Birgit Feldmann

Group Types in E-Learning Environments -- Study Team, Working Team and Learning Team

For the success of e-learning activities communication, collaborative and cooperative learning are important factors. The need for relationship building, sharing a sense of community and a common goal is an important factor not only in face-to-face but also in computer-supported cooperative learning arrangements. Therefore, a wide variety of groupware tools exists. Meanwhile, technical aspects of computer-supported learning are well documented. Also, there are evaluation results concerning psychological aspects in certain e-learning arrangements. These results mainly address only one or a small amount of selected e-learning activities, but not group processes and group types in a more general meaning. But to implement groupware tools, to analyse groups, and to arrange group settings in e-learning processes, it is important to know, which type of group should be addressed. In this paper, based on nearly ten years of experience with a wide diversity of different e-learning arrangements, theoretical and methodical aspects of three different group types in e-learning are identified and described in detail: Study team, working team and learning team. This provides an overview of the most important group types. The findings will then be exemplified and suggestions are given, which group type match with what purpose (e.g. networking, practical training, theoretical seminar, addressing large numbers of students in basic instruction courses, etc.).

Two Decades of e-learning in Distance Teaching – From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 at the University of Hagen

Technology changed the way of learning and teaching during the last twenty years to today a great deal. The change started in the 70’s with the increasing use of technology in education and spread out at the beginning of the 90’s with the upcoming Internet, was followed by the development of Learning Management Systems and nowadays the new and easy to use possibilities of Web 2.0. All these technologies could lead to new forms of learning, teaching, information gathering and managing, communicating, collaborating, and networking. It seems natural to adapt the new technologies to higher education, especially to distance education, as there a many known problems: E. g. in Germany no study fees are allowed. How to finance highly interactive, small classes? Another problem are the professional restrictions of distance students, their time budget is limited. The consequence is that normally students have very limited contact to their peers and their tutors until the final examinations. The drop-out rates are extremely high (more than 80%) and a lot of students study more than six years to reach a degree.

The Internet communication environment (ICE)-virtual university as virtual community

Our experiences and research in the field have shown, that students working collaboratively are more successful than students working alone. Therefore, it should be a logical consequence to install collaboration as key factor in a distance study environment. That is not as easy as spoken, because the classical distance study institutions struggle with a bundle of different problems. e.g. in Germany no study fees are allowed so how shoulde highly interactive, small classes be financed? Another problem is the professional restrictions of distance students, their time budget is limited. The consequence is, that normally students have nearly no contact with their peers and their tutors until the final examinations. The drop-out rates are extremely high (more than 90%) and a lot of students study more than six years to reach a degree. The deployment of virtual teaching improved the situation substantially, but not enough. The paper tries to show a solution for the mentioned problems.

System Support for Social Learning in Computer Science at a Distance University – The University of Hagen

Students working collaboratively are more successful than students working alone, these fact was shown by research on technology-supported learning and teaching have clearly confirmed the general understanding that. Therefore, it should be a logical consequence to integrate communication and collaboration as a key factor into a distance study environment. However, this is not a trivial task from various points of view. For instance, for public universities in Germany studies have to be free of charge – which then raises the question, how to finance highly interactive small classes? Another problem is the professional restrictions of working distance students: their time budget is very limited. The consequence is that students typically have very limited contact to their peers and their tutors until the final examinations. The drop-out rates are extremely high. E-learning improved the situation substantially (even though poorly used by the teachers in many environments), but by far not enough. Former research showed, that students’ want more social learning application. This paper shows how social learning could be integrated in an existing technical and organizational infrastructure and so open up new possibilities to approach these challenges, and how it can be used to improve the situation substantially.

Quality Standards for e-Learning in Vocational Education and Training: The Certified European E-Tutor

E-learning is shaping the education in Europe and points to new and creative ways of teaching in Vocational Educational Training (VET). This development, however, has not reached all parts of Europe according to surveys by CEDEFOP (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training) and the quality of e-learning in VET varies widely, depending on the personal competence of the teachers and trainers. Also, different educational traditions and cultural predispositions need to be taken into account when the acceptance of e-learning should be increased. Therefore, a systematic training of teachers and trainers could be a valuable instrument to ensure the quality of e-learning in a professional and efficient way. This is the main goal of the project “Certified European E-Tutor” (CET) funded by the European Commission. This paper will describe the background of the project and then discuss the state of the art in research on e-learning quality standards and reference initiatives. The main part of the paper is the description of the projects goals of the CET, especially the e-learning standards for e-tutors developed in the project. Impact and outlook will close the paper and give a perspective for future developments.