Instructional Design

1. Course Redesign Using Learning Theory
2. How 1990s Computer Mediated Communication can inform today's MOOCs
3. Theory of Practice
4. Needs Assessment and Proposal Development
5. Analysis and Assessment
6. Instructional Materials
7. Introduction to Innovation (Sample Course Notes)

Course Redesign Using Learning Theory

Introduction

Here I investigate the use of new learning technologies to adapt the materials from an existing course on "ICT Sustainability" (Worthington, 2011) to be delivered as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The existing course was designed for on-line delivery to small groups of adult learners who have a university first degree and with the assistance of a tutor. The task then is to see how the same material could be used with large numbers of less advanced students, without tutor support, while retaining the ability to use the same materials in a tutor lead small online course. The current course uses a constructivist approach to education, derived from that of the UK Open University (Lindley, 2008). It is proposed to supplement this with the Personalised System of Instruction (PSI), developed by Keller (1974). This hybrid mode (Neo & Neo, 2010) would provide more support in learning the basic elements in a MOOC version of the course for less advanced students. The major issue with the use of PSI is not the efficacy of the technique, which already in use for vocational education in Australia, but in making it acceptable to university academics. It is proposed to do this by using PSI as a supplement to the existing constructivist approach.

Background

In its flexible learning strategy, the University of British Colombia identified three issues for universities (UBC, 2014):

1. Increasing focus on vocational education,

2. Online competition,

3. Demand for mid-career education.

The problem for higher education institutions is to provide courses which are accessible (preferably online), meet the vocational needs of students, but are also academically sound. In announcing the decision of Central Queensland University (CQU) to discontinue the use of multiple choice questions in examinations, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Professor Rob Reed, discussed the history of educational psychologist Frederick Kelly's use of the tests in WW1 US Army intelligence testing (Reed, 2014). CQU was concerned that multiple choice questions were not suitable for assessing real world skills.

Anderson and Dron (2013) categorised three generations of distance education pedagogy based on the learning theories underlying them. However while being an improvement on an analysis simply based on the technology used, this still assumes that only one approach to learning can (and should) be applied in a course (or program). Students need to have a basic knowledge of a topic, before learning advanced skills. Rather than adopt one teaching and assessment approach for a whole course, these should suit the particular material and level. It is proposed that a combination of techniques can be used to teach basic and advanced material to the same students using the same learning technology.

Origins of the Green Computing Course

In 2008 the Australian Computer Society (ACS) commissioned a course on "Green Computing" for its Computer Professional Education Program (Worthington, 2012a). The course teaches how to evaluate the carbon footprint and e-waste from IT in an organisation and recommend how to reduce them. These objectives are aligned with "Sustainability assessment" and "Sustainability strategy" from the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA, 2011).

The Green Computing course is one of a series of 12 week postgraduate online courses, using a constructivist approach to education, derived from that of the UK Open University (Lindley, 2008). The course was first run by the ACS in February 2009 as "Green ICT Strategies", then adapted for the Australian National University from July 2009 as "COMP7310" and for Athabasca University as "COMP 635". The course is delivered on-line, with an e-book of course materials which is also available as a printed booklet (Worthington, 2011), group activities and assessment is via the Moodle Learning Management System.

Need for Enhancement

While well received by students, the course is resource intensive, requiring a trained tutor for each small group of students (typically six to twenty-four). Also the course is designed for a standard twelve week university face-to-face semesters, which may be too long for online study.

The Green Computing course was originally intended for university qualified IT professionals, but has also been taken by those from other professions and by undergraduates. However, it is not clear how the educational techniques developed for a cohort of postgraduate students with the same professional background will translate to a more general audience. Apart from not having the particular subject knowledge of ICT professionals, students may not have the maturity assumed by the current course design. The intention therefore is to look available learning research and theory to see what can be applied in this situation for "best practice".

The Students

The original ACS "Green Computing" course was commissioned for Australian ICT professionals as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program (CPEP). These students are typically adults with a degree in computing and at least two years experience working in a computing job. Almost all ACS students are Australians resident in Australia, but a few are international students resident in islands of the Pacific region. Students are typically aiming for advancement in their career by broadening their technical skills into the management area. Students are aiming to obtain postgraduate qualifications, with the CPEP being accepted for articulation into masters programs at eleven Australian universities (ACS, 2012).

In contrast to the CPEP program, ANU students undertaking the green computing course are a mix of Australian and international students, with computing degrees, some with no work experience. The students are required to be English speakers, with those having English as a second language required to pass a university level academic English test.

What most students of the green computing course have had in common has been an undergraduate degree in computing. This contrasts to the typical MOOC, with no formal entry requirements, aimed at high school graduates. Can an advanced postgraduate course for IT specialists be converted to this format?

Not all the students for the ICT Sustainability course are IT specialists, some students with engineering, environmental science, law and arts degrees have also undertaken the course. One undergraduate was able to complete the course in an accelerated four week programs (one third the normal time). A shorter two week version of the course was prepared as a student project (Worthington, 2012b). This has been used live in a classroom for high-school IT students and also adapted as an experimental edX course (Wu, 2014). This suggests the content of the course could be suitable for non-specialist students.

Proponents of MOOCs have argued that they are a way for those without formal education in developing nations to access higher education. However, research indicates that the largest proportion of students are from developed nations and already have tertiary qualifications. Nesterko et al (2013) report that developed nations accounted for 42.29% of of enrollments in HarvardX courses (as of September 8, 2013), with India having the next highest being India (9.47%). DeBoer, Stump, Seaton and Breslow (2013) report a similar distribution of students for the first edX course, MIT's "6.002x: Circuits and Electronics.", with 70.94% of students having a higher education degree. Of the students without a higher education degree, 26.68% had completed secondary school. The ANU explicitly aimed its Astrophysics Xseries Certificate, including the "Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe" edX course, at students with a high-school level education Maths and Physics (ANU, 2014). Aiming the ICT Sustainability course at a similar academic level would be appropriate. However, an issue which needs more consideration is the maturity of the students and their access to relevant information.

The Course Content

This study focuses on the teaching methods to be used and assumes the course content is appropriate and up to date. The material is checked each time the course is run (annually) and last had a major revision in 2011,being restructured to incorporate the SFIA Skills definitions (SFIA, 2011). Issues to be considered are the use of video, forms of feedback, student interaction and assessment.

As with traditional distance education courses, ICT Sustainability is heavily reliant on text based materials. The ebook is the equivalent of 100 pages of text, with no graphics. There are no video presentations accompanying the course. There are four videos from external sources recommended for the students to watch:

• Professor Ross Garnaut discusses the challenges of climate change (pt1). 9 Minutes (ANU, 2009).

• General EPEAT Orientation. 56 Minutes (EPEAT, 2012).

• Google container data center tour. 7 Minutes (Google, 2010). Available:

• Green Planet. 9 Minutes (TelecomTV, 2009).

This is eighty-one minutes of video in total, or about seven minutes per week. However, none of these videos feature the course designer and so may lack the human touch advocated by some learning theories. Friedlander and Taylor provided weekly video feedback for their Understanding India edX course to provide a more personal touch (ANU, 2014b).

Learning Theory Applied in The Current Course

Lindley (2008) described in detail the educational thinking behind the CPEP program, of which the Green Computing course forms a part. So before proposing new teaching methods, it would be useful to review those origins. The Computer Professional Education Program (CPEP) was established by the Australian Computer Society (ACS) for post university professional development. CPEP students are required to have an ICT degree and 18 months work experience in a relevant job. The aim is to foster professionalism, with graduates required to then complete at 30 hours of continuing professional development. Implicit in this is a view of the student becoming an expert and also taking responsibility for their own education.

Lindley (2008) references the Knowles' theory of Andragogy or "self-directed learning" (Knowles, 1980). However, while Knowles makes mention of Computer Assisted Instruction, this was as a form of Programmed Instruction, very far from the idea of self-directed learning: "The very notion of terminal behavioural objectives is discordant with the concept of continuing self-development toward one's full potential." (Knowles, 1980, p. 135).

The Conscious Competence Learning Model, is also applied in the CPEP with students being encouraged to reach the fourth stage of competence: "conscious competence" (Chapman, 2003?).

This concept of "conscious competence" relates closely to the use of e-portfolios and student reflection. Alongside course based subjects CPEP students are required to undertake "Professional Practice", keeping a "Reflective journal" with weekly reflections on their learning to be discussed with a mentor and prepare an ePortfolio with skill assessment and career plan (ACS, 2012b). The hope is that the student will maintain the eportfolio for used for personal development and career advancement, after the completion of the program.

The concept of "competence" is important in the area of professional development. Wilcox and King, J. (2014) explore the relationship between competencies, skills and knowledge. Lindley (2008) explicitly references Salmon's five stage model of online learning: Access and Motivation, Online Socialisation, Information Exchange, Knowledge Construction, and Construction (Salmon, 2004). However, it is not clear how these stages relate to "competence". In a later work Salmon, Gregory, Dona, and Ross (2014) report successfully using the five stages explicitly in an experiential online development course for educators. However, the researchers admit that their cohort of students were pre-disposed to this approach have been self selected due to familiarity with Salmon's approach to e-learning.

Lindley (2008, p.5) briefly mentions Outcomes Based Education (OBE), but only two of the four principles which Killen, (2000) sets down: "clarity of focus" and "designing back" (the "desired end result" of the education). Lindley does not mention Killen's other two OBE principles: "high expectations" and "expanded opportunities". Killen was writing in the context of school and vocational education and it is not clear how well OBE translates to HE, although Castillo (2014, p. 176) reviews the implementation of OBE for higher education in the Philippines, as part of a "a shift from a teaching- or instruction-centered paradigm in higher education to one that is learner- or student-centered, within a lifelong learning framework." One reason given for this is international recognition of qualifications (the example of engineering is given), so graduates can be employed in other countries, placing it in a vocational context.

Most important to the CPEP program, according to Lindley (2008, p. 6) is reflective learning. Students are required to write about their experience of learning in the program in a journal. The claim is that students will continue this practice beyond their formal learning to help with future professional development. Also it is claimed that this suits adult learners engaged in intellectually demanding activities (Hinett & Varnava, 2002).

Applying Behavioural and Cognitive Learning Theory To The Course

It might seem a step backwards to take a course designed along constructivist principles and attempt to apply Behavioural and Cognitive learning theory. However, it is suggested that a hybrid-mode learning environment (Neo & Neo, 2010) could be used, with the behavioural and cognitive techniques applied to small tasks in learning fundamentals, within a borderer constructivist approach. Behavioural theory's emphasis on measurement and observation fits well with the subject matter of ICT Sustainability, with formulas and calculations to be learned. Personalised System of Instruction (PSI) can be implemented using Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle, as the modern successor to Computer Based Training systems of the 1960s. While modern LMS, such as Moodle are usually promoted as supporting a constructivist or social constructionist approach to education, they have the facilities to support older approaches.

Shafeeq and Rahman (2014) point out that the influential early PLATO system (Programmed Logic/Learning for Automated Teaching Operations), developed in 1959 by the University of Illinois, used a Behaviourist approach to learning. This "drill-and-practice" approach providing the student with feedback on their progress and matching the learner's pace are still applicable for basic learning tasks.

As an example of a basic task in the green computing course, the computation of carbon emissions from electricity use by computer equipment could be taught with a simple computer based application. The system would present the formula and explanation from the current course notes, with students being asked multiple choice questions to assess their comprehension. Common misconceptions would be detected and additional material provided. The student would be presented with worked examples of formulas, possibly using illustrations (perhaps even animated illustrations) and the student asked "fill in the blank questions".

Personalised System of Instruction Applied to Higher Education

Keller's Personalised System of Instruction (PSI), was developed in the mid 1960s for teaching physiology (Keller, 1974). The elements which Keller described for his system are:

1. Utilising of course content,

2. Self pacing of the student through the units,

3. Mastery demanded at each step,

4. Repeated tests without penalty and maximum credit when done,

5. Proctors, to assist the students.

By 1974 Keller reported that this approach was being used for 412 courses, including ones in engineering and mathematics/statistics (Keller, 1974). Keller also reported the use of PSI at secondary schools and for postgraduate level. Also he pointed out that proctors were not strictly necessary, if teachers can relate to the student's experience). While it might seem a little old fashioned, this can be used with modern Learning Management Systems for the basic parts of a course.

Smith (2010) describes the competency-based training (CBT) approach of Australia's Vocational Education and Training (VET) system as "competency-based curriculum". Harris and Schutte (1985), make the link between TAFE education (TAFE being the earlier term for VET), competency and the Keeler Plan:

"Competency-based education may most appropriately be described as a synthesis of two other well known alternative educational systems: Mastery Learning and Keller's Personalised System of Instruction." From: Harris and Schutte (1985, p. 52).

PSI can be seen as an elaboration of Skinner's Programmed Instruction. The idea of changing the behaviour of students using a teaching machine is a concept not well accepted for university education and not helped by Skinner's examples of teaching pigeons to perform (Skinner, 1954). It is more accepted in VET vocational education, particularly as one of the aims of such education is to change the behaviour of students so they conform to workplace requirements.

There are clear parallels between PSI's seven elements and the approach to training by Australia's VET Registered Training Organisations. Nationally standardised training packages are made up of units of competency, with students required to pass each unit. Students will typically work in a workshop with an instructor present to help and undertake computer based modules in a learning centre with a roving proctor, or online at home (with online assistance). Students are not given a grade, but just considered "not yet competent" until "competent". Smith describes this form of assessment somewhat dismissively as "Tick and flick" (2010).

The use of a PSI approach is not widely accepted in Australian Higher Education outside the VET sector. While VET has a nationally standardised database of training packages and modules with competency based assessment, Australian universities each develop their own courses, which are not divided into standardised modules and not each competency assessed. University academics are unlikely to accept a wholesale change to the VET approach, but it is suggested may accept incorporation of some of its features within courses. Forsyth (2014, p. 191) questions the packaging of on-line courses into "chunks" and the conversion of students into consumers of education as a commodity. Kazi (2004) questions if such courses are achieving their pedagogical goals, or being used just because they are easy to track student progress. However, carefully structured materials which provide re-enforcement through small tests could be seen as a useful part of an overall program.

Use of VET Educational Materials

The use of VET educational techniques for a university course suggests that the VET sector should be looked at as a source of educational materials. A search of the Australian National Register on Vocational Education and Training (Australian Department of Industry, 2013) found a Vocational Graduate Certificate in Information Technology Sustainability (ICA70211). Of the twelve units of competency for this qualification, five relate directly to sustainability:

1. ICASUS702A - Conduct a business case study for integrating sustainability in IT planning and design projects

2. ICTSUS7235A - Use ICT to improve sustainability outcomes

3. ICTSUS7236A - Manage improvements in ICT sustainability

4. ICTSUS8237A - Lead applied research in ICT sustainability

5. ICTSUS8238A - Conduct and manage a life cycle assessment for sustainability

However, use of these units of competency would require extensive reworking of the course materials. Also the vocational nature of some material is not as applicable, for example "Install and test power saving hardware" (ICTSUS4184A) is intended for training technicians who are licensed install equipment. It is not clear if the VET material can be easily converted for university use. An alternative approach which applies PSI to the existing course content to ensure mastery of the basic concepts, along with the existing assessment process for higher level concepts seems most appropriate.

Recommendations

1. Retain existing course content structure: The course is currently divided into twelve weekly modules, each comprising eight to ten hours work for a student. This structure should be retained.

2. Divide Modules Into Smaller Components Using Keller's PSI: The content within each week should be broken into smaller components using Self pacing, Mastery and Repeated tests.

3. Add Quiz Based Assessment: The current weekly assessment which uses free form answers to questions should be supplemented by the quiz questions of the Repeated tests, to provide students with feedback on their progress with basic material. This should replace half the weekly assessment. Students would receive a mark of 1 for this and not be permitted to proceed until they have achieved that mark.

4. Retain discussion forums: The current discussion forums would be retained, but just one question would be asked each week in each topic (instead of the current two or three). The material not covered in questions would be included in the quiz based assessment.

5. Peer assessment of forum contributions: The discussion forum contributions of students would be peer assessed.

6. Retain Assignment Based Assessment: The current two assignments for the majority of assessment would be retained, along with assessment by an expert human tutor. This component of the course would not be available for the free/low cost MOOC version of the course.

How 1990s Computer Mediated Communication can inform today's MOOCs

Introduction

This review looks at one study from the late 1990s into what the range of participation in CMCs was and why (Taylor, 1998). This could be useful in informing today's e-Learning and MOOC developers. The use of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) for education is now the subject of discussion in the media. Many reports on the use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), make claims that students will engage with computers for education in a new way. However, there are decades of literature on computer based distance education which can inform the current debate. MOOCs have been proposed as a way to broaden access to education, but have barriers to previous forms of online participator been overcome?

The Research Process

Taylor follows a conventional research process, starting with a literature review (Taylor, 1998, p. 13) looking at previous studies of the interaction of students and instructors (interestingly Taylor changes from "instructors" to use the term "moderators" later). Most papers referenced are from the early to mid 1990s, during the early days of the use of the Internet. As a result Taylor emphasises the limitations of the media at the time. This remains an issue today, particularly for developing nations and in regional and remote areas, with limited Internet access. Some of the pre-Internet studies Taylor discusses are also still relevant, as they concern the educational effectiveness of the use of two-way audio and video. While the technology used for audio and video has changed from analogue phone lines and satellite, to digital fibre optic cables, the educational outcomes are unchanged.

Taylor goes on to chart the development of Computer Medicated Communication (CMC), at this stage a purely text based media and ends with the question: "... why the learners do not seize the opportunity that is offered by CMC" (1998, p. 25). This is the central research question for the study.

Theory: Taylor's study is theory driven. The idea of interaction being of value for learning is explored and the limits of that interaction in distance education. The key theory used is Feenberg's 'phatic' expressions: non-verbal cues which are lacking from text based communication (1989). Taylor then theorises that this lack of non-verbal cues in CMC will be heightened for students who already have a fear of communicating. The student's fear of communication can be measured with McCroskey's communication apprehension (CA) questionnaire (1981) and then compared with the student's perceived and actual communication in real e-learning courses.

Statement of the Problem

Question: Taylor (1998) sets out to find why some learners participated more than others in CMCs. The study considers if a lack of participation by some students (so called "lurkers") is due to an absence of visual clues missing in text based forums or if a perceived need for high quality academic writing is deterring students.

Three research questions are asked:

1. "To what do students attribute their levels of participation in computer conferencing?" (Taylor, 1998, p. 82)

2. "Is there a systematic relationship between oral communication apprehension and levels of computer conference participation?" (Taylor, 1998, p. 84)

3. "Is there a significant difference between responses of the lurker and the non-lurker to the PRCA-24 and the computer conference participation questionnaires?" (Taylor, 1998, p. 86)

Purpose and Method: Taylor describes their study as "... an exploratory examination of the phenomenon of lurking ..." and later use the terms "explanation" and "description" for their case study to "gather basic information" (p. 36). So could best be described as exploratory basic research.

A set of definitions are provided (Taylor, 1998, p. 37) for the main concepts:

• Lurking: a low participation rate in CMCs. This is defined for the study, as at most, two postings per conference topic of at most 150 words total. It is not clear how these values for lurking were derived, with no sensitivity analysis of them in the paper, nor sources cited.

• Communication Apprehension: Taylor (1998, p. 29) quotes McCroskey's 1977 definition of CA as "... an individual's level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons." This is cited by Taylor as being originally from McCroskey's 1981 paper, but is actually from a previous study (1977). McCroskey's "Personal Report of Communication Apprehension" (PRCA-24) questionnaire is used to measure apprehension (Taylor, 1998, p. 11). The PRCA has been widely used in studies of students in North America and Australia (McDowell, 1994) and is suitable for this research.

It might be argued that Lurking and Communication Apprehension are obsolete concepts in the age of social media and smart phones, with every one (or at least every young university student) comfortable being online, all the time. However, students of any age can still experience anxiety speaking in a formal academic setting, be it online or a physical classroom, so these are issues still worth exploring.

One aspect not fully explored by Taylor (1998) is the extent to which students who are Lurking may still be engaged in the course. A student who is not originating text messages, due to Communication Apprehension may still be reading messages (that is Lurking), or may be completely non-engaged in the course, neither reading nor writing. Course Management Systems (such as Moodle) allow for the monitoring of what content the student accessed in a course, even when they did not contribute, but Taylor does not appear to have made use of this information. This may be because Taylor's approach draws heavily on McCroskey's earlier studies, at which time good "analytics" would not have been available from the early computer systems in use.

Research Design

The single case study is described by Taylor as "... non-experimental as it does not include any manipulation or control, is inductive, and does not seek to predict." (1998, p.36). However, the purpose of the study is to see if the student's apprehension about communication relates to their participation in computer conferences and this implies a causal relationship (apprehension causing lower participation). If such a relationship was found, it could be used to devise interventions to assist students at risk of under participation

Unit of analysis: Subjects of the study were 274 Athabasca University Masters of Distance Education students, studying by distance education in the first three courses of the program. These were adult students with an average of 42 years (making them different to the typical non-DE student). Taylor commented the students were "... broadly dispersed geographic locations throughout Canada" (1998, p. 38).

Sampling techniques: No sampling was used, with all students invited to take part in the study. One possible source of bias might be that students who have Communication Apprehension may be reluctant to participate in such a study and so be under-represented. A possible indication of this is that Taylor found that 60.8% of the total non-respondents to the survey met the definition of lurking, compared with only 30.7% for respondents (1998, p.69). That is, those who did not take part in the survey were about twice as likely to contribute minimally to the conferences as those who did take part.

Measurement Techniques: Two questionnaires were used, one for Computer Conference Participation and one for Communication Apprehension. The "Computer Conference Participation Survey" (Taylor, 1998, p. 89) had 31 items, using mostly a 5-point Likert scale (quantitative) and some free test questions (qualitative). This questionnaire asked about the student's experience with CMC, other factors which might effect their participation and how much they participated. The second questionnaire was the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA-24), using a 24 item Likert scale (Taylor, 1998, p. 111), as discussed previously. In addition students were asked for permission (Taylor, 1998, p. 114) for the researchers to access the CMC to measure the frequency (postings per unit) and magnitude (words per posting) for each student participating in the study.

The study surveyed students enrolled in courses for the September to December 1995 and September to December 1996 terms. Students who withdrew within the first 30 days of the course under the university's early withdrawal policy were excluded from the analysis, as they would not then participate in the CMC. However, as a result 28 of the students (about 10%) were excluded. It is not clear why this was done, as these students may well be withdrawing due to Communication Apprehension and their exclusion would thus underestimate the effect. This methodology could not be used for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), where the number of students renaming active in a course drops rapidly in the first few weeks. The first edX MOOC had only 50% of the students engaged after the first week (Breslow, Pritchard, DeBoer, Stump & Seaton, 2013). Even a course with highly motivated students, such as those who want to learn academic English to enrol in College (so presumably less susceptible to Communication Apprehension), showed only a 6% completion rate (Whitmer, Schiorring & James, 2014).

Findings by Talyor

The results of the Conference Activity and Experiences questionnaire show that most students reported reading the conference forums "Every couple of days" (42.30%) or "Daily" (40.38%) (Taylor, 1998, p. 48). This is consistent with a similar study of students at Open University UK, Baxter and Haycock (2014), which found that 38.1% of students were "occasional posters".

The Personal Report of Communication Apprehension - 24 Scores (Taylor, 1998, p. 62) for all students had a mean of 52.02 Standard Deviation of 17.76, which is reasonably close to compared to 65.60 and Standard Deviation of 15.30 report by McCroskey for over 40,000 college students (McCroskey, n.d.).

The data was grouped by lurker and non-lurker groups for some analysis. No weightings or adjustments were applied to the data. The data was reported in a comprehensive set of 28 tables. However, no graphs or diagrams were provided and the lack of these may have made the data more difficult to interpret for the reader.

The analysis makes use of simple statistical measures of mean, standard deviation, correlation and Chi-square test, appropriate to the quantitative data. However, the analysis carried out on two open ended text questions in the questionnaire is less clear. The responses are described as having been "tabulated" and "clustered according to any central themes that emerged" (Taylor, 1998, p. 66), however the methodology is not further described. This contrasts for example, with Carroll, Diaz, Meiklejohn, Newcomb and Adkins (2013) who describe using a thematic analysis, followed by axial coding to analyse student developed Wikis.

The PRCA-24 Scores did not show a statistically significant correlation (at a 95% confidence level) with Lurking or with Conference Participation. When divided into lurker and non-lurker groups a Chi-square test did not find a significant difference in PRCA-24 score and computer conference participation. One positive result was that participants were self aware of their level of participation, with 50% of the lurkers reporting their viewed their level of participation as at best "below average".

Discussion

While Taylor's study is now sixteen years old (1998) the discussion of the role of interaction in distance education is still relevant today. While Internet speeds have increased and more interactive software is available, the text-only nature of CMCs remains a common feature of online courses. In 2014, text based forums appear to still be the primary mode used by these successors to these courses at Athabasca University (2014). More generally, the interactive component of on-line courses may be decreasing, with MOOCs popularising pre-recorded videos as the primary method of instruction. The term xMOOC is being used, sometimes pejoratively, to describe these highly structured, one-way courses, with little student interaction (Ross, Sinclair, Knox, Bayne & Macleod, 2014). Such courses are unlikely to help students become comfortable with expressing their views in an academic environment.

Taylor's study is heavily dependent on McCroskey's 1977 idea of communication apprehension (CA) as "... an individual's level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons." However this concept was conceived in terms of oral communication in a face-to-face classroom and it is not clear if the theory is directly applicable to a text based CMC. The study also depends on the text contributions to the CMC as a measure of the student's involvement in a course. There is no consideration of other forms of on-line participation, such as via social media, audio, or video.

Taylor suggested that the variability in instructional style of the moderators and the personalities of the participants may explain the lack of correlation between students confidence in communication and their frequency and quantity of forum postings (1998, p. 84). However, the PRCA-24 questionnaire used was designed to measure how confident the students were with communication and no analysis was made of the moderators.

One aspect not adequately addressed in the report was the effect of the course assessment scheme and tutor input on student participation. Taylor comments that "Most moderators allotted a percentage of the final course mark to the conference contributions, ranging from 10 to 20% ... Some required a minimum of 2 contributions per unit ..." (1998, p. 44). The allocation of marks to conference contributions could be expected to have a significant effect on student behaviour, but is not addressed further in the report. Also the practice of allocating marks for student participation does not appear to have been at the discretion of the individual moderators, as Taylor suggests. The official published course descriptions for the period of the research include a set proportion of marks for conference contributions (Athabasca University, 1997). Assuming each moderator carried out the assessment set down for the course, there would be an incentive for students to participate.

Conclusions of The Study

Taylor found that students are reasonably self aware of their level of how much they contribute to forums in a course. But no systematic relationship between oral communication apprehension and levels of computer conference participation was found. While the quantitative analysis of the data has been carried out with the appropriate statistical tools, the qualitative analysis of free form answerers by students appears to be very limited. More analysis of what students said might have yielded better insights that the negative statistical tests show. The results as they stand would apply to the current courses offered in the Athabasca University Master of Education (Distance Education) as the courses, content, teaching methods and assessment to not appear to have changed greatly between 1998 and 2014.

Implications for future research: Perhaps worryingly, this study still has implications for future research more than a decade later. Universities are still grappling with the issue of why some students do not interact online.

An updated version of the communication apprehension questionnaire might be carried out for both students and moderators in relatively conventional online courses (such as those run by Athabasca University), on xMOOCs (large scale course with minimal student interaction) and with courses which encourage students to interact via social media. The nature of interaction for e-learning courses and how it can be supported with software, is yet to be adequately explored (Worthington, 2013).

Conclusion

Taylor found that are reasonably self aware of their level of how much they contribute to forums in a course. But no systematic relationship between oral communication apprehension and levels of computer conference participation was found. The study raises important questions about the role of the human tutor in an online course: what skills should they have and how much freedom to use an individual approach to teaching should they have and what effect this has on student's learning. This has implications beyond individual courses, for universities and educational systems. As an example, the Australian National University(ANU) and the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) formed an "alliance" in 2010 to "... to share teaching, research and enrolment prospects." (Australian National University, 2010). In theory the strengths of the two institutions should complement each other, ANU for research and USQ for online distance education. However, the results of the alliance have been limited, with ANU listing only six USQ courses for their students, of the more than one thousand offered by USQ (Australian National University, 2014). One reason for this may be the differences in the amounts and modes of student interaction for courses of the two institutions. USQ has online courses very similar in format to those of Athabasca University, as studies by Taylor. With such courses the student interaction is within carefully prescribed bounds. The ANU follows a very different approach, where the format, delivery methods and assessment is decided by the lecturer in change, each time a course is run and may be changed while the course is being run. In this environment the student interaction may range from none, to recasting the content and assessment.

Taylor did not find a correlation between a student's communication apprehension (CA) and interaction in a course. However, such a study repeated in a course which has a significant number of students for whom the language of instruction is not their first language, may show different results. In particular, Australian universities are having to accommodate large numbers of students for whom English is a second language and are therefore less confident in communicating in student forums (Worthington, 2012, p. 3). One solution proposed to this problem is to have mixed bilingual classes where English speaking students learning a second language interact on-line with students who speak that language and are learning English (Worthington, 2014, p. 3). Taylor's techniques might be used to assess the success of this approach. One approach which was not available to Taylor in 1998, but can now be applied is measuring reading comprehension by tracking eye movements (Copeland & Gedeon, 2013). This may provide a way to apply the concept of Taylor's analysis routinely, on a much larger scale, for conventional e-learning courses and MOOCs.

Theory of Practice

Introduction

This paper presents a personal Theory of Practice for my online teaching to postgraduate students, in vocationally orientated courses (Worthington, 2012). Three learning principles, inspired by Zen maxims of the Martial Arts, are presented: Economy of effort, Realism, and Switching smoothly between techniques. Theory and research literature, are presented to justify these.

Three Learning Principles

Bruce Lee established the Jeet Kune Do system of martial arts in 1967 (Lee, 1975). As with other such systems, this contains elements of an eastern philosophy of life, as well as physical training techniques. Khoo & Senna-Fernandes (2014) sought to use this as inspiration for techniques in plastic surgery, so it does not seem too far-fetched to look to the same source for insights into teaching.

Economy of effort for maximum results

Meditation, Created by Jens Tärning from the Noun Project, CC-BY 3.0, 2014

"One of the greatest adjustments the novice athlete must make in competition is to overcome the natural tendency to try too hard - to hurry, strain, press and try to blast the whole fight at once." (Lee, 1975, p. 57)

Martial arts emphasize maximum results from minimum effort. Similarly, learning is a means to an end and so should be done efficiently: using just enough resources to get the job done. However, most theories of education ignore the cost of an activity. There tends to be an inappropriate emphasis on trying in education, rather than succeeding.

I seek economy of effort in my teaching and try to instill this approach in my students. Courses are aligned with external job skills requirements, with readings and exercises to help the student meet that requirement. But economy of effort is not the same as leaving students to fend for themselves. Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) reviewed studies which showed that lower aptitude students achieved lower results when provided with no, or less, guidance.

Mayer (1999) suggests highlighting the most important information for the leaner using simple techniques (such as bold italics), provide a summary and eliminate irrelevant information. They suggest using the SIO (Select, Organize, Integrate) principles for textbooks and lectures as well as multimedia materials. The techniques of Cognitive Information Processing can be used to provide meaningful structure to the material, with a default sequence (even if the students are encouraged to find their own path). Huang and Andrade (2014, p. 300) suggest methods to manage the cognitive load placed on the student by being able to present only the information the student needs on a mobile device.

Realism

Martial Arts, by Heywood (Public Domain)

"... most systems of martial art accumulate a ' fancy mess'' that distorts and cramps their practitioners and distracts them from the actual reality of combat, which is simple and direct." (Lee, 1975, p. 14)

Education needs to provide the student with useful skills. Students will need to start with simplified exercises, but need to be exposed to increasingly realistic problems. My students either have jobs or are training for a specific role as a professional, their studies are therefore focused on obtaining skills for that job. By providing student exercises which are based on their own workplace, or a reasonable simulation of the workplace, the students are motivated and learn useful skills.

Baviskar, Hartle and Whitney (2009) point out that Constructivism is a theory of learning, not of teaching, but any method of teaching should be based on how students learn. Baviskar, Hartle and Whitney (2009) list the four features of constructivism as: eliciting prior knowledge, creating cognitive dissonance, application of new knowledge with feedback, and reflection on learning

There is an obvious correspondence between these features of learning and the teacher's role in motivating the student with: "... providing content and resources, posing relevant problems and questions at appropriate times..." (Baviskar, Hartle & Whitney, 2009).

Switching smoothly between techniques

Flexible, Created by Borengasser for the Noun Project, CC-BY 3.0 2012

"If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo." (Lee, 1975, p. 5)

Educational literature is full of explanations of why one principle, theory or technique is superior to another. But one approach will rarely do for all situations. Educators need to move smoothly from one technique to another. Students will need times when they learn alone and then others in a group. They can learn the basics using a simple drill and practice computer program (based on behaviorism theory) and then explore advanced topics with other students.

Kanuka and Anderson (1999) claim that competition and student expectations is pressuring higher education institutions to remove time, place, and situational barriers. However, universities seem to have been able to resist that pressure with most students still attending face-to-face classes on campus. They argue that computer mediated conferencing allows for "small group discussions, Socratic dialogue, collaborative/cooperative learning, brainstorming, debriefing, case studies, problem based learning", but simply translating these classroom techniques the online environment is unlikely to significantly increase efficiency. What might make a difference is to be able to blend techniques.

Kanuka and Anderson (1999) create a two dimensional space with a social axis, from socially to individually (the scale would more naturally run the other way from individually to socially) and an axis from subject to objective reality. They then place four forms of constructivism into four quadrants of this space: Cognitive (Individual & Objective), Radical (Individual & Subjective), Situated ( Social & Subjective and Co-Constructivism (Social & Objective).

Kanuka and Anderson (1999) describe and then dismiss each form of Constructivism, until they reach the last, Co-Constructivism, which emphasizes the shared social interaction between students and teacher. This must be comforting for teachers used to the classroom and who can see a path to adopt the same approach on-line. However, the on-line environment provides a way to interact with a large fluid group of people, unlike the small fixed class. Also the many voices challenge the idea that there is an objective reality. When anyone can create a plausible looking web site and edit the Wikipedia, how do you know what is an authoritative source and what is not? All four forms of Constructivism should be able to be applied on-line in one course simultaneously.

One interesting approach is with what Mayer (1999) calls "multi-frame illustrations" with "coordinated captions". These are essentially a cartoon strip, with a series of frames showing a series of steps, with the text on each frame. This was shown to be superior to illustrations with text separate and illustrations on separate pages. Also animation was found to be superior. In my own work I will tend to use simple diagrams and pictograms (Figs. 1 to 3), to highlight points. Babaian and Chalian (2014) report on the use of the narrative techniques of graphic novels for teaching surgery and Meyers (2014) has used comics for teaching Communication Theory. This approach is supported by the Cognitive Information Processing, which encourages the use of graphic representations of information (Huang and Andrade, 2014, p. 300).

Koh, Basawapatna, Nickerson, and Repenning (2014) report using online assessment of computer coding skills using a "Project First, just-in-time" pedagogy, combining Csí­kszentmihá¡lyi's Flow (2014) with Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. In practice this presents the students with a combination of increasingly advanced programming concepts within the same project and more complex projects. The authors claim to be able to track the progress with the student's progress in real time by mining data from the learning management system. However, this level of monitoring might detract from the social aspects of learning and the authors may be stretching these theories beyond breaking point by attempting to implement them explicitly in software. For example Vygotsky (1977, p. 16) referred to the zone of proximal development in relation to children's play and "voluntary intentions" rather than a form of programmed step by step instruction.

Conclusion

Three learning principles, as part of my personal Theory of Practice for online distance teaching are: Economy of effort for maximum results, Realism, and Switching smoothly between techniques. These are intended for teaching computing to postgraduate students on-line and are inspired by the Jeet Kune Do System of Martial Arts. No one approach or technique will be sufficient for all teaching and the practitioner must be ready to apply approaches as required. Learning materials and assessment should be based on real world scenarios and, where possible, incorporate the student's own experience. The cost of teaching and learning, to the teacher and the student, should be taken into account, so resources are used sparingly.

Needs Assessment and Proposal Development

Introduction

In this chapter I carry out the first two steps in instructional design (ID) for creating a new course provisionally titled "Innovation, Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship in Technology" to be offered on-line, initially for students in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Canberra. First a needs assessment will be carried out, followed by a proposal for what is to be developed. These first two phases will be fowled in a separate document with creation of one of the learning objects for the course.

An "Innovation ACT" competition was established at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra in 2008 (Blackhall, n.d.). The competition, now supported by the University of Canberra and the local Canberra government (the "ACT Government"), has the aim of providing):

1. "Entrepreneurial education via seminar sessions ran parallel to a university semester

2. Entrepreneurial experiences within a competition environment that allows students to test their ideas."

From Innovation ACT (2014a), emphasis added.

The Innovation ACT competition provides students with handbooks and templates, students attend presentations, prepare their proposals with the help of a mentor and then pitch their ideas to a panel of judges (InnovationACT, 2014b). Prasad (2014) discusses the history and educational role of such enterprise competitions and categorizes it as an "action learning" pedagogy.

While popular with students and having an educational role, the Innovation ACT competition is not part of a formal educational program and so is not evaluated as to its educational effectiveness and students do not receive credit for participation towards their studies. This document discusses how to design an on-line course which students could take in conjunction with Innovation ACT and similar competitions, as part of a university degree program. The course would be designed to fit with postgraduate certificate and degree programs in the computing discipline, as that is to author's discipline area.

Kakouris (2009, p. 231) argues for an ADDIE model (Anallise, Design, Develop, Implement and Evaluate) is suitable for providing on-line entrepreneurial education, emphasizing guidance, communication and peer support. They argue that the DE teaching material can be used to implement Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction: Gain Attention, Inform Learners of Objectives, Stimulate Recall of Prior Learning, Present the Content, Provide Learning Guidance, Elicit Performance (Practice), Provide Feedback, Assess Performance, Enhance Retention and Transfer to job" (Gagné (1965) cited in Kakouris (2009, p. 233)).

Is a Human Tutor Needed?

Kakouris (2009, p. 233) assert that the DE system can act as a "virtual educator" without a human tutor. More recently replacing the tutor with an automated system has been attempted with a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on entrepreneurship. Al-Atabi and DeBoer (2014) report on an entrepreneurship MOOC conducted with 1600 online student in 115 countries, plus 60 on-campus students. The online students formed teams and under took group projects. In addition to videos, the students received points from peers and badges to provide them with feedback on progress. Al-Atabi and DeBoer (2014) noted that the completion rate for online students was 25%, which is higher than a typical MOOC, but was far lower than the 90% completion rate for the students undertaking the same course on-campus.

Neck, Greene and Brush (2014) point out the role for the instructor to "facilitate engagement in creative processes" for higher level skills. As the course under development here is intended to be part of a conventional university degree program, a completion rate of 25% is unacceptably low. It is therefore proposed to take a middle path, having on-line materials, but facilitated by a human tutor, to achieve a completion rate comparable to face-to-face courses.

Part 1: Needs Assessment

Needs assessment approach

Smith and Ragan, (2005, pp. 43) suggest that an ID needs assessment should first establish if there is a need at all. They outline a cycle of needs assessment, design, production, implementation and evaluation (Smith and Ragan, 2005, pp. 44), while advocating the evaluation plans actually be constructed during the needs assessment phase. This may be unrealistic where the need for a course has not yet been established and so work on evaluation would be wasted if the course is never run.

Smith and Ragan, (2005, pp. 44) divided needs assessments into three model types:

1. Problem Model: As Smith and Ragan note, it is necessary to determine if there really is a "problem" and if a cause it the best way to solve it. In the case of an unsolicited new course on innovation, the problem model is not as applicable, as there is no current group of employees to canvas. As the aim is to have students go out and create new companies, there are also not employers to consult. The Innovation ACT competition is part funded by the local government, which has in an economic development strategy to foster new industries, a "culture of entrepreneurship" and encourage startup firms to provide employment (ACT Government 2013). The ACT Government might therefore be consulted about the problem of educating innovators.

2. Innovation Model: This approach looks for changes in the students, the education system or the environment. The innovation model would seem apt for a course in innovation: students are less likely to want to simply get a job in a corporation and instead want to set up their own company. The approach of involving students in an innovation competition working on a real world project is not new in the Australian education system (along with e-learning and e-portfolio systems which make it easier to offer such education), but not widely used. However, the reduction in the available of jobs for life has required graduates to be more entrepreneurial, being able to take on new roles and even invent a job for themselves. Thompson and Kwong (2013) found that "enterprise education", designed to develop entrepreneurial skills, in UK schools had a "direct positive relationship with entrepreneurial activities and intentions". This indicates that students will respond positively to such education and an introductory course on innovation with lead to the student doing more such work.

3. Discrepancy Model: The discrepancy model, as described by Smith and Ragan, (2005, pp. 45) , does not start with a new need, but as a check to see if an existing course is meeting the already established requirements. This applies to an innovation course, as some such courses already exist, along with externally set skills requirements. The analysis to be carried out therefore incorporates some elements of the discrepancy model, at least to say what is wrong with existing courses and so why a new course is required. With this the requirements will be listed and how well these are met with courses, to determine the gap.

Scope and extent of the need

a. Who to query. As there is a question over the popularity of the existing course, the first group to survey are potential students. It would be simpler to have access to students currently enrolled in a program of study (as they are easy to access). But it may be worthwhile contacting those who have not been attracted to programs, perhaps via a professional body, such as the Australian Computer Society and Engineers Australia. These bodies could also asked as to the need. Innovation organizations, such as the various "co-working" offices and "hacker" competition providers may be of use. In addition experts in the field can be consulted, as Dr. Lachlan Blackhall, founder of Innovation ACT (Blackhall, n.d.), who has worked on engaging students with real world problems (Smith, Brown, Blackhall, Loden & O'Shea, 2010).

b. How to Query. An on-line survey instrument could be used to collect information from potential students. This could use multiple choice and rating questions. Interviews could be used with organizational representatives. However, they are unlikely to agree to a formal social science style of interview and a more informal approach may need to be used.

c. Type of questions. Reimers-Hild and King, (2009) proposed six questions for entrepreneurial leadership and innovation in the context of distance education. These could be applied more generally for questioning potential students and employers about innovation courses:

1. "How entrepreneurial is your organization? On a scale of 1-5, would you classify your organization as a 1 (not at all entrepreneurial) or a 5 (extremely entrepreneurial)?

2. How are administrators, instructors and learners in your organization learning to be more entrepreneurial?

3. Developing a global mindset throughout an organization characterized by risk taking, innovation and change should be encouraged, not discouraged. ...

4. Is innovation a priority? On a scale of 1-5, would you classify your organization as a 1 (not at all innovative) or a 5 (extremely innovative)?...

5. In what ways can your leaders share the vision ... Can they use both face-to-face and online methods? Can they use both individual and large group settings?...

6. How can you institutions connect employees and learners with their passions and their personal vision of the future?...

7. What is your organization doing to develop and leverage the human and social capital of its administrators, instructors and students? ..."

From Reimers-Hild and King , 2009 (emphasis added) .

d. Other data sources. While the sources discussed above may be of some use, the primary source of information will be preexisting skills definitions and syllabuses. In particular Australian computer science degrees are accredited by the Australian Computer Society (ACS, 2014). The Society promotes the use of an internationally standardized skills framework and courses are required to be "aligned" with the framework (IP3, 2015). It would therefore be appropriate to based the course on the most appropriate skills definitions in that framework. McEwan (2013) discusses the use of SFIA skills definitions (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015) for university courses and note it is particularly useful for fast developing new job categories (SFIA is also part of the ACS/IP3 framework). McEwan proposed the use of SFIA level 5/6 for Masters-level courses and 4/5 for Honors-level. They also found that one SFIA skill was insufficient for a typical university course and used two. In this case McEwan (2013) aligned a course with skills "Emerging Technology Monitoring" (EMRG) and "Innovation" (INOV).

Alongside the university system, Australia has a system of Vocational Education and Training (VET), which as Mazzarol (2014) points out, has been active in offering courses in entrepreneurship for small business. Some universities have associated VET Registered Training Organizations (RTOs) to deliver such courses, at a lower qualification level than their degree programs.

The VET system has a national database of standardized skills sets, make up of units of competency (Australian Department of Industry, 2013) and a database of preprepared learning objects (National VET E-learning Strategy, 2013). A search of the training database for "innovation" found a "Managing Innovation Skill Set" BSBSS00014, "Innovation Leadership Skill Set" (BSBSS00008) with units of competency "Establish systems that support innovation" (BSBINN501A), "Foster leadership and innovation" (PSPGOV604A). However, of the ten courses listed in the training database with the word "entrepreneurship" in the title, only two are currently offered, a Graduate Certificate and a Diploma of "Entrepreneurship for Food and Wine". This indicates that perhaps the demand for such courses at the VET level is not a strong as Mazzarol (2014) suggests. A search of the database of learning objects found three relevant entries: "Communicate information and ideas", "Plan for change" and "Manage emerging challenges and opportunities". These may be of some limited value in the innovation course for low level skills, as may the units of competency.

The intention is that students can optionally undertake an innovation competition, in particular "Innovation ACT" alongside the course. Therefore the content of "Innovation ACT" will provide more detail as to the need.

Need and Causes

The Australian Computer Society already offers an on-line innovation course: "New Technology Alignment" NTA, (ACS, 2013). However, NTA is intended for employees of corporations to identify innovations within the organization. The need is to address the aspirations of students to set up their own enterprises working on their own products, rather than working for a corporation. This is in part by an innate wish to innovate and partly due to the difficulty in finding worthwhile (or any) employment in a corporation. Segal Quince & Partners (1985) argue that the growth of start-up high technology businesses around Cambridge from the 1980s was in part due to students who wanted to maintain the Cambridge lifestyle and, with the lack of alternative employment, were forced to setup their own business. The ACT Government (responsible for Canberra), is implementing a similar strategy by funding Innovation ACT, to encourage students to stay in Canberra and set up a business, rather than move away after graduation. The proposed course would teach the students skills needed to set up a business in Canberra.

What is Available: The University of Canberra (UoC) and ANU both offer innovation courses in Canberra. UoC have courses as part of the Bachelor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation (University of Canberra, 2012b). A typical unit is "Managing Change and Innovation" (University of Canberra, 2012a), offered in blended mode (on-line content with on campus attendance of up to thirty nine hours). ANU has "innovation" courses in business and engineering programs: "Entrepreneurship and Innovation" MGMT3027 (ANU.n.d. b), "Innovation and Commercialisation" MGMT7165 (ANU.n.d. c), "Engineering Innovation" ENGN3230 (ANU.n.d. a), "Technology and Innovation Management and Strategy" MGMT7106 (ANU.n.d. d). However, these are courses have largely the format of a conventional lecture and examination based university program, are not integrated with an innovation competition and not aligned with external skills standards.

What is desired: A course which is delivered on-line, can be used alongside an innovation competition to provide the student with more hands on-experience and aligned with external skills standards to provide an industry relevant and preferably global qualification.

Cause of the Needs Gap: The Canberra university courses are designed to fit within conventional classroom teaching techniques and program structures. The student is assumed to undertake their academic study at the university, receive a university qualification and then move to employment, most likely at a corporation or institutional setting.

Potential solutions

One solution to the problem of including innovation in a university technology program is the "New Venture Design" course for engineering and business students at UBC (Kruchten, Lawrence, Dahl & Cubbon, 2011). Since 2003 UBC's final year engineering and business students have had the option to work in mixed teams on an entrepreneurial venture

Teams of six UBC students produce a prototype and business plan. The students are provided with conventional lectures and lab work activities. Teams can optionally enter external innovation completions in Vancouver, or elsewhere. This approach solves the problem of providing students with academic credit for innovation competition, but duplicates the activities of the competition, increasing resource requirements and student effort. Also the use of conventional lectures and labs limits the course to on-campus students.

a. Instructional solutions: On-line course materials and forums for students to help form their teams can be provided. Quizzes and large assessment items, which follow the sequence and content of Innovation ACT (and similar competitions) can be provided. One issue concerns scheduling. Ideally students would be able to commence the course at any time, to suit the competition they were intending to enter. However, as such competitions depend on the students forming a team and this could be difficult to schedule within the course. An alternative strategy would be for the students to undertake the course self paced, with or without, their team. Another alternative is to have the course in a set program term and not closely align it with the competition. This would cause difficulties where the student submits competition materials as part of their assessment, but the competition and assessment deadlines do not align.

b. Non-instructional solutions: An alternative to a full course would be to rely on the competition materials and process to provide the entire learning experience and have the student submit evidence for assessment, as a form of Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). This would require the student and/or the assessor to check the competition covered the syllabus (and used the same terminology) and the materials produced were suitable for assessment. Also there would be the difficulty that innovation competitions are almost always entered by teams of competitors, and are assessed exclusively on the team product. It is therefore not possible to know what contribution an individual team member made. This might be overcome by having the student keep a diary with their contributions during the competition (submitted via an e-portfolio system) and with some form of test (such as on-line quiz).

Part 2: Proposal Development

Components of the course

Course description: "Innovation, Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship in Technology" is a new course to for students to develop the capability to identify and develop new technology based business ideas. Students will learn to identity strategic uses for information technology, applying systematic investigation, analysis, review and documentation to take an idea through the stages of development and proposal. Students are encouraged to take part in Innovation ACT, or a similar innovation competition, and submit their competition materials for assessment.
Learning Outcomes
After successful completion of this subject students will be able to :

1. Investigate a strategic application of IT.

2. Propose new ways of conducting business using IT.

Skills Alignment:

1. SFIA Version 5, Level 6: Business analysis BUAN, (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015)

2. SFIA Version 5, Level 6: Innovation INOV, (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015)

Course components: The major topics (based on Innovation ACT, 2014) are:

1. Business Model Thinking

2. Stakeholder Engagement

3. Concept Generation

4. Value Capture

Activities are:

1. Contributions to on-line forums/exercises for ten weeks (assessed at 2% per week for 12 weeks, with the best 10 counted),

2. Mid semester assignment: "Investigation of a strategic application of IT". Individual work of 2,000 words, plus references 40%

3. End of course deliverables: A business proposal. Students are encouraged to undertake the work as part of Innovation ACT, or another innovation competition. However, the activity must take during the semester. May be performed in a group of up to six with all receiving the same mark. Up to 2,000 words, plus references, 40%.

The Innovation ACT Business proposal consists of:

1. Business Model Canvas: One page diagram of the business model, using the IACT Business Model Canvas template, or similar (about 5% to 6%).

2. Executive Summary: One page text summary of the business model (300 words, about 5% to 6%).

3. Canvas Report: Five to eight page report on development of plan (this is equivalent to 1,500 to 2,400 words of assessment, about 30% to 50% of the assessment)

4. Continuation report: Detailed plan outlining funding requirements and proposed expenditure (Assuming 5 pages, that is 25% to 30% of the assessment).

5. Pitch: Notes and visual materials for a five minute presentation. A video of the presentation can also be provided, but for academic purposes, the assessment will be based on the notes for the presentation, not the presentation itself (assessment 5% to 10%).

The learner population

The learner population for this course would have a degree in computer science, information technology, software engineering or other technology discipline. The students would typically be enrolled in a postgraduate certificate or degree program (usually a Masters by coursework) at an Australian higher education institution. Students would be in a city where they have access to an innovation competition (such as Innovation ACT in Canberra). Students would be expected to have experience at using a computer and the Internet to be able to undertake an on-line program. They would require sufficient communication skills in the language of instruction (English) and to work in teams. As Blair and Hoy (2006) point out "... an online community doesn't happen by sheer virtue of creating discussion forums and requiring weekly postings ...". Also the innovation course will be a form of group Problem Based Learning (PBL), which can be subject to dysfunctional group interaction and high cogitative load (Hung, 2011). However, it is not clear if any additional skills can be asked of the students, beyond written and computer literacy.

How the course will be delivered

The course will be delivered as in online DE format as a 12 weekly units using non-real-time (asynchronous) delivery. Course notes will be provided an an e-book, with additional readings (and videos) and weekly exercises to complete. Forums will be provided for student interaction with each other in groups and with an instructor, via a Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle. An e-portfolio system (such as Mahara) will be provided for students to collate their project material. No real-time (synchronous) activities will be provided, due to the difficulty of supporting these and of students in different time zones participating. Students will be expected to undertake team activities, and optional participation in an innovation competition, without further support from the course (organizing their own meetings and any telecommunications required). Materials and exercises will be designed in accessible web formats suitable for mobile devices. Suwantarathip and Orawiwatnakul (2015) report success delivering small exercises to students using mobile devices.

Feedback for low level tasks will be provided by small automated weekly quizzes, to assist students with terminology. Van der Kleij, Feskens and Eggen (2015) note the importance of feedback in a computer based course. Students will also receive weekly feedback and a mark from the instructor, but this will be of necessity a brief few sentences. The mark will be based on an average of peer assessment collected by the LMS and then vetted by the instructor.

Example Content

What is Innovation?: Unit 1 (What is Innovation?) provides some terminology and concepts, before the students start to think about what project they would like to work on. The primary reading is Moore (2012). Students are also introduced to the on-line discussion forums at this point and do an icebreaker exercise to become antiquated so they can then form teams in the next unit to work on a project. This fits in the course's aim of bridging theory and practice, individual student study and group project work.

Conclusion

This document provides the first two steps in instructional design (ID) for a new course "Innovation, Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship in Technology" to be offered on-line, initially for students in Canberra, Australia. The aim is to provide a formal masters level course to complement competitions, such as "Innovation ACT", catering for students who have ambitions of becoming entrepreneurs. A needs assessment, after Smith and Ragan, (2005, pp. 44) was provided and the limitations of existing courses discussed. An on-line course is discussed (noting the limitations in the fixed term based course format). A brief description of one unit is provided. This will be fowled in a separate document with creation of one learning objects for the course.

Analysis and Assessment

Conclusion

This document provides a sample of a design specifications for an innovation course. First Instructional Analysis, with learning goals, learning objectives and content analysis were carried out, followed by development of sample test items for student assessment. This will be followed in Assignment 3 by preparation of the learning object using the Moodle Leaning Management System. The course design allows for the option of either criterion-referenced or normative testing, by an adjustment to the assessment scheme.

Instructional Materials

Introduction

Here the design of an instructional unit called "An Introduction to Innovation" is completed. This is intended to be part of a new course, provisionally titled "Innovation, Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship in Technology" to be offered on-line, initially for students in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Canberra. The needs assessment, proposal, Instructional Analysis and Test Item design has already been completed. This last step in the instructional design (ID) is the preparation of one of the instructional units, using the Moodle Leaning Management System.

Unit of Instruction

The Unit of Instruction is implemented using the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS), being installable from a 130 kbyte Moodle backup file: http://www.tomw.net.au/digital_teaching/backup-moodle-course-worthington-innovation.mbz. This can be restored in the Moodle sandbox demo at: https://demo.moodle.net/

Instructional Design Strategy

Instructional strategy

The instructional unit has been designed using the instructional strategies outlined in Smith and Ragan (2005). The materials are designed for delivery via computer, using a web browser, a tablet device or smart phone. They are designed to be delivered in non-real time (asynchronous) mode for distance education. The materials have been designed to be efficiently encoded so they can be used over a low bandwidth Internet connection for remote users in developed nations and in developing nations with limited infrastructure (at a typical dial-up speed of 48.8 kbps). The instructional unit uses HTML web-based content for a learning management system (LMS), however, the materials are designed to be suitable for being printed for delivery on paper for use in distance education or in a classroom. The course notes are in the form of an e-Book, which can be read on screen, or when printed used as paper based course materials (complete with APA references). Knight (2015) in a study of eight higher education teachers in Australia found that they still saw a role for the use of such textbooks.

The instructional unit is self-instructional, with an automated quiz.Group-based activities are also suggested. However, this is intended to be just one unit in a larger course, with a human tutor. Legal and ethical considerations may also require those offering this course to have a human tutor overseeing the self-instructional units, to ensure the students are safely and correctly instructed. The unit is designed for students in the third year of an undergraduate university STEM program (science, technology, engineering or mathematics), or advanced graduate/postgraduate students undertaking a STEM component, such as those undertaking an ANU TechLauncher project (Australian National University, 2015). It should take one to two hours to complete.

Learning materials for learning outcomes

The instructional strategy used is common to many DE courses: material is presented for the student along with a self administered, automatically checked quiz. Discussion questions are provided for group discussion along with peer assessment. The materials are designed to be backward compatible with print delivery and use in a physical classroom. Also, the material is organized as a conventional lesson with introduction, materials, conclusion, activities and assessment. Directions to the learner are kept to a minimum, on the assumption that the unit forms part of a program and all program units will use the same format and LMS.

Practice with feedback is provided for the learner through multiple attempts at the automated quiz and forum discussion. Quiz feedback provides hints for answers and links to the relevant notes and model answers are provided for forum discussions. Assessment covers all learning objectives.

Promoting learner engagement and motivation.

Preparatory elements used are confined to a text introduction and the structure of the instructional unit as displayed by the LMS. It is assumed that the program the unit is part of a course which will have already aroused the interest and motivation of the learner. The idea of setting up your own business to sell your own invention is a powerful motivator for students and in the author's experience the problem can be to moderate that enthusiasm. The learner's attention is drawn to the learning objectives being aligned with the relevant international skill standard, so their learning will be globally recognized (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015).

Interaction is limited to that supported by the LMS, but includes the quizzes (student-content), which provide feedback. Learner involvement is provided through group discussion (student-student). Activities are correspond to the learning objectives and are derived from real world examples.

The use of student-instructor interaction is precluded by the requirement that the unit use self-instruction. However, this could be supported via the LMS, with human created feedback on quizzes and discussions.

Embodying great instruction

The learning materials have been designed with accessibility and maintainability as the priority. As part of a university program, the emphasis is on making the material clear and simple. Text is formatted using the XHTML Basic subset of the HTML markup language (Baker, Matsui, Stark & Wugofski, 2000). The text is in one column, with sizes, font and colors inherited from the LMS and is designed to adapt automatically to the small screens of hand-held devices. The content is formatted for conformance to Level AAA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 2.0 (World Wide Web Consortium, 2008).

The writing style and reading level is intended for third year STEM university students, but taking into account that many may have English as a second language. Introduced technical terms are provided in a glossary. Navigation is limited to that provided by the LMS, with it assumed the learner will progress linearly through the material (with no complex branching). A brief video is provided.

Embodying great instruction: The aim of embodying "great instruction" is not one the author believes appropriate, or subscribes to. Instructional design should be adequate for the learner's requirements, fit for the intended purpose and within the budget available for development. Attempting to make "great instruction" implies going beyond what is required, wasting teaching resources, risking producing something too complex and expensive to be feasible.

Reflecting on instructional design and future improvements

The original aim was to design a complete 12 week course, which turned out to be too larger a challenge. Just one module of the course was produced. It would have been useful to limit the scope of the problem earlier. The requirement for the unit to be self-instruction has implications for instructional design, as well as for the larger questions of the future of education and the self image of teachers. It would have been worth exploring these issues in more depth and perhaps resolving them and deciding exactly what a self-instruction unit is, before beginning design work.

Timing: Reducing the unit to something which could be done in one hour provided to be a challenge. Designing a unit of instruction as small as one hour is a concept alien to someone used to designing week long units (eight to ten hours student work). It proved difficult finding something small enough to learn in one hour. The Peer reviewer pointed out firmly that the first attempt was far too large ("All this in an hour?"), but a second attempt with reduced readings proved more feasible. The Peer reviewer also questioned the readability of the materials, describing them as "dry" and with a Gunning fog index 15. The materials were changed in response, but materials for an advanced university course in a STEM area is going to always be a bit dry. Shuptrine and Lichtenstein (1985) measured the readability levels of undergraduate marketing textbooks at 15 to 20 on the Gunning fog index, indicating this innovation course is at the lower end of this range.

A remaining problem with timing is the wide range of language skills of potential learners. McEwan (2012, p. 80) notes:

"Typically, a student with an overall 6.5 IELTS score will have a reading speed for comprehension of approximately 80 words per minute as compared to 400 words per minute for native speakers."

Based on these speeds, the unit would take an IELTS 6.5 student one hundred minutes and a student fluent in academic English less than one hour to complete all tasks.

Tools: The unit was developed by hand, which proved to be challenging, even for such a small unit. One improvement would have been to use software development tools from the computer industry. As an example, version control software automatically keeps track of changes made to content, allowing for different versions to be maintained and for work by multiple developers (an open source software project may have hundreds, or thousands, of developers).

At the same time I was designing this unit I was teaching a course for graduate students on a related subject. It may have been useful to involve the students in the design process, asking them what they thought beginning students need to know and what was a suitable form of instruction.

Positioning: The unit is intended to be part of a real educational program which teaches innovation, using a combination of coursework and a project (where the student can set up a real company to sell their product). The aim is to do a small amount of further development work and then trial the unit on a class of about 200 students in the second half of 2015. The first run through of the course would not involve assessment of the students (only evaluation of the unit). The materials would then be further improved and released publicly as free open access materials, with the hope I would be hired (and paid) to teach the material.

Conclusion

The design an introductory instructional unit for a new course in innovation was completed. This will be offered on-line, to students in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Canberra in the second half of 2015. One of the lessons learned from this design was how very difficult and time consuming the design of an instructional unit is. While there are theories, tools and techniques to assist with this, the unsolved problem is a business model for an education system to support such a development activity.

Introduction to Innovation (Sample Course Notes)

Next: Planning and Management.

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About the book: Digital Teaching In Higher Education

Higher Education is a global industry, driving a new technological, industrial revolution. However, it is important to remember education is about teachers helping students learn. This work is a collection of short essays exploring how to use digital technology to provide a form of teaching which will meet social and economic goals, and make use of technology, while still having a place for the academic as a teacher. Drawing on work undertaken for a Masters of Education in Distance Education, this book charts one future for Higher Education, including instructional design, planning and management, catering for international students, using Open Education Resources and Mobile Learning. E-learning designer and computer professional, Tom Worthington MEd FACS CP, uses as a case study his award-winning course in ICT Sustainability and the design of a new innovation and entrepreneurship course.