Comparison and Contrast between SLN and
Beiwai Online
This article is going to compare SUNY learning network
in the US and Beiwai Online College in China. Based on her learning experience
in SLN and her teaching experience in Beiwai Online College, the author is
going to focus on the following three aspects:
1.
The structure
of both systems.
2.
The
interaction between the students and teachers in both systems.
3.
The teaching philosophy
of the two systems.
This article will compare and contrast SLN and Beiwai Online College in
the above three aspects with the goal to learn from SLN and to make
contribution to the future construction and teaching activities of Beiwai
Online College.
Key words: Online education; Interaction; Discussion; Tutor; Student
centered.
从SLN和北外网院看中外远程教育的异同
本文将基于作者在美留学时在纽约州立大学网络系统的学习经历以及回国后在北外网院上海财大教学点执教的亲身经历，对纽约州立大学网络学习系统和北外网院进行对比,着重研究以下三个方面：
1.这两个网络学习系统的基本构架
2.网络系统中师生之间的互动关系，以及对教学效果的影响
3.这两个网络学习系统不同的教学哲学
希望通过该研究，能吸取国外的先进经验，取长补短，为北外网院的进一步发展做出贡献。
With the repaid development of modern
information technology, online education has become very popular all over the
world. No matter in the US, the most developed country, or in China, the most
populated country, more and more people are using distance education to update their
knowledge. SLN and Beiwai Online are two representative learning networks in
these two countries. Based on my learning experience in the US and my teaching experience
in China, I would like to compare and contrast these two learning systems.
Hopefully, through this comparison, we can find common laws in distance education
and identify the distinguishing features of each individual system.
As we all know, the US is a pioneer in the world in
applying technology in education and SUNY learning network is a national leader
of online education in the U.S.. It eliminates the constraints of time and
location that higher education normally places on students and provides
opportunities to people at all ages previously precluded from taking classes
due to geographic barriers and busy personal and professional schedules. Supported
by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and SUNY System administration office of the
Provost-Advanced Learning & Information Services, SLN has created an infrastructure
to support asynchronous online courses for the 64 institutions and nearly 400, 000
students of the State University of New York system. Rather than each campus
developing its own online interface and support network, SLN has developed and implemented
operational and support services that can be shared across the entire SUNY system.
Within this consistent interface, students can easily follow the course while
instructors still have a great deal of flexibility and powerful tools for
developing their own courses. Developing
at an amazing speed, currently SLN has more than 40 degree programs and offers 2000
courses and its enrollment of students this year has reached more than 50000.
SUNY learning new work has received the EDUCASE Award for Systemic progress in Teaching and Learning and the Sloan Consortium Award for Excellence in ALN Faulty Development. The advantages of this system can be summarized by the words of Dr. Karen Swan, a professor in State University at Albany, “The students love it and the SUNY Learning Network gives access to higher education to those who previously have not been able to fit college courses into their lives.”
As a graduate from SUNY, I experienced SLN myself. I
took several online courses when I was doing the program of Curriculum design
and instructional technology at SUNY at Albany. Like in many other programs, a student
can get the master degree of CDIT without going to campus so long as he has
gained enough credits online from SLN. And this benefited me greatly when I was
fulfilling my teaching responsibility in a university in China and doing an American
degree via SLN at the same time.
In one of my online courses, my instructor said in the virtual community
of the course that if there was a competition about the distance between the
teacher and the student, he would surely win the championship. At that time,
there were very few students taking SLN courses across the Pacific Ocean.
When
I came back to China, I had the great honor to work as a tutor for Beiwai Online
in the learning center of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and
through this job I get to know Beiwai Online. Since Beiwai Online was published in 2000, it has provided
new opportunities of English higher education to many people in China who have
missed the opportunity of learning English due to various kinds of reasons. Being one of the 67 Chinese online
institutes authorized by the Chinese State Education Commission, Beiwai Online
is the first Chinese online education college qualified to confer English degrees
to students. Currently it offers English diploma program, Bachelor degree
Program and English training program. The graduates of Beiwai Online can get the
degree certificate officially issued by Beiwai and authorized by the Chinese
State Education Commission. At present, it has 44 local learning centers in 22 provinces
and it has enrolled more than 8000 students. It has established its own quality
control system, tutoring system and study support system.
By using the modern informational technology and
outsourcing teaching resources, Beiwai Online has set up a modern, open and
multi-level distance learning system for English education, which strongly meet
the increasing needs of English study in the Chinese society. It advocates
modern teaching methods and emphasizes students' self studies. Beiwai Online
has been quite successful since it was first founded and it is expanding
amazingly. I feel very honored to be a tutor of Beiwai Online in Shanghai and I
was very fortunate getting involved with the activities of such a prestigious
online college.
Based
on my personal experience with these two learning systems, I am going to
compare SLN and Beiwai Online through the following 3 aspects.
I. Comparison
of the structure of the two systems.
First
let’s have a look at the structure of these two different learning systems. SLN
is virtualizing its university and its teaching and learning activities are
very similar with a traditional class:
students read course materials, write papers, do research and
communicate with their instructor and fellow students. The only difference is
that the students and the faculty use internet technology to accomplish these tasks.
All the classroom activities are conducted in the cyberspace and the teacher
and students interact with each other in the virtual classrooms.
Now let’s see how everything in SLN is carried out. When
one enters the interface of SLN, he will see the following three big sections.
1) Course
Information. This section contains general introduction to
this course. It has items such as welcome message, registration information,
contact information, overview, course objective, textbook and reading, course learning activities, course schedule, plagiarism, etc..
2) Learning modules.
This section has the following 3 parts.
Discussion. This is
a required discussion area for each module. All the students have to post discussion
postings according to the thread or the topic of this unit. And the teacher
comments on it and grades it immediately. Usually for each module, every student
has to supply at least three postings and each posting will count a certain
credits.
Talk with the professor. This is a
place where the students can ask the teacher all kinds of the questions
concerning the content of this unit.
Question area. If a
student has any questions concerning the content of the course, he can ask his classmates
and the teacher questions in this column.
3) Class Community. This is an area for
social activities outside class. The teacher and students can have discussion not
only about the content of the lessons, but also about things outside the classroom teaching. It contains the following
sections:
Meet your classmates. This is an area for the student to introduce himself
to the class and meet the others enrolled in the course. This is a starting
place for the class community.
The Bulletin board. This is an area where the students talk and chat with their
classmates or with the instructor outside the class. It is similar to students
talking in the hallway after a conventional classroom course. The students and
the teachers share their experiences both in and outside the class .
Your evaluation. This is a place where the teachers
give the grades to students’ homework.
Shared references. This is the place where teachers and students contribute
internet resources to the class. Every module, students are required to post a
website or some other learning resources for the class so that they can share the
references with each other.
The Online Office Hours & your private
folder This is a section specifically designed for all private communication
between the student and the instructor. All documents created in this area are
private and viewable only between the instructor and the individual
student.
From the above
description, we can see SLN has built up all kinds of channels for the public
and private communication and has provided great potential for the interaction
between the SLN teachers and students.
Different from SLN network where all teaching and learning activities
are conducted together in one platform, Beiwai Online has two separate
platforms for teachers and students. Most of the activities of the teacher
happen on the teacher's platform while students’ activities take place on the
student’s platform so its teaching and learning activities are separated. On the teacher’s platform there are sections such as
Announcement, Tutorial, Student Question Management, Assignment, Study Record,
Reference Materials, Self-assessment, Chat Room, Grades, Tutor’s Garden, Subject
Management, TC Management, Course Evaluation, Calendar, Virtual Classroom. On
the student’s platform there are sections as Announcement, Course Content
References, Tutorial Materials, Self-assessment, Assignments, Group works,
Forum, Course Evaluation & FAQ. Except an interlinked forum, all the other activities in
teacher’s platform and the student’s platform are separated. As far as I know,
there are two forums in Beiwai Online; one
is the interlinked forum in the teacher's and student’s platform, which is for
the teachers and students of Beiwai Online, the other one is on the homepage,
which is open to all the visitors of Beiwai Online homepage. Basically the students study on their own
through books, tapes and CD-ROMs and they attend the tutorial classes in the
local learning centers regularly and ask the teachers’ questions in the two
forums.
Therefore, we can see that SLN conducts all the
activities on one platform while Beiwai Online handles the teaching activities and the studying activities separately
in different platforms.
II. Comparison of the interaction styles
As we can see from
the previous part, both systems have great potential for interaction, but how
do the teachers and students have real confrontation and communication with each
other in these two systems? What are the similarities and differences in the
interaction channels? The
comparison is in the following.
For SLN, the teachers and the students can interact with each other
through all the three sections on the interface and according to my experience,
the major part of interactions in SLN happen in the following areas:
1.Discussion. This is the most important place in SLN, which has the
function of a virtual classroom. Every student has to post at least 3 postings
for each module, the teacher grades it and gives timely feedback, which makes
sure that the interaction between the students and the teachers go on.
2. Bulletin board. This is an informal place outside the classroom context,
where the students and the teachers get socialized with each other and chat
about all kinds of things.
3. The online office hour & Private folder. This is a place for the
students to have private communication with the instructor, which eliminates
the need for and use of unreliable email systems for course related interactions.
This is especially useful when a student is afraid of being laughed at in the
virtual classroom and wants to ask the instructor questions in private.
Except these official interaction channels in the
course, some SLN teachers also try to increase interaction in their own way and
create more contact means. I
remember that when I was studying in SLN, a very successful teacher offered us
many contact methods when a new course got started, e.g. Email, Aol messenger,
telephone and fax so that the students can ask her questions all the time . At the
same time, she required all the students provide their contact information to
her so that she can reach the class whenever needed. In this way, the interaction between the students and the teacher
went on all the time. When a
difficult module came, she even arranged a TA to give face-to-face help to students.
Therefore in her online course, the students feel it is not much different from
the traditional face-to-face classroom teaching. I myself also benefited
from the interaction with the instructor and the classmates of SLN. Once when I was taking an SLN course
from China, I met a technical problem online and did not know what to do. I posted
a question on the bulletin board and an American classmate, thousands of miles away
in the U.S., guided me through the problem step by step.
Beiwai Online also has a lot of interactions between the teachers and the students, but its style is somewhat different from SLN. According to my understanding and experience of working for Beiwai Online, Beiwai Online’s teaching activities and the studying activities are conducted in different platforms and interactions between the teacher and the students happen through the following channels:
1. Regular tutoring classes conducted by tutors in local learning
centers. Most of the students attend the tutoring classes on biweekly basis. In
the 2 hour face-to-face tutoring time, the tutor is to supervise and check the
learning progress of the students and provides tutoring in accordance to the
individual needs of students.
2. Frequent emails sent by students to tutors to seek help and to ask questions.
According to a survey I did with my own students, this is the most widely used
method for the students to interact with the tutor.
3. VOB interaction. Voice of Beiwai Online is a real time audio
interactive service for students and teachers. It offers a variety of forms of
chatting, lectures and office hours. VOB is a very good place for real confrontation
and communication between the teacher and the students. As a real time voice
interaction system, VOB has very strong interactive function, which is more suitable
for practicing oral English. Currently many study groups activities have
already been conducted on different VOB channels, and it builds up the virtual
English community of Beiwai Online.
4. Interwise virtual learning classrooms. Beiwai Online uses interwise
software to set up virtual online classrooms, where the teachers can deliver real time lectures to the students and have
real time conversation with them. Students
and teachers can interact with
each other in the interwise Virtual Online Classroom through short
messages, voice one-on-one interwise software.
5. The traditional way of telephone. According to the requirements of Beiwai
Online, all tutors should give 2 hours fixed office hours to the students by
telephone every week. Although
according a survey conducted by Beiwai Online, not all the tutors have met this
standard, it still shows that the importance of telephone in teacher and student
interaction in Beiwai Online.
6. Through the two forums of Beiwai Online. One forum is on the teacher’s and student’s platform, in which the students can form up study groups to share their experiences about English learning. The other one is on the homepage, which is open to all the visitors of Beiwai Online homepage and a lot of activities are conducted there also.
7.The other ways of student – teacher interaction--letters and fax.
From the above we
can see, both distance learning systems work very hard to build up the
interaction channels between the students and the teachers in order to enhance
the studying activities. However,
SLN and Beiwai Online distinguish from each other in the following aspects:
1. SLN is an asynchronous learning network while Beiwai Online has both synchronous and asynchronous interactions. 2. Beiwai Online has successfully established audio interaction channels with the students, such as VOB and interwise, which definitely generates more audio communication capacity between teachers and the students than SLN. 3. Beiwai Online has organized all kinds of community activities which have greatly enhanced tutor-student interaction and students’ self studies, such as “May 1 Holiday Tour”, “Distinguished Professors Online”, English star groups etc. All these activities are mainly conducted on the forums of Beiwai Online and in the real voice communication place VOB and the interwise virtual classroom and each of them has relatively specific place and location. Also Beiwai Online has organized many online activities for the tutors, which is very helpful for the work of the teachers all over the country. By contrast, SLN’s academic activities are not as many and various as Beiwai Online.4. SLN has more text based asynchronous online interaction between the teachers and the students about the course learning materials while Beiwai Online tends to encourage the students to study on their own and discussion about the study materials is mainly conducted in the tutoring classes.
5. SLN also has an online private folder, where the teacher and students
can have private conversation. I am not sure if Beiwai Online has any place for
private conversation or not, if there is one, it will be very useful for
private communication between the instructor and the students.
III. Comparison of the teaching philosophy
Although both SLN and Beiwai online are both distance learning systems, their teaching philosophies are not the exact same. One thing that is similar between these two systems is that both systems advocate the student-centered approach and try to motivate the students to study on their own. In both distance learning environments, the teacher is not only the instructor/ the tutor but also the facilitator, the counselor, the manager and also the organizer. Although SLN teachers arrange to have interactions with the students through various kinds of channels, the major part of their teaching activities are still really done in the virtual classroom “the discussion area ” and activities for the students are organized in the SLN platform. On the same platform, the students ask the teachers questions and get the help from the teachers like in a normal classroom.
Beiwai
Online creates a new concept in its teaching philosophy, i.e. the tutor. Beiwai
Online tutor is somewhat different from the traditional concept of teacher. His
function is to advocate independent studies, motivate the students to study on their
own , supervise and control their performance. Different from the SLN virtual classroom, Beiwai
Online’s tutoring classes are mainly aimed at checking the studies of the
students and let the students demonstrate and practice what they have learned in
their self studies during the daily life so as to pave the way for the next
stage of the studies. The tutor also has to interact with students through the
two hour fixed telephone office hours and home work feedback. Basically Beiwai Online
wants to change the students’ reliance on the teachers and the classrooms,
while SLN is just the virtualization of the traditional classroom and real teacher.
For the Beiwai Online, teachers encourage the students to study independently
and use the tutoring classes to let the students demonstrate what they have
learned on their own.
Both SLN
and Beiwai Online are distance-learning networks and mainly depend on online interaction,
but their different teaching philosophies lead to the different amounts of face-to-face
interaction involved. SLN doesn’t count on the face-to-face learning activities
and only uses it as a supplementary to the regular online courses when
absolutely necessary. However,
sometimes a moderate amount of it can make the online teaching more effective. For
example, I remember that once in SLN, I took a course about research
methodology, which is very theoretical, abstract , boring and difficult to
understand even if delivered in the
real classroom. The instructor, somehow, for technical reasons, replies to the
students very slowly, thus accumulating a lot of problems. All the students were very unhappy
about this and complained a lot. Finally, she had to arrange several
face-to-face instruction sessions so as quench the dissatisfaction of the
students. From this we can see that sometimes face-to-face interaction is very important
and necessary for distance learning.
For Beiwai Online,
face to face tutoring is an integral part of the program, every week, there
will be 2 hour face-to-face tutoring class in the local learning center. Since the majority of Beiwai Online
students regularly attend the tutoring classes, they can get more help from the
real contact with the tutors. Instead of explaining the detailed knowledge
points to the students , the tutor encourages the students to
practice what they have learned on their own in order to check their achievement and progress.
Discussion and Suggestions
Above presented
are the difference and similarities in the structure of the course learning
system, in the interaction channels and also in the teaching philosophy of SLN
and Beiwai Online. But what is the theoretical significance of these similarities
and differences? The following survey done by Dr. Karen Swan can provide us
with some insight.
In the
spring of 1999, Dr. Karen Swan in
SUNY at Albany conducted an online survey with 3800 students enrolled in 264
courses offered through SLN. She
found out that three factors are consistently associated with the success of
online courses, i.e., a clear and consistent course structure, an instructor
who interacts frequently and constructively with students and a valued and
dynamic discussion. And the students’ perception of satisfaction and learning
in online courses is related to interaction with course content, interaction
with course instructors and interaction among course participants.
Karen Swan’s finding has demonstrated some inner laws
of universal significance to the distance education all over the world. For
example, according to Karen Swan’s survey, consistent course design is very important
for the success of the online learning. Due to lacking face-to-face communication,
if instructional design is not very clear, it is easy for students to get
confused or lost in complex course structure, thus making interaction with
content more difficult. Therefore, we suggest that the Beiwai Online course
design interface should remain consistent so that it will be easier for the
students to navigate and the technicians should make sure that the platform is
stable so that the students will not have difficulties submitting the homework.
It is important that the structure of the instructional design system must be
consistent, clear and in good order. Therefore, course designers should keep this
mind and strive for simplicity and redundancy both for platform design as well
as the course design.
Karen
Swan’s findings also suggest that shared discourse among students and between
students and instructors is positively related to student satisfaction with
courses. The survey’s results generally support the importance of creating opportunities
for interacting among classmates in online courses.
Therefore, I would also like to suggest that Beiwai Online increase interaction channels between the students
and the teachers on the platforms so that there will be more interaction
between the teachers and the students and more discussion and more social activities
held on the online community.
Although Karen Swan’s findings is done with the
student population of SLN, its finding has revealed some common laws that are important
to both online learning systems. Clarity of system design, more interaction
with the instructors or tutors, more discussion are very important to the success of the distance learning students both in China and in the US . These
common principles should be observed by distance learning educators all over
the world.
No matter in China or in the world, distance
learning has a very promising future because of its flexibility and convenience.
It saves our time, energy and money. The purpose of comparing the two important
online learning systems in the US and China is to explore the common principles
in distance learning and to let
systems learn from each other . SLN is a distance learning system in the US and
it may not be very suitable to transplant it into the Chinese context, but its experience in distance learning can definitely benefit Beiwai online.
If the US distance educators and Chinese distance educators can learn from each
other about instructional innovation and utilization of technology, this
will surely benefit both countries .If we make efforts to
further explore the inner laws of distance leaning and learn from other
countries, distance learning in China will develop much faster. I hope that
through all our efforts, Beiwai Online will become a more convenient and
effective learning system, which can provide high quality English education to the Chinese society -
at anytime and at any place.
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