The rapidly increasing use of computer technology (the Internet included) is changing the lives of millions of people and the social organizations in which they are embedded. It is changing the way we work and play, as well as making fundamental alterations in the meaning of concepts such as physical distance, since people can now interact readily with others half a world apart in ways that were practically unimagineable less than a century ago. This essay sets out to explore the positive effects of computer technology for the vital institutions in our society -- its schools. I will discuss the positive implications of choosing to obtain an education online (versus choosing to obtain an education via the traditional pedagogical system) by refuting some of the most common objections voiced about home-schooling, or for the purpose of this essay, "online home-schooling".
By this point in the CyberPhilosophy course (offered by the University-College of the Cariboo in Kamloops, BC, Canada), my classmates and I now know that besides its communication capacity, the Internet is the largest global collection of information stored in network-accessible databases, text articles, sound and video clips, Internet magazines and personal notebooks (Holeton, 1998). This collection of information is not organized as well as it should or will be, but even today automated searching tools and dedicated network librarians are building indices and tools to allow us to receive, in our homes and workplaces, any information, in any format, from anywhere on the globe. The Internet has, in large part, constructed this "utopian dream tool" that is ready to dispense all kinds of information on any subject, ubiquitously. As intelligent knowledge workers charged with the crucial task of creating lifelong learning opportunities, educators are attracted to the potential of this most global knowledge tool. Instructors and learners are increasingly using the Internet as the basis for information searching, educational interaction and global communication (Schofield, 1995).
Education is definitely changing in the "Information Age"; and, especially with the increasing popularity of the Internet comes the notion of online education through "networked learning". Networked learning happens when learners and instructors use computers to exchange information and access resources as part of a learning endeavor. Unlike broadcast media such as television and radio, networked learning is based on an interactive learning model (Banks, 1998). Interactions can be between learner and instructor or learner and learner, among a group of learners, or with outside experts or professional colleagues who are not directly involved in the course. Learners can interact frequently with each other as well as with the instructor, provide support for each other's learning and develop ways of working and learning together. A study completed for the Conference Board of Canada in 1993 points out the importance of developing skills in communicating and team-based problem solving (Haughey & Anderson, 1998). Networked learning can help accomplish and realize all of these skills.
The benefits of learning online are one and many. Networked learning supports cooperative learning. Learners at a distance from each other can work together on the same problem in real-time using a shared computer screen. Besides conserving time, networked learning helps ensure more efficient access to valuable resources. Learners can access resources anywhere in the organization or throughout the world without leaving their own work area. Resources can be accessed from any location, be it from home, school, on campus or the workplace -- wherever learning is most meaningful, and these resources can immediately be put into practice.
Using computer networks, learners can select from a wide variety of learning resources that match their learning needs. For example, networked learning can include not only reading text-based reports and documents, but also listening to compositions, speeches and other audio materials, watching video and television clips and running computer-assisted learning sequences. Activities like these are collectively termed "computer-controlled multimedia". Ambron and Hooper (1990) describe multimedia as a "technology-based medium for thinking, learning and communication". The ability to critically assess the quality and utility of information and to synthesize it with prior experiential knowledge is enhanced through networked learning because it is a type of multisensory learning, and studies show that people learn best through their senses (Ambron & Hooper, 1990). Multimedia can provide multiple, multisensory learning contexts (for example, when observing the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly or composing the music for songs with graphics). Not only that, multimedia also offers a safe environment for risk taking, experimentation, exploration, and problem solving. All of these, along with the necessity of developing strong written communication skills, the opportunity to converse with colleagues from different cultural backgrounds and the sense of community that develops through collaborative efforts, are crucial personal and vocational skills of the Information Age (Ambron & Hooper, 1990).
So, with all these advantages of learning through the careful utilization of multimedia sources, energies are shifting towards offering education over the Internet (Banks, 1998), where there is no shortage of employing these types of educational technologies. As the Online Learning Centre (based in Canada) points out, entire degrees are now available online. There most certainly is not a lack of institutions which are eager to reach out and expand their student population base, especially as post-secondary students are more often non-traditional in age, responsibilites, and goals. A few institutions now offer online Ph.D. degrees although most require some time for meetings at a main campus or other central location. Other full degrees are available online; for example, Masters degrees in Business and Instructional Technology. A large number of individual courses are also available online, and many of these credits can be transferred into traditional degree programs.
NorthStar Academy is one such example of an online school that can provide students with a high-school diploma upon successful completion of the required course credits. The programs offered through this school are based on a Canadian curriculum (adapted from Alberta's Department of Education) and on a United States curriculum (adapted from the Richardson Independent School District of Texas). NorthStar Academy's informational website explains how all of the learning that takes place within their "school" mimicks what happens in a traditional school, including "lectures, discussion (including the sorts of chatter that occurs in the hallways), peer learning, group work, and student presentations to the class."
NorthStar Academy's website also outlines the benefits of putting one's children through online education:
* students who are tutored or who study individually or in very small groups have been found to achieve close to two standard deviations above the mean of comparable students in grouped instruction (Bloom, 1994)* students who study independently are better prepared for post-secondary studies (Hathaway, 1993)
* students are more likely to edit and refine their work when using a productivity tool like word processing software than if they are using pen and paper.
* students are not inhibited by time or shyness factors of a traditional classroom environment
* students can review every aspect of their class activities to include class lectures, presentations, assignments, and group discussions because all of these items have been digitally recorded, a clear benefit over oral communications that can easily be forgotten.
NorthStar Academy lists the main advantages of online home-schooling on their site; however, not everyone agrees with this system of teaching. Some say the advent of virtual schools spells the demise of traditional institutions (Schrum & Berenfield, 1997). In this way, online education services are often compared to distance education programs, or taking classes by correspondence at home, which are also the opponents of traditional education. One of the added benefits of online home-schooling is the opportunity to learn in the convenience of your own home at your own pace, exactly as it goes for distance learning or home-schooling by correspondence. Questions do arise about the relationship between the quality of the learning environment and the size of the class. It is argued that students who are home-taught become too dependent on their teachers because of the one-on-one contact that is constantly available to the them and that this actually hinders the learning process. The truth of the matter is that networked learning allows for a shift in the teacher's role. The teacher's role is transformed "from the sage on the stage to the guide at the side". Thus, as discussed in Chapter 3 of Schofield's Computers and Classroom Change, in both the lab part of computer science classes and the GPTutor classes the teacher's role tended to change from that of the expert who presented information to be assimilated by the students to that of a coach or tutor who assisted students when they encountered difficulties in their relatively independent work. This shift meant not only that the students received more individualized help, but also that they, generally speaking, worked more actively on their own rather than having the pace and content of their work controlled quite minutely by the teacher. Also, among the most controversial of topics related to home-schooling -- whether through correspondence or via the Internet, if you will -- are the ones addressing the cost factors associated with learning from home or on the Internet (often because of the high cost of the types of software used with the latter) and, more importantly, the ones concerned with proper development of the child's socialization skills.
Dr. Fred Worth is a proponent of home education even though he took classes through the traditional system himself. Dr. Worth has discussed, in depth, several of the common myths that people have about a child's socialization when she or he is home-schooled. Just the same, his discussions can be applied to the online education paradigm because, technically, those who learn online learn at home. So one argument related to developing proper socialization skills is that children who are home-schooled won't know how to interact with people of different backgrounds. Dr. Worth objects by saying that children who are home-schooled more often than not are also involved in extra-curricular activities outside school that encourage them to seek out friendships with people from other economic, social or racial backgrounds. In fact, he states: "They encounter people of more diverse backgrounds since they are not spending all day in an age-segregated environment." Dr. Worth goes on to say that "the artificial, age-segregated government school classroom" does not afford any opportunity for children to learn how to get along well with people, and: "All that children learn there is how to interact with the same 25 or so children of the same age, with one adult thrown in as a balance. In a home school, in addition to the classroom learning, children will often accompany their parents during errands and chores during the day. They will encounter people at the grocery store, hardware store, post office and all of the other settings that they will encounter throughout life. They will see people of all ages and all backgrounds. They will see them in all kinds of situations. Clearly, if you want a child who will grow up knowing how to interrelate with a wide range of people then home schooling is the best choice. Home school wins."
Another major objection that people often employ about learning online is that the children won't know how to deal with the real world. To retaliate, I will point out that age segregation is not the "real world". According to Dr. Worth's findings, government schools hold those students who can excel back until the slower ones "catch up". Again, this is not how things operate in the real world. The option to home school accommodates for this, then, because learning online is more "learner-centered". Any given course will have a set of Learning Outcomes which it seeks to satisfy. In a face-to-face environment this is supported by aiming lecture content above the bottom end of the group's pre-existing knowledge and using seminars and tutorials to clarify details and cover additional material with those students who have not followed the lectures fully. In this setting decisions about content are taken by the experienced tutor. Moving to networked learning, by making use of Hypertextual materials for example, involves replacing this with a "core" set of information which satisfies the essential objectives of the course, plus additional materials for students who have difficulty following the core and optionally other materials to stretch more advanced students beyond that core level. This means that the decision about what the student needs to know has moved from the teacher to the learner. Computer-based approaches exacerbate the problem, because the speed of access creates an expectation that the learner should look at all the material. This can be overcome by taking advantage of the interactive nature of the computer to explicitly assist the student in these decisions by providing orientation, self-assessment and related study guidance on an individual basis (Alessi & Trollip, 1990). The end effect of this, then, is that online school programs have greater flexibility in that they may be catered to meet the individual learning needs of the student.
You may have noticed Dr. Worth labels traditional public schools as "government schools". He believes that government schools are not public anymore: "There is less and less parental involvement. That is in part because some parents have abdicated their responsibilities. However, it appears that the educational elitists and the government have worked together to keep parents from having much control over what goes on in the schools" (Worth, 1997). Along the same line, Paulo Friere, in his essay entitled "The 'Banking' Concept of Education", discussed the political implications of the relations between teachers and students. Some forms of schooling, he said, can give students control over their lives, but most schooling teaches students only to submit to domination by others (i.e. the teachers, who are also "brainwashed" by the government):
A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness (207).
Friere mentions a good point, where the traditional methods of teaching encourage the students to engage in a passive, submissive role: "Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into 'containers', into 'receptacles' to be 'filled' by the teacher. The more completely he fills the receptacles, the better a teacher he is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are" (208). This would be an appropriate time for me to reinforce one positive impact provided by online education which was mentioned earlier; that is, the interactive nature of networked learning. Learning online is considered more of an "active" process rather than a passive one; increased involvement and participation on the part of the pupil is therefore fostered in the online learning process.
I agree with both Dr. Worth and Paulo Friere. It is not surprising that "the 'banking' concept of education" regards men as adaptable, manageable beings (208). I say the more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them. For this reason, I believe (and Dr. Worth would agree with me, too), that sometimes it's better not to socialize with your peers in a classroom situation because there is a greater tendency to want to conform -- conform to the ideas of your teacher or your classmates, what with the issues related to peer pressure and such.
This essay has suggested that networked learning through multimedia is an educational telecommunications tool with the potential to change the fundamental nature of teaching and learning. In fact, the education system is already changing because of it. Now there is external competition for traditional, public schools not only from private schools (for example, boarding schools or other religious private schools) and distance learning programs via correspondence (by mail), but now also from online, so-called "virtual", schools. New and improved technologies are continously being examined by educators, researchers, and communities in an on-going effort to enhance professional development, encourage lifelong learning, provide educational opportunities to traditionally underserved populations, and conserve limited resources. As the future of education is changing, it is becoming more and more important for society to begin to recognize and respect the services offered by these online schools. I hope this essay has served its purpose by supplying you with just a taste of what online education services have to offer. At the very least, I hope you will reconsider the benefits employed through online education services because, after all, chances are that since the Internet is promoting the concept of lifelong learning in the Information Age, you too may have to take advantage of these types of online home-schooling services in the future. So remember it as yet another viable alternative to education.
Alessi, Stephen M. and Stanley R. Trollip. Computer-Based Instruction: Methods and Development. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1991.
Ambron, Sueann and Kristina Hooper. Learning With Interactive Multimedia. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press. 1990.
Banks, Bob (1998). "Supporting Networked Learning as a whole: Pedagogy, Management and the Learning Environment." Abstract online at www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/csnl/1abs.html#anchor1.
Friere, Paulo. "The 'Banking Concept' of Education." In Ways of Reading: An anthology for writers. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press. 1993.
Holeton, Richard (1998). Composing Cyberspace: Identity, Community and Knowledge in the Electronic Age. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Class text for CyberPhilosophy 224, available online at http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/english/holeton/.
Schofield, Janet Ward. Computers and Classroom Culture. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. 1995.
Worth, Fred Dr (1997). "Answers to Objections about Home-Schooling." Available online at http://www.hsu.edu/faculty/worthf/social.html.