The Internet offers many powerful resources for implementing distance education. Internet-based education can take many forms, including: (1) tutorial, (2) virtual classroom, (3) correspondence course, (4) project-based education, and (5) event-based education. Internet-based education can also provide a valuable supplement to more traditional approaches to education. And as Internet technologies develop, more possibilities emerge. An overview of issues related to designing and implementing Internet-based education will be presented here.

One fundamental concept to understand is the contrast between synchronous and asynchronous communication. Synchronous refers to communication that occurs instantaneously, in real time. The telephone is an example of this --- both participants in a telephone conversation are present --- at their respective locations -- simultaneously. Asynchronous communication refers to communication that does not take place in real time but is delayed at the receiver's end. A telephone answering machine is an example of asynchronous communication. Electronic mail is another example. The concept of synchronous versus asynchronous communication is an important fundamental parameter in Internet-based education since many patterns are possible, as we shall see.

Another essential concept for Internet-based education, one that requires a major shift in thinking is for educators to recognize and harness the vast array of resources that are now available on the Internet, especially the World Wide Web. In addition to selecting a textbook, the instructor should now consider incorporating a Web navigation guide tailored to a particular subject or at least some student exploration quests on the World Wide Web into many classes, especially Internet-based classes. Gaining awareness of these resources and facility in navigating them is a critical component of information literacy and basic technological competence for today and tomorrow. Related to this, Nicholas Negroponte, in his book Being Digital, reports: "Today kids are getting the opportunity to be street smart on the Internet, where children are heard and not seen. Ironically, reading and writing will benefit. Children will read and write on the Internet to communicate, not just to complete some abstract and artificial exercise. What I am advocating should not be construed as anti-intellectual or as a disdain for abstract reasonings --- it is quite the opposite. The Internet provides a new medium for reaching out to find knowledge and meaning. (p. 200)" Not only children, but adult learners should be encouraged to reach out to these resources.

Interactive Tutorial

With the emergence of the World Wide Web, including tools such as forms, it is possible to implement interactive multiple-choice tutorials and tests via the Internet, building on the model of computer-assisted instruction. These tutorials and tests can be scored electronically. One example of this kind of test is the Kearsey Temperament Sorter (http://www.keirsey.com/cgi-bin/keirsey/newkts.cgi), a personality test that is available on-line.

This type of application requires elaborate and rigorous design efforts up front, but may offer something that can be used repeatedly or revised fairly easily from one semester to the next so that it offers great value and versatility for some types of educational applications. This offers the advantages of asynchronicity: students can work at any time of day or night from anywhere in the world.

We can expect to see this kind of application become increasingly sophisticated. For example, Internet market researchers and advertisers are developing interactive audience research tools on the World Wide Web that can perhaps --- with great care --- be adapted to education. With these tools, it may eventually be possible to gather and analyze data on student research and data gathering strategies on the World Wide Web.U.S. News and World Report (June 17, 1996) reports, "Many Internet users assume nobody is watching as they hop around the World Wide Web. In fact, Web site owners can collect a startling amount of personal data on visitors. To demonstrate, the Center for Democracy and Technology, a public-interest group, last week launched a feature on its site (http://www.cdt.org) that pinpoints such things as what city you're from and the last page you visited. More-powerful systems can discover, say, your E-mail address or your favorite images on a site." (p. 76)

Taking this type of audience research strategy to a higher level is Firefly, the web site of Agents Inc. According to U.S. News and World Report (May 27, 1996), "The Firefly site harnesses a form of artificial intelligence called collaborative filtering and uses it to recommend movies and music --- and soon books --- to Web surfers around the globe. Consumers visit http://www.ffly.com and rate films and CDs they like or dislike. After a few visits, each consumer's "agent," a software element that becomes part of a giant cross-referencing database, begins to suggest new offerings users might enjoy. In addition, the "agent" provides a list of people with similar tastes who also visit the site. To keep consumers returning, Firefly offers a place for users to chat as well as a monthly webzine called Flypaper." (p. 71) Community-building, advertising, information access, and entertainment all rolled into one! According to U.S. News and World Report , "Agents Inc.'s real innovation is its ability to help advertisers pinpoint sales messages. Since Firefly's software "agents" are intimately aware of each visitor's tastes, advertisers can target only those users who are likely to care about their products." Not only does Firefly seek out information in response to immediate requests, it profiles and seeks out information on the user's behalf without having to be asked. This is a very important trend --- customizing information services and advertising to the individual user. And it may have important implications for Internet-based education and training: educators can develop and build upon interactive student profiles that serve as a basis for understanding individual student needs and performance.

Interactive tutorials can be created with HTML forms.

Virtual classroom

The virtual classroom is a class that meets via the Internet using groupware and/or listservs as well as electronic mail and the World Wide Web. Groupware is primarily a synchronous medium. The listserv is asynchronous. However, some groupware features, such as electronic mail, can be used as an asynchronous medium. A third type of technology - multi-user environments - can also be used to implement the virtual classroom.

A. Groupware

Groupware, also know as "computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW)" can link people on different computers using the same software program (such as Lotus Notes) to perform a variety of functions. Groupware provides a collaborative computing system featuring networking, communications, concurent processing (working on the same document or chart simultaneously), and windowing environments (i.e., multiple windows on the screen simultaneously, including text, video, and graphics windows). Johansen (1988) identifies seventeen functions that groupware supports:

1. face-to-face meeting facilitation
2. group decision support
3. computer-based telephony extensions
4. presentation support
5. project management
6. calendar management
7. group-authoring
8. computer-supported face-to-face meetings
9. screen sharing
10. computer conferencing
11. text filtering
12. computer-supported audio/video teleconferencing
13. group memory management
14. spontaneous interaction
15. comprehensive workgroup support
16. nonhuman meeting participats (using intelligent agents)

Different groupware systems emphasize different features. Increasingly, groupware capabilites are available on the World Wide Web. For example, software such as CU SEE ME makes it possible for desktop videoconferencing.

Groupware systems, developed initially for use in business, have been used very successfully for implementing distance education. New York University uses Lotus Notes to implement distance education. And at the Rensselaer Polytechnic University a groupware type program --- BBN/Slate --- has been used, with exciting results, to teach physics.

Some related links:

http://www.cs.purdue.edu/research/shastra/shastra/html/ http://samson.shksno/imia/dak/stupro.html
http://www.mrabsi.com/vrml_nj.html
http://explorer.csc.com/CSC_Vanguard/csccsi/pubs/gwstrat.html/
http://www.visualworld.com/articles/tryon3.html

B. Listserv

The listserv offers another approach to implementing the virtual classroom, centered around electronic text. The listserv can be supplemented by electronic mail, the World Wide Web, and the telephone --- as well as the other tools in a panoply of exciting new software and hardware tools that are becoming a part of the rapidly evolving World Wide Web --- audio, multimedia, 3D models, form-based surveys, videoconferencing, etc. The basic structure of this approach is shown in the following model, developed by Roger B. Wyatt:

1. Process
   Electronic mail provides a channel of communication between individuals, including communication between professor and student and between individual students. An important supplement to this is the telephone.
   
   
2. Content/Discussion
   The World Wide Web provides the formal class content --- the instructor's weekly lectures and related information. The listserv will provide a group forum for all class members to present and discuss ideas, respond to readings, etc.
   
   
3. Courseware/Student Homework
   The class listserv provides a forum where students can submit their assignments, to be read by the instructor and other students. In addition, student-designed Web page projects can be featured on the World Wide Web. Increasingly, students have flexible access to World Wide Web servers close to home, through their own Internet access options, rather than reliance on a central Web site, such as a university server. This trend has benefits, but it may raise policy issues. Many resources such as clip art and Web-related software tools are available on the World Wide Web, providing a vast array of resources.

Virtual learning communities

Just as a classroom where teacher and students are physically present develops into a community, however temporary, over the course of a semester, classes taught via the Internet become virtual learning communities, communities unbounded by physical space. According to Howard Rheingold (1993), "Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace. (p. 9)" Designing and creating virtual learning communities is an important approach to Internet-based education. How to approach the design and implementation of virtual learning communities?

Michael Schrage (1990) offers a valuable model for designing virtual communities. Collaboration is central to Schrage's model. "Collaboration is the process of shared creation: two or more individuals with complementary skills interacting to create a shared understanding that none had previously possessed or could have come to on their own. Collaboration creates a shared meaning about a process, a product, or an event. In this sense, there is nothing routine about it. Something is there that wasn't there before. Collaboration can occur by mail, over the phone lines, and in person. But the true medium of collaboration is other people. (Schrage, p. 40)" Schrage emphasizes that in a collaborative relationship, the creation of value is the central issue; communication and teamwork exist to support this. This model is ideally suited to the virtual learning community.

Schrage presents a model of collaboration composed of thirteen design themes: (1) Competence, (2) A shared, understood goal, (3) Mutual respect, tolerance, and trust, (4) Creation and manipulation of shared spaces, (5) Multiple forms of representation, (6) Playing with the representations, (7) Continuous but not continual communication, (8) Formal and informal environments, (9) Clear lines of responsibility but no restrictive boundaries, (10) Decisions do not have to be made by concensus, (11) Physical presence is not necessary, (12) Selective use of outsiders for complementary insights and information, and (13) Collaboration's end. Let's look at these themes more closely in the context of the virtual classroom.

1. Competence
   An Internet-based virtual classroom is based on competence with the technology underlying the course delivery --- computers, modems, communications software. Developing competence --- in terms of both technical skills and mastery of the content --- are central to the virtual class. Technical competence --- and a positive orientation toward troubleshooting technical problems --- are essential to implementing and participating in the virtual classroom.
   
2. A shared, understood goal
   The class and its subject matter provide the goal, which can encompass all of the collaboration goals identified by Schrage: problem-solving, creating, discovering, creating value --- and developing competence, mastery.
   
3. Mutual respect, tolerance, and trust
   As any educator knows, this element of Schrage's model should be fundamental to all educational contexts and experiences. In practice, the teacher can set the tone, but occasionally problems can arise, often due to a single individual --- someone who is not listening to others or who seems to need to know all the answers, to have the last word, creating his or her own debilitating barriers to learning while turning off and even intimidating other students. The Internet context can draw out these tendencies in a few students, more so than a face-to-face learning environment. Interpersonal cues that might restrain this kind of behavior in a face-to-face setting are missing in the context of a virtual classroom. In these instances, the teacher must continually reinforce the collaborative premise of the virtual learning community. Some netiquette guidelines are provided below.
   
4. Creation and manipulation of shared spaces
   The listserv provides a shared space for the virtual classroom that all can share in creating. Beyond that, students can identify the URLs for World Wide Web sites relevant to class topics and assignments, thereby providing pointers to the larger shared space of the World Wide Web itself.
   
5. Multiple forms of representation
   Multiple forms of representation --- text, illustrations, charts, photographs, graphics, etc. --- can be advantageously applied to any kind of subject matter. As the capabilities of the World Wide Web advance, audio and multimedia will become widespread. However, in designing and implementing Internet-based courses it is essential to keep in mind that students accessing computers from home are less likely to have access to the full panoply of Internet capabilities than those accessible to students on campus with access to university resources.
   
6. Playing with the representations
   Learning activities that feature playing with different representations can be very valuable (Jonassen, 1994; Burke & McLellan, 1996; McLellan, 1996a, 1996b). Since the Internet provides information in different forms --- text, graphics, audio, images, multimedia, hypermedia --- it is ideal for this kind of activity.
   
7. Continuous but not continual communication
   Communication must be timely. This includes timely responses to student questions and timely input to listserv discussions by students and instructor. Timeliness will vary in the context of the particular virtual class, but continuous monitoring of the listserv by the instructor is vitally important.
   
8. Formal and informal environments
   The listserv provides the primary informal space. The World Wide Web --- where the syllabus, lectures, assignments, references, and related resources are stored --- provides the formal space. The telephone is the most informal space; it can be utilized to great advantage in this way. Instructors may want to implement student-teacher "meetings" via the telephone with individual students.
   
9. Clear lines of responsibility but no restrictive boundaries
   Clear lines of responsibility are established through the framework of the syllabus and the implementation of the class.
   
10. Decisions do not have to be made by concensus
    The instructor is the final arbitor in decision-making. It is valuable to have students take ownership of the class by helping to determine certain things, such as discussion topics, helping classmates determine how to solve technical problems, ideas for carrying out assignments, etc.
    
11. Physical presence is not necessary
    The lack of physical presence affects different students differently, depending on personal experience and learning style. A Web page featuring brief student biographies, together with photographs and email addresses can help. So can informal introductions on the listserv at the beginning of the class. Rheingold reports that, "Some people - many people --- don't do well in spontaneous spoken interaction, but turn out to have valuable contributions to make in a conversation in which they have time to think about what to say. These people, who might constitute a significant proportion of the population, can find written communication more authentic than the face-to-face kind. (p. 23)" Rheingold also reports that the Internet is a place where "people often end up revealing themselves far more intimately than they would be inclined to do without the intermediation of screens and pseudonyms. (p. 27)" Students often enjoy participating in a community with people who are geographically dispersed; this adds a new dimension to education that may have immense potential.
    
12. Selective use of outsiders for complementary insights and information
    Outsiders can include guest speakers contributing to the listserv dialogue or student interviews with outside experts via email, telephone, etc. Field trips reported on the listserv also fit within this dimension of Schrage's model.
    
13. Collaboration's end
    The virtual class ends with the end of the semester. The temporary virtual community dissolved. However, lasting bonds can be established.

Related link: http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/jravitz/Ravitz_Paper_8_95.html

C. Multi-User Environments

Related to the listserv is a third possibility: the virtual classroom in a MUD (Multi-User Domain) or MOO (Multi-User Object-Oriented Environment) setting. This is real-time text-based communication; it's similar to Internet Relay Chat, except that it takes place in an imaginative context described via text and participants are usually playing some sort of role. Howard Rheingold (1993) explains that MUDs are "imaginary worlds in computer databases where people use words and programming languages to improvise melodramas, build worlds and all the objects in them, solve puzzles, invent amusements and tools, compete for prestige and power, gain wisdom, seek revenge, indulge greed and lust and violent impulses. (p. 145)" Each MUD is based on a different type of theme, ranging from shoot 'em up games to TV shows such as Star Trek to constructivist learning environments such as the Cyberion City MUD. The Virtual Online University operates in the form of a MUD. This format is still unusual as an educational delivery format. It offers the advantage of a shared space (at least an imaginary space), but many students, especially older students, find it cumbersome and unappealing. That is likely to change as these systems become faster and more sophisticated and as students who grew up with computers enter higher education in greater numbers.

It's interesting to note that 'bots' --- intelligent computer agents --- serve as guides to newcomers in some of these multi-user environments. It is sometimes hard to detect that these bots are not really people! Bots are an example of virtual agents - something we will see more of in the future. One of my students recently commented: "As a neophyte on a MOO I sure liked the help I received from another character. I'm pretty sure it must have been an automated bot there just to help beginners like me." It is possible to design these bots so they can serve as assistants to the instructor within the virtual classroom. This may have great potential.

Project-based education

The Internet provides an immense wealth of resources for research and study. Students can pursue independent project-based studies at a distance, communicating with the instructor via email and perhaps preparing a report that is developed as a web page. This might include a web page or a series of web pages with interactive links to related material on the World Wide Web. Increasingly this type of project is being implemented in traditional face-to-face classes; it offers great potential for Internet-based education. A wealth of student projects from students of all ages can already be viewed on the World Wide Web. These projects vary in quality but they point the way to exciting potential in distance education.

Event-based education

The Internet offers people the opportunity to link together across great distances to share in a common experience via the desktop computer. This includes "cyber-events" --- interviews on-line with celebrities, concerts accessed via CU SEE ME --- videoconferencing via the World Wide Web, and telepresence science field trips such as the Jason Project and NASA's TROV Project. In the Jason Project, children at different sites across the U.S. have the opportunity to teleoperate the unmanned submarine Jason, the namesake for this innovative science education project directed by Robert Ballard, a scientist as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (EDS, 1991; Ulman, 1993; McLellan, 1994). Similar to this, NASA has implemented an educational program in conjuction with the Telepresence-controlled Remotely Operated underwater Vehicle (TROV) that has been deployed to Antarctica (Stoker, 1994). By means of a distributed computer control architecture developed at NASA, school children in classrooms across the U.S. can take turns driving the TROV in Antarctica. Rose (1995) reports on a similar project. He reports the learning experience extends beyond the event itself: concommitently, student interactions and supplemental learning activities must be planned and implemented effectively. Indeed, the Jason Project offers a rich program of learning activities, with the telepresence field trips at the center. For each year's Jason voyage, the National Science Teachers Association and other experts develop an extensive curriculum (hundreds of pages long) laying out an array of learning activities. These examples of event-based education are very high tech, very elaborately coordinated. But as the capabilities of the Internet evolve, this kind of Internet-based education will expand and flourish.

The Electronic Cafe International (ECI), based in Santa Monica, California hosts "cyber-events" that feature artistic collaboration and performance (Galloway & Rabinowitz, 1992). In ECI, people from different locations around the world are electronically mixed into the same real-time virtual space. The ECI has sponsored dance projects, "Earth Day Global Link '90," and other collaborative creative initiatives that include connections and real-time teleperformances by participants across the globe. The introduction of the World Wide Web, especially videoconferencing capabilites, greatly expands the potential for this kind of activity. Musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson has made the Web a centerpiece of her performances. A number of less well-known musicians have also performances accessible to audiences via the World Wide Web a part a their low-cost self-promotion strategy.

This kind of activity has great potential in the arts and the sciences. Students in different locations around North America and around the world can be linked together via te Internet for special events of all kinds - Shuttle launches, astronomy events such as the recent asteroid crashing into Saturn, political events, cultural events, events with great historical implications, the Olympic Games. The Discovery Channel and other media companies are leading the way in showing how "events" such as a television special can be the centerpiece for Internet-based activities. this offers great potential for education.

Correspondence course

This time-honored approach to distance education has new potential with the Internet. Course materials such as the syllabus can be posted on the World Wide Web and students, working individually, can submit their assignments via electronic mail or via interactive forms on the World Wide Web. Greater interaction --- on a more timely basis --- is possible between student and instructor with email, making this potentially a more intimate form of education. However, the degree of interactivity --- and the degree of synchronousness --- are up to the instructor and the educational institution.

If there are numerous students, the instructor may not have the time for intensive interactions via email with all the students. Or graduate assistants may be needed to take on part of the work, perhaps overseeing "sections" of students. Courses will have to be designed to take into account this kind of factor. This brings up the point that continuing education and distance education support staff will need to adapt to the Internet, as they are, indeed, doing, to support the Internet-based instructor. Traditional correspondence courses are designed to be fairly self-contained, highly structured packages, usually not featuring much interaction between student and instructor. This snail-mail model can be followed for email correspondence courses, or, if the instructor prefers, a more interactive model can be adapted. Although there may be more than one student, this approach features students working independently, in contrast to the virtual class model described above, which features a community of students interacting with each other as well as with the instructor.

One important advantage of the correspondence course approach is that students can work at their own pace. And they can start the class at any time. This approach may be particularly useful for just-in-time training. It can be tailored to individual schedules and educational needs.

Netiquette for Virtual Classes

• Treat others as you would want to be treated --- with respect and empathy. Always remember, there are real people behind the text on your computer screen. Body language and facial expression may be absent, so be sensitive to --- and make use of --- other communication cues that help you to interact with people who are seen only through their words. The student photos and biographies are one element that can enhance colleagiality.
  
  
• Share your talents with other members of the class. If you have answers to technical problems that other students encounter, don't hesitate to offer assistance. And share resources such as Web links that you think might interest other members of the class.
  
  
• Electronic communication has distinctive advantages and disadvantages. Always be aware of this. Be patient when communication problems emerge and try to work around these problems to promote better communication within this new media context. Electronic communication travels at the speed of light, but people may not have their modems on all the time to receive the communication instantaneously. Be patient.
  
  
• The wise person understands that when others are not listening, or are having to know all the answers, they create their own debilitating barriers to learning. Don't create barriers for yourself or for others. Listen to --- and respect --- other points of view.

Presence

Americans are used to using technology to be very emotional...For most of us, our first love affair was on the phone. Laurie Anderson

The notion of presence, which has emerged in conection with the concept of telepresence --- presence at a distance --- has significant implications for human interaction with technology and with learning environments.

Telepresence is the feeling of being in a location other than where you actually are. Related to this, Teleoperation means that you can control a robot or another device at a distance. Knoke (1996) lays out a scenario of a telepresence board meeting sometime in the near future:

[W]ith twelve of the fourteen directors present, Steele called the meeting to order...

But John Steele was not in his office. He was traveling by himself 90,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, streaking at 1,700 miles per hour - 2.4 times the speed of sound - toward Los Angeles. The meeting participants were similarly scattered over five continents, with no more than three or four being even in the same country. Computer imagery merged multiple audio and video tracks from all over the world to create the illusion of a single meeting room, complete with a conference table and potted plants. It even provided for private chitchat during breaks. Six of the board members on the far side of the world were electronically reattired in full business dress to disguise their midnight bathrobes.

Even more remarkable, although English was the official language of the meetings, three of the participants chose to speak and listen in their native languages, with simultaneous translations provided by computers. (pp. 19-20)

This sounds far fetched, but according to Knoke (1996), "By the year 2020 each of them could be as commonplace as faxes, home computers, and CNN are today." This scenario presents an ideal vision of telepresence, where participants feel fully present with each other visually, verbally, etc. But many intermediate systems offoer a compelling sense of presence --- including the humble telephone. Designers of Internet-based educaton will want to establish a sense of presence as one of the key design goals in order to implement effective and appealing distance education electronically. It's not only sophisticated technologies, but design that is critical.

For telepresence to work as it should, design must be based on an understanding of the psychology of presence. Presence has to do with emotional as well as perceptual feelings of comfort and connection...being there, mind and soul, if not body. The concept of presence has special relevance to Internet-based education, where interpersonal interactions are carried out almost entirely via text, without body language, facial expressions or gestures. At a distance, it is still important to make a human connection. Understanding 'presence' and incorporating design elements to promote it are essential to effective Internet-based education.

The sense of presence is more important to some types of Internet-based education than to others. For example, it's less important for tutorials and correspondence courses than for the other three formats described in this report.

Communications theorist Frank Biocca (1995) reports that there are three types of presence:

1. Spatial presence
2. Social presence
3. Self-reflexive presence

We can think of presence as appropriate mental focus for carrying out a task within a virtual world or some other computer application. Presence is achieved when the user is not distracted from the virtual world or word processing file in order to fumble with frustrating, awkward interfaces or gimmicky activities that break the metaphor, the flow, of the activity.

References

Biocca, F. (1995). Presence. Presentation presented for a workshop on Cognitive Issues in Virtual Reality., VR '95 Conference and Expo, San Jose, CA.
EDS. (1991). EDS: Bringing JASON's Vision Home. Dallas, TX: Author [brochure].
Galloway, I., and Rabinowitz, S. (1992). Welcome to "Electronic Cafe International:" a nice place for hot coffee, iced tea, and virtual space. In: L. Jacobson. Cyberarts: Eploring Art and Technology. 255-63. San Francisco: Miller Freeman.
Knoke, W. (1996). Bold New World.
McLellan, H. (1994). Virtual Reality and Multiple Intelligences: Potentials for Higher Education. Journal of Computing in Higher Education. 5(2), 33-66.
Negroponte, N. Being Digital. New York: Vintage Books.
Rheingold (1993). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.
Schrage, M. (1990). Shared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration. New York: Random House.
Stoker, C. 1994, July). Telepresence, Remote Vision, and VR at NASA: From Antartica to Mars. Advanced Imaging. 9(7), 24-26.
Ulman, N. (1993, March 17). High-tech Connection between Schools and Science Expeditions enlivens Classes. Wall Street Journal. B1, B10.