Improving the Effectiveness of Educational Programs on the World Wide Web
Thomas W. Knecht, Ed.D. Department of Agricultural Communications North Carolina State University, Raleigh

Abstract

The potential value of the World Wide Web for distance education and staff development is becoming widely recognized, and communicators in land-grant universities are being called upon to develop materials for Webbased educational efforts. While the interactive multimedia capabilities of the Web offer strong advantages over conventional printed materials, most current usage taps only a small fraction of the Web’s potential for helping adult users at remote locations develop new knowledge, skills, and attitudes. This paper explores how basic principles of adult education and an understanding of adult learners can be applied to more fully exploit the capabilities of the Web and other multimedia tools for delivering self-paced, interactive educational programs.

The Internet, for years a little-known data-exchange tool of the military-industrial complex and the major research universities, has become in the past few years a household word. Previously computer-phobic or computer-apathetic citizens are laying down their credit cards on the counters of discount electronics stores to buy multimedia desktop computer systems far more powerful than the banks of computers used to put the first man on the moon. Manufacturers are poised to introduce “Internet Appliances,” dedicated, simple-to-operate systems that will allow homeowners plug-and-play access to the Internet’s many features. What has spurred all this sudden interest? It’s the World Wide Web, of course, that alluring, interactive, multimedia “front end” or graphical user interface to the Web that allows point and click access to this immense international computer network and its massive distributed resources.

For once, university communicators were not at the end of the line in gaining access to a totally new communications medium. When television became widely popular in the 1950s, for example, the only practical access to this powerful new medium was through commercial broadcast stations, primarily because they owned the very expensive equipment necessary and they held the necessary broadcasting licenses. Video cameras and recorders, let alone transmitters and antenna towers, were far too expensive and complex for agricultural communication units to purchase and operate. Communicators in land-grant institutions therefore began to work with their local stations to develop educational programming. The opposite is true for the World Wide Web. Universities typically have had the best capabilities to establish what is now called a “presence” on the Web, and commercial users are hastening to catch up. Access is not really an issue; for a fairly modest sum of money, a person or organization can obtain an Internet connection, set up a server, and establish a presence -- in essence, become a “broadcaster” on the Web.

We are only beginning to grasp the value of the Web as a resource for education. It can provide interactive access to millions of potential learners around the globe. And though it seemed just a few years ago to be restricted to the well-educated and the computer geeks, it is becoming the media of choice for the masses. By the end of 1995, 40 percent of America’s 100 million homes will have a personal computer. Internet connections are increasing by almost unbelievable numbers every month.

As agricultural communicators, however, we are not well prepared to take advantage of this unexpected gold mine of communications opportunity. Many of our early efforts on the Web have consisted of what could be called information dumping. We have simply converted existing paper-based documents to electronic form through HTML coding or some proprietary coding scheme and have mounted them on a Web server. I do not mean to belittle this effort; it is astonishing to me how much valuable, practical information has appeared on Web servers over the last two years. It is important to realize, however, that providing information is not educating. Information is a critical tool in the educational process, but it alone will not bring about desired educational outcomes. As we will discuss later, education is the process of bringing about a change in the learner’s knowledge, skills, or attitude -- or a combination of all three. Most of us and our units are not well prepared to take advantage of the Web’s educational potential for two reasons. First, in most of our units we are still divided by medium. Print people -- writers and editors -- whose product is the placing of meaningful marks on paper, have worked largely separate from radio and television people. True, a writer might be called upon from time to time to produce a video or radio script, but often our groups work in isolation. The Web, however, is a multimedia tool. It demands the talents of people who can write text, produce sound bites, develop video clips, or design interactive “applets” and link them all together into a program carefully designed to achieve an educational objective. Second, making the most effective use of the Web for education requires an understanding of educational principles. Most of us have not been trained in educational theory and practice; our background is in the medium we produce. Print editors and writers, for example, typically have had training in English or journalism. Videographers and radio producers generally have educational backgrounds in communications or video production. We have focused on the products, using our talents to produce the best publication or videotape or slide-tape presentation that we can, relying on our clients -- the educators we serve -- to combine those elements and others into effective educational programs. The Web demands that we package “the whole ball of wax.” Knowledge of educational principles and instructional strategies is becoming just as important as ability in writing or editing or speaking or shooting. The purpose of this paper is to present some very basic educational concepts that can be applied in developing effective multimedia educational programs for the Web. While there is only space enough to touch on fundamental concepts, those concepts can go a long way toward improving our practice and may serve as a stimulus to further reading, training, and reflection. Let us return for a moment to an important assertion made above: that informing is not educating. Working as we do in media-specific units, we may be inclined to think that the products we produce -- videotapes, publications, slide shows, or whatever -- will do the entire educational job. They will not. They are effective educational tools only when used as part of a broader, well-designed educational program. Basically, education is the process of bringing about change in the individual. That change may be cognitive (what the person knows or believes), it may be the development of a new skill, or it may be a change in attitude. Ultimately what we seek is a change in behavior, which will come about when the individual applies his or her new knowledge, skill, or attitude to a specific life situation. For example, if a person gains greater understanding of personal finance and develops skills in budgeting, accompanied by a change in attitude toward financial matters, he or she may do a better job of managing the family’s resources. Education, then, is not the process of “dumping” information into an individual as if that individual were a holding pond for facts. For centuries, education, particularly as applied to youth, was actually viewed as the process of delivering information to be memorized. Paulo Freire (1970) referred to this belief as “the banking theory of education”: the teacher “deposited” information into the “accounts” (minds) of the learners. People can learn many facts, but memorizing information does not expand the mind or change the way in which people interact with the world around them unless they process those facts, relate them to existing knowledge, and consciously use the information to develop new skills and attitudes. In this century, we have come to understand that experiencing is the key to learning, especially for adults. Children have many facts to learn as they grow up (how many ounces there are in a pound or what nine times twelve equals, for example). Adults already have command of multitudinous basic facts and know how to gain any other information they may need. Their need is to improve the ability to cope with their social roles -- on the job, at home, and in the community -- by developing new perceptions or skills. To achieve that goal, they need carefully designed educational programs that provide experiential learning situations through which they can develop and practice new understandings and skills. Since most of the educational materials and programs we produce in agricultural communications units is intended for adults, our job is to develop educational tools that will provide either real or realistic vicarious experiences so that adults can explore, experience, and learn. To do so, we need to know something aboutadult learners.

Characteristics of Adult Learners

Although it has been widely debunked, we still sometimes hear the assertion that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Most of us don’t believe it anymore -- unless of course we’re using it as an excuse not to attempt to learn something new. But at the turn of the current century this axiom was widely accepted. Education was for young people; when you graduated from grade school, high school, or college you were assumed to have all the knowledge and abilities you needed for life. But things didn’t change as rapidly then as they do nowadays. Today we know that people’s educations become obsolete within a relatively short time after graduation. Engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, technicians, salespersons, and assembly-line workers all need to be retrained to keep their skills current with changes in technology. This is certainly true in the subject areas with which we deal: agricultural production, child development, financial management, community economic development, waste management, environmental quality...in Extension the list is nearly endless. Thus the adult is a central target for our educational programs.

Adults are largely self-directed learners. Think about the things you have learned and the skills you have developed in the past year or two. For example, think about how you learned about the World Wide Web. Did anyone force you to learn those things? Probably not. Adults tend to learn what they want or need to learn when they want or need to learn it. They tend to learn what they perceive to be of immediate value to them in fulfilling their social roles. Knowles (1980, p. 53) has observed that “to adults, education is a process of improving their ability to cope with life problems they face now. They tend, therefore, to enter an educational activity in a problem-centered or performance-centered frame of mind.” Educational programs that do not address current, important needs will not attract these voluntary learners. Consequently, it is essential to establish rapport with potential learners and work with them to identify their educational needs (Boone, 1985). Programs developed to address clearly identified and validated needs are much more likely to be successful than those based on the educator’s own unsubstantiated perceptions of learner needs or statements about what they learners “ought to know.”

Malcolm Knowles (1980) lists other adult learner attributes of which designers of adult education programs should be aware. Knowles, who for many years directed adult education programs for the YMCA, points out that the format and time schedule of the program must be developed with the recognition that adult learners have many other responsibilities to their families, jobs, religious organizations, and communities. Fortunately, Web-based educational programs free learners of the need to be in a certain place at a certain time. They can take part in a Web learning experience at any time of the day or night, wherever access to the Web is available -- at work, at home, or elsewhere.

Because they are self-directed, adults set their own learning objectives. For an educational program to attract and retain participants, the educational objectives must align closely with those of the learners. Furthermore, the learners must be able to see readily how each element of the program contributes toward reaching those objectives.

Adults, because of their multitudinous responsibilities, also find their time precious. They cannot afford to engage in activities that do not lead directly to the desired educational outcomes. Unless they have an unusual amount of leisure, they cannot and will not watch videotapes or read large amounts of text on peripherally related subjects.

Finally, like children, adults need feedback in the form of support, encouragement, and positive suggestions for improvement in their performance. Their standard of performance is internal; in most cases they do not need to answer to an outside authority. They judge their performance in an educational setting against their own goals and standards. They therefore need to know when they have succeeded and to what degree, and they want suggestions for improvement.

These principles suggest some characteristics that Web-based educational programs should possess if they are to be successful in educating adults. In the next section we will examine three key characteristics.

Characteristics of Successful Web-based Educational Programs

1. Successful programs are designed to meet the learners’ needs. The first step in designing any educational program should be to determine what changes in knowledge, skills, or attitudes will benefit the learner. The most valuable source of information for the educational program designer -- and the source most often overlooked -- is the learners themselves. People often sense when they need to enhance their learning in specific areas of their lives. When they do, identifying educational needs is as simple as asking them. For example, I recently realized that I needed to know about Sun Microsystems’ new programming language called Java and the Web browser called Hot Java. When a colleague informed me about a local seminar on this topic, I rushed to sign up. Sometimes potential learners are not consciously aware of their learning needs, but they often can identify issues of concern in their lives that an astute educator can translate into educational needs and objectives, which then in turn can be tested with potential learners. Other sources of information about educational needs include employers, community leaders, spouses, religious leaders, social service agency personnel, and Extension Service agents.
   
   Fortunately, the Internet provides opportunities for developers of Web-based educational programs to survey potential learners and others about educational needs very easily and at low cost. For example, if we were considering offering a program for agricultural communicators on developing Web-based training programs, we could easily contact heads of agricultural communications departments and all members of organizations such as Agricultural Communicators in Education to determine their level of interest and the specific topics that they would like to see covered in such a program. Interacting with the learners during program design and development not only provides valuable information about learner needs and interests but also publicizes the upcoming program and gives those who enroll a sense of ownership in the program, increasing the probability that they will participate and learn.
   
2. Successful programs engage the learner in an experiential process. As we have discussed, programs that simply provide information are relatively ineffective in helping people learn. Learners must interact with the information, integrating it into their own conceptual frameworks (Boone, 1985). What we read, see, or hear we forget quite rapidly unless we relate it in meaningful ways to things we already know or apply it to situations that are meaningful to us. Where skills are to be taught, learners need opportunities to practice the skills until they achieve mastery. Teachers of mathematics have long used this strategy by requiring students to apply math principles to practical situations: in other words, to work the “word problems” that we all dreaded.
   
   Because of its interactive, multimedia nature, the Web offers a multitude of opportunities for experiential learning. For example, in the context of an educational program the learner can interact in real time via the Internet with a computer program that simulates a practical situation and allows the learner to observe immediately the results of alternative actions. Using the latest technologies, browsers can automatically download small application programs called applets. These programs, which could include spreadsheets or simulations, can be very valuable interactive teaching tools. For example, a learner could use a spreadsheet applet within a program on family financial management to explore the effects of various options for handling the family’s investments. On a simpler level, learners can interact rapidly with the instructor or with other learners in the program to resolve questions and discuss issues using the automated e-mail features that most Web browsers incorporate.
   
3. Successful programs provide rapid feedback and reinforcement. Adults often approach educational programs with some trepidation about their ability to perform (Cross, 1984). Many have been away from formal educational settings for years and are reluctant to engage in educational programs for fear they may not measure up in the eyes of their peers. They often live and work in a competitive environment where to admit ignorance is to lose advantage. Reassurance at the outset and positive feedback during the program are essential to encouraging and sustaining the learners’ participation. Good educational programs are designed to ensure that the learners will have an early success (for example, be able to successfully complete the first assignment), that learners will continue to receive encouragement and positive suggestions for improvement throughout the program, and that their achievements will be recognized at the end.
   
   Fortunately, Web-based educational programs are ideally suited to the needs and concerns of adult learners. At one extreme, the educational interaction can take place strictly between the individual learner and the remote computer if that is what makes the learner most comfortable. Exchanges between the instructor and learner can take place by individual e-mail. In a typical program, the learners might be assigned to experiment with a simulation applet; the results can be returned the Web server and examined by the instructor, who can then evaluate the results and by e-mail messages to individual learners offer feedback on performance and positive suggestions for improvement. For learn-ers who are more confident, electronic message groups and listservs can be used to stimulate discussion among the participants. Much of the learning in adult education programs comes from interchanges among the learners themselves, supplementing the learning opportunities designed into the program. Listservs and message groups can also help learners keep in touch and exchange information after the formal learning program has been completed, reducing the likelihood they will abandon their newly developed perceptions and skills and revert to old ways of thinking and former patterns of behavior.
   

Conclusion

The World Wide Web offers dramatic new opportunities for delivering interactive multimedia educational programs to individuals at far-flung locations, who can take advantage of the programs at their own convenience. The Web offers opportunities for learners to engage the subject matter and to practice newly developed skills so that learning is retained and applied. Successful educational programs, however, involve more than providing information, even if that information is presented through multiple media such as interlinked text, video clips, and sound bites. Effective programs are based on a careful analysis of learner needs, they provide experiential learning opportunities, and they provide timely feedback to the learner as well as interaction among learner groups.

References

Boone, E. 1985. Developing Programs in Adult Education. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Cross, K.P. 1984. Adults as Learners. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Freire, P. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.
Knowles. M. 1980. The Modern Practice of Adult Education. New York: Cambridge.
Knox, A. 1986. Helping Adults Learn. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.