Educator, Students Provide Frontline Perspectives
Based in Toronto, Canada, York University (www.yorku.ca) has an expanding enrollment
of more than 40,000 students. An inevitable consequence to its growth is overcrowding—both
in the lecture halls and the parking lots. The majority of the undergraduates
are commuters, including mature students trying to balance career, family, and
education. Many of York’s professors and administrators believed that
providing a multimedia online learning venue would address the university’s
growing pains and even improve the quality of students’ education. However,
they wanted an online system that did not create additional work for the faculty.
Students Give Online
Learning High Marks
In the fall of 2002, York University launched a pilot project using Sonic Foundry’s
Mediasite Live to capture, stream, and archive the lectures for a popular, two-semester
social sciences course that I teach. As a long-time advocate of education technology,
I was excited to be the first professor at our university to use the system.
There were 200 traditional, classroom-based students and 50 students who accessed
the weekly two-hour lectures online. Because Mediasite Live captures the speaker
in both audio and video, and automatically indexes and synchronizes that information
with virtually any visual instructional content from the class, each group received
identical information. The eLearning students were still required to attend
on-campus tutorials and take exams at the university.
I was surprised by how often the students said in their evaluations and personal
comments to me that self-discipline was a key factor in being a successful distance
learner. Praise for the convenience and flexibility of online learning was tempered
with the proviso of having to make an extra effort to stay focused.
Another surprise was how much the online students needed to feel connected
to the class. They truly appreciated that I acknowledged them during the lectures,
even if I couldn’t actually see them. It started as a casual occurrence
during the first term, but the positive response from the students encouraged
me to make name recognition a standard practice thereafter.
From Fear Factors
to Success Factors
The one big complaint about any technology-based teaching aid is the extra
work created for educators. Professors fear they will need to re-create all
of their instructional material, or perhaps change their whole style of teaching
in order to provide a quality education experience for the burgeoning number
of online students.
In the world of high technology and teaching, when a new application is introduced,
there is always huge hype about its ease-of-use and about the variety and quality
of learning tools it contains. Then reality clashes with fantasy, and there
is the inevitable disappointment.
Mediasite Live is an exception to that rule. It worked smoothly from the beginning,
performed exactly as promised and didn’t get in the way of what or how
I teach. It was fun for my students and for me.With eagerness from the students
about the technology, and since no additional work was required on my part,
York bought four more Mediasite Live systems.
The
majority of students agreed that the online version forced them to be self-motivated
in taking charge of their education.
This enabled the university to expand online learning opportunities to other
courses within the social sciences division and across campus, starting with
the Fall 2003 semester. In addition, the university’s Career Services
Department is maximizing resources by offering 12 Web-based workshops for students.
This frees the career counselors to spend more time on “high-touch”
services (situations where students receive one-on-one personalized attention,
such as career advisement, administering of self-assessment tests, critiquing
resumes, and interview role-playing).
Finally, a well-designed, content-rich Web site is vital to a successful distance
education experience. We created the site (www.calumet. yorku.ca/sosc2311/)
for our pilot eLearning hybrid course as a one-stop-shop that provides not only
the streamed lectures, but all the support material as well. With the right
tools in place, educators can be more effective and reach a greater number of
eager students.
