Thursday, March 7, 2002

A New Handbook Collects Essays About the Nuts and Bolts of Online Learning By BROCK READ With the recent demise of for-profit distance-learning ventures at both New York and Temple Universities and the continuing fallout from the dot-com crash, online educators can be forgiven for approaching their field with as much caution as exuberance, according to Allison Rossett, a professor of educational technology at San Diego State University. "The honeymoon is over," she says. But Ms. Rossett remains "ecstatic" about the possibilities of online learning: "I am a believer," she says. And a compendium of essays that she compiled and edited, The ASTD E-Learning Handbook (McGraw-Hill, 2002), proves that her field is still a fertile one for professors and professionals. The book offers more than 500 pages of advice on a broad range of issues facing online educators. "I wanted to further the cause of e-learning, but I wanted to do it in a responsible fashion," says Ms. Rossett. She decided to include essays that provided specific advice to professionals working in online teaching and training -- not just in higher education, but also in government and corporate programs. The book opens with an article by Ms. Rossett titled "Waking in the Night and Thinking About E-Learning," but most of the pieces deal with online education in action, not in the abstract. One article discusses methods of preventing student attrition; others recommend instructional games, knowledge-sharing techniques, and blended-learning methods (in which lessons are delivered through a variety of media). The book "is meant to be a handbook for professional practice," according to Ms. Rossett. "It answers people's questions about today and maybe Friday, but not necessarily 2005." Most of the essays in the guide have already been published in online or print journals, but others were written or revised specifically for the book. The articles include analyses of the costs and benefits of online education and recommendations for training future e-learning professionals; they close with a series of case studies from online-learning endeavors at Cisco Systems Inc., Oracle Corporation, the University of Virginia, and several U.S. government agencies. The book's range of suggestions and studies is its greatest strength, according to Marc Rosenberg, a principal with DiamondCluster, an online-learning consulting firm. "Some books take a very traditional view of e-learning," he says, "but Allison Rossett and the authors have expanded the scope of e-learning and looked at it from many different angles." Mr. Rosenberg is himself the author of E-Learning: Strategies for Delivering Knowledge in the Information Age (McGraw-Hill, 2001). Ms. Rossett solicited several articles from graduate students who completed noteworthy projects -- including Rebecca Vaughan Frazee, a student of hers who helped her compile the book. Another such contributor was Nory B. Jones, who collaborated with James Laffey, an associate professor of information science at the University of Missouri at Columbia, on a paper about data and information-sharing. Ms. Jones -- now an assistant professor of management and information sciences at the University of Maine -- has published other articles in online and print journals, but writing for the handbook was "a great career opportunity," she says. In at least one respect, Ms. Rossett's book is notable for something it does not do: focus extensively on higher education. While many of the articles were written by college professors and technology experts, most focus on corporate education and professional training. Ms. Rossett says this is due in part to the nature of her own work, which usually involves government and corporate programs. The emphasis on corporate e-learning should give academic administrators "a fresh way of looking at things," according to Ms. Rossett. Issues facing corporate trainers -- like the application of interactive technology, the length of class sessions, and interaction between individuals and groups -- are issues that colleges would do well to examine, she argues. "Higher-education administrators should step out of their shoes and take a look at what Cisco, the IRS, and AT&T are doing," she says. Background articles from The Chronicle: Debating the Demise of NYUonline (12/14/2001) Temple U. Shuts Down For-Profit Distance-Education Company ( 7/20/2001) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

Colleges bash Bush administration proposal on work study and community service Bush said to have picked vice dean from Johns Hopkins U. as NIH director Head of humanities endowment defends Bush administration's priorities for agency California voters approve 13 of 14 bond measures for community-college facilities U. of North Carolina board approves 8% increase in tuition, plus more on some campuses U. of Iowa receives record $63-million pledge for biomedical research Actions against 4 professors at Medaille College raise concern over academic freedom Northwestern U. fires the director of its press Peking U. punishes professor for plagiarizing American textbook Colleges are unconcerned by online author's $2.6-billion copyright lawsuit  A new handbook collects essays about the nuts and bolts of online learning