Internet and education

Denis Newman (denis_newman who-is-at earthlink.net)
Mon, 05 Jan 1998 20:50:39 -0600

Hi everybody. Mike asks about Internet and education. I'm seeing a huge
impact on training and higher ed. Much less in k12.

In training, the push is toward just-in-time systems, and courses that can
be taken inside the workplace. Gets away from classrooms but not
necessarily away from teachers. In many ways it is a version of the
apprenticeship model where information can be brought to people as they are
working. The push here is also for efficiency--the cost of training can be
much lower if learners don't have to travel to the classroom. I think there
are a lot of interesting questions for xmca researchers in the
Internet/training area.

In the academic area there is also a huge impact which starts with a
professor putting the syllabus up as a web page and expands as items are
linked to resources, projects, assessment tools. What seems powerful here
is that the changes are incremental. It is a very small step to put the
syllabus up but once that happens, learners anywhere on the Internet can
see what's being taught. A next step is to restrict access to just the
people registered and then you begin incorporating interfaces to all the
"backoffice" systems such as student registrations systems. Right now UC is
experimenting with portfolio systems to simplify the process of applying to
multiple colleges. Then you have things like this xmca "seminar" that
crosses over institutional boundaries. It's all happening on a very large
scale it seems to me. The technology is getting there. The project I'm
working on (http://www.imsproject.org) is developing the standards for how
all these Internet instructional management systems and the content (coming
from professors or coming from publishers and replacing
textbooks/bookstores) will work together.

In k-12 schools the picture is a lot less clear to me. Maybe it's because
I'm more familiar with the k-12 world so less impressed with its
achievements. But I'm not seeing the same kind of market forces that are
changing training (you can't argue cost effectiveness in k-12) or the
grassroots adoption that I'm seeing in universities (where the
infrastructure is much more taken for granted). The research issues in
schools usually revolve around special cases with extraordinary resources
or exceptional curricula that are hard to replicate. The numbers that are
thrown around such as 65% of schools have Internet access are
misleading--probably much less than 10% have anything like what's meant by
Internet access on a modern university campus. At this point there is no
real commercial market for k-12 Internet products unlike those developing
in training and higher ed. I'd be interested to know what other people see
happening and what questions are worth asking and trying to answer about
what might happen in k-12 (or other areas) as Internet becomes more
pervasive. -Denis

At 04:15 PM 1/3/98 -0800, you wrote:
>
>Nice to see you here Denis!
>
>A number of discussions have occurred about the internet and education
>at different levels. What seems exciting in this area to you from your
>new perch in SilValley?
>mike
>
>
>

Denis Newman
758 Holly Oak Drive (650) 852-9204
Palo Alto, CA 94303 FAX (650) 852-9405
denis_newman who-is-at earthlink.net Cell/pager (415) 308-5202