EDEN European Distance Education Network (EDEN), Annual General Meeting Tuesday, 22 June, 16.00-18.00, Hall L Meet the Needs of Rural Communities in the Twenty First Century Dr. Terry Piper Dr. Ken Stevens * Open Classroom Working Group Abstract This paper outlines the introduction of a new educational structure in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador - a digital intranet, within which four Advanced Placement science subjects were delivered to senior students in rural communities. The use of information and communication technologies to form electronic classrooms provides new opportunities and introduces new problems for teachers, students and policy makers.
The Electronic Development of New Educational Structures to Meet the Needs of Rural Communities in the Twenty First Century The provision of education in small schools in rural communities is a challenge for educational administrators in many parts of the world. In largely urbanized societies like Canada with economies that depend on the development of resources located in rural and remote areas, there is a direct economic relationship between the viability of rural schools and national prosperity. It is difficult to maintain viable rural community infrastructures without schools that are perceived to be at least as good as those in urban areas. The Context of the Study Newfoundland and Labrador is characterized by geographic isolation, rural lifestyles, and a distinctive history and culture. In the 1997-98 school year, there were 391 schools operating in the province of which 260, or 66%, were located in rural communities. Thirty one percent of schools in the province are designated "small rural schools" (N=122) and 75 of these had fewer than 100 students. Seventy of these small rural schools are all-grade (K -12), which means that they must offer a senior high school program. The recent re-organization of Primary, Elementary and Secondary education in Newfoundland and Labrador into ten school districts provided an opportunity to develop the first digital Intranet in the province. The Vista School District (District 8) contains 18 schools ranging in student enrolment from 40 to 650. The region in which the Vista School District is located extends from Bonavista in the north, (the place where John Cabot landed in North America in 1497) to the Burin Peninsula in the South. It is a large geographic area covering about 7000 square kilometres. The region has a population of about 35,000 people and an economy supported by a diverse infrastructure including fishing, forestry, farming, mining, aquaculture and tourism. The Vista School District was formed in 1996 and became a legal entity in January 1997. There were 5165 students enrolled in the 18 schools in the district who are taught by 366 teachers. The Vista School District is approximately two hours by road from the capital city, St Johns, which is the location of Memorial University of Newfoundland. Closed and Open Schools Schools as we have known them are autonomous institutions with their own teachers, their own students and their own cultures. Traditionally schools have been established to serve geographically defined communities and, in rural areas, this relationship is a particularly close one. Schools in each community to a considerable extent duplicate what schools are doing in other communities with students being taught by teachers assigned to them to teach face to face as whole classes, small groups and, in some cases, individually. There is nothing remarkable about this model of the school and it is an accepted part of the global educational landscape. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this model of the school is that it remains largely unchallenged at a time when educational structures are being challenged by new information and communication technologies. The above model, for the purposes of this paper, will be referred to as a "closed model of the school." In this model, the school is considered to be closed if it is autonomous and has its own students, teachers and community. It is, in this way, considered to be a small, enclosed teaching and learning environment. The open model challenges the closed model of the school. The open model is based on schools academically and administratively integrating with one another for at least part of a school day. Information and communication technologies facilitate the linking of classes in schools to share teaching, learning and resources. In Newfoundland and Labrador virtual classes have been a feature of the province's education system since 1988 when audiographic technology was installed to establish an analog learning network. The transition from an analog network to a digital network is a critical part of this research. The open model challenges the closed model of the school by questioning the need for appointing all teachers to schools, rather than, in appropriate cases, some teachers being appointed to networks of schools. It questions the appropriateness of learners engaging solely with their peers within their own, physical classrooms and, it questions the very notion of a school itself. The open model of the school is grounded in the application of information and communication technologies to teaching and learning and the construction and deconstruction of virtual classes. In the tension between closed and open classes teachers are increasingly engaged in a search for appropriate pedagogy. A pedagogy of telelearning will facilitate on site and on line teaching and learning as well as the administration of open classes. This paper outlines the path between a closed model of the school in rural Newfoundland and Labrador to the beginnings of an open model. It is based on teaching and learning in selected science classes in rural parts of the province. An Open Model for Teaching Science: The Vista School District Digital Intranet The Vista School District Digital Intranet is an attempt to use information technologies to provide geographically-isolated students with extended educational and, indirectly, vocational opportunities. This is part of a broader pan-Canadian initiative to prepare people in Canada for the Information Age (Information Highway Advisory Council, 1995,1997). It is rare to find high school students in small and remote communities anywhere in the world who are provided with instruction in university-level studies. In Iceland (Stefansdottir, 1993), New Zealand (Stevens, 1995a, 1995b) and Finland (Tella, 1995) there are moves to provide alternative models for the delivery of education to rural students. The electronic linking of nine sites within this district to collaborate in the teaching of Advanced Placement Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics has created a series of virtual classes in this area of rural Newfoundland. Classes began in September 1998 and concluded in June 1999. The introduction of the Vista School District Digital Intranet represents two dimensions of change: (a) curriculum and technology and (b), the re-organization of classes within an Intranet. Curriculum and Technology: The 4 x 4 Model of Integrating Information Technologies into the Curriculum The development of Advanced Placement Web-based courses in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics took place within a development team in each subject area. A lead science teacher in each discipline was paired with a recent graduate in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics respectively who possessed advanced computer skills including web page design, Java and HTML. The lead teacher and the graduate assistant were, ideally, to have been assisted by a Faculty of Education specialist in each curriculum area together with a scientist from an appropriate area of the Faculty of Science at Memorial University of Newfoundland. It is anticipated that there will be Faculty of Education and Faculty of Science input in all four areas in future. The extent to which each Web-based course was developed by a team of four people varied. Most of the development was through interaction between the lead teacher and the recent graduate with reference, as appropriate, to two professors (Science Education and Science). This model provided a measure of interaction between schools, graduate students and the Faculties of Education and Science of Memorial University of Newfoundland. To provide a connection between the high school and Memorial University, faculty members were asked to take part in providing resources, quality control evaluation and suggestions for improvement. Although at times professors had different opinions as to the most appropriate approach to the design of the courses, the 4 x 4 model enabled the four courses to be developed in time for the current school year. Minimum specifications were adopted for computer hardware and network connectivity. All schools involved in the project had DirecPC satellite dishes installed to provide a high speed down-link. In most rural communities in this part of Canada, digital telecommunications infrastructures do not enable schools to have a high speed up-link to the internet. Appropriate software had to be identified and evaluated for both the development of the resources, and the delivery of instruction within the intranet. Front Page 98 was selected as the software package. Additional software was used for the development of images, animated gifs and other dimensions of course development. These included Snagit32, Gif Construction Set, Real Video, and similar packages. Many software packages were evaluated and finallyWebCT was selected. This package enabled the instructor to track student progress, it contained online testing and evaluation, private email, a calendar feature, public bulletin board for use by both instructor and student, a link to lessons, chat rooms for communication between teacher and student, and more. For real- time instruction Meeting Point and Microsoft NetMeeting were selected. This combination of software enabled a teacher to present real-time interactive instruction to multiple sites. An orientation session was provided to students in June 1998, prior to the implementation of this project in September. Students had to learn how to communicate with each other and with their instructor using these new technologies before classes could begin. The Re-organization of Classes In an Intranet The development of the Digital Intranet within a school district involved the introduction of an open teaching and learning structure to a closed one. Accordingly, adjustments had to be made in each participating site so that administratively and academically, AP classes could be taught. Research into the organization of senior students who were independent learners in a networked environment in New Zealand (Stevens, 1994;1995b) preceded the formation of the Vista Digital Intranet in Canada. Independent learners in New Zealand were found to learn effectively and were able to obtain very satisfactory results in national examinations within an electronic network of small rural schools. In the New Zealand situation though, students usually had at least one teacher on site who could assist with academic questions. In the Canadian intranet, this was not always possible. A question in the minds of teachers and researchers in the initial stage of the Vista Digital Intranet was whether students who were not used to being unsupervised would cope with new freedom and accept increased responsibility for their learning. Until final results are known from the AP examinations, it is not possible to answer this question. Students were unanimous at the conclusion of the school year, that to be successful in an AP on-line course it was necessary to be able to learn independently, be able to manage a high volume of work and be willing to engage teachers and other learners in answering questions as they arose (Stevens, 1999). It was recognized early in the last school year that a common schedule had to be adopted throughout the school district to allow students to interact with their instructors in the new intranet. Unfortunately this was not fully realized until after classes commenced, with the result some instructors had to repeat classes for small numbers of students. Students in participating Intranet schools therefore had differing levels of access to their AP Instructors. It is anticipated that in future there will be both asynchronous as well as synchronous teaching and learning within the Intranet, but at the present time it is not possible to provide other than synchronous access. The initial plan was to allow for 5 on-line sessions and 5 off-line sessions. This schedule was not followed in all schools. On-line sessions were scheduled in the morning when network traffic is at its lowest point. Off -line sessions were scheduled in the afternoon. The Shift From Closed to Open Teaching and Learning in Newfoundland and Labrador The move from a closed to an open environment in the teaching and learning of science is based upon a transition from an analog to a digital environment. The province of Newfoundland and Labrador has a high rate of use of satellite dishes per capita and there are many schools in this province with LANs. As a province Newfoundland and Labrador provides excellent opportunities for the development of these technologies. The linking of nine rural schools into a digital Intranet has policy implications for the teaching profession, for the management of learning, for the organization of participating sites and for the future direction of education in this part of Canada. For the teaching profession there are three major policy implications. First, teaching within an Intranet is much more public than teaching face to face in traditional classrooms. One's colleagues can, and frequently do, observe one's on-line classes and can observe one's teaching methods. This leads to new considerations of how one communicates as a teacher in a virtual class (Tiffin and Rajasingham, 1995). Second, teaching in an Intranet involves the application of a range of information and communication technologies to pedagogy, a process that at present has few guidelines. Those who are currently teaching AP subjects in the pilot Digital Intranet in Newfoundland are very conscious of being pioneers. Third, the implementation of teleteaching within the virtual environment of an Intranet requires the integration of traditional (face to face) and virtual classes. With the appointment of lead teachers for subjects in Intranets, assisted by on-site colleagues at participating sites, there is the beginning of new pedagogy for virtual classes and, with this, the emergence of new opportunities in the teaching profession. The advent of the digital Intranet has implications for students. The integration of information and communication technologies into Intranets requires students to interact with teachers in a variety of ways. In future this will be both synchronously and asynchronously. Students in the Digital Intranet are also frequently subject to scrutiny by their peers as they respond through chat rooms, audio, video and with their AP on-line teacher. The Digital Intranet provides students with access to multiple sites within a virtual class simultaneously, as well as the opportunity to work independently of a teacher for part of the day. The major change for the students in the first Digital Intranet in Newfoundland though, is the opportunity they have been given to study advanced science subjects, as members of virtual classes, from their small, remote communities. A Digital Intranet has many implications for the management of education, based on the need to ensure all sites collaborate both academically and administratively. The most important administrative issue in the first year of operation of the Vista Digital Intranet has been the co-ordination of timetables across participating sites. The need for increased technological support for this new virtual structure has become increasingly urgent for teachers and students who are using information and communication technologies to teach and learn across dispersed sites. Both have to be provided with expert advice and instruction in the use of new applications. A particular problem has been difficulty in securing and maintaining instructional design expertise in the preparation and upgrading of courses delivered through the Intranet. The Digital Intranet challenges the closed model of the school and manages geographic isolation in a new way. There will, hopefully, be future opportunities to take this development to other areas of the curriculum, to other school districts and to other than AP students in schools. Through the application and coordination of a range of information and communication technologies, some Advanced Placement students in Newfoundland and Labrador have, in the current school year, been able to move from closed to open learning environments. The broader educational and sociological implications of this development have yet to be considered. Collis (1996) notes that telelearning is the future of distance education. This research suggests that there is considerable potential in this new educational structure for rural communities in Canada in the twenty first century. References Collis B (1996) Telelearning in a Digital World - The Future of Distance Learning, London and Boston, Thompson Computer Press Information Highway Advisory Council (1995) The Challenge of the Information Highway, Ottawa, Industry Canada Information Highway Advisory Council (1997) Preparing Canada for a Digital World, Ottawa, Industry Canada Stefansdottir, L. (1993). The Icelandic Educational Network - Ismennt, In: Davies, G. and Samways, B. (eds) Teleteaching - Proceedings of the IFIP TC3 Third Teleteaching Conference, Amsterdam, Elsevier Science Publishers, pp: 829-835 Stevens, K.J. (1994) Some Applications of Distance Education Technologies and Pedagogies in Rural Schools in New Zealand, Distance Education Vol. 15, No. 4, pp: 318 - 326 Stevens, KJ (1995a) Geographic Isolation and Technological Change: A New Vision of Teaching and Learning in Rural Schools in New Zealand, The Journal of Distance Learning Vol 1, No1 Stevens KJ (1995b) The Technological Challenge to the Notion of Rurality in New Zealand Education - Repositioning the Small School, In: Ian Livingstone (ed) New Zealand Annual Review of Education No 5, pp: 93-102 Stevens, KJ (1999) The Vista Digital Intranet - The Development of a New Structure for Teaching Advanced Placement Science, Presented to the Vista School District Administrative Council Clarenville, Newfoundland, Canada, June 1999, 12pp Tella S (1995) Virtual School in a Networking Learning Environment, Helsinki, University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education Tiffin J. and Rajasingham L (1995) In Search of the Virtual Class - Education in an Information Society, London: Routledge. |
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