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Update Newsletter
September 1994, Volume 6, Number 3
Published by The Centre For Systems Science Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC Canada V5A 1S6 604-291-3455 Editor: Barry Shell shell@cs.sfu.ca
Shaping Cyberspace Into Human Space
Computer networks open new opportunities for educators and students.
CSS members are developing revolutionary new software for online learning.
The Internet is not a highway. "The Internet is more like a community," says
Linda Harasim. "Anyway, it's not a road going somewhere. That's why people are
having trouble understanding it. It's a place." The first thing everyone types
when they get connected is, "I'm here!"
Harasim, an SFU Communications professor, specializes in telelearning--courses
taught over computer networks. She is the principal investigator in a $1
million project to develop a Virtual University sponsored by CANARIE
(Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research in Industry and Education).
Harasim intends to build her school on a foundation of text-based computer
conferencing.
Anyone who has ever sent or received email (electronic mail), has already had a
taste of online computer conferencing. People "join" a conferencing system by
logging on via the Internet. Anyone can start a new discussion, or respond to
one that's already happening, and participants can send private messages to
each other, too. There may be three discussions or hundreds, ten participants
or thousands. When you join a group, you see what others have been talking
about and you have the option of typing in your two-cents worth. The computer
keeps track of who said what and when.
Nothing happens in "real time"; in other words, people read and contribute to
discussions at different times. This asynchronicity means that all
participants need not be involved at once. "Anytime, anyplace," says
Harasim. "Online education is evaporating all the old boundaries, the things
that kept people apart." Besides greater access, the new model encourages
active rather than passive learning. It encourages group learning, too.
Harasim believes that online education through computer networking is
creating a paradigm shift in education.
"The old models came from 19th Century technology and they're based on
transmission models," says Harasim, "One-to-many broadcast: the TV, the radio,
the newspaper, the lecture! New computer networking technology requires and
enables a whole new way of teaching and learning. For the first time in human
history we can have many-to-many communication across time and across space.
Never before have we been able to have group interaction that's time and place
independent--the framework for a learning society."
" ' Communicate' and 'community' have the same root, communicare,
which means 'to share', " says Communcations professor Linda Harasim. "We
naturally gravitate towards media that enable us to communicate and form
communities because that, in fact, makes us more human."
According to Harasim, the new technology requires new learning models. For
instance, video conferencing is inherently time dependent, and used on its own,
it has all the drawbacks of the lecture hall and then some. There's a need to
go beyond the old "sage on the stage" model, but Harasim knows that
telelearning is not a nirvana or a replacement for face-to-face
communications. It expands existing educational models. The Virtual
University is not a computer tutoring system that replaces teachers. Harasim
uses computer networks to bring teachers and learners together in
revolutionary new ways.
"You can't just open a computer conference and leave it like that for the whole
school year," says Harasim. "That's like teaching in a barn." The teacher must
shape computer space--access times and hard drive memory--as well as people
space--learning partners, plenary groups and project teams. Harasim shapes for
purpose, place and population. She likes to start a course with an online
discussion and debate. Next she organizes several weeks of activities involving
learning pairs and small groups. If possible she holds a full group
face-to-face meeting at the beginning or end of the term.
(See
Tips for Creating Virtual Learning Spaces.)
Canadians are pioneers in telelearning and educational networking. In 1986 at
the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Harasim was involved in the
first totally online graduate course offered anywhere in the world. Now,
with Tom Calvert at SFU and partners like the Open Learning Agency, Science
World BC and MPR (the research arm of BC Tel), she is creating a computer
software tool called VIEW (Virtual Interactive Environment for Workgroups)
that allows educators and students to shape their interactions in cyberspace.
A doorway to the Virtual University? One potential VIEW (Virtual
Interactive Environment for Workgroups) computer screen.
VIEW is the interface, the doorway to the Virtual University for both teachers
and students. For instance, teachers can set up student interactions by
choosing from a list of learning group types. "You click on, say,
'Learning Pair'," says Harasim, "and VIEW prompts you for the names of
two partners from the class list." The software then sets everything up for
you, but more than that: it provides a list of group options that gets
teachers to say, "I didn't know you could do that. I didn't realize you can
do a debate!" It guides teachers in the new collaborative learning paradigm,
a natural consequence of telelearning. Harasim calls it active learning or
knowledge building. (See
Why Computer Conferencing?) Human group dynamics encourages learning in ways much
richer than the lecture hall.
When School Is Out
In designing VIEW Harasim and her partners have looked far beyond the
classroom. The virtual university doesn't have to be a university. It's
designed as a general tool for shaping any kind of online interactive space;
for humanizing cyberspace. Education is just one way to use it. Others may
employ the same software to create other "places": virtual salesrooms,
boardrooms, clubs or even churches.
Harasim is a pioneer on the electronic frontier. "As we settle this place we
have to socialize it and civilize it," she says. "You humanize a place by
creating livable spaces that are accessible, comfortable and offer something
people want; a place for shared experience, a community."
Linda Harasim and Tom Calvert are creating a new national research network for
telelearning, part of the federal Network of Centres of Excellence Program.
Their objective is to maintain Canada's lead in networked learning systems
and to shape Canada's gameplan for a nationwide educational computer network
into the next century. There are many research challenges ahead: How to
improve access, how the new technologies can strengthen needed educational
reforms, how to reduce current educational inequities related to gender,
ethnicity, social status and geography, how to maximize training in industry,
how to promote lifelong learning in Canadian society and more. Other important
questions relate to economics, participatory structures, the discourse
process, planning and above all design issues, both instructional and
technological. Currently about 50 researchers from the following institutions
are involved in the new Network: SFU, UBC, Open Learning Agency of BC, The
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Carleton,
TeleUniversite, Quebec, Memorial, York, McGill, Laval, Mount Allison, UNB,
the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and the Communications Research
Centre of Canada.
The group's ultimate goal is to determine how telelearning can become the basis
for a Learning Society in the 21st Century that will provide for lifelong
learning anytime, anyplace to anyone who wishes or needs to learn.
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