ALN: Pedagogical Assumptions, Instructional Strategies, and Software Solutions
Jaishree K. Odin
University of Hawaii at Manoa

Asynchronous Learning Networks --a term coined by Frank Mayadas of the Sloan Foundation signifies any technology enabled collaborative learning environment using remote resources that can be accessed from anywhere at anytime and yet create a community of learners who are actively interacting, sharing ideas, learning and helping each other learn.

Remote resources are print resources, for example, books, journal articles, or online resources which could include materials created by the instructor for the class, or it could be CD-ROM, video or audio materials. It could also include simulations and multimedia presentations.

Collaborative Learning environment is created through asynchronous electronic conferencing and through individual and team assignments that require learners' engagement with the material and promote learner-learner and learner-instructor interaction.

How are the pedagogical assumptions of ALN different from the traditional lecture class?

In a traditional lecture class, the assumptions about teaching and learning are that the teacher is the repository of fixed knowledge and the student is the receiver of this knowledge. The teacher's role is to use his expertise to prepare an elaborate lecture, meet the students weekly at an appointed time, and deliver this lecture. The student's role in such a class is to sit, listen and take notes. In the distance mode, it translates into printed lectures or lectures on a video or lectures delivered via interactive video. In such a model, then, it is taken for granted that the teacher and students occupy two different modalities which signifies a certain power relationship which the teacher controls completely. The instructional goals in such a classroom are memorization and retention of facts and reproduction of fixed maps of knowledge. Some of my honors students tell me that undergraduates develop a very interesting mechanism for coping with this kind of instruction--they call it the art of short term memory--they study hard for their midterms and finals and easily forget what they memorized after the exams are over.

The reason for our best students feeling that way about a major part of their undergraduate education is the focus in lecture classes on memorization of facts rather than actively using these facts to create new knowledge. The knowledge base that the student possesses is completely ignored in the traditional modes of delivery. And, learning, therefore, is passive and decontextualized. The traditional classroom in its extreme form is thus teacher-centered though it would be wrong to generalize and say that all such classrooms are exclusively so.

At a time when there is a growing concern about falling educational standards both in public schools and institutions of higher learning, one can rightfully ask if the assumptions on which our educational practices are based are really adequate in our fast paced society where a vast amount of information becomes obsolete as soon as it is produced. If that is the case, then the old paradigm of teaching where education is seen as transfer of fixed knowledge from the teacher to students is no longer adequate.

In an ALN classroom, the basic assumptions of teaching-learning process undergo a dramatic change-here the instructor becomes the facilitator who guides the learners toward meaningful encounters with knowledge. The learner's role here is to explore information in a collaborative and interactive fashion.

The environment in an ALN classroom is learner-centered--there is a multidirectional flow of information. Course participants act on knowledge as they read course materials and think about it. They formulate their own thoughts about the ideas they come across, share them with others, and in the process transform their mental maps.

When used for learners who are geographically separated, ALN does not exclude occasional synchronous interaction which course participants might wish to have either with the instructor or amongst themselves, over the phone, in the MOO, using synchronous conferencing, or face-to-face meeting.

What are the instructional design strategies necessary for creating effective ALN courses?

ALN course designers are aware that the electronic media is very different from the print media. They design work assignments as well as individual and team projects that promote interactivity and collaboration in the learning process.

While preparing for an ALN course, the instructor selects course materials carefully and creates assignments which promote contextualization of the material so that it is more meaningful to learners. A long lecture here is replaced by creative assignments or problem solving exercises which get learners actively engaged with the material that is included in the course work.

ALN discussion and work assignments are designed in such way that involves absorbing information, evaluating it, and making comparisons and connections. This helps learners develop critical thinking skills, competence in the subject area while at the same time making them proficient in technical skills.

The instructor's role as course facilitator is quite often misunderstood when instructor facilitation is seen as the direct opposite of the teacher's control in the traditional classroom. This type of thinking makes the instructor see herself as an outsider who must let learners take full control of the classroom activities. Carried to the extreme, this can lead to an environment where the instructor's expertise remains untapped throughout the duration of the course. In an effective ALN environment, the instructor is crucial as the content expert if deeper learning is to take place--to explain, to clarify, to direct, to help learners draw from their own knowledge base. In such a decentered classroom, the instructor continually shifts roles between teaching and learning--teaching the content of the course, though indirectly, while at the same time learning where the students are coming from. Students too get to assert themselves occasionally as experts as they relate what they learn to their world. If trained in traditional models of teaching, the decentered classroom and continual change of roles between teaching and learning is perceived by the teacher as a sudden loss of control. It is a loss of control only if the classroom is perceived in terms of a binary model where the teacher occupies one pole and the learners another. If learning environment is perceived as multilayered where the interaction between the instructor and the learners creates a social context for receiving, exchanging and transforming knowledge, then the process of teaching/learning becomes a complex mode of interaction amongst the learners, the instructor, and the content of the course. As the philosopher John Dewey points out learning process involves a continual reorganization, reconstruction and transformation of experience. This occurs only in an interactive situation where participants communicate genuinely, listening as well as responding to others in a mutually collaborative fashion. In such a classroom, students learn how to learn, even as I understand that in any discipline, mastery of the fundamentals is crucial because that becomes the foundation-the stepping stone-for discovering relationships and expanding one's thinking. Mastery of the fundamentals, especially in the sciences, can be facilitated by the computer with its self assessment as well as instantaneous feedback capabilities, so that the instructor can focus on developing assignments that actively engage students in using this knowledge so that new knowledge is created in the process.

The instructor's role in creating an effective learning environment must be emphasized, especially in light of the faculty's concern that online courses will eventually make their jobs unnecessary. The only way higher education faculty will make themselves dispensable is by resisting incorporating new technologies and adapting their curriculum to a changed world. With the swiftness with which virtual universities are stepping in to offer education at a cheaper price and gearing it toward competency, the more in danger we are of sinking our university structures for lacking initiative and vision to change. The day would be sad indeed when higher education is seen merely as acquiring skills and competency in a particular field-and not as broadening the intellectual, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions of one's being through being exposed to great works whose effect cannot be quantitatively measured through tests but which enhance the quality of our personal and professional life. Incorporating technologies in the curriculum itself, I think, is not enough, it is equally important to understand how new technologies are changing the disciplines themselves.

Creating a learner-centered classroom then does not mean that we can dispense with the faculty. We need the content expertise of the instructor to effectively and efficiently run a course--be it a classroom-based course with ALN components or an ALN course itself.

What is the appropriate software for creating an ALN course that involves learner-centered course delivery as well as course management?

As all of us know, the quality of online courses varies from site to site, as does the software used in creating these courses and the credibility they have. A great number of online courses are designed in such a way that makes them very similar to correspondence courses--one could call them web-based reading materials with an added component of electronic conferencing. The designers of these web courses don't show an awareness of the fact that the electronic media is very different from the print media. If you look at the history of printing, in the beginning the publishers of printed texts wanted their books to look exactly like manuscripts. They looked at printing simply as a way to mass produce manuscripts. It took a few decades for the publishers to realize that many more things were possible in the print medium. We stand at another transition point now and have a tendency to do the same with the electronic medium.

There are some good web-based courses out there, too. These courses involve interactivity and collaboration usually brought about through the use of various kinds of conferencing software as well as asynchronously managed group projects. These courses, however, do not involve learner-centered course management because web sites do not provide enclosed spaces of instruction where learners can easily navigate through complex information while at the same time participate in multiple activities. Furthermore, extensive work is required by instructors to produce HTML coded documents to create a web-based course. Using web sites with conferencing space as the site of instruction seems to be already outdated in light of the recently released software that allows not only learner-centered course delivery, but also learner-centered course management. Also, designing and delivering courses using such software does not require any elaborate technical skills on the part of the instructor.

In designing any ALN course, therefore, attention must be paid to the software that is used for course delivery. An integrated software application allows the learner to do multiple tasks in one sitting and at the same time promotes navigation from one task to another with great ease. In addition to allowing organized and efficient interlinking of different databases, it provides a high level of organization of different aspects as well as parts of the course which enables easy integration of new materials as the course progresses. Also, such software is adaptable to different disciplinary needs which could play a crucial role in determining whether an institution should invest in it. Furthermore, it enables individual, team, as well as entire class discussion amongst course participants, in addition to having built-in capability for different types of assessments, for example, quizzes, exams, essays, self assessments and so on.

The best software that I have encountered so far from the design perspective and learner-centered course management is LotusNotes' LearningSpace. It allows the instructor to create an ALN environment which is dynamic and interactive, allowing non-linear presentation, contextualization, as well as continual integration--all that with a visually clear and pleasing interface.

Learning Space with its five interlinked databases, Schedule, MediaCenter, CourseRoom, Profiles, and Assessment Manager, produces simulation of a real classroom and allows flexible and easy manipulation of course materials and management of course activities. While discussions, tests, quizzes, and other types of individual work assignments can be easily incorporated into LearningSpace, it also facilitates creating team projects or semester long inquiry based projects that get students involved in exploratory thinking.

Designing a course in LearningSpace is easy, since each database has its own template. The instructor does not need to prepare HTML coded course syllabus or assignments; the course materials can in fact be directly transferred from the word processing files into course templates. LearningSpace workarea gives the illusion of an electronic classroom--an enclosed space that has designated sites for different activities. It lends itself easily to a very structured and at the same time very open learning environment. It allows a great deal of flexibility with regard to creation of assignments to suit different disciplinary needs and also the type of participation desired. Whereas an integrated software solution like LearningSpace is ideal for distance learning, it can also be used to supplement the course work in face-to-face classes. Depending on the disciplinary needs, the ALN components created in LearningSpace can be added to a course that would allow students to work individually or in teams from anywhere at anytime. Discussion space can be used to discuss questions that students encounter while doing assignments or it can be a space for discussing ideas that students encounter in their course readings.

What is the significance of ALN pedagogy for distance learning?

In order to create effective learning environments, therefore, course designers must take into account the changed pedagogical assumptions as well as interactive instructional strategies and appropriate software for asynchronous learning. ALN could become the basis for an institution's distance learning operation because it combines self study techniques with interactivity to create effective learning environments that can be accessed from work, from home, or from geographically isolated places--thus making college education accessible to students who otherwise would have no access to it. The Sloan Foundation has funded a series of initiatives across the nation to promote on-campus, near-campus, as well as far-campus ALN. A number of funded universities have already implemented such courses or components in their curriculum. They have been involved in a systematic study of ALN practices as well as conducting studies for evaluating the effectiveness of such courses in a variety of fields that cover various disciplines in colleges of arts and sciences as well as engineering.

The ALN web site has some interesting articles about the experiences different universities have had with both off campus and on campus ALN. The Sloan Foundation has also funded the University of Hawaii to start our ALN program. ALN could become the foundation for expanding our outreach as well as continuing education efforts to make education available to people throughout the state who either because of life conditions or geographical location have limited or no access to college education.

The current excitement over distance learning across the nation stems from the potential that communication technologies have for creating effective interactive, learning environments which can be accessed from anywhere at anytime. In traditional modes of distance teaching, for example, correspondence courses or television/radio broadcasts, the course delivery is always on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis. Such distance learning practices are not conducive to creating communities of learners. Interactive video has brought some interaction, though it is minimum. With the interactive technologies of today which have introduced news groups, electronic discussion lists, or other sophisticated groupware, it is possible to be geographically separated and yet be part of a virtual community of learners.

Another important factor that has generated tremendous interest in distance learning is the changing student demographics. If we look at a typical college student these days, she is employed part time and sometimes full time. Number of nontraditional students who return to school for professional or personal growth has been steadily increasing. Then we have others who want to but cannot go back to school because of their life conditions that do not allow taking classes that have fixed schedules and require face-to-face meetings. The distinction that we make between regular students and continuing education students is becoming increasingly fuzzy, since both types of student population face the same challenges in terms of managing their work responsibilities and success at school. As the nature of our student population and student needs change, we need to adapt our course delivery methods and teaching practices to that change if universities are to remain viable institutions in the twenty first century. The flexibility and convenience of asynchronous learning environments could fill such a need by allowing students to participate in classes from anywhere at anytime.