Pedagogy, the Internet and the Classroom
Dr. Marina Stock McIsaac
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona, USA
(e-mail: mmcisaac@asu.edu)
2¼ Encontro Internacional Artibytes
Santarm, Portugal
June, 1999
The Influence of Technology
People around the world are influenced by advances in technology. Millions wake up to
morning television news and go to bed after televisionÕs evening entertainment. People in war
zones see television coverage of the destruction of their neighborhoods at the same time as their
relatives do half way around the globe. When national broadcast facilities are closed down in
times of war, individual stories and news reports speed across the Internet. Reports such as
those first stories that came from Tiananmen Square have maintained the Internet as a medium
for immediate and personal communication across geographic borders. This paper discusses the
growth of the Internet, examines PortugalÕs role in that growth, and presents pedagogic strategies
for effectively using the Internet for teaching and learning.
Youth Drives Use of Technology
Technologies used in mass media, entertainment and multimedia have captured the
young adult market. Video stores are common in cities as well as in rural communities. Video
arcades attract teens around the world. Along with the interest in video games has come an
interest in chatting and surfing the web. Electronic networks provide some of the most interesting
studies in new media for communication. No technology has seen a more rapid development
than the Internet.
According to Michael Erbschloe, Director of Research for Computer Economics, the
number of Internet users under the age of 16 will number more than 77 million by the year 2005.
Most of the growth will come from North America and the Asia Pacific, but the 15 million users
from Europe will be significant. The number of children throughout the world using the Internet
will increase dramatically over the next six years and will become a huge market (Cyberatlas, 1999).
Although the fastest growing population is among young people, the global Internet
population will reach 250 million in 2002, and 300 million by 2005, according to a report by
Datamonitor. In the report "The Future of the Internet", Datamonitor said it expects most of the
Internet growth in the coming years to come from the developing markets of Asia and South
America. 206 million dial-up connections are expected by the year 2005. The number of Internet
users in the Asia Pacific will increase nearly fourfold from 2001 to 2005. However, even though
the rate of growth will be higher in the Asia Pacific area than in North America, there will still be
more young people using the Internet in North America than in the Asia Pacific area in 2005
(Datamonitor, 1999).
Multimedia
Multimedia is fast becoming a seamless integration of video, audio and still images, often
in an interactive and virtual environment. Although multimedia productions are predominantly
displayed on compact disc (CD), the Internet is rapidly developing multimedia capabilities.
Forecasters predict a rise in the volume of Internet traffic attributable to video and audio-intensive
applications. Presently, audio and video account for only 2 percent of Internet traffic, but by the
year 2003, Datamonitor predicts a rise to 6 percent. High-bandwidth networks are already being
developed to handle the increase in audio, video, fax and voice that will occur in the near future.
The business world follows the Internet market closely. IDC reports that despite
falling prices and emerging lower-cost access methods, the European Internet access and related
services markets will show strong continued growth over the next five years. They predict over 50
percent growth in each of the next two years, demonstrating that the Internet is fueling the fastest
growth ever seen in European telecommunications markets. Broadband access is the fastest-
growing segment of the Internet market. All European markets will exhibit growth rates near, or
over 100% from 1999 to 2003. This will be due to :
· Increased market penetration
· Falling prices of leased line services
· Rapidly increasing use of lower priced broadband services (Datamonitor, 1999)
Portugal and the Internet
Where does Portugal stand in the development of Internet based services? Is it
reasonable to expect that lines will be available so educators can take advantage of some of the
services that are more easily available in North America and Northern Europe? Will there be an
infrastructure to support multimedia and Internet-based courses in the majority of PortugalÕs
educational institutions?
According to a 1998 report from the International
Data Corporation, (IDC, 1998), only 200,000 of PortugalÕs 9.9 million adults were online last year.
That was only 1.9 percent of the nationÕs population in comparison to 15% of the population online
in the U.S. and 6% in Europe. A recent report from Forbes magazine (NUA, 1999b) ranked the
Internet markets of EU member countries, and drew an overall comparison with the US market.
Forbes ranked countries on an A-D scale based on:
o Online population
o Number of PCs
o Cost of access to Internet
o Income level
This is how countries were evaluated on Internet access.
A= U.K., Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
B= Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and Ireland.
C= France, Belgium, Austria, Italy.
D= Spain, Greece, Portugal
It is interesting to note that a government spokespserson in January, 1999, told the recent
Congress on Ecommerce that Spain now has over 2.74 million citizens over the age of 14
who currently have Internet access. This represents 8 percent of the population, and it is
anticipated that Spanish commerce will generate revenue in excess of 513 million dollars in 2000.
It is easy to see the potential growth, especially in countries that are presently farther down the
economic ladder. Clearly economics plays an important part in the potential use of the Internet
for educational purposes. Three recent events show the positive steps that Portugal is taking.
First is the issue of deregulation. By the end of 1998 all but six countries had
deregulated their telecommunications sectors. The remaining six countries were Czech Republic,
Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and Turkey. Portugal is one country that has scheduled
deadlines for deregulation of telecommunications services. It is deregulation that has
made the Internet affordable to citizens of the member countries. As long as monopolies control the telecommunications services, rates remain expensive.
Second, Portugal participated in the first Pan-European Net Strike in February, 1999
(NUA, 1999a). The Campaign for Unmetered Telecommunications (CUT) supported users in
Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland who went on strike for 24 hours,
boycotting use of the net. This protest was against current high Internet access charges in those
countries. Another similar strike is planned for summer of 1999. The aims of the strike are to:
o Ensure that the cost of telephone calls reflects the costs to the telecommunications operators
o Establish flat rates for ISP connections across countries in Europe to ensure equal access to all Europeans
o Abolish minimum call charges with consumers charged only for the time they are connected
The average cost of going online in Europe is USD $49.32, compared to USD $34.87 in the US.
Among Europeans there is an annual disposable income of USD $14,801, compared to USD $21,928 in the US.
Third, Portugal is one of only two countries that is in full compliance with the EUÕs
Directive on Data Protection (NUA, 1998). This directive has called into question both the
standards and adequacy of current US privacy protection policies. The EU Directive on Data
Protection declares that people have a right to know how their data is being used, to contest the
accuracy of that data, and to restrict the dissemination of that data. Portugal and Greece are the
only countries with privacy laws fully in accord with the directive.
Pedagogy and the Online Classroom
If the Internet is projected to experience unprecedented growth, and if Portugal is working
to become EU compliant in providing Internet services, we should look at how pedagogy can best
be served by integrating web-based technologies in the classroom. Since this Artibytes
conference is directed to the teaching and learning of language, I will draw my examples from the
literature in language learning. When considering teaching online, there are two types of web
courses to consider: those that are web-enhanced, and those that are taught totally online
called web-based courses.
Web-enhanced courses .
Web-enhanced courses are those that use the Internet to facilitate learning through:
o Group projects such as global learning networks
o Affordable resources such as online reports, journals
o Interactive and cooperative learning
o Teacher training and collaboration
Web-enhancement adds online resources to traditional courses. Examples of pedagogic use of
the Web to supplement classroom activities are:
„ Global learning networks.
Relatively inexpensive tools like e-mail are used to link
classrooms on several continents. Cummins and Sayers (1995) describe several of the
partnerships in which students interact with peers from other cultures. The researchers report
that global learning networks have helped children both to confront their prejudices about other
groups and to better appreciate their own cultures.
One of the most valuable reasons for using the Internet to support
classwork is the relative ease of access it provides to inexpensive resources. The wealth of
online journals, research reports, curriculum materials, and student projects is available quickly,
cheaply, and easily on the Web. Several research journals, such as Current Issues in Education,
(http://cie.ed.asu.edu/) have gone online to avoid the long publication time and expense of
traditional quarterlies.
„ Interactive and cooperative learning
. Creative uses of technology can help teachers in a
traditional classroom. These uses can overcome teacher-centered approaches stressing rote
memorization, close-ended activities, and a passive learning environment. Students have
benefitted from interactive learning environments to foster second-language acquisition and
higher order thinking skills (Dolson & Mayer, 1992). New technologies such as hypermedia
enable children to link information together in multiple ways, creating open-ended learning
opportunities that encourage critical thinking, student-directed activities, and collaboration with
peers. Hypermedia can also provide meaningful contexts and whole-language environments for
English acquisition (Bermudez & Palumbo, 1994).
„ Teacher training and collaboration
. Telecommunication tools such as modems, satellites,
and computer networks now provide expert help online and encourage long-distance
collaboration among educators. Teachers can share ideas, lesson plans, and resources with
others in their discipline, although they may be many miles apart. Teacher training can be offered
from a central location to help teachers in remote sites. Two such projects at Arizona State
University offer web-based assistance to teachers and students; (http://eruditio.asu.edu/) and
(http://conexiones.asu.edu/).
Courses may be offered completely online and thus enable students and faculty to study
together anytime and anyplace. These courses are most successful with adult, self-motivated
learners or learners who are not able to take courses at traditional sites. There are numerous
considerations that must be given to the design and implementation of these distance education
courses (McIsaac & Gunawardena, 1996). Research indicates that interaction is one of the key
components of successful distance education (McIsaac & Blocher, 1998). There are certain
pedagogic decisions that must be made for a totally online course to be successful. Although
more thorough discussions of these topics can be found elsewhere (McIsaac, 1997), (McIsaac &
Ralston, 1996), I will review them briefly here.
Teachers who engage in computer-mediated communication (CMC)
or completely web-based instruction, must look at new paradigms for teaching. It is no longer
appropriate to be the "sage on the stage" in which students come in to a lecture hall, sit down for
an hour to listen to a lecture, and leave. Teaching via such a rich medium as the Internet requires
that instructors take a "guide on the side" position. Teachers are no longer the single authority on
a subject, but one of a number of experts. Successful online teachers facilitate learning by
engaging students in collaborative learning groups, by providing thick and rich resources, by
encouraging students to participate in constructing their own knowledge. These teachers are
experts who engage students interactively in such a way that students become synthesizers
of knowledge rather than accumulators of facts. Teachers should structure courses for interactive
online collaboration, and must effectively moderate discussions. Expert online teachers are
organized, have good moderating skills, provide timely feedback, and design resource-rich, well-
structured online classes. Not all teachers are eager to make the change (Taylor & White, 1991).
Institutional support
is needed to attract teachers to invest the additional time required for planning and giving feedback in online courses.
Students who study online require a different set of skills to be
successful than traditional classroom students(Moore, 1990). Both reading and writing skills are
needed. In addition to being diligent, students are more successful if they are self-directed,
autonomous learners, (Seaton, 1993). Many students prefer the focused opportunity to study at
their own convenience. These students use a wide range of strategies, depending on their
learning styles and how the course is designed (Fraser & Nieman, 1996). Research suggests
that web-based courses are most successful when they meet specific needs of adult learners
who because of time, finances, work or family constraints, find it more convenient to study online
than to travel to a traditional classroom.
This is, perhaps, the single most important design component in a successful
web-based course. Moore (1989) and others have suggested that interactions must occur in the
following areas:
o Student-teacher
o Student-student
o Student-content
o Student-technology
These interactions must be structured and continuously moderated to keep the learning
experience directed. Because of the deliberate attention participants can give to their responses,
online interaction can be as rich, or even richer, than the face-to-face experience. However
discussion groups, moderators, chat groups, and virtual office hours are all necessary
components of successful online interaction. Vrasidas, in his paper at this Artibytes symposium,
suggests that successful interaction is highly dependent on timely feedback from the instructor.
The strength of the Web is that it offers immediate two-way interaction. Current text based
modes of interaction will soon give way to multimedia voice and video in the online classroom.
Meanwhile, structured two-way interaction will remain an important component of any successful web-based class.
„ Social context of learning.
Education is a process of socialization. We educate our
citizens to make informed decisions and to advance the societyÕs goals. The traditional classroom
contains many cues that model expected behaviors. The online classroom lacks many of those
contextual cues that help to socialize a community of students (Gunawardena, 1993). Many
scholars are investigating the presence and absence of traditional social classroom contexts, and
are exploring ways to integrate social context into the online environment. If, as many educators
believe, all learning takes place in a social context then how can we provide that dimension for
online learners? There are three ways that socialization can be encouraged.
1) Use communication strategies specific to the medium. When communicating on the
Web, emoticons (:-) are often used to replace missing visual cues. There are over 70 typographic
symbols that indicate joy, sorrow, anger, and humor. These can help to eliminate misunderstandings.
2) Engage in simultaneous rather than linear online discussions and chats. The strength
of this medium is that many functions may occur at the same time; chats, discussions, writing and
reading. An online student typically has a variety of windows open and is involved in a number of
activities. Take advantage of the fact that students donÕt have to wait until each person speaks in
the linear fashion required by the traditional classroom. Build online communities with distributed
responsibilities, so that learners are engaged in various interactive activities.
3) Encourage reflective thinking. Online students have the time to construct thoughtful
responses. These usually result in far richer discussions, and a more substantive exchange of
ideas. Many students, especially quieter ones, favor the online environment because they have
more confidence in writing a thoughtful answer than verbalizing a quick response in class.
Conclusion
Portugal is in a unique situation to participate in the forecasted growth of the
Internet. Market reports have indicated that the next 10 years will see unprecedented investment
in web-based technologies. As teachers, we should not miss this opportunity to help our students
increase their knowledge, update their skills, and become informed members of the global
community. The Internet can help to build an informed society. However, information alone will
not improve education. Teachers must model knowledge building strategies for students by
integrating the use of new technologies into learning and by providing well designed online
learning experiences.
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