Watson, 1996) Students’ access to books, journals, experts, museums, libraries and data of all kinds is nearly unlimited. Learning becomes active and investigative as students research and study the cornucopia of resources. Rather than lecture to large numbers of students from podiums, lecturers can facilitate and guide them through their knowledge construction. Curricula become student directed and more relevant because studies are footed in the real world.

On emphasizing the change from traditional teaching methods, Laszlo and Castro (1995) and Jones and Jones (1996) point out that interactive learning technologies are rapidly becoming powerful multi-sensory, interactive environments that challenge current educational values with both risk and opportunity. There is a need for a major paradigm shift away from traditional teaching methods and tools for optimization of human learning potential. There may not be major changes to the physical environment where computers, for example, are installed, but the need to make meaningful pedagogical transformation is necessary. It should be borne in mind that the current global educational system is oriented towards the production of ‘knowers’ instead of learners, and consequently threatens the formation of individuals capable of responding effectively to rapidly changing environments. Rapidly changing environments are the hallmark of contemporary societal dynamics and require an appropriate repertory of learning responses. Also, the advent of computer aided learning environments has augmented the domain of the educational experience where the new technologies can launch human potential through the generation of repertories of learning responses that foster inquisitiveness and readiness to deal with large class teaching and learning challenges. The technologies can also suppress human potential by fostering attitudes of competitive aggression and individual domination.

Conclusion The above indicates the urgent need to co-opt educational technologies into formal education (teaching and learning) in ways that avert their negative potential and boost their positive potential. They have begun to change the pattern of human learning and could strongly impact on the capacity of education to prepare individuals

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capable of dealing with the dynamics of the present large class teaching era in higher education, by helping to stimulate a new educational paradigm.

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Biographical note Dr William Duncan Papo holds a BA Ed, a BEd (Educational Management and Technology); a MEd (Media Science) and a DEd (Teaching Studies). He has taught at High School, College of Education and is currently, Senior Lecturer and Head of Department of Educational Practice at the University of the North. Dr Papo teaches and supervises MEd and DEd research projects in Educational Technology.

Address for correspondence William Papo, Department of Education Practice, School of Education, University of the North, South Africa; e-mail: [email protected]

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