Michael M. Danchak

Designing for the changing role of the instructor in blended learning

This paper is an analysis of the challenges of dealing with the human and technical aspects of blended learning. It presents a case study of how one course has evolved over the years, presenting not only the lessons learned and the changes made at each stage, but the rationale for those changes. Looking at learning as the combination of information and interaction, the paper describes how the instructor went from being the Sage on the Stage to being the Sage in the Cage, to being the Guide on the Slide to finally being the Guide on the Side. It also documents how the course went from being technology driven to learner driven, and the evolution of an activity cycle. The paper ends with rationale for design changes and implications for current and future designs.

Optimizing Instruction Using Adaptive Hypermedia

How do you optimize instruction in an adaptive hypermedia learning environment? We believe instruction is optimized when adaptivity is grounded in good instructional design. To respect diverse talents and ways of learning, our cyclic approach to instructional design is the basis upon which inference techniques can be applied to continuously adapt instruction according to learning behavior and performance. We define an individuals learning behavior in terms of how they interact with the environment (i.e links activated, pages visited, time spent, and frequency of visits). This paper describes the OctoPlustrade cycle and presents results of an experiment comparing two groups interacting with OctoPlus-formatted tutorials: a control and an adaptive group, to whom adaptive navigation, presentation and content features were added over time. Results indicated reduction in time spent for the adaptive group with comparable performance in the fully adaptive tutorial

Designing collaborative learning in large introductory courses

Introductory courses present a challenge because the students have varying degrees of prior knowledge, the majority of the students do not intend to fake additional courses in the domain and they usually have large enrollment. A typical example is Computer Science I. Studio format is ideal if faculty resources are available. However, sixteen sections quickly tax even large departments. The paper describes how we used diversity of background as a strength and how interactivity was introduced in large (200+ student) sessions using one faculty member and a number of graduate teaching assistants.

Adapting educational hypermedia to interaction behaviors

This research investigated learner interaction with presentation, content and navigation adaptivity and its effect on time spent (efficiency) and performance (effectiveness) with three online tutorials. The tutorials were developed using a learning cycle to address the needs of all learners. Adaptivity was gradually introduced according to the learner interaction behavior with the cycle. Results from an analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicate that the amount of time spent was significantly reduced in the third and fully adaptive tutorial with comparable performance.