The Virtual Classroom® and the Virtual University at New Jersey Institute of Technology

With support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, NJIT has completed one project which used Asynchronous Learning Networks plus videotaped lectures to create, deliver, and evaluate the effectiveness of the major courses needed for bachelor's degrees in Information Systems and Computer Science. These project results are summarized below, and many more detailed results can be found in separate listings in this home page section.

Beginning in January 1997, a three year extension of the initial project seeks to greatly expand the courses, departments, and degree programs offered via ALN. This new project is also briefly summarized below.

A. Video Plus Virtual Classroom: Educational Excellence Through Self-Paced Learning (1993- 1996)

Review of Project Goals and Summary of Results

The original grant proposal summary stated:

"This is a proposal for a demonstration project which will seek to use a specially tailored form of educational computer conferencing called the Virtual ClassroomTM, in combination with Video, to attain five objectives:

1. Faster progress towards the undergraduate degree, by facilitating self-paced learning and solving major educational logistics problems;
   
2. Improved quality of learning through the increased collaborative learning and faculty-student interaction facilitated by computer conferencing;
   
3. Increased access to educational opportunities for working adults or those trying to re-enter the work force, particularly women;
   
4. Formative and summative evaluation of the effectiveness of this media mix used in different ways, for attaining the above objectives; and
5. Dissemination of the successful techniques developed in this project to other institutions, to facilitate its replication.
   

This project will develop, offer, and assess the effectiveness of an undergraduate major in Information Systems delivered via a combination of Video plus Virtual Classroom, with experimentation with different scheduling strategies to find out what works best to increase students' rate of progress toward the degree. The initial target degree is the Bachelor of Arts in Information Systems taught by the CIS department at NJIT, though all of the courses are also applicable to the slightly more rigorous B.S. in Computer Science, and NJIT plans to complete the remaining courses to offer the complete B.S. degree following this project. It will take three years to complete the budgeted activities, plus some additional years of impact measurement."

This is a brief summary of the evidence on the extent to which the project met each of its objectives and announced activities, which have been underlined above for emphasis. In addition, this summary will also examine in more detail some of the specific innovations or experiments that were tried, and the extent to which they did or did not seem to work. Finally, it will describe some of the problems encountered, which other institutions may which institute ALN programs may expect to face. However, rather than following the order of activities as they were listed in the proposal, we will start with a description of what was "produced" and of the evaluation methods used to answer the questions about the extent to which the goals were achieved.

The data indicate that the project goals were largely achieved. Specifically:

• Course production goals were met.
• Enrollments showed steady growth, reaching about 250 per semester by the end of the project.
• Extensive evaluation and dissemination activities were completed.
• Over half of the students in the VC + video experimental sections felt that having this option available enabled them to complete more courses that semester than would have otherwise been possible (and thus make faster progress toward their degree.)
• Objective grade data indicate that students withdraw or receive Incompletes more in distance courses than in traditional campus-based courses. However, those who complete the course tend to do as well as students in traditional sections.

Subjectively, the majority of students feel that the Virtual Classroom improved the convenience of course access, access to their professors, and the quality of learning.

• Correlation statistics support the theoretical premise that active participation by both faculty and students, and the use of group or collaborative learning strategies in ALN, are positively related to desirable outcomes.
  

Some problems encountered included:

• Marketing- despite special efforts, it was harder than anticipated to enroll new distance students as degree candidates for the distance learning degrees. New marketing strategies need to be developed for this new mode of delivery.
  
• Technological glitches and roadblocks: Constantly increased demand for access to the ALN system and other campus computing facilities put pressure on the systems and sometimes caused slowdowns or blockages or outages in service that inconvenienced students and faculty. For instance, despite increasing campus dialin ports from approximately 32 to 96 during the project, this was insufficient. It became necessary to create a special modem bank reserved for project students in order for them to be assured no busy signals. Getting the new modem bank installed included a several month wait for the phone company, which was behind due, in part, to the demand created everywhere for new Internet related connections. The machines that handled a few courses online well started to bog down under the pressure of several hundred active users, and software and hardware upgrades were necessary. One can generally expect that such problems are endemic for the present, and plan for redundant or backup channels of communication with students when and if such problems are encountered.
  
• Unresolved policy problems about faculty load, faculty support and compensation, intellectual property, proper training and supervision of adjuncts assigned to online sections, sources of funding for production of new courses involving ALN, etc. Faculty union committees are now examining some of these issues, on the NJIT campus (and on other campuses). It can be expected that ALN, as a new model for teaching, will challenge some of the existing practices and policies on campuses, and they will have to be re-examined and changed.
  

B. New Project: From Virtual Classroom to Virtual University: Institutionalizing Asychronous Learning Networks at NJIT (Jan 1997- December 1999).

If the innovation is not to languish, there must be a major expansion in the depth and breadth of use of ALN at NJIT, and continued experimentation with means to make it more effective. Within three years, we want to grow to at least 500 students matriculated in distance programs which use ALN as a key component, and to total enrollments of at least 2000 per year. Specific objectives to enable us to achieve these goals in the three year project include:

1. Complete the full set of courses needed for not only the major courses but also the full degree programs for the BAIS and BSCS, in ALN format. Currently prospective distance students are told to go to a nearby college to pick up some of the "missing" general education requirements, possible minor, and other supporting courses. . This severely limits our ability to attract and retain matriculated students in the program. This will also start to involve many other departments at NJIT, so that the innovation will spread beyond the CIS department faculty. As long as only CIS faculty were involved in a relatively small number of CIS courses offered via ALN, this was seen by most of NJIT faculty as simply a CIS research project. Thus the first step in institutionalizing the innovation is to involve a significant number of faculty from other schools and departments at NJIT, and to give them a vested interest in ALN by having programs that they offer via this medium.

2. Building on the initial involvement of a number of schools and departments at NJIT in completing the two degrees, develop and offer a variety of certificate programs, degree programs, bridge programs or other sequences of courses, via distance modes that have an ALN component as a key feature. The proposed new programs using ALN in combination with video or CD ROM or other multimedia modes will add master's programs in CIS, plus three "bridge" programs (the courses that a non-major in a field has to take to be able to matriculate in a masters program), and three graduate level certificate programs (which can be a stepping stone to a full master's program, both for the student and the department), in the School of Industrial Management, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. Other departments will also be encouraged to take part.
   Besides the BAIS, BSCS, MSCS, MSIS, CoE bridges and Telecommunications Networking certificate programs, the other programs included in this new project are:
   • Bridge program to the Master's in Management.

   • Certificate program in Health Care Information Systems (also called "biomedical informatics") .

   • Graduate certificate in Professional and Technical Communications, to be produced by the department of Humanities and Social Sciences. This is a case of the "medium being the message." Students are being taught to design, write for, etc., new computer based media; it is thus a natural fit to teach use of the new media, via new edia!
     

3. Faculty Training and support as they learn to teach effectively in an ALN environment, is the conceptual and budgetary heart of this proposal. There will be both formal (2-3 day) faculty workshops, and ongoing peer and technical support, to enable faculty to learn how to effectively use state-or-the-art ALN tools and pedagogical techniques based on collaborative learning, to convert a specific course to one that is a distance course that uses text-based computer conferencing in combination with multimedia tools and other anytime/ anywhere technologies, to deliver a course. Once a faculty member has been given the time and support and experience with designing and delivering one course via ALN, it is expected that she or he will join the ranks of the "experienced" who go on to convert other courses and to offer peer support to other faculty members involved in this innovation. Information on the faculty training materials and strategies that work well will be shared with other institutions.
   

4. Systematically experiment with new innovations in the implementation of ALN that are designed to alleviate problems identified during the initial phase of the project, including:
   

   a. Strategies for dealing with "too large" sections (those over 30)

   
   b. Strategies for dealing with sections that are "too small" to be financially and pedagogically a success. Specifically, we wish to implement much more widespread integration of regular sections with remote sections of some courses, using the VC. This innovation will both solve problems of insufficient enrollments in some purely distance sections to provide "critical mass," and, we believe, will improve the quality of the experience for both on-campus and distance students.

   
   c. Alternatives to examinations on campus or by arranged personal "proctors," including systematic study of the use of the "exam activity" software.

   
   d. Orienting students new to ALN, in order to improve retention.
   (Experimentation with "pre-course" orientation using various lengths of time and media).

   
   e. Incorporating multimedia/hypermedia course components.
   

5. Focus evaluation research on the above innovations; disseminate results to encourage the spread of ALN. Establish an ongoing evaluation program for student/faculty input to formative evaluation; automate this so that it can continue after funding ends.