Flexible learning and the "electronic classroom"

The primary objective of this paper is to provide an overview of how the rapidly emerging array of flexible delivery methods, are being accommodated in existing and new facilities. Many of these delivery methods are emerging through opportunities in new technology. The chain of events commencing with developments in technology and communications through curriculum redesign, production, staff development, course delivery and consumption is explored. These developments, and their impact on facilities, are considered in the context of emerging regional development, the move towards the development of learning skills and the linkages between education, training, the workplace and home. They are also related to the necessity for access and equity, socialisation and whole of life education.

Case studies are examined to illustrate the arguments presented. The case studies explore how technology will influence facility design to enhance student learning and program production. Influences on delivery through the use of a variety of communications and technologically driven methods including video conferencing, teletheatres, "electronic libraries", "electronic classrooms " and flexible learning centres will also be explored. The case studies will include examples from the three key educational sectors - university, TAFE and schools, and will include:

• The new Information Technology Building at the University of New England. This new facility will be the virtual centre of information technology production and delivery at UNE at Armidale.

• The strategic plan for TAFE capacity in South Australia including the Mt Gambier TAFE expansion proposals.

• The strategic plans for the rehabilitation and expansion of the Kincoppal Rose Bay K-12 school and the proposed new library, IT and residential facilities.

The paper concludes with a review of TAFE's "Physical Facilities for Flexible Learning" by its Flexible Delivery Working Party. It explores future scenarios which will inevitably proliferate and impact on educational facility planning and design and which have already been explored by the OECD's program in Educational Buildings "PEB Exchange".

This paper examines strategic issues in planning educational facilities for IT. A number of case study examples in three educational sectors are explored to see how these issues are being managed, literally, on the drawing board. It speculates on what the future might hold for educational facilities, as planners respond to the impact of IT. It also considers how education and knowledge generation, which remain fundamentally dependent on social and work based interaction, might be influenced in educational facility design developments.

The learning environment

The designers of educational buildings have a unique responsibility because they give physical expression to the meaning of education in a society. What education represents for all of us is now changing faster than ever before. We are all therefore concerned about the best way of providing flexibility in the systems we create [1].

In fact, the OECD, who are co-sponsors of this conference, has felt that educational facility planning is so crucial that they have been funding a Program in Educational Building for some years. This unit has been collating, coordinating and leading educational facility developments, primarily in Europe, over the past decade or so. Other specialist units have also emerged. For example the "National Interface Task Force", a unit in the USA, which has been exploring the interface between facilities and learning, notes that: "until the educational delivery mode is specified, it is difficult to plan for emerging technologies[2]"

SCUP (the Society for College and University Planning) regularly reviews issues related to technology and educational facilities in its quarterly journal. DEET (the Australian Department of Employment, Education and Training) has published a series of reviews on technology and its impact on facilities. One of the major findings was that the investment in video conferencing has:

placed Australia far in advance of any other country in terms of establishing an infrastructure, fostering practice and developing an understanding of video conferencing[3]

Where are we now, where are we going and how do we get there?

Where are we now?

• Capital renewal cost - facilities are continually accruing maintenance liability and potential obsolescence. How to upgrade facilities and include the rapid advances in IT and communications is increasingly requiring attention by facility managers.

• The rate of change and cost of IT - hardware and software appear to have a maximum useful life of 2-3 years. The capital equipment, networking and software expenditure being committed to sustaining state of the art computing is impacting heavily on institutional budgets.

• Slow response and cost of curriculum development - technological advances have not been matched with advances in curriculum development. In fact some might argue that the innately conservative nature of the teaching profession ("chalk and talk") inhibits the maximum possible benefit derived from IT advances. The Monterey Institute of Technology and Higher Studies, in order to overcome this dilemma, is "...using extraordinary teachers who are able to do the most with the system"[4]

• Simulated workplace learning - there is an increasing trend to replicating the workplace in the learning environment:

  The failure of work learning styles in the university context and educational styles in the workplace, suggest that forms of "bridging apprenticeships", such as the QUT cooperative education program, should be developed and expanded[5].

  This reflects the age old "master/apprentice" model of yester-year, resulting in increased linkages between education and training institutions and industry.

• The previous demarcation between education vs. training - is being eroded as universities, TAFEs and schools provide increasing articulation for student pathways to learning.

• Social interaction remains probably the most significant factor which will be impacted on by IT. Whilst employers continue to express their dismay at the lack of people skills new graduates have, the various modes of individualised learning delivery methods has only served to exacerbate the situation. Project and multi-disciplinary teams are increasingly used in the work place, research environment and in education and training and this factor needs to be considered in planning facilities for IT and future pedagogical trends.

Where are we going?

• An OECD meeting of experts in Paris, in March, 1994 - recognised that there are a number of key issues emerging. For example regional centres are increasingly seeking higher educational establishments as they are seen as attractors of industry and activity. It noted that student choice of institution is changing as they become more mobile whilst distance and open learning educational opportunities are increasing.

  Again there is tension between the growing and important provision of information technology (open and distance learning in the UK and the Netherlands, the need to support large numbers of portable computers in the USA) and the desire to encourage personal, human interaction[6].

• Lifelong learning - will provide greater demand on restricted resources. Flexible modes of delivery will increase to provide choice to the market place.

• International developments - include various twinning and other arrangements. This is resulting in the need for specialised facilities both on and off shore, together with sophisticated IT and communications, as institutions compete for the educational export dollar and local student seek to venture to overseas campuses for parts of their programs.

• Quality and competition - national quality ranking of universities and greater devolution in TAFE and schools is increasing competition. To date no ranking related to the quality of facilities or IT is evident. What impact would a development such as this have?

• Equity and access - is increasingly a requirement, from both a social justice perspective and in order to gain greater market penetration.

• Information technology and communications - have resulted in a range of delivery options, as set out in the diagram below[7].

What are the current trends?

These developments are occurring with a range of new (and old) tools and facilities, as follows:

• Teletheatres - will seat around 50 students to maximise the intimacy of the video networking to two (or more) other sites. Simultaneously networking more than three appears to provide difficulties in the facilitator managing interaction from students at the remote sites. The theatres have motorised video cameras at the front focusing on students and the facilitator, a white board and/or a computer imager, with voice or button activated microphones able to receive all participants in the theatre.

  This model has been tried successfully this year as a collaborative arrangement for the engineering degree program at the University of Adelaide's North Terrace Campus, The University of South Australia's Levels Campus and the Flinders University's Bedford Park Campus.

• Video conferencing - is alive and well in the TAFE network in South Australia. Two video cameras, with microphones for each of the 10 to 12 participants, are linked by telephone lines to a number of sites in the city and in regional South Australia. The only difficulty so far has been the limitations of transmission limited to two telephone lines, and the cost of equipment to complete expansion plans.

• The classroom of the future - "....it is impossible to predict the form that instructional technology will take during the lifetime of any classroom built now"[9]. Notebook computers are likely to have a major impact - a "computer literate" assumption is being made at a number of higher educational institutions, which is pushing out computer labs and using student owned notebooks - no pens or drawing boards implies no computers supplied.

  This is emerging as a possibility at other universities and in some private schools. Obviously equity is an issue, and this development will be slow until the price of notebook computers drops or they are made available for hire, loan or lease by educational institutions.

• The "electronic library" [10] a recent strategic facility planning study by Woods Bagot of the National Library of Australia required the planners to provide for a doubling of reader spaces and circulation. The new Berwick Campus at Monash will make use of the adjacent Casey TAFE for hard copies and will focus on electronic/ digital access, storage and retrieval of material for students at that campus.

• Interactive TV - will increasingly emerge as a significant delivery method. One radio guest (name unknown) commentator recently noted that the larger shopping malls may provide an insight to the future of educational delivery. The introduction of TAB, EFT-POS, video parlours, virtual reality, computer based marketing displays and touch screens are all evident, complete with a great range of responsive emotions by users to suit.

• The teleworker - using advanced computer network infrastructures to "bring work to the people as distinct from bringing people to the work"[11].

• Computer teaching suites - have been in use for 10 to 15 years. However, their future use is in some doubt as the cost of updating specialised instructional software and hardware increases.

• Tutorial rooms - are likely to contain networked PCs with CD ROM; two video cameras, one for materials capture and one tor student capture; microphone; simultaneous "white board simulation"; facsimile; laser printer and ITV[12]. These are a from of video conferencing facility.

• IT support areas it is now essential that "...support areas are no longer a luxury. Without them a computer based learning environment cannot be maintained. Space standards even in "traditional" school buildings must be reassessed to take account of this need"[13].

• Flexible learning centres - are expanding at an increasing rate. For example the University of Central Queensland has a network of "Branch Campuses" at nine or ten sites in Northern Queensland. SA DETAFE is developing a range of these centres as opportunities and funds allow. Many initiatives are evolving in industry for collaboration in the development of work based flexible learning centres.

• Equipment - the range and complexity continues to expand. Electronic white boards, imagers, video, international computer links, CD ROM, ITV and computer based touch screen controls in teletheatres are just some of the innovations now being used.

• "Futuristic" - artificial intelligence and virtual reality have yet to take a significant hold in general educational and training programs due primarily to cost. However, they are in use in some specialised training centres, eg. pilot training and robotics. Some are available in video games centres and a major centre outside Paris has focused on these as part of a range of IT platforms for educational delivery.

Three case studies

They reflect Cassel's[14] view that technology will become increasingly dispersed and potentially anarchic and that, whilst many educational buildings are prisons of learning, new technology has empowered the individual to escape from using these facilities.

University IT and communications buildings and DEC

In both buildings there is a wide range of IT and communications spatial and equipment infrastructure to accommodate the range of delivery modes noted above. Key features include maximising the possibilities for social interaction through design, centrality and openness of the structures.

TAFE flexible delivery links with industry video conferencing and CBT

The facilities contain a range of IT and communications infrastructure which will enable flexible learning and flexible delivery and optimise opportunities for interaction with industry and the community. They will also enhance opportunities for greater articulation and pathways for students to higher levels of learning.

Schools and IT - the "library of the future"

It has found that, to survive in the highly competitive private educational marketplace, it has had to embrace technology to better serve its regional customers.

Conclusions - what of the future?

Whilst curriculum development is much slower to take advantage of these technologies, the delivery techniques themselves are here now and must be designed for. Perhaps we should be exploring the massive changes in international marketing, entertainment, gambling and retail industries to foreshadow the nature of change in delivery in the future.

Educational facility planners must understand the integration and interaction of the learning, physical and IT environments, as flexible learning centres emerge in the three educational sectors, in the community and in industry[15]. The overriding issue of people interaction, as a fundamental basis of learning and knowledge generation, must not be underestimated. The notion of flexible learning centres is a likely and significant solution to this proposition.

However, the pre-eminent consideration in all of these ideas must be the availability of choice for the consumer.

Endnotes

1. "New Technology and its Impact on Educational Buildings"; OECD; Paris; 1992

2. "Technology and Education: Designing Educational Facilities to Avoid Premature Obsolescence"; Dr W E Hathaway; CEFPI Journal; Dec., 1988.

3. "Video Conferencing in Higher Education in Australia"; Occasional Paper Series; DEET Higher Education Division; AGPS; 1993.

4. "Overseas Experience in Non-Traditional Modes of Delivery using State of the Art Technologies"; R Caladine; Occasional Paper Series; HED; DEET; AGPS; 1993.

5. "Learning Contexts of University and Work"; R Gardiner & P Singh; Evaluations and Investigations Program; DEET; AGPS; 1991.

6. "The Planning and Design of New Higher Educational Buildings"; Progress Report; OECD Meeting of Experts; Paris, April, 1994.

7. "Technology Survey Report"; Open Training and Education Network; 1994.

8. "Computer Based Education in Australian Higher Education"; T Cochrane, H D Ellis, S L Johnston; Evaluations and Investigations Program; DEET; March 93.

9. "Design of General Purpose Classrooms and Lecture Halls"; R L Allen; Penn State University; 1991.

10. "What Size Libraries for 2010"; M Matier & C Sidle; Planning for Higher Education; Vol 21; SCUP, 93.

11. "Information Technology Policies: New Challenges for Global Competition and Cooperation"; OECD; Paris; 1994.

12. "Berwick Campus Brief'; Monash University; Woods Bagot; 1994.

13. "The Alford Information Technology Centre"; OECD; PEB; 1989.

14. Op Cit.; OECD; 1992

15. "Physical Facilities for Flexible Delivery"; Flexible Delivery Working Party; June 1994.

Bibliography and references

1. "New Technology and its Impact on Educational Buildings"; OECD; Paris; 1992

2. "Technology and Education: Designing 2 Educational Facilities to Avoid Premature Obsolescence"; Dr W E Hathaway; CEFPI Journal; Dec., 1988.

3. "Video Conferencing in Higher Education in Australia"; Occasional Paper Series; DEET Higher Education Division; AGPS; 1993.

4. "Overseas Experience in Non-Traditional Modes of Delivery using State of the Art Technologies"; R Caladine; Occasional Paper Series; HED; DEET; AGPS; 1993.

5. "Learning Contexts of University and Work"; R Gardiner & P Singh; Evaluations and Investigations Program; DEET; AGPS; 1991.

6. "The Planning and Design of New Higher Educational Buildings"; Progress Report; OECD Meeting of Experts; Paris, April, 1994.

7. "Technology Survey Report"; Open Training and Education Network; 1994.

8. "Computer Based Education in Australian x Higher Education"; T Cochrane, H D Ellis, S L Johnston; Evaluations and Investigations Program; DEET; March 93.

9. "Design of General Purpose Classrooms and Lecture Halls"; R L Allen; Penn State University; 1991.

10. "What Size Libraries for 2010"; M Matier & C Sidle; Planning for Higher Education; Vol 21; SCUP, 93.

11. "Information Technology Policies: New Challenges for Global Competition and Cooperation"; OECD; Paris; 1994.

12. "Berwick Campus Brief'; Monash University; Woods Bagot; 1994.

13. "The Alford Information Technology Centre"; OECD; PEB; 1989.

14. "Physical Facilities for Flexible Delivery"; Flexible Delivery Working Party; June 1994.

Author: Kenn Fisher is Principal Educational Planner with Woods Bagot Pty Ltd, 91 King William Street, Adelaide, SA 5000, Telephone (08) 212 7600. Please cite as: Fisher, K. (1994). Flexible learning and the "electronic classroom". In J. Steele and J. G. Hedberg (eds), Learning Environment Technology: Selected papers from LETA 94, 75-80. Canberra: AJET Publications. http://www.aset.org.au/confs/edtech94/ak/fisher.html