Emma Nardi

Third University of Rome

What role can technology have in distance education? How can it contribute in terms of reduced learning time and as regards quality of instruction? This article presents an example of what technology can do in order to deal with a particularly important didactic problem: that of establishing the learning message.

I shall not consider, here, the ever important role that technology plays in overcoming the space-time issue that is typical of distance education, but I shall try to establish how technology can improve teaching-learning activities both as regards time and quality factors. In this regard, we can consider distance education as a real teaching laboratory where the operating conditions are detached from the "artisan-type" dimension that is typical of in-presence teaching, thus allowing "industrial-type" solutions in the sense that Otto Peters gave to the expression. "Technology" is a term which comes from two Greek words: "techne", meaning art, and "logos", meaning speech. Technology is thus systematic speech and therefore a reflection on technique and the possibilities for application. This reflection is all the more important when technique is placed at the service of education: in this case, we must start with a project which takes the learner’s needs and characteristics into account in order to establish the technological means to reach the desired goals in the most efficient and effective way.

Figure 1. Etymology of the term "technology".

Does technology have any direct impact on learning time?

Playing a quintet by Mozart for string instruments, for example, K 515 for violins, cello and viola, requires appropriate skills but also long background study. Mozart composed this quintet in 1787. It was music reserved for professionals and not for the great many and even able amateurs of the time who, at the very most, could try their hand at quintets where the string instruments were accompanied by the piano or wind instruments. I have chosen a particularly difficult musical example to illustrate that the time needed to reach this objective has not really changed that much from Mozart’s times. Not only this, but the best sound quality is obtained by using instruments of those very times: technology has not yet managed to equal the pure sound quality of a Stradivari or of a Guarnieri del Gesù.

With regard to time, therefore, there is a component that cannot be shortened in any viable way by technology. The influence of technology on time may, if anything, be indirect. So, for example, technology allows a drastic reduction in the time-span separating the student’s performance from the correction message, with undoubtedly positive effects for learning.

From a time standpoint, distance study involves an alternation of stages diachronically following on from one another: the student deals with a certain kind of content, undergoes an intermediate test phase and then resumes individual study. Technology allows a considerable shortening of time for communicating: from the postal feedback of traditional correspondence courses we have progressed to interaction in real time that network systems allow, with a compression of the blue sections shown in figure 2 that will virtually tend toward zero thanks to technological solutions.

Research work is unanimous in establishing that the lower the time-gap between performance and performance correction, the better the effects on learning. Therefore, this example shows how the contribution that technology can make to teaching actually concerns the quality of instruction.

What characteristics must be present in order to be able to speak of the quality of instruction?

A process is determined by a certain number of causes that produce certain effects. The causes are the independent variables of the phenomenon and the effects are its dependent variables. In the teaching-learning process, one of the groups of independent variables is composed of the student’s characteristics: aptitude, socio-economic background, previous experience and attitudes towards study are all elements that go to establish the student’s cognitive and affective profile when embarking on a distance education experience. The student dropout problem, which all distance education courses experience and try to solve, is closely linked to students’ characteristics.

If we limited ourselves to considering only the student’s characteristics in the teaching-learning process, the resulting model would be quite poor and schematic because it would match positive results with students having positive characteristics and negative results with students having negative characteristics, in a kind of determinism which would make any hope for progress vain. To break the rigidity of this there is another group of independent variables relating to the quality of instruction. Through appropriate actions these variables can change the situation and overcome the negative conditioning. It is obvious that the quality of instruction plays a fundamental role in cases where the student’s cognitive and affective characteristics tend towards the negative side. In this particular case, the idea is to use appropriate strategies in order to offset the elements undermining proper learning. If students’ characteristics differ from one another, then their needs are not the same either and cannot thus be met with an undifferentiated offer: individualization therefore becomes an unquestionable need and, in this light, technology may play a leading role in solving the problem.

The initiative I shall now describe is an example of the way technology can contribute to solving the individualization problem.

The latest studies on adult literacy have highlighted the spreading tendency towards vocabulary reduction. This reduction involves increasing difficulty in understanding written texts that still constitute an integral part of learning proposals. In view of this, CEDE (Centro Europeo Dell’Educazione) has formulated a new individualization strategy based on the possibility to offer students a learning process that takes into account individual vocabulary skills. The starting hypothesis is that the formulation of an individualized message based on the student’s cognitive characteristics (vocabulary competence, in this case) should reduce the risk of the student rejecting the offer and then dropping out of the course.

The procedure is organized in the following way. The course study materials are drafted, taking the virtual student into consideration, i.e. the student able to understand the course in its scientific form. Once real students enroll in the course, each one is asked to answer certain open questions on important course topics. Based on each student’s performance, an instrument – called an estimator – will then estimate the number of words the student is able to understand. The data obtained in this way will subsequently be used by another instrument, called a "modulator", which will modify the message created for the virtual student making it suit the real student’s characteristics. Modulation does not involve reformulating the message created for the virtual student to make it exactly suit the real student’s vocabulary competence, but sets the standard slightly higher: not too high, though, that it discourages the real student with too difficult a learning proposal, but not too close to the student’s actual vocabulary skills because it would not provide any scope for personal improvement. New concepts can therefore be gained by adding new words to one’s overall vocabulary. The difference between already possessed vocabulary and the slightly enriched one of the learning proposal will allow the real student to gradually approach the characteristics of the virtual student that the more complex message was created for. How does the modulator work? In a first experimental stage the modulator compares the vocabulary content of the virtual message, organized according to frequency groups, with the real student’s vocabulary competence. Just like an arithmetical operation, this comparison will highlight a difference: virtual vocabulary minus real student’s vocabulary equals the vocabulary to be defined. The modulator will automatically provide a definition or explanation after a word that is outside the grasp of the real student’s vocabulary competence.

Figure 4. An example of individualization of the teaching-learning offer.

As the real student enriches his/her own vocabulary, the system will register the new data and consequently change the learning offer. In this proposal, individualization has been designed in a dynamic way in order to allow in-process adaptability that is especially necessary when the learning process is of a certain duration: if there are many learning messages, the procedure must be repeated at every important stage of the process.

Finally, I would like to examine the goal of teaching communication with respect to the goal of social communication. With the aim of making oneself understood by the highest number of people possible, social communication is forced to lower the message standard to the lowest common denominator by simplifying syntax, doing away with any nuances, schematizing ideas and situations, and – obviously - limiting vocabulary range. Educational communication obviously has a rather different goal: while the starting point may be the same (a realistic assessment of the target’s prior skills), the final aim must necessarily be diversified to account for the student’s cognitive and affective development. If this development does not take place, then the education project is deemed to have failed.

In the last decade of this century, technology has made a great contribution to overcoming the space-time condition of isolation characterizing distance education by recreating the conditions for interaction both between students and teachers and between students themselves. The new challenge in which technology must play a role concerns specific attention to be devoted to individual learners’ needs and to flexible learning conditions: in a word, individualization.