Running head: MOTIVATING AT RISK AFRICAN AMERICANS AND HISPANICS
Motivating at Risk African Americans and Hispanics Through
the Study of New Media Technology
James L. Richardson
LaGuardia Community College
Abstract
The rising number of African Americans and Hispanics turning away from higher education is creating a problem that threatens many aspects of American society. Educators can help reverse this destructive trend by creating New Media based curricula that addresses the motivational factors impeding the academic success of these students. The recent advances in personal computing, as well as the rise of the Internet and global networks offer educators an unprecedented opportunity to reengage and motivate many of these students by teaching them to develop digital content that is technically advanced, economically viable, and which stays true to their core values. This new approach, which makes use of interactive technology, can bridge the gap and make it possible for many disenfranchised African American and Hispanic students to view academia in a more positive light.
The rising number of African Americans and Hispanics turning away from college and higher education is creating a problem that threatens many aspects of American society. It has been shown that increasing numbers of these students, many without sufficient economic and socio-political influence, can lead to increased levels of poverty, criminal behavior, incarceration (James, 2004), and greater family instability. However at the same time that some of these “at risk” students are turning away from higher education, new media centric areas of our economy and popular culture are experiencing incredible growth with this same demographic
(Smith, 2010).
In the fall of 2002 LaGuardia Community College created a two-year degree program in New Media Technology as one of the methods to address the growing need for digital media professionals. Recent technological advances in the fields of digital arts and computer information systems, gave LaGuardia educators an unprecedented opportunity to develop new media based curricula that directly converged with the interests, passions and cultural value systems of the predominately African American and Hispanic student body. While the primary goal of the program was to provide quality instruction in new technologies, another key objective was to motivate many of these “at risk” students to embrace education and secure greater opportunities for their economic success.
What is New Media?
In order to fully understand the societal impact of new media and how it was utilized at LaGuardia to motivate “at risk” African American and Hispanic students, it must first be defined. The field of new media is an emerging discipline that encompasses numerous areas of study, all which have helped to fuel the union of science, news, literature, commerce, television, radio, film, and the recording industry into a new paradigm. According to the summary of findings from the Digital Youth Project (Ito, et al., 2008), new media is described as the convergence of traditional forms of communication, finance, and entertainment with new methods of Internet based delivery. The wide spread proliferation of high speed broadband networks, combined with more powerful computers and sophisticated software, has created a technological focal point for the creation and dissemination of much the multimedia content driving popular culture.
Established minority filmmakers have also begun to make use of these new technologies and distribution methods as a way of leveling the playing field in Hollywood. Noted filmmakers Spike Lee and Robert Rodriguez are possibly best known for their first films, “She’s Gotta Have It” and “El Mariachi”, which both defied the Hollywood conventions of the time because they were produced for $160,000 and $7,000 respectively (Lee, 2010). Despite the fact that Lee and Rodriquez have produced and directed numerous films over the course of their careers, it is only recently that they took the opportunity to work on large-scale big budget films. As a result of working predominately in independent films at the start of their careers, both filmmakers have been extremely conscious of controlling the production costs of their movies. Lee and Rodriquez were avid supporters of using digital technology to enhance filming methods long before it became fashionable, and have heralded the use of this new medium for up and coming African American and Hispanic filmmakers.
Speaking in an interview about “Bamboozled”, his 2000 satire about a modern televised minstrel show, Lee stated, “We decided to use digital video because we were dealing with the medium of television, and it gave us that video look. Plus, we didn’t have a lot of money” (Fuch, 2000). Bamboozled shocked critics on many levels due to it’s derisive subject matter and also because much of the film was shot using consumer quality Sony VX1000 digital video cameras. Lee said that while the learning curve of working with digital formats presented a challenge, the cost and portability of the smaller handheld cameras allowed him to create the film that he wanted at a price acceptable to the major studios.
Rodriquez echoed similar sentiments on the use of digital technology in film production. As an early adopter of computer based editing, Rodriguez noted that with the software, camera technology, and computer processing power available today, his first movie created for a total of $7000 in 1992, could be made for $70 today (Farber, 2006). He went on to say that “Technology can help you create happy accidents–you are writer, director, photographer, sound mixer. It’s not that I am better than anybody…I just know I will make it wrong in all the right ways that will charm people make it human and not make it feel manufactured. The technology makes it possible” (Farber).
Today, many of the African Americans and Hispanics who were influenced by the early independent works of Robert Rodriquez and Spike Lee are now acutely aware that they can create and tell their own stories for a fraction of the costs of their mentors. Such is the case with African American filmmaker and director Angelo Bell, whose 2009 released feature film, “Broken Hearts Club”, was promoted through Facebook and distributed on Amazon.com and Netflix. His decision to pursue this method of filming developed out of the desire to take his passion for storytelling into a visual medium and to profit from his craft (Bell, 2010b). The use of digital filmmaking equipment and Internet based distribution enabled him to achieve this goal. In addition to his Facebook and Twitter pages, Bell maintains his own blog (Bell, 2010a) for the purpose of marketing and promoting himself and his films on the web.
If the film and television industries have been transformed by the “new media ecology” (Ito, et al., 2008), it can only be said that the music sector has been irrevocably altered by this shift in technology and communication. For example, the early African American and Hispanic pioneers of Hip Hop used microphones, records and inexpensive turntables, in conjunction with freestyle poetry, to tap into their creative energies. The innovative use of common household items allowed many underprivileged African Americans and Hispanics to create their own musical renditions with limited resources. Today this process is again being recreated, but instead of using turntables and records, the tools of the trade are high-end personal computers and specialized music software.
Using computerized digital workstations to create entirely new audio compositions are only one area in which new media based technology has changed the music industry. The use of the Internet as a delivery medium, and the ability to digitize music collections into compressed and easily transmittable audio files called MP3s, has been a large factor in this transformation. The global reach of the Internet, and the negligible cost of transmitting digital information, has enabled authors to market and promote their music without having to rely solely on mainstream recording labels. The rise of non-commercial peer-to-peer file sharing networks like BitTorrent, and the commercial viability of music downloading sites like the iTunes store, have given artists the means with which they can communicate directly with their fan base.
Explaining the Motivational Landscape
Over the past decade there has been a great deal of debate over the concept of the “digital divide” and how the lack of access to computer technology and global communication negatively impacts African Americans and Hispanics. It is a widely held belief in many academic circles that access to these technologies may level the playing field for minorities and make opportunities for success and advancement possible (Sahay, 2006). While it is true that access to digital technologies is a key component of success in many areas of 21st century society, the barriers facing the educational advancement of African Americans and Hispanics are more complex. In addition to providing access to technology and global communication, it is also important to address the motivational and systemic reasons why African American and Hispanics continue to shun higher education in numbers far greater than their counterparts from other groups.
According to Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory (SDT), all human motivation can be allocated to three main motivational categories: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation (Deci & Ryan, 2000; 2008). Before we can determine how this theory may be applied to analyzing the motivational factors that affect the educational decisions of African American and Hispanic students, it is important to define these motivational categories.
The first of Deci and Ryan’s (2000; 2008) motivational categories, intrinsic motivation, can be described as a process that begins at infancy, where individuals are spurred on to action without the promise of external rewards. Individuals, in this case, are motivated by the internal self-satisfaction derived from the action, as opposed to being motivated by the possibility of an external reward that may be gained by engaging in the action. For example, a young musician may enjoy playing a style of music because the fast paced tempo of genre makes the songs instinctively pleasing. This behavior would be in contrast to the musician who plays a style of music merely for the financial and status based rewards gained as a result of performing. Deci and Ryan go on to explain that in spite of the fact that all humans have certain autonomic motivational tendencies, these patterns can change over time and cause individuals to deviate from the natural intrinsic motivational tendencies due to outside factors such as negative experiences and destructive reinforcement. Conversely, Deci and Ryan propose that positive experiences and constructive reinforcement throughout life can help individuals sustain their natural intrinsic motivational tendencies and, as a result, become more self-determined to achieve success. Out of all of the three categories, Deci and Ryan believe that intrinsically motivated individuals have greatest opportunity for academic success.
The second category type, extrinsic motivation, is when individuals are driven to actions solely by external factors, such as fear of punishment or expectation of a reward, rather than as a result of a natural innate sense of self-satisfaction for achieving a specific goal. Deci and Ryan (2000; 2008) hypothesize that extrinsically motivated people will only work towards achievement if a reward or threat of a negative outcome is deemed great enough to warrant taking action. An example of an extrinsically motivated person would be the child that works hard in school to get straight A’s only because their parents promised a reward for such an outcome. Deci and Ryan classify extrinsically motivated people as having a moderate opportunity for academic success.
The final category of Deci and Ryan’s (2000; 2008) three motivational types is amotivation. Amotivated individuals are at the bottom of Self-Determination Theory scale, as it pertains to maximizing opportunities for academic success. These individuals tend to avoid acting in their best interest by either not placing value on a given task, or not having the self-confidence to believe that they are capable of accomplishing the specific task. These individuals are the most difficult to motivate towards successful academic outcomes due to their negative mindset.
The Impact of Race and Culture on Student Motivation
Identifying what motivates individuals is a complicated issue in a best-case scenario. When we further convolute the setting by looking at it through the historical prisms of race, and American cultural conflict, the level of difficulty rises exponentially. The trials and tribulations of slavery, the backlashes against both legal and illegal immigration, the years of Jim Crow Segregation, the struggle to integrate into a new country and culture, the fight for civil rights, the subtleties of institutionalized racism, and the stigmas of affirmative action have all played a large part in shaping the collective motivational tendencies of African Americans and Hispanics. Utilizing the SDT developed by Deci and Ryan (2000; 2008), and understanding the historical context of the negative and destructive United States minority-majority race relations, a strong case can be made that the motivational tendencies of African Americans and Hispanics have been moving from intrinsic motivation, to amotivational over the years as a direct result of unfair treatment at the hands of the mainstream society.
Historically, African Americans have long been shut out of higher education. The roots of these barriers begin within the institution of slavery, where blacks were forbidden from learning to read and write, and arguably continued up until the nadir of civil rights movement when the Supreme Court case of Brown vs. the Board of Education challenged the concept of racial segregation through the guise of “separate but equal” education. It was only due to the outcome of this case that African Americans and other minorities legally, if not in practice, gained access the same educational opportunities as whites. While this was an encouraging development, some academics and social scientists believed that despite the civil rights movement helping to put in place structures that eventually would minimize systematic racism in education, the positive effects would not be immediate. As a result, many culturally destructive trends continued to be felt for years to come.
Although both groups have struggled to find equality and secure a place within American society, the historical landscape of Hispanics within America differs from that of African Americans. The Hispanic experience has its own unique and complex set of challenges that can explain why, when we examine their place in traditional educational settings, the motivational tendencies of some Hispanic students may trend more towards Deci and Ryan’s (2000; 2008) amotivation than towards extrinsic or intrinsic motivation. According to statistics by the Pew Hispanic Center (Pew Research Center, 2009). Hispanics have the highest dropout rate of any ethnic group in America. The Hispanic drop out rate (17%) is nearly three times as high at that of whites (6%), and nearly double the rate of African-Americans (9%). Many academics have pondered that some of the factors attributing to this ethnic disparity are language barrier challenges for non-English speakers, anti-immigrant perceptions, greater financial responsibilities as a result of providing for larger immediate and extended family members, and the effort needed to balance cultural identity against the need to integrate into mainstream society (Pew Research Center). However, while all of these challenges may present barriers to educational success and drive some African Americans and Hispanics toward amotivational behaviors, the current shift in education as a result the new media ecology offers hope that some of these students can be reengaged.
Identifying the Tools For Reengagement
If one is observant of the recent trends in urban culture in relation to the areas of fashion, speech, music, entertainment, and status, it is clear that Hip-Hop holds a significant sway over the attitudes of many African American and Hispanics. This is especially true in the urban inner cities in which Hip-Hop originated. Noted Hip-Hop artist and activist Chuck D of Public Enemy has long stated that “Hip-Hop is the Black CNN” (Mahoney, 2010) and merely reflects attitudes and experiences of many inner city minorities. According to Daudi Abe in his essay entitled “Hip-Hop and the Academic Canon” (Abe, 2009), the African American and Hispanic experience provides the theoretical framework for Hip-Hop’s origins. He continues on to say, “over the last 30 years, the hip-hop movement has risen from the margins to become the preeminent force in US popular culture”. Abe hypothesizes that one of the reasons for this dominance is because, despite the lower social standing that African Americans and Hispanics occupy in the US in relation to mainstream white society, America has always equated urban culture as “avante garde” and the “definition of hip and cool”. This impact on mainstream American culture becomes even more evident when we view the 2009 RIAA statistics on music industry demographics and learn that Hip-Hop is the second most popular music genre, only trailing behind Rock (The Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA], 2008). Further examination of music industry demographics underscores the popularity of the Hip-Hop genre across racial and socio-economic classes.
Once relegated to the fringes of society, Hip-Hop can arguable be described as firmly in the mainstream. When we consider that African American and Hispanics have primarily dominated Hip-Hop, the influence that both groups have had on shaping popular culture is difficult to contest. Academics seeking to reengage disaffected minority students would be severely remiss not to take advantage of this unique a form of popular culture in developing new coursework. The use of computerized software and hardware in the production of Hip-Hop music makes the synthesis of new media technology a natural instruction method in which to tie together the interest of African American and Hispanic students with marketable technical skills.
Countering Low Motivation: Mapping the Plan of Reengagement
Understanding the causes of why African American and Hispanic students may have greater amotivational tendencies concerning education, and what are potential motivators, would be the first steps in developing a plan of action to address and correct the problem. Based on Deci and Ryan’s SDT (2000; 2008), if academics want to reverse the negative impact of destructive reinforcement that is at the core of amotivational behavior patterns, we need to inspire “at risk” African American and Hispanic students to positive action. This can be achieved by designing a reward-based curriculum that takes into consideration, and identifies, their highest values. To offer African Americans and Hispanics the greatest opportunity for educational success, the ultimate goal of the curriculum would be to move these “at risk” students from the amotivational, to the extrinsic, to finally the intrinsically motivated behavior patterns highlighted in the SDT.
Phase one in designing a plan to combat low motivation in underperforming African American and Hispanic students is to create a curriculum developed within the confines of a supportive and nurturing environment. This nurturing classroom environment is needed to offset the lack of self-esteem and confidence that is usually inherent within those who trend towards amotivational behavior. In short, these students need to regain confidence in their ability to succeed if they are to shift toward extrinsic motivation from their current amotivational behaviors. The next step in guiding amotivated students towards the reengagement is to make them understand the rewards, whether monetary or status based, that are possible as a result from the successful completion of the coursework. The positive benefits of this academic reengagement should be demonstrated through the curriculum in a culturally viable way that enforces the teaching of critical core competencies in the technologies required for success in the 21st century marketplace.
However, there will always be students who don’t respond to this approach of academic reengagement. In these situations where the student initially fails to shift their amotivational behavioral patterns toward extrinsic motivation, the new media driven course material should emphasize the possible negative outcomes if they do not strive to master the competencies defined in the curriculum. Essentially it is necessary for the amotivated student to understand how failure to perform will directly impact upon them and their cultural value system, if the shift towards extrinsic motivation is not achieved.
The final phase of the reengagement process involves encouraging the underperforming African American and Hispanic students to develop a sense of pride in their accomplishments that does not stem from anticipation of a reward, or fear of a negative outcome. To reach this goal of helping African American and Hispanic students move from extrinsic patterns to the more self-determining intrinsically motivated behaviors, the curriculum should be structured in a format that encourages students to enjoy learning for the sake of knowledge accumulation. This is without a doubt the most difficult phase of the reengagement process, as it requires a fundamental change in the way that many of these students have come to think about the traditional mainstream education system. It is for this very reason that a new non-traditional approach utilizing new media based curricula must be taken.
Turning Theory into Practice: LaGuardia’s New Media Technology Program
As the curriculum for the New Media Technology program at LaGuardia Community College was being updated in 2005, a number of LaGuardia’s institutional factors were taken into consideration. The question of how to motivate and instruct an ethnically diverse student population that has generally not responded well to the traditional teaching strategies was a main concern. The goal of the redesign was to create a program of study that would reengage disaffected learners while training them in marketable technology based skills.
To best appreciate the environment under which this redesign was developed, it is necessary to comprehend the institutional profile of LaGuardia Community College. LaGuardia is large urban community college located in Long Island City, New York, and is one of the 23 colleges that comprise the City University of New York (CUNY) system. The current 17,000 plus full time students that are enrolled at LaGuardia are predominately from poor and working class backgrounds, with learners of Hispanic and African descent encompassing more than half of the school population (LaGuardia Community College, 2010). However, while the school has a sizable African American and Hispanic student population, nearly 80% of all the first year students entering LaGuardia require some level of basic skills instruction in math, writing, English as a Second Language (ESL), or reading before they are ready to tackle college level materials. Based on the ethnic makeup of LaGuardia’s population, and the challenges facing these students, it was decided that the revised New Media Technology curriculum should be a hands-on and project-based degree that featured consistent reengagement throughout the program of study.
The structure of the new curriculum was set up to reflect elements of the SDT scale discussed by Deci and Ryan (2000; 2008). This decision was made in order to engage many of the underperforming students and help them to shift from amotivated behaviors, to extrinsic and intrinsic motivators that offer greater opportunities for academic success. Classes throughout all levels of the curriculum would be taught with an equal amount of time devoted to lecturing on the theory of new media, and similar time in the computer lab where those theories would be put into practice. This would permit students with difficulty staying focused during traditional classroom lectures to be constantly reconnected to the subject matter through hands-on exercises.
At the very beginning of the redesign, it was obvious to the curriculum developers that technology had created a new dynamic that was fundamentally changing the way in which this generation communicates. The designers surmised that the visual nature of new media was better suited to helping build the confidence levels of underperforming amotivated students than traditional degrees due to the creative and technical aspects of the discipline. Classes on topics such as video production and interactive web design, which rely more on visual acuity and creativity than on written and linguistic acumen, would limit some of the initial academic barriers facing many amotivated students. This approach would allow them to gain academic confidence as they developed marketable technical skills.
To address the concerns of how to best reengage amotivated African American and Hispanic students at LaGuardia, it was estimated that the creative nature of the new media courses would allow these students the flexibility to draw material from their own cultural and racial backgrounds in crafting digital content. By allowing students to connect their unique cultural and racial experiences to their class work, instructors would gain greater insights into the value systems of these learners and how to best motivate them towards academic success. For example, in the introductory course within the major, Introduction to New Media, students are required to complete a basic new media project that addresses a core digital competency every week. The syllabus for Introduction to New Media was developed as a series of staged assignments that increase in difficulty, from low stakes to high stakes, over the course of the semester and culminate in the creation of a student’s first digital portfolio. Since each assignment builds upon the theories and methods from the previous project, students must stay engaged in the coursework from week to week in order to be academically successful. To invest the learners in ongoing process, each student has total creative control on how to implement their weekly project in terms of design.
The final assignment for the class requires the student to develop an original creative project based on any topic of their choosing. The project can on any subject but must incorporate the material covered throughout the semester. The purpose of the staged assignments and the final culminating project is to build intellectual confidence by gradually introducing complex technical subjects, promote academic accountability by forcing the students to stay engaged, and empower learners by encouraging individual creativity and project ownership.
In addition to the introductory course, LaGuardia’s ePortfolio initiative was implemented at every level of the New Media curriculum in order to stay in alignment with the overall educational goals of the institution. Prior to graduation, students would be required to design a final professional portfolio to facilitate transfer to a four-year institution or market themselves to potential employers. During the time since these changes were implemented, students have created interactive portfolios containing multimedia web sites and video productions on diverse topics ranging from the child soldiers in Sierra Leone to the latest trends in urban sportswear. This open and creative format allows the student to personalize the course work to highlight the subject matter and issues that they value most. According to statistics on the effectiveness of ePortfolio based courses compiled in 2007 by LaGuardia Community College’s Office of Institutional Research (OIR) (Eynon, 2009), students in New Media focused classes were more likely to pass their courses than their counterparts in non technology centric courses. The pass rate for technology-based classes was 77.1% as compared to the 72% pass rate for courses not enhanced with digital media.
One of the anticipated benefits of the curriculum change was that the skill sets required to produce quality digital content would create lines of convergence across multiple disciplines such as business, mathematics, physics, technology, art, literature, music, film, and journalism. As a result, many of the African American and Hispanic students that were ambivalent towards the benefits of traditional liberal arts and science subjects, are now being prompted to discover the value in these disciplines. By incorporating a multimedia enriched pedagogical approach that enables African American and Hispanic students to merge popular entertainment genres like Hip-Hop and movies with traditional liberal arts and science coursework, they are able develop highly marketable skills while gaining a greater appreciation for traditional liberal arts and science coursework.
Examples of Successful Reengagement
To illustrate the benefits of instructing African American and Hispanic students with this pedagogical approach, the following case studies detail the experiences of two prior students in the New Media Technology Degree Program at LaGuardia Community College.
Case study A.
J. Singletary (personal communication, December 1, 2010) is a single 23-year-old African American male who graduated from LaGuardia Community College with an Associate in Applied Science (A.A.S.) degree in New Media Technology in 2009. He is currently working as a video editor in the corporate training division of a major international packaging and shipping company. In addition to his fulltime job, Mr. Singletary founded College Dropout Films after graduating from LaGuardia in 2009. College Dropout Films (http://vimeo.com/user3253499) is a consortium of independent video producers dedicated to using this new Internet based visual medium to benefit aspiring Hip-Hop artists. The name “College Dropout Films” is an inside reference between the various members of the group. The premise of the story being, that if it had not for becoming involved in digital film production, they would have all dropped out of college.
During the interview, Mr. Singletary stated that he was drawn to the study of new media as a result of the movies that he grew up watching. He was especially influenced by many of the 3D animation movies created by the computer-generated imaging (CGI) company, Pixar Animation Studios, made famous by Steve Jobs. Films such as Ice Age, Toy Story, and Monsters Inc. all played a significant part in sparking his interest in the digital arts. Mr. Singletary originally gravitated towards LaGuardia’s New Media Technology Program because it was the closest equivalent to a formal course in 3D animation that he could find at the time. In addition, the lower tuition rate that CUNY institutions charge in comparison to private universities made LaGuardia one of his only viable options for college.
During the course of his study, Mr. Singletary, an avid fan of Hip-Hop music and culture, discovered he had a significant aptitude for film and video editing. He stated that the more traditional majors in liberal arts and sciences did not interest him because he could not relate to their standardized lecture formats and content. Furthermore, he did not see a direct correlation between his life experiences and the subject matter contained within the liberal arts classes. It can be stated that he had a fairly negative view of traditional educational methods and it is doubtful he would have continued his education after high school if it were not for the program in New Media Technology.
Mr. Singletary stated that the study of New Media changed his views on education because it offered a different style of teaching and learning. What particularly interested him was the less structured and more “hands-on” approach to creating digital content. While lectures were part of the classroom organization, the lectures in new media were far more interactive. Some of the tools used to instruct students included Podcasts, special effects movies, cartoon animations, and power point presentations. The “hands-on” learning substituted task based projects for standard written exams that enabled Mr. Singletary to problem-solve and figure out methods that worked specifically for him. This individualized style of exploration gave Mr. Singletary a sense of personal satisfaction because of the freedom to express himself in the digital creations that he developed.
Despite working fulltime and pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors as the founder of College Dropout Films, Mr. Singletary is currently planning on continuing his education in 2012. His goal is to attend either Hunter College or Brooklyn College and obtain a Bachelors of Arts in film production. Examples of his creative work can viewed on his Vimeo page under his music production pseudonym, “Joey Snaxx” (http://vimeo.com/user4254885).
Case study B.
J. Batista (personal communication, December 4, 2010) is a married 26-year-old Puerto Rican male who graduated from LaGuardia Community College in 2006 with an A.A.S. degree in New Media Technology. He currently works as an interactive media designer for a New York based advertising firm creating Flash advertising banners and micro-sites.
Mr. Batista was initially motivated to study new media because of his interest in digital music production. He stated he was always fan of electronic music and had dabbled with the technology on his own. However, Mr. Batista wanted to expand his knowledge beyond his self-study efforts and believed a formal class would assist him in his goal to become a professional music producer. His decision to attend LaGuardia was for a straightforward reason. At the time, the New Media Program was the most affordable equivalent to a formal course in digital music production that Mr. Batista could find.
Mr. Batista’s views on a traditional liberal arts and sciences education mirror that of Mr. Singletary. He found very few liberal art and science programs that spoke directly to his life experiences and interests. As a result, he described himself as fairly unmotivated towards pursuing a standard liberal arts or sciences degree and is doubtful that he would have continued his education beyond high school had it not been for the non-traditional pedagogies within new media.
While he initially was drawn to the New Media Technology Program to learn more about music and audio production, Mr. Batista developed an interest in online gaming and animation as a result of taking a Flash animation course at LaGuardia. The visual nature of Flash made it possible for him to create interactive web sites utilizing many of his interest such as graphics, movies, and music. Also, the way in which the classes were taught, with equal time given to theory and practical computer exercises, helped him stay focused during the lessons. Interestingly, during his time studying new media, despite having very little interest in subjects such as math and science, Mr. Batista discovered himself having to develop those very same skills as a result of his fascination with Flash animation and gaming. In order to create the interactive projects that he wanted, it became necessary for him to learn programming skills that made use of applied mathematics and physics to construct exciting new media based entertainment. Mr. Batista finds it ironic that he entered LaGuardia without a desire to study mathematics and now uses it in many of his interactive projects.
Since graduating from LaGuardia, Mr. Batista has started an online recording label in his spare time. Despite working fulltime as an Interactive Designer, he has not given up on his desire to be a successful music producer. His music label, Dangerbox Recordings, (http://www.dangerbox.net) specializes in Trance and Electro House music. The venture is still in the startup phase, but Mr. Bastista is hopeful that it will be profitable soon since he and his wife recently welcomed their first child into the world.
Mr. Batista has no immediate plans to return to school since the exceptionally strong demand for Flash programmers would make it difficult for him to pass up the money and attend classes. He has not ruled out the possibility of additional school in the future but he states that his current education has taken him to where he wants to be in this point in his life. Example of his work can be found on his web site (http://www.dangerbox.net/jbatista84/)
Conclusion
The benefits of the technological innovation we are experiencing at this point in history should not just be limited to enabling individuals to bank online or reconnect with old friends through Facebook. While many of us have participated in these activities and found them to be both convenient and exciting, the opportunity afforded our society by using new media based technology is far greater. We now have the ability to reshape long held negative perceptions about education and learning in some of the most disaffected and disenfranchised students within our midst.
In a recent speech on the future outlook of America’s educational competitiveness, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan referenced a famous quote attributed to Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” (U.S. Department of Education, 2010). Secretary Duncan was sounding the alarm that America must take immediate steps to reverse some of the destructive trends that are keeping our students, particularly minority students, from being more competitive on world stage. African American and Hispanic students have the highest dropout rates of all ethnic groups and comprise approximately more than a quarter of the US population (Pew Hispanic Center, 2009). If we do not address these educational divides, we risk the likelihood of the Untied States wasting vast reserves of human capital and falling further behind other industrialized nations.
The fields of digital arts and technology are among the most profitable and popular areas in our economy. It is quite possible for anyone with the proper training to develop a music demo, shoot a video, create an original video game, or start and promote a new business using merely a standard laptop computer. As educators begin designing new curricula they need to be mindful of cultural impact of technology and how these new mediums can be leveraged to reengage unmotivated and underperforming students. The convergence of established time-honored media outlets and new methods of hi-tech communications can make it possible for many “at risk” African American and Hispanic students to discover the benefits of traditional education in the liberal arts and sciences. In preparing these students to compete in the 21st century workplace, it is essential that we help them realize how their unique cultural and racial backgrounds can connect to their academic experiences and place them on a successful path for the future.
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Los procesos de solución de problemas, especialmente los problemas que presentan poca o ninguna estructura (mal estructurados), es una de las áreas más desatendidas por las investigaciones relacionadas al diseño de la instrucción (Jonassen, 2004). Estas destrezas son de particular interés en el desarrollo del aprendizaje adulto y la enseñanza en el nivel graduado. Algunos teóricos han propuesto el uso de estrategias (andamios cognitivos) basados en tecnologías que sirvan para apoyar estos procesos.
El presente estudio pretendió poner a prueba las estrategias sugeridas por Lin, Hmelo, Kinzer y Secules (1999), usando cuatro tipos de andamiaje (procesos, apuntes, modelaje y foro social) para facilitar los procesos de solución de problemas mal estructurados. El estudio se desarrolló como un estudio de caso múltiple, siguiendo el enfoque formativo (Reigeluth y Frick, 1999), enmarcado en el paradigma cualitativo, pero adoptando una metodología mixta. Su intención era auscultar la efectividad de los andamios en apoyar los procesos de solución de problemas auténticos del carácter mal estructurados mientras se desarrollaba el proyecto del curso en la modalidad en línea en la plataforma MOODLE. Se hizo énfasis en la herramienta del Wiki.
Los resultados sostienen que los andamios fueron efectivos en lograr su propósito. Aquellos que se caracterizaron porapoyar al estudiante en adquirir un dominio profundo, no solamente del contenido, sino de los procesos asociados a él y aquellos que le permiten monitorear su propio proceso de solución de problemas mientras aprenden fueron los más efectivos. Además, los estudiantes estimaron otros aspectos afectivos como importantes para este logro. La herramienta Wiki no produjo los resultados esperados.
Introducción
Los procesos de solución de problemas conforman un área de interés particular en el desarrollo del aprendizaje adulto y la enseñanza en el nivel graduado. Para algunos teóricos como David Jonassen (2004) el aprender a solucionar problemas es posiblemente la destreza más importante que los estudiantes puedan desarrollar. También señala que los educadores han ignorado por años justamente el enseñar cómo aprender esta destreza tan importante.
Según Ge y Land (2003) algunas estrategias han demostrado ser efectivas como recursos de andamiaje para los procesos de solución de problemas, tales como el modelado, el uso de apuntes y las preguntas guiadas generadas por estudiantes. Sin embargo, señalan que estas investigaciones rara vez han indagado la efectividad de estas estrategias en la solución del tipo de problemas caracterizados como mal estructurados, considerados como más característicos del tipo de problemas complejos que se confrontan en la vida diaria.
Un problema se considera mal estructurado si cualquiera de sus tres componentes básicos (estado inicial, operadores y estado meta) no se especifica claramente en la situación problema. Estos problemas no cuentan con metas ni condiciones preestablecidas, poseen soluciones múltiples, o múltiples brechas de solución, o simplemente no tienen solución. Su principal característica es que presentan incertidumbre acerca de cuáles conceptos, reglas y principios son necesarios para la solución o para cómo se organizan. Estos problemas no ofrecen reglas generales o principios para describir o predecir los resultados de la mayoría de los casos y requieren que los estudiantes emitan juicios acerca del problema y que defiendan sus juicios expresando sus opiniones personales y creencias (Jonassen, 1997).
Jonassen (1999) sugiere el uso de tres estrategias para facilitar los procesos de construcción del conocimiento y la solución de problemas del carácter mal estructurados en ambientes abiertos de aprendizaje, mediados por tecnologías: el modelado de procesos, el ofrecer guía y las estrategias de andamiaje. El modelado de procesos propone ejemplificar en forma conductual o explícita la ejecutoria o conducta o ejemplificar los procesos cognitivos encubiertos que la tarea de solución de problemas requiere. El ofrecer guía implica motivar, incentivar, proveer retroalimentación, dar orientación, provocar la reflexión y la articulación de lo aprendido. De las tres estrategias, el ofrecer guía se considera como la menos precisa, siendo un concepto un poco ambiguo. Los andamios cognitivos proveen sistemas temporales para apoyar el aprendizaje del estudiante y su ejecutoria, más allá de las capacidades del aprendiz. Los andamios cognitivos se orientan a facilitar los procesos de reflexión. Desde el punto de vista de los recursos tecnológicos, la integración de andamios cognitivos a la experiencia de aprendizaje plantea un cierto grado de manipulación de la tarea por parte del sistema que componen estos recursos. Los procesos de análisis cognitivos de las tareas de aprendizaje permiten y facilitan la identificación de los procesos mentales que necesiten ser suplantados por un andamio cognitivo. El modelaje se enfoca en la ejecutoria del experto; el ofrecer guía se enfoca en la ejecutoria del estudiante; el andamiaje cognitivo se considera un acercamiento sistemático para apoyar al estudiante, enfocándose en la tarea, el ambiente, el maestro y el aprendiz.
De igual forma Lin, Hmelo, Kinzer y Secules (1999) sugieren que la tecnología puede proveer un andamiaje poderoso para facilitar la reflexión tanto individual como colaborativa, de cuatro formas: a) mediante exhibiciones de los procesos, (b) usando apuntes o pistas para los procesos, (c) proveyendo modelos de los procesos, y (d) proveyendo un foro para el diálogo social reflexivo. Argumentan que un enfoque de sistemas que combine estas técnicas diferentes de andamiaje pueden hacerlas más poderosas que cuando sean usadas en forma individual. En el estudio conducido por Ge y Land (2003) ellas indican que el uso de estrategias como el modelado y monitoreo por parte del instructor pueden proveer andamiajes adecuados a los procesos de hacer preguntas, elaborar, explicar, construir argumentos, proveer retroalimentación constructiva y el auto monitoreo del aprendizaje.
La reflexión crítica, pilar del proceso transformador en el aprendizaje adulto (Mezirow, 2000), es otro de los objetivos que persigue la formación de un estudiante del nivel graduado. El poder de la reflexión en los procesos de aprendizaje es un fenómeno ya reconocido por teóricos y practicantes de la educación (Dewey, 1933). El desarrollo de la autonomía y el aprendizaje auto dirigido en el estudiante adulto requiere de la capacidad para pensar en forma racional y reflexiva, para analizar evidencia y emitir juicios; requiere, además, de la capacidad para conocerse a sí mismo y ser libre para formar y expresar una opinión; y finalmente, para ser capaz de actuar en el mundo (Tennant y Pogson, 1995). Siendo el desarrollo de la autonomía y el aprendizaje auto dirigido una de las metas de la enseñanza de los adultos, ésta favorece el fomento de la reflexión profunda y crítica como proceso facilitador del cambio transformador en su aprendizaje (Brookfield, 1995; Cranton, 1996; Mezirow y Asociados, 1990; Mezirow y Asociados, 2000). Aunque la reflexión no es un fin en sí misma (Lin et al.,1999), ésta es considerada la clave principal para el aprendizaje como producto de la experiencia (Schon, 1983).
Mezirow (1990) establece que la mayor parte de nuestro conocimiento como adultos proviene de nuestros esfuerzos por solucionar problemas que nos permitan acomodarnos a los cambios rápidos y continuos de la vida. Por lo tanto, la manera en que nosotros definimos y solucionamos los problemas se convierte en el contexto para casi todo nuestro aprendizaje. De aquí la importancia en distinguir entre los tres niveles de reflexión, al solucionar problemas: la reflexión acerca del contenido, la reflexión acerca de los procesos y la reflexión acerca de los supuestos o premisas que sostienen nuestros entendimientos, sentimientos y acciones. La reflexión crítica es aquella que tiene que ver con la reflexión acerca de nuestras premisas, la reflexión acerca de las razones, el por qué, de las cosas que hacemos, sentimos, creemos y pensamos, así como sus consecuencias.
Tanto la reflexión crítica como los procesos de solución de problemas del carácter mal estructurados, pueden ser auxiliadas por recursos tecnológicos, cuando estos sean apoyados por recursos meta cognitivos explícitamente diseñados con esa intención. Otros factores parecen incidir en la efectividad de cualquier diseño instruccional, como lo son la motivación personal y la destreza en el manejo de las herramientas tecnológicas (Negrón, 2008).
La literatura apunta hacia la necesidad de continuar explorando los efectos del uso de estrategias de andamiaje en los procesos de solución de problemas y explorar los escenarios de problemas reales o auténticos, aquellos que se caracterizan, por lo general, por ser de carácter poco estructurados o mal estructurados. Según Jonassen (2004), la literatura relacionada al diseño instruccional para la solución de problemas es casi inexistente.
La presente investigación se condujo como un estudio de caso formativo múltiple (dos grupos de investigación independientes) en la modalidad de investigación en acción, para la prueba del modelo sugerido por la investigación de Lin et al. (1999) y siguiendo las recomendaciones de Ge y Land (2003). Se quiso explorar la efectividad de la aplicación de andamios cognitivos como facilitadores del proceso de solución de problemas en el ambiente ofrecido por el curso EDU618-Evaluación de procesos y productos educativos– del Programa Graduado en Sistemas de Instrucción y Tecnología Educativa de la Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, en San Juan, Puerto Rico. El curso propone a los estudiantes organizarse en quipos para trabajar en el desarrollo de un proyecto, vinculados a una organización de base comunitaria (estrategia de aprendizaje en servicio) y responder a las necesidades expresadas por estas organizaciones, que requieren el diseño, producción y evaluación formativa de materiales y recursos educativos. El curso demanda de los estudiantes que actúen como expertos frente a las necesidades presentadas por las organizaciones, procediendo con el análisis de la situación problema, delimitando el alcance de su intervención, diseñando y delineando un producto, sometiéndolo a evaluación formativa durante cada fase de su diseño y desarrollo, y sometiendo su producto final al escrutinio y juicio público. Al culminar su experiencia los estudiantes deben presentar por lo menos un primer prototipo del producto mejorado ante la consideración de los representantes de las organizaciones para las cuales trabajaron. El contexto que se provee para el aprendizaje a través del curso es auténtico y los estudiantes deben aproximarse a los problemas actuando como lo harían los expertos en el campo del diseño de la instrucción. Los problemas que confrontan no están definidos de antemano, por lo cual son considerados del tipo mal estructurados.
El curso se ofrece en modalidad híbrida, combinando encuentros presenciales con virtuales facilitados por la plataforma de administración de cursos conocida como MOODLE y su particular herramienta de trabajo colaborativo del Wiki. Además utiliza de otros recursos y herramientas propias de esta plataforma. La investigación se llevó a cabo mediante la observación de dos casos, la primera durante el mes de junio de la sesión de verano de 2008 y una segunda implantación de seguimiento entre enero y mayo de 2009. La sesión de verano se extiende desde inicios de mayo hasta mediados de julio, pero la autorización para desarrollar la investigación solamente se otorga para el mes de junio.
La presente investigación partió de una valoración de los procesos formativos en la proposición de teorías para la enseñanza (Reigeluth y Frick, 1999). Partió, además, de un entendimiento de que los estudiantes aprenden pensando y que las tecnologías son herramientas que pueden facilitar ese proceso en la medida en que éstas se utilicen apropiadamente con esos fines (Jonassen, 1999).
Problema de investigación
Esta investigación se propuso estudiar cómo se pueden mejorar los procesos de solución de problemas auténticos y mal estructurados de estudiantes de maestría utilizando estrategias de andamiaje que asuman las cuatro formas sugeridas por Lin et al. (1999). El ambiente de aprendizaje colaborativo fue facilitado por la herramienta de Wiki en línea de la plataforma de cursos MOODLE, mientras los estudiantes trabajaban en la solución de un problema auténtico, integrando materiales educativos a un proyecto de carácter social. Específicamente la primera parte de la investigación interesaba saber: ¿Cuáles estrategias de andamiaje (exhibiciones de procesos; apuntes de procesos; modelos de procesos; y un foro para el diálogo social reflexivo) resultan más efectivas para los estudiantes al proponer alternativas de solución a los problemas reales planteados por la situación? ¿Cuáles estrategias de andamiaje resultan más eficaces en un ambiente de aprendizaje abierto colaborativo del tipo Wiki? ¿Cuáles de las estrategias de andamiaje resultan más atractivas para los estudiantes? ¿Cuáles estrategias de andamiaje favorecen el desarrollo de destrezas de pensamiento reflexivo profundo y crítico? Para la segunda implantación de los andamios en 2009, se añadió una pregunta de investigación: ¿Cómo perciben los estudiantes la efectividad de los andamios al usarse en forma integrada?
Método general de investigación
Vista general del método usado
Reigeluth y Frick (1999) plantean que el tipo de investigación denominada investigación formativa es el método más apropiado para crear y mejorar las teorías del diseño instruccional. Este tipo de investigación es una forma de la investigación en acción que tiene como intención mejorar la teoría para el diseño de las prácticas y procesos instruccionales. Su intención es orientar la práctica de la educación y su adecuación se juzga en términos de su efectividad, su eficacia y su atractivo.
La presente investigación se condujo como una investigación formativa, siguiendo la modalidad de estudio de caso múltiple, en el cual se diseñó la experiencia siguiendo las pautas señaladas por Lin, et al. (1999) sobre cómo la tecnología puede servir a los recursos de andamiaje. La experiencia se llevó a cabo en el ambiente tecnológico virtual provisto por la plataforma de administración de cursos en línea MOODLE. En la sesión de verano 2008 participaron 11 estudiantes de un total de 14. Tres estudiantes se negaron a participar de la investigación (aportar con sus datos) por diversas razones personales. La segunda etapa de implantación de los recursos de andamiaje se llevó a cabo en una sección subsiguiente del curso (enero de 2009), con nuevos estudiantes. En esta segunda implantación participaron 10 en la entrevista grupal y la apreciación de los andamios cognitivos integrados al curso. Siguiendo las recomendaciones de Reigeluth y Frick (1999), se procedió con la metodología sugerida con la intención de mejorar una teoría existente. Se hizo una aproximación a la investigación como un caso diseñado de acuerdo al modelo.
Procedimiento general de investigación
La metodología de investigación combinó diversas técnicas, asumiendo el paradigma cualitativo como el paradigma predominante, pero integrando técnicas cuantitativas en ciertas instancias del proceso. Según Hénandez-Sampieri, Fernández-Collado y Baptista-Lucio (2003), la gran ventaja del modelo de enfoque dominante es que se enriquecen tanto la recolección de los datos como su análisis. De igual manera, se presta para hacer análisis mediante la triangulación por medio de diferentes fuentes de datos. Esto aporta credibilidad a los mismos.
El presente informe recoge la investigación llevada a cabo durante ambas partes y resume los hallazgos de ambas instancias. Al comienzo de cada instancia, se procedió con la observación de los grupos para determinar el conocimiento pre representación del problema. En la primera etapa solamente se realizó el análisis de tareas para determinar los andamios cognitivos necesarios. Luego, en ambas etapas, se procedió con la implantación de los andamios cognitivos durante el desarrollo del curso y posteriormente se procedió a determinar el elemento de conocimiento post representación del problema de los equipos de trabajo y validar la efectividad general de los andamios cognitivos en apoyar la solución de problemas de los estudiantes.
Procedimientos de la primera etapa de la investigación.
Durante el desarrollo de la investigación en su primera etapa, se llevó a cabo una serie de actividades siguiendo la aplicación del método formativo adoptado. El curso había iniciado en el mes de mayo, pero las actividades apoyadas con andamios cognitivos se propusieron para la actividad de trabajo en equipo que iniciaba en junio. Para los propósitos de este informe, esta primera etapa se subdividió en tres fases que se describen a continuación.
Métodos de la primera parte
Fase 1: Análisis de tareas y propuesta de andamios cognitivos.
Como parte de los procesos del diseño de la instrucción, el diseño y desarrollo de los andamios cognitivos inició con el proceso de análisis de tareas. En los procedimientos de análisis de tareas se persigue tener una idea de cómo sucede el aprendizaje relacionado a la tarea de aprendizaje. Jonassen, Tessmer y Hannunm (1999) lo definen como “… a process of analyzing and articulating the kind of learning that you expect the learners to know how to perform (p. 3)”. El proceso de análisis de tareas siguió un formato multi métodos, combinando procesos y técnicas tanto cualitativas como cuantitativas. El acercamiento al análisis de tareas adoptado fue mucho más cónsono con los modelos de análisis de tareas sustentados por la teoría de actividad, que parte de un entendimiento del contexto como elemento esencial de este proceso (Jonassen, Tessmer & Hannunm, 1999). Esto dio curso al diseño y desarrollo de los diferentes recursos de andamiaje cognitivo sujetos a investigación.
En el caso bajo estudio, la tarea de aprendizaje requiere el diseño y desarrollo parcial del proceso de evaluación formativa para un producto educativo. Ésta es considerada como una tarea de solución de problemas auténticos en equipos de trabajo. Así que se optó por considerar, no solamente las destrezas relacionadas a la solución de problemas y los conocimientos básicos del contenido relacionado a los procesos de evaluación formativa, sino que a su vez se consideraron las destrezas cognitivas para el desempeño efectivo de los procesos de trabajo en equipo como una actividad importante en la solución de este tipo de problemas. Para el análisis de la tarea desde la perspectiva del contenido y sus procesos, se usó de los procedimientos de análisis mediante jerarquías de aprendizaje originalmente propuesto por Gagné (1985). El objetivo de instrucción primario que da base a la experiencia de trabajo en equipo se describe como: “Desarrollar un plan de evaluación formativa para el diseño y desarrollo del primer prototipo de un recurso educativo incorporando recursos electrónicos.” Del análisis jerárquico de tareas se derivaron unos andamios cognitivos para apoyar a los estudiantes en el manejo de los procedimientos y desarrollo de su experiencia educativa concerniente al objetivo del curso que orienta la experiencia del proyecto mayor.
Para el análisis de la actividad de trabajo en equipo se usaron como marco de referencia las destrezas cognitivas del funcionamiento de los equipos identificadas por Klein (2000). Estas destrezas cognitivas de los equipos son: (1) control de la atención, la comunicación y el manejo de la información; (2) conocimiento compartido de la situación o problema; (3) modelos mentales compartidos; (4) aplicación de estrategias y heurísticas para tomar decisiones, solucionar problemas y planificar;y, (5) meta cognición.
Los procedimientos de análisis de tareas jerárquicos no son aplicables a los ambientes que presentan tareas de solución de problemas auténticos, mal-estructurados. Esto es debido a que en problemas de esta naturaleza es imposible determinar de antemano cuál es el espacio del problema (Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, 2000). La solución de este tipo de problemas requiere de los estudiantes destrezas cognitivas que le permitan enmarcar el problema en un contexto particular, partiendo de representaciones inicialmente confusas y ambiguas, hasta lograr una representación de la situación que sea manejable y conducente a la operacionalización de posibles soluciones.
A raíz de esta perspectiva, se partió de la idea de que la tarea requería acercamientos multi metódicos para descifrar los apoyos o andamios cognitivos requeridos por los grupos de estudiantes trabajando en sus proyectos del curso (posición cónsona con la teoría de actividad). Se inició por determinar el conocimiento de los equipos de trabajo. Blickensderfer et al. (2000) definen el conocimiento de un equipo como el conocimiento compartido entre los miembros de ese equipo. Este conocimiento está compuesto por dos tipos de conocimiento: el conocimiento existente antes de llevar a cabo la tarea; y el conocimiento y comprensión que se genera en forma dinámica durante la ejecución de la tarea. El conocimiento pre tarea toma en consideración los modelos mentales sostenidos por el equipo antes de iniciar la tarea, sus expectativas y las actitudes que las nutren y las posibles destrezas que como equipo poseen. Partiendo de este enfoque hacia el entendimiento de los equipos como entidades inteligentes, se procedió a diagnosticar el estado de conocimiento pre tarea de los grupos. De estas apreciaciones del funcionamiento de cada uno de los grupos y el análisis de las deficiencias en el conocimiento pre tarea, se identificaron las destrezas que habrían de apoyarse mediante el desarrollo e instalación en el curso en línea de andamios cognitivos.
La situación general de los grupos al inicio de la tarea, se percibió como confusa. No tenían claro qué se esperaba de ellos. No sabían a ciencia cierta cuál sería el resultado final de su proyecto; se percibía ansiedad. Durante las primeras dos semanas, no usaron de los espacios provistos en el curso en línea para informar de los avances de su trabajo como equipos. Prevalece el entendimiento de la profesora como autoridad y fuente de conocimiento; no se percibe como parte del equipo. Se hizo evidente que la dificultad mayor de los grupos en este momento inicial estaba relacionada a la comunicación y el manejo de la información. Señala Klein (2000) que ésta es una de las destrezas cognitivas de grupos más importantes para los equipos cuya función principal es la de planificación; el desarrollo de modelos mentales comunes y la meta cognición son las otras destrezas críticas para los equipos de planificación. Más adelante, los estudiantes hicieron su Primer Informe de Progreso en reunión presencial.
A raíz de esta presentación se analizó el estado de situación para cada grupo de trabajo. Para este análisis se usó como referencia y punto de partida la escala desarrollada por la Academia de la Fuerza Aérea de los Estados Unidos (1995) para estimar los niveles de ejecutoria individual al enmarcar y resolver problemas mal estructurados. Se desarrolló una escala usando como base estos mismos criterios, pero dirigida a grupos de trabajo en lugar de a individuos. Los criterios de la escala son: estructura del problema, perspectivas personales, conciencia del contexto del problema, estructura del problema, representación del espacio del problema, acercamiento al espacio del problema, atribución de fracasos, generación de alternativas de solución, el uso de herramientas para enmarcar el problema y las soluciones, y la confianza y compromiso con las soluciones. Se hizo un recuento narrativo de las presentaciones y las interpretaciones de la profesora respecto al estado de desarrollo de cada proyecto, el entendimiento de los participantes de los grupos respecto a la naturaleza del problema, y las destrezas cognitivas de grupos demostradas hasta este momento, siguiendo las destrezas cognitivas identificadas por Klein (2000).
En resumen del análisis del estado preliminar se determinó que los proyectos se encontraban en su etapa inicial de planificación, con algunos adelantos en la pre-producción o diseño del primer prototipo del producto. Durante esta primera etapa, aproximadamente el 70% de los grupos habían enmarcado y definido el problema y presentado opciones de solución, sin ser todavía validadas contra los recursos y limitaciones disponibles para ellos. El restante 30% aproximadamente, todavía no había capturado la esencia de la naturaleza del problema que confrontaban. También se observó que los estudiantes necesitaban apoyo en las destrezas relacionadas a la comunicación y manejo de la información, así como en desarrollar un conocimiento compartido de la situación problema y las estrategias meta cognitivas que les permitirían lograr el trabajo propuesto.
Como resultado del proceso general de análisis de tareas, se desarrollaron cuatro estrategias de andamiaje cognitivo (Lin et al, 1999), con siete andamios cognitivos para facilitar tanto el dominio del contenido básico como los procesos relacionados al mismo y facilitar los procesos de los trabajos de equipo. Estas fueron integradas al curso en su forma virtual en MOODLE. Las estrategias fueron: (a) Exhibiciones de procesos (tecnologías que convierten un aprendizaje tácito en un aprendizaje explícito y evidente. incluyen la exhibición de procesos de solución de problemas y procesos de pensamiento); (b) Uso de apuntes de los procesos (se refieren a diseños en los cuales la tecnología plantea preguntas apropiadas y guía a los estudiantes a organizar, monitorear y evaluar sus propios procesos de solución de problemas mientras aprenden); (c) Modelado de procesos (donde expertos modelan los procesos para los aprendices novicios que están aprendiendo acerca de ese mismo dominio); y (d) Diálogo social reflexivo (el individuo reflexiona sobre sus propios esfuerzos y también sobre los esfuerzos relacionados a las metas de su grupo). El Anejo A presenta una tabla que hace un resumen y breve descripción de los siete andamios cognitivos desarrollados para esta investigación.
Fase 2: Aplicación de los andamios cognitivos durante el desarrollo del curso.
Los andamios se fueron desarrollando y se hicieron disponibles a los estudiantes en el momento en que la profesora los estimó como necesarios. Durante la primera sesión (junio de 2008), los andamios se desarrollaron a la par con el desarrollo del curso, en un período aproximado de cuatro semanas. Tanto en la primera sesión como en la segunda, la secuencia de presentación de los andamios se mantuvo igual.
Fase 3: Determinación del elemento de conocimiento post representación del problema de los equipos de trabajo.
A los efectos de poder determinar el grado de conocimiento generado por los estudiantes ya lograda la representación del problema, o lo que Blickensderfer et al. (2000) denominan conocimiento post representación del problema, se procedió en forma similar a la descrita para la determinación del grado de conocimiento pre tarea generado por los grupos de trabajo. Se analizaron los contenidos de las comunicaciones electrónicas y participaciones en foros, así como los informes presenciales de progreso, la efectividad de la propuesta y las destrezas cognitivas de equipo. Mediante este análisis se pretendía poder evidenciar el progreso de los estudiantes en su proceso de reflexión y si habían logrado evidenciar ser capaces de enmarcar y proponer soluciones al problema mal estructurado que la tarea del curso les presentaba, especialmente por el apoyo brindado por los andamios cognitivos integrados al curso.
En este análisis se pudo determinar que las diversas formas de comunicación electrónicas establecidas en el curso en forma directa (foros y chats) o como formas alternas (correo-e y comunicaciones sincrónicas en MSN) fueron utilizadas mayormente por los estudiantes con los siguientes propósitos: para informar las tareas rendidas, para aclarar dudas con la profesora, para solicitar ayuda a la profesora en algún procedimiento, para reportar problemas técnicos, o para la búsqueda de retroalimentación inmediata de parte de la profesora. También se usaban para darse estímulo y apoyo entre ellos mismos, creando un ambiente de camaradería entre estudiantes y profesora.
En algunas instancias se utilizaron para evidenciar sobre sus procesos del trabajo en equipo, reafirmando así las decisiones tomadas y reflejando que habían reflexionado acerca de la naturaleza del problema. Especialmente las comunicaciones sincrónicas a través de MSN sirvieron la función de auxiliar a los estudiantes en el proceso de establecer el alcance de sus expectativas para el proyecto de clase, permitiéndoles enmarcar mejor el problema, mucho mejor que las comunicaciones del tipo correo-e. Las comunicaciones vía el CHAT también facilitaron este propósito.
Según la apreciación de la profesora, en muy escasas ocasiones estas comunicaciones reflejaron procesos cognitivos profundos que identificaran avances en sus procesos de reflexión profunda y crítica. Según Cranton (1996) se identifican tres niveles de la reflexión: sobre los contenidos, sobre los procesos y sobre los supuestos. El nivel de reflexión demostrado por los grupos se limitaba a la reflexión acerca del contenido y en algunas ocasiones al nivel de reflexión meta cognitivo o de procesos, pero la reflexión crítica o reflexión acerca de los supuestos no se evidenció en estas comunicaciones.
En la entrevista grabada en vídeo existe evidencia de cómo los estudiantes reflexionaron acerca de sus propios procesos, tanto personales como de grupo. Aunque no hacen atribución a ningún recurso en particular, hablan acerca de cómo la experiencia del curso en línea con estas herramientas integradas, les permitió auto examinarse y aceptar abiertamente su responsabilidad por su propio aprendizaje. He aquí algunas muestras editadas de estas intervenciones en la entrevista grabada: “Esto de trabajar a distancia es algo novedoso… y muchas veces tendemos a resistirnos al cambio…” Otra estudiante señaló: “Al ser la primera vez que tomamos cursos en línea…nosotros tenemos que estar más en la disposición de tomar estos cursos y a la vez de orientarnos de cómo tomarlos…” Finalmente otro de los estudiantes señaló: “Tenemos que ser más proactivos en este tipo de cursos y cambiar paradigmas…Tenemos que ser más proactivos y más abiertos…romper paradigmas, ¡que no es fácil!”
Es evidente que los grupos incursionaron en procesos de reflexión, llevándoles a desarrollar un conocimiento compartido acerca de la tarea. Los procesos de reflexión individual se reflejaban en los procesos de grupo.
Se tuvo evidencia del grado en que los estudiantes lograron enmarcar y proponer soluciones al problema mal estructurado y el reconocimiento de la incertidumbre y ambigüedad. La siguiente comunicación a través del correo-e evidencia el tipo de situaciones que los estudiantes confrontaban en el proceso de enmarcar el problema mal estructurado: “Reconozco que al comienzo de cualquier curso, cada arranque, tiende a ser un poquito estresante, un poquito pesado, porque en ocasiones tú no tienes claro al 100% lo que tú esperas y posiblemente lo que tú esperas no es lo que es o lo que esperas es lo que es, pero no tienes seguridad de cuál va a ser el rumbo que vas a tomar…” Aquí se evidencia cómo este estudiante ha capturado la naturaleza incierta del problema auténtico que se le presenta. Desconoce el estado inicial de las cosas, desconoce con certeza lo que se espera (estado meta) o, de tener claro la meta deseada, las operaciones que han de llevarse a cabo son desconocidas también.
En ocasiones, confrontaban dificultades en poder articular las expectativas del proyecto de clase con las expectativas manifestadas por los representantes de las Organizaciones. Se sentían ansiosos y buscaban articular la multiplicidad de expectativas con los recursos de los cuales disponían. La propuesta de evaluación, según fue presentada en el WIKI disponible para ello, fue evaluada usando una rúbrica diseñada a estos fines (Anejo B).
Cuando se combinan en triangulación las observaciones hechas durante la presentación del informe de la propuesta, las comunicaciones asincrónicas y sincrónicas, y los resultados de la evaluación usando la rúbrica, es evidente la consistencia entre estas observaciones. Los estudiantes en su mayoría lograron enmarcar adecuadamente el problema y proponer una solución adecuada, según facilitados por los andamios cognitivos desarrollados para el curso. Aún así, a pesar de sus avances, recurrían a la autoridad representada en la profesora como proceso de validación de sus posturas y acciones. Son estudiantes auto-dirigidos, pero no independientes. El curso lo toman en su segundo o tercer trimestre en el Programa y para muchos la estrategia de enseñanza adoptada en el curso entra en conflicto con el paradigma de enseñanza y aprendizaje al que están acostumbrados. También para muchos es su primera experiencia trabajando en el contexto de aprendizaje en línea.
Resultados de la determinación de la efectividad de los andamios cognitivos (junio de 2008)
La determinación de la efectividad, la eficacia, el atractivo y la profundidad de los andamios fue el foco principal de esta investigación. Además interesaba saber cómo funcionaban estos recursos en un ambiente de aprendizaje abierto colaborativo del tipo Wiki y cuáles favorecían el desarrollo de destrezas de pensamiento reflexivo profundo y crítico. Para facilitar el proceso de establecimiento de consistencia en la interpretación de los resultados obtenidos para contestar las preguntas de investigación, se procedió a triangular tres fuentes de datos. El proceso de triangulación es una de las técnicas que aumenta la credibilidad de los datos en la investigación formativa. Se usaron tanto fuentes de datos cualitativas como cuantitativas. Para llevar a cabo la triangulación se tomó la encuesta de la primera parte de la entrevista realizada en la última sesión de clases como una primera fuente de datos; la segunda parte de la entrevista consistente en preguntas de contestación libre, se convirtió en la segunda fuente de datos; y las diversas comunicaciones en línea (chats, foros, correos-e y conversaciones sincrónicas en MSN) como la tercera fuente de datos.
Efectividad, eficacia, atractivo y profundidad de los andamios.
Para la primera fuente de datos se usó una escala de siete puntos para cuatro categorías generales o atributos de los andamios cognitivos. Las cuatro categorías o atributos fueron: su efectividad (entendida como el grado en que el andamio logró la intención para la cual fue propuesto), su eficacia (entendida como el grado de esfuerzo, energía y tiempo requerido por este andamio en relación a su efectividad), su atractivo (entendido como cuán agradable resultó ser el andamio), y su profundidad (entendida como el grado en que logró estimular pensamientos reflexivos profundos y críticos). En la segunda parte de la entrevista, los participantes evaluaron libremente los andamios. Se llevaron a cabo cuatro rondas de discusión, orientando cada ronda con una pregunta guía o una combinación de preguntas simples. A continuación se presentan los resultados obtenidos de esta triangulación.
La Tabla 1 demuestra que los andamios del tipo exhibición de procesos (uno y cuatro) y los del tipo apuntes de procesos (tres y seis) fueron considerados por los estudiantes como más efectivos, eficaces, atractivos y profundos. Estos alcanzaron sobre un 90% en valor absoluto de la escala total. Muy cerca siguieron los andamios dos y siete, con un porcentaje de valor absoluto en la escala total sobre 80%. El andamio que pareció no alcanzar un porcentaje alto en la estimación de los estudiantes fue el andamio cinco, con un 75% en valor absoluto de la escala total. Esto puede haberse debido a que estos recursos se instalaron un poco tarde y los estudiantes no supieron cuál era su verdadera función. Los andamios del tipo exhibición de procesos y de apuntes de procesos resultaron ser los más efectivos.
Tabla 1
Resultados de evaluación de los andamios según cuatro criterios
Andamio
Efectividad
Eficacia
Atractivo
Profundidad
Mediana
% abs
#1- Enfocando el problema
72
70
65
70
70.0
91
#2- Entrevista Casanova
70
62
63
70
66.5
86
#3- Preguntas de entrevista
72
71
60
69
70.0
91
#4- Auto-evalua destrezas de equipo.
72
70
65
70
70.0
91
#5- Foro de discusión de temas
57
56
58
60
57.5
75
#6- Plan de evaluación formativa
72
70
70
72
71.0
92
#7- Chats semanales
68
63
67
57
65.0
84
Mediana
72
70
65
70
N= 11
Nota. Cada escala alcanzaba un valor máximo de 7 puntos. El valor absoluto máximo por escala es de 77 puntos. El porcentaje absoluto parte del valor absoluto máximo de 77 y toma como base el valor de la mediana.
Los análisis de correlación del tipo Pearson demuestran que los criterios de efectividad y eficacia correlacionan a un r = 0.90, siendo estos dos criterios los que alcanzaron el nivel de correlación más alto. Los estudiantes tienden a entender que el andamio logra su intención en proporción con el grado de esfuerzo, energía y tiempo que le dedican. No ocurre así con los andamios considerados como que cumplen con su propósito y los que logran estimular en ellos sus pensamientos reflexivos profundos y críticos. La correlación entre la percepción de la efectividad y la profundidad de los andamios solamente alcanzó un r = 0.70, considerada como una buena correlación, aunque moderada. De igual manera, los estudiantes estiman que si los andamios son eficaces (requiere de ellos esfuerzo intelectual), entonces hay una tendencia moderada a estimular en ellos sus pensamientos reflexivos y críticos, para un r = 0.71. La eficacia y el atractivo parecen no establecer una relación muy fuerte, asumiendo valores r = 0.48, así como las características de atractivo y profundidad, para un r = 0.26. Esto señala hacia una tendencia a no percibir el atractivo de los andamios como un factor crítico de entre sus cuatro atributos esenciales. La Tabla 2 recoge los resultados de estas correlaciones.
Tabla 2
Coeficientes de correlación Pearson entre criterios
Pearson para:
Valor coeficiente r
efectividad/eficacia
0.90
efectividad/atractivo
0.59
efectividad/profundidad
0.70
eficacia/atractivo
0.48
eficacia/profundidad
0.71
atractivo/profundidad
0.26
Tabla 3
Resultados de la prueba CHI para los andamios tomando la efectividad como lo esperado
Criterio
Valor CHI
eficacia
0.96
atractivo
0.66
profundidad
0.90
Según evidencian los resultados en la Tabla 3, al considerar la efectividad como el factor que sirva de base a lo esperado, la prueba CHI reafirma que el atractivo es poco considerado como atributo crítico para la efectividad de los andamios. Esto puede estar en contradicción con el énfasis que tradicionalmente se atribuye al atractivo de los recursos instruccionales como factor crítico de su efectividad. Sin embargo, la eficacia (el grado de esfuerzo, energía y tiempo que le dedican) y la profundidad (el grado en que logró estimular en ellos sus pensamientos reflexivos profundos y críticos) alcanzaron valores de CHI = 0.96 y CHI = 0.90 respectivamente, indicando que estas dos características contribuyen altamente a la efectividad de los andamios.
Estos resultados fueron comparados con los obtenidos en la segunda parte de la entrevista grupal para buscar la consistencia en las relaciones observadas a través de la escala de apreciación de los andamios cognitivos. Esta segunda parte de la entrevista fue grabada en vídeo y luego transcrita para efectos de facilidad de análisis. Una frase o una idea completa se establecieron como unidad de análisis del contenido. Luego de hacer la selección de frases o segmentos, éstas se clasificaron en categorías emergentes mediante la codificación abierta (Strauss y Corbin, 1990). El Anejo C presenta la tabla con el resumen de las expresiones de los estudiantes y las categorías evidenciadas en sus manifestaciones. Esta sección fue orientada por cuatro preguntas que se usan de referencia para organizar e interpretar los datos recogidos y que aparecen en este mismo anejo.
Otra vez, en la entrevista grabada, los andamios seis y uno y la combinación de los andamios dos y tres fueron considerados por los estudiantes como los más efectivos. Esta sección permitió abundar sobre las posibles razones por las cuales los consideraron así. Algunas de las categorías de razones fueron: la accesibilidad que ofrecen; que facilitan lo presencial, lo social y el intercambio; facilitan el monitoreo de parte de la profesora; permiten que la profesora y estudiantes ofrezcan retroalimentación constructiva; porque responden a necesidades de aprendizaje específicas de los estudiantes; permiten modelar procesos para los estudiantes; facilitan el conocimiento procedimental además del conocimiento declarativo; favorecen el monitoreo meta cognitivo de los estudiantes; incorporan una variedad de recursos multimedios que apelan a una variedad de sentidos; porque son atractivos; favorecen la colaboración en las tareas; y algunos permiten cierto grado de interactividad con el medio.
Del análisis de las diversas formas de comunicación en línea utilizadas (chats, foros, correo-e y comunicaciones en MSN) entre los estudiantes y la profesora, se pudo constatar la consistencia de los resultados demostrados previamente. Se analizaron estas comunicaciones para determinar las categorías presentes en ellas que fueran consistentes con la apreciación ya evidenciada en las dos fuentes de datos previos, culminando así con el proceso de triangulación para esta parte del análisis de los resultados de la investigación hasta el momento. Algunos extractos de comunicaciones editadas de los CHATS muestran la percepción sostenida por los estudiantes referentes a la efectividad de la integración del andamio de la entrevista a un experto (modelaje de procesos), seguida de unas preguntas (guía de procesos) y el trabajo en el Wiki, revalidando las impresiones presentadas anteriormente. “Tengo una mejor visión de nuestro trabajo”… “Si me encanto yo pude ver los videos y creo que es una buena forma de trasmitir conocimientos waoooo…
El contexto de aprendizaje ofrecido por el WIKI.
La herramienta del WIKI se propuso como el contexto principal donde los estudiantes desarrollarían el trabajo en forma colaborativa. Inicialmente los estudiantes usaron la herramienta como un espacio para instalar documentos terminados, no en proceso de elaboración. Ante la novedad o lo desconocido, los estudiantes procedieron “asimilando” (para usar la nomenclatura de Piaget) la experiencia sin modificar sus esquemas usuales. Por ejemplo, un estudiante comenta en la entrevista lo siguiente: “… por ejemplo, muchas de las asignaciones desde el WIKI… nos llamábamos por celular para ponernos de acuerdo y terminábamos reuniéndonos presencialmente…” Otra estudiante abunda sobre esto y dice: “… sabíamos lo del WIKI, pero no subíamos los trabajos al WIKI, nos reuníamos, nos enviábamos los trabajos por Messenger o por e-mail, pero se nos olvidaba subirlo al WIKI…” A este momento se manejaba el WIKI como una herramienta tradicional donde se suben los trabajos al sistema MOODLE como tareas en su forma final. Luego del primer informe de progreso se pudo constatar el uso más frecuente del WIKI y las modificaciones en los estilos de los grupos al manejar la herramienta. A pesar de todo, la investigadora todavía guarda la idea de que los estilos no se modificaron en su totalidad y que la herramienta del WIKI no fue usada por todos los grupos en su óptima capacidad. La resistencia al cambio se hace evidente, como fue reconocida a su vez por algunos de los propios estudiantes en la entrevista grabada. Este fenómeno se perfila a su vez como una potencial área de investigación futura.
Conclusiones de la primera etapa (junio de 2008)
En resumen, la efectividad de los andamios quedó evidenciada por los resultados obtenidos durante la primera implantación de los recursos. En el proceso de la investigación surgieron nuevos factores de gran interés para la investigadora, que aportaban a la validación del modelo sugerido por Lin et al. (1999). A continuación los hallazgos y conclusiones de la primera etapa de la investigación y algunos asuntos que quedaron pendientes para la segunda implantación del curso usando los andamios cognitivos. Aunque los procesos relacionados a la solución de problemas mal estructurados no se distinguían como preguntas de investigación aparte de las otras propuestas, este aspecto es considerado de gran importancia para el enfoque formativo adoptado en la investigación y el contexto de aprendizaje provistos mediante los recursos de andamios.
Procesos de enmarcación del problema.
Los estudiantes, como grupos de trabajo, lograron apoyarse unos a otros en el proceso de determinar la situación provista por el tipo de problema que confrontaban. También establecieron las metas del proyecto partiendo de una reconsideración de sus expectativas como grupo, considerando aquellas que estaban a su alcance. Esto evidenció la capacidad de los grupos para analizar la situación problema, apoyados por los andamios cognitivos, y determinar los alcances de la misma. Además, fueron capaces como grupos, auxiliados por los recursos de andamios, de determinar las formas como podrían dar solución al problema identificado. Los estudiantes evidenciaron haber logrado capturar la naturaleza del problema mal estructurado, enmarcarlo adecuadamente y proveer soluciones adecuadas en respuestas a las necesidades expresadas por los representantes de las Organizaciones. Se entiende que estos procesos fueron auxiliados por los recursos de andamios cognitivos.
Procesos de reflexión.
Cranton (1996) reseña los tres niveles de la reflexión y los describe como la reflexión acerca de la descripción del problema, la reflexión acerca de las estrategias usadas para resolver el problema y la reflexión acerca de la relevancia del problema mismo. Aunque la reflexión como proceso no se hace evidente en forma directa, las expresiones de los estudiantes demostraron no solamente que reflexionaron acerca de los contenidos relacionados a los problemas (tanto en su plano individual como en grupo), sino que también reflexionaron en torno a sus propios procesos cognitivos y procesos de acción. La integración de los andamios facilitó el proceso de reflexión acerca del contenido del problema y de los procesos instrumentales y meta cognitivos necesarios para solucionarlo. No obstante, solamente algunos parecieron alcanzar niveles donde se cuestionaran sus propios esquemas mentales frente a las nuevas experiencias, evidenciando lo que parece implicar los inicios de cambios profundos en sus paradigmas, favoreciendo el aprendizaje transformador. El entendimiento de la investigadora es que esta forma de reflexionar no se estimula a través de los currículos tradicionales de formación académica y los estudiantes no acostumbran ejercer este tipo de proceso reflexivo. Los andamios cognitivos usados no evidenciaron favorecerlo en esta investigación.
Efectividad de los andamios cognitivos.
Los andamios cognitivos sirvieron como herramientas altamente efectivas para los estudiantes, quienes los valoraron grandemente. La efectividad como característica de los andamios cognitivos (entendida como el grado en que el andamio logró la intención para la cual fue propuesto) correlacionó altamente con la eficacia (el grado de esfuerzo, energía y tiempo que le dedican) y la profundidad (el grado en que logró estimular en ellos sus pensamientos reflexivos profundos y críticos). El atractivo, como característica de los andamios, no correlacionó significativamente con su efectividad. Hubo diferencias marcadas en la efectividad de los andamios, según la percepción de los estudiantes. Aquellos andamios dirigidos a apoyar el entendimiento y dominio del contenido y sus procesos relacionados se percibieron como mucho más efectivos que aquellos que estaban dirigidos a facilitar los procesos de diálogo reflexivo.
Efectividad del ambiente colaborativo tipo WIKI en la solución de problemas.
El ambiente provisto por el WIKI se consideró como muy propio para el trabajo colaborativo, pero todavía la herramienta no es usada en su forma óptima como recurso de trabajo colaborativo. Algunos estudiantes parecen no acostumbrarse totalmente a ella. Amerita más atención como herramienta para los cursos en línea.
Procedimientos de la segunda etapa de la investigación (2009)
En la segunda implantación de los andamios cognitivos ya modificados propuesta para enero de 2009, se enfocó la investigación hacia validar la idea expresada por Lin, et al (1999) de que la integración de los andamios como sistemas resulta ser más efectiva que si fuesen usados individualmente. A las preguntas generales de la primera parte de la investigación se añadió la pregunta: ¿Cómo perciben los estudiantes la efectividad de los andamios al usarse en forma integrada?
Métodos de la segunda parte
Al igual que en la primera etapa, se observó inicialmente el funcionamiento de los grupos y se determinó que demostraban destrezas adecuadas en los trabajos de grupo, por lo que se procedió a hacer visibles los andamios según se estimaba pertinente. El andamio número cuatro –Auto evaluación de destrezas de equipo- no se usó, por estimarse que los grupos funcionaban adecuadamente. Al finalizar la experiencia de aplicación de los andamios como un sistema integrado en el contexto del curso en línea, se procedió con la encuesta y la entrevista para validar la efectividad general de los andamios cognitivos.
Resultados, hallazgos y conclusiones de la segunda parte de la investigación
Los resultados de las encuestas sobre los andamios cognitivos en la segunda implantación de los recursos en enero de 2009 fueron consistentes con los resultados de la primera implantación. La tabla 4 presenta los resultados de la evaluación de los andamios por los estudiantes durante la segunda implantación.
Tabla 4
Resultados de la evaluación de los andamios según los cuatro criterios (2009)
Andamio
Efectividad
Eficacia
Atractivo
Profundidad
Promedio
Mediana
% abs
#1- Enfocando el problema
65
65
63
64
64.25
64.5
0.92
#2- Entrevista Prof. Casanova
56
52
45
55
52
53.5
0.76
#3- Preguntas de entrevista
63
64
58
69
63.50
63.5
0.91
#5- Foro de discusión de temas
58
60
62
59
59.75
59.5
0.85
#6- Plan de evaluación formativa
66
63
63
64
64.00
63.5
0.91
#7- Chats semanales
56
51
53
51
52.75
52.0
0.74
Mediana
60.5
61.5
60
61.5
N= 10
Nota. Cada escala alcanzaba un valor máximo de 7 puntos. El valor absoluto máximo por escala es de 70 puntos. El porcentaje absoluto parte del valor absoluto máximo de 70 y toma como base el valor de la mediana.
Otra vez, los andamios del tipo exhibición de procesos y apuntes de procesos fueron considerados por los estudiantes como los más eficaces, profundos, efectivos y atractivos. Los resultados atribuibles al andamio dos fueron sorprendentes, reflejando una percepción diferente al primero de los grupos expuestos a este andamio. Otra vez el andamio siete volvió a ocupar el lugar de menor preferencia entre los estudiantes.
Tabla 5
Coeficientes de correlación Pearson entre criterios 2009 en comparación con el 2008
Pearson para:
Valor coeficiente r 2008/2009
efectividad/eficacia
0.90
0.90
efectividad/atractivo
0.59
0.75
efectividad/profundidad
0.70
0.85
eficacia/atractivo
0.48
0.84
eficacia/profundidad
0.71
0.93
atractivo/profundidad
0.26
0.62
Nota. Los resultados del 2009 aparecen ennegrecidos
Ya instalados como un sistema y funcionando en un contexto más natural en el curso, la apreciación de los estudiantes parece reflejar un cambio, relacionando la eficacia y el atractivo. En la Tabla 5 se puede observar que los atributos efectividad y eficacia se sostienen como los dos criterios críticos de los andamios. Sin embargo, al aplicar la prueba CHI cuadrado estipulando la efectividad como lo esperado, los resultados se asemejan a los del primer grupo, como se ilustra en la Tabla 6. Es evidente que la efectividad de los andamios es más dependiente de la eficacia y profundidad que de su atractivo.
Tabla 6
Resultados comparativos de la prueba CHI en el 2008 y 2009 para los andamios tomando la efectividad como lo esperado
Criterio
Valor CHI
2008
2009
eficacia
0.96
0.97
atractivo
0.66
0.67
profundidad
0.90
0.95
En la entrevista grabada, los estudiantes valoraron otra vez la efectividad de aquellos andamios dirigidos a reforzar el dominio del contenido y el desarrollo de destrezas procedimentales. Se favorecen los andamios que tienden a desarrollar el conocimiento procedimental en combinación con el conocimiento declarativo. De igual manera se expresaron a favor de la integración de estos como un sistema total, en forma articulada a la experiencia. Como grupo, tomaron iniciativas y recurrieron a herramientas disponibles en la Web (Google Sites, SKYPE y otras) adelantándose a la presentación de los andamios de foros sociales, a los chats y a los trabajos en el Wiki. Esto marcó un cambio en la manera como los andamios se usaron en esta segunda implantación.
Resumen y conclusiones de la investigación
En general se puede concluir que los procesos de solución de problemas auténticos y mal estructurados fueron facilitados por los andamios cognitivos cuando estos se usaron en manera integrada a las experiencias del curso en su modalidad en línea. La propuesta del modelo de Lin et al. (1999) y las sugerencias hechas por Ge y Land (2003) se sostienen como el resultado de este estudio de caso múltiple. El uso integrado de la diversidad de tipos de andamios y la diversidad de tareas, resulta ser altamente efectivo. Los andamios integrados facilitaron el desarrollo de las destrezas de solución de problemas mal estructurados, apoyando a los estudiantes en desarrollar una representación mental del problema que confrontaban y proveyéndole espacios para manipular los modelos mentales creados (conocimientos acerca del problema) y probar sus modelos en forma colaborativa en los espacios y escenarios provistos en el curso. Los andamios facilitan el apoyo de estas destrezas. Los andamios cumplieron al proveer para la meta cognición, la solución de problemas y la construcción de conocimientos. Esta integración fue el resultado de un proceso profundo de análisis de tareas que precedió al desarrollo de los andamios cognitivos. Estos procesos adoptaron acercamientos tanto tradicionales de elaboración de jerarquías de aprendizaje al estilo de Gagné, como acercamientos más constructivos y cónsonos con las formas cualitativas de la investigación, como el análisis de los procesos de grupos y las tareas cognitivas de equipos que se fundamentó en la teoría de la actividad (Jonassen, 1999). Estos procesos fueron claves en el éxito alcanzado a través de estos recursos de aprendizaje.
Los procesos de reflexión se estimularon parcialmente a través de las estrategias de andamiaje. Solamente se evidenciaron procesos de reflexión acerca de los contenidos y los procesos, pero no así la reflexión crítica. La falta de exposición a este tipo de reflexión a través de sus años de preparación académica previa parece ser el factor más influyente en este resultado. Este es un factor a considerar en la adaptación de los andamios para futuros grupos o en el desarrollo de nuevos andamios cognitivos dirigidos a capacitar a los estudiantes en estos procesos de reflexión crítica.
Es evidente que los andamios logran su intención en proporción con el grado de esfuerzo, energía y tiempo que demandan al estudiante (eficacia) y el grado en que estimulan en ellos sus pensamientos reflexivos profundos y críticos (profundidad). Los andamios más efectivos en apoyar los procesos de solución de problemas mal estructurados son aquellos que apoyan al estudiante en adquirir un dominio profundo, no solamente del contenido, sino de los procesos asociados a él. De esta forma, de los tipos de andamios sugeridos por Lin et al. (1999), los estudiantes percibieron como más efectivos aquellos que les permitían hacer evidente un aprendizaje tácito (andamios de exhibición de procesos) y aquellos que le permiten monitorear su propio proceso de solución de problemas mientras aprenden (andamios de apuntes de procesos). Además, los estudiantes consideran que estos facilitaron la presencia social, que alivian el aislamiento y permiten el desarrollo de un sentido de comunidad, aspectos afectivos importantes para los procesos de solución de problemas en equipos de trabajo. De esta forma se facilitan los esfuerzos de los estudiantes por construir su conocimiento.
La herramienta de Wiki en línea de la plataforma de cursos MOODLE no funcionó como era esperado. Los estudiantes no utilizaron la herramienta como una que facilita el trabajo colaborativo, sino que la usaron más bien como una herramienta tradicional de someter tareas finales para evaluación. Hubo gran resistencia al uso de la herramienta del Wiki, al tiempo que adoptaban otras maneras alternas de trabajo en equipo. Las herramientas y recursos de la Web 2.0 pueden jugar un papel altamente significativo en facilitar los procesos mentales de los estudiantes, sirviendo de puentes entre sus capacidades y las tareas de aprendizaje. Los recursos alternos informales que provee la Web 2.0 parecen señalar una tendencia que, para la fecha de publicación de este informe, se hace cada vez más evidente y delinea una brecha para nuevas investigaciones.
Finalmente, es evidente que el uso de los recursos de andamios cognitivos es un proceso dinámico y constante que requiere grandes esfuerzos de parte del diseñador de la instrucción y el docente. Cada individuo, cada grupo, cada sesión de cursos, es diferente y demanda recursos diferentes. El constante cambio tecnológico impone reconsideraciones de los escenarios de aprendizaje y sus recursos. Esto constituye un reto para los diseñadores instruccionales y los docentes, muy especialmente cuando se diseña para facilitar la solución de problemas del carácter mal estructurados. El espacio sigue abierto a la investigación futura. La integración de andamios cognitivos basados en las nuevas tecnologías de las redes de información y los entornos de la Web son escenarios vírgenes para este tipo de investigación.
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We are engaged in nothing less than an effort to change the focus of the national conversation from artificial, shorthand indicators of learning to something that reflects the shared work and understanding of faculty members and academic professionals across campuses”
–Terrel L. Rhodes
The Association of American Colleges & Universities focuses its approach on student learning outcomes through its LEAP (Liberal Education America’s Promise) VALUE (Valid Assessment of Undergraduate Education) Rubrics, a set of general education rubrics developed by faculty groups across the country looking internally at common general education outcomes. The process for developing the rubrics emerged from “Principles of Excellence” developed by a leadership council of educators, which include: “giving students a compass (focus each student’s plan of study on achieving the essential learning outcomes–and assess progress), teach the arts of inquiry and innovation, connect knowledge with choice and action, assess students’ ability to apply learning to complex problems” (AAC&U). The internal yet cross-national look at refined student outcomes through the VALUE rubrics has the potential to measure student outcomes across campuses, across classrooms and longitudinally through multiple iterations.
As one of 12 community colleges named by the AAC & U and MetLife as Giving a Roadmap: Enrollment to Engagement in Educational Achievement and Success Campuses, Queensborough Community College was invited to apply to the Collaborative on Authentic Assessment of Learning (CAAL):pilot, and was accepted to participate.” CAAL is currently being developed to provide a virtual community where institutions can upload, share, and discuss their campus assessment results using the VALUE rubrics. This collaboration among e-portfolio vendors and campuses is intended to expand communication across campuses regarding common instruments, compelling findings, potential benchmarks for student success, and best practices of assessment using rubrics and e-portfolios.” Queensborough was tasked to score the Integrative Learning Value Rubric on 100 student work samples. The scores and samples will be placed in a repository.Queensborough’s “Roadmap” activities, made possible by the Freshman Academy structure launched in 2009, will therefore be deepened and better supported, as the current student learning outcome work is currently being implemented as a teaching and learning tool as much as an assessment tool in small interdisciplinary faculty cohorts on campus approaching high impact strategies. The detailed attention to naming principles of excellence and general education outcome rubrics as in the LEAP VALUE project offer the opportunity for a culture of evidence that allows for a reflection process that focuses on student learning, as well as partnerships with business groups and state officials to ensure not only greater access but greater success in United States higher education and the workplace.Through the use of rubrics, students, notably historically underserved and first generation college students, are given a clear outline of expectations, assisting them in the achievement of the learning outcomes which will enable them to complete their educational goals.
Organizing a First Year Experience:
Queensborough Community College’s goal is to provide an academic environment that strengthens students’ commitment and makes it possible for them to graduate or complete their goals in a timely manner. In the fall of 2009, after 8 years of preparation Queensborough launched the Freshman Academies. All first-time, full-time students are enrolled in one of six Freshman Academies based upon his/her chosen field of study. The six Freshman Academies are Science, Technology, Engineering and Math; Liberal Arts; Visual and Performing Arts; Education; Health Related Sciences; and Business. What is different about Queensborough’s Freshman Academies is that it is a scaled-up and institutionalized effort for activities which rarely move beyond the pilot stage and rarely reach the least prepared student, and concentrate all services into six academies for all first-time, full-time freshmen. The Freshman Academies are mandatory for all 3241 first-time, full-time freshman who enrolled at this open access community college of the City University of New York during the fall 2009.
Academic Enhancement: High Impact Strategies & Integrated Learning:
The academic enhancement initiative centers on the directed focus of high impact classroom strategies in the first 30 credits. George Kuh, who first identified high impact practices through a study of the National Survey of Student Engagement (2008) writes. “The results of participating in these high-impact practices are especially striking for students who are further behind in terms of their entering academic test scores. The benefits are similarly positive for students from communities that historically have been underserved in higher education.”
At Queensborough, the high impact strategies for freshman include cornerstone courses, e-portfolio, learning communities, service learning, and writing intensive courses.
1. Cornerstone Courses are introductory courses that teach general education skills of communication, critical thinking, organization and development of values.
2. e-Portfolio is a personalized, electronic archiving system which allows students to express their educational goals and see their own progress as a student as they move through college. It can also incorporate social networking.
3. Learning Communities are two courses taught by two different professors which are linked by a theme. The same students are in each of the classes. These classes assist students in seeing connections between disciplines, and help them get to know their fellow students and professors.
4. Service Learning employ class assignments that take students’ work out into the community. Students learn more about the subject they are studying while making an impact outside the classroom, encouraging civic engagement.
5. Writing Intensive Courses are specifically designed to improve students’ writing ability through all the academic disciplines. Two writing intensive courses are required to graduate.
All five of the high impact strategies had been adopted by faculty members before the launching of the academies. The academies initiative has served to target, promote and scale up the high impact strategies, as well as to examine best practices and general education objectives in relation to those strategies. As students began to hone an academic identity by virtue of membership in one of six academies based on field of major interest, the role of participating faculty expanded beyond individual discipline identifications into the multidisciplinary academies. Greater faculty consciousness of general education and the students’ complete academic paths has been achieved through efforts to implement and assess high impact strategies on a larger scale.
To support and promote the high impact strategies and co-curricular activities, as well as to serve as a communicative bridge to the Freshman Coordinators (Student Affairs personnel described as “relationship guides” who provide enhanced advisement and referral to freshman), a group of faculty leaders have emerged who serve as Faculty Coordinators, Learning Outcomes Facilitators and Basic Education/Developmental Mathematics. The faculty leaders meet regularly with freshman coordinators and participate in Freshman Orientation and other Academy gatherings with students. They also facilitate interdisciplinary faculty cohort groups which meet throughout the semester to discuss best practices as well as to support the development and implementation of cross cutting general education rubrics. The General Education Objective rubrics, which focus on speech, reading, writing and quantitative illiteracies served not only as assessment tools, but as a method of communication of expectation and goal setting for students in the classroom.
By Fall 2010, the Learning Communities Initiative began to implement the Integrated Learning VALUE rubric as a tool to demonstrate student integration of the two disciplines that comprised each Learning Community.
The interdisciplinary conversations that ensued among the faculty have created a greater consciousness of the general education objectives that had been voted on by the faculty as well as led to examinations of the true ‘impact’ of the high impact activities in dialogue with the principal investigator of the Freshman Academies Assessment Protocol and the Office of Academic Affairs.
The feedback loop from faculty to student and among faculty have initiated greater articulation of integrative strategies in the classroom, such as the institution of supplemental education assignments in Freshman Composition, a cornerstone course in cooperation with the Kupferberg Holocaust Archive and the QCC Art Gallery. Academy specific cornerstone courses have been created which feature readings which relate to students’ field of major interest and assist with making connections to student aspiration. Additional academy specific courses address areas in which certain groups of students traditionally encounter roadblocks, for instance a remedial math class has been formed dedicated to visual and performing arts students which employ the arts to teach basic mathematics. The Student Interdisciplinary Wiki Project incorporates groups of three classes which all participate in a virtual learning community through ePortfolio and shared interdisciplinary wiki assignments, which also layers service learning. The Academies therefore are not only ensuring that students receive two high impact practices, but are attempting to ensure that the quality of these experiences are relevant and memorable. The Student Wiki Interdisciplinary Group began using the Integrated Learning Rubric in Spring 2011, attempting to demonstrate the active reflection on interdisciplinary connections that was inherent in that practice. In Summer 2011, the initiative “Moving Ahead with ePortfolio” incorporated a longitudinal exploration of the Integrated Learning VALUE rubric in classes using ePortfolio integrative learning assignments.
As a result of the constant evolution of the high impact practices in their emphasis on interdisciplinarity, experiences beyond the five named high impact strategies occur through the vehicle of the Freshman Academies, such as diversity/global learning, common intellectual experiences and collaborative project based learning, which have also been named as high impact practices by George Kuh (2008).
The VALUE Rubric and Integrated Learning
The VALUE Rubrics reflect the emphasis the academy places on the ability to analyze and integrate knowledge in a variety of ways– Terrel L. Rhodes
Alongside the Principles of Excellence, the LEAP campaign identified a series of Essential Learning Outcomes which include: knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world, intellectual and practical skills, personal and social responsibility, and integrated and applied learning. In the case of integrated and applied learning, demonstration is to take place through the application of knowledge, skills and responsibilities to new settings and problems. Teams of faculty and other academic professionals developed fifteen institutional level VALUE rubrics corresponding to elements of the Essential Learning Outcomes using existing campus rubrics, other organizational statements on outcomes, disciplinary expertise and an iterative process which included faculty feedback (AAC & U).
The definition of integrated learning on the VALUE rubric is: “An understanding and a disposition that a student builds across the curriculum and co-curriculum, from making simple connections among ideas and experiences to synthesizing and transferring learning to new, complex situations within and beyond the campus.” Integrated learning can take place when assignments develop students’ ability to synthesize knowledge and make connections, increasing the potential for personal success, social responsibility and civic engagement. Structures, assignments and environments where the exchange of experience and understanding is encouraged cultivates the opportunity for integrative learning, and is embodied in Queensborough’s practices of Service Learning, Learning Communities and the Student Wiki Interdisciplinary Group.
The rubric holds five dimensions:
1. Connections to Experience, in which student connects relevant experience and academic knowledge
2. Connections to Discipline, in which student sees (makes) connections across disciplines and perspectives
3. Transfer in which student adapts and applies skills, abilities, theories, or methodologies
gained in one situation to new situation
4. Integrated Communication
5. Reflections and Self-Assessment in which student demonstrates a developing sense of self as a learner, building on prior experiences to respond to new and challenging contexts (may be evident in self-assessment, reflection, or creative work).
Performance gradients begin at zero, in which there is no demonstration of a dimension, and then are staged on level 1 as benchmark, the learning skills and abilities among beginning students, levels 2 and 3 as milestones, which suggest key characteristics of progressive learning, and level 4 as capstone, which reflect achievement for the specific criterion for a student who graduates with a BA.
The Collaborative for Authentic Assessment of Learning Pilot Process at Queensborough
The purpose of the Collaborative for Authentic Assessment of Learning pilot was to gather information on how the process of gathering student work samples and scoring the rubric would interact with the life of the colleges which participated.
Queensborough initiated a call for faculty participant / student permission forms collected along with their work samples –de-identified through an anonymous numbering system. The permission template provided by the pilot facilitator did not ask demographic information and first generation college status, and it was discovered that there was no database which collected first generation status, so a second round of student work was collected and a more extensive permission form was used. Student work in the Honors Program and students in the Student Interdisciplinary Group from Basic Educational Skills in Reading and Writing, Freshman Composition and content courses in Chemistry, Math, Art History, Business and the Health Sciences comprised the first group of samples collected. In addition, a second round of samples were collected from a homogenous group of students all participating in the University Summer Immersion Program which the City University of New York provides for incoming students, all of whom were asked a series of reflective questions.
Two separate scoring sessions were held, the first by a group of paid faculty which scored work samples from the honors students and Student Wiki Interdisciplinary Group, the second by tutors from the Basic Educational Skills learning center which scored the reflective essays. The brief training and norming session was met with enthusiasm and vigorous discussion which led to consensus as the understanding and dialogue around the Integrated Learning rubric grew.
Preliminary Observations
Work samples had been gathered based on proximity—both the honors program and the Student Wiki Interdisciplinary Group had called for artifacts for demonstration of student learning, so it was an efficient form of collection for the purposes of the study. It was clear from the results that the integrative nature of the Student Wiki Interdisciplinary Group assignments held prompts which led to higher levels of evidence of integrative learning, particularly in the dimensions of Connections to Experience and Reflection and Self-Assessment. Some students in that group had also been introduced to the rubric in the classroom, and the higher scores suggest that inviting students to consider the learning outcomes of the class and providing articulation of what constitutes the ultimate goals in the assignment increases their ability to demonstrate the outcomes sought. The summer immersion pre-college students predictably scored at zero or benchmark levels.
Additional qualitative information emerged from a faculty reflection on the process, in which themes of faculty’s deeper understanding of integrative and applied learning emerged from the process of calibrating the rubric and discussing the dimensions with each other. Said one faculty scorer, “Professor L.’s comment made me understand the difference between ‘connection to experience’ and ‘reflection,’” Another faculty member wrote, “I appreciated the time spent in groups collaborating on the scoring process—I now have a better understanding of integrative learning.” A theme emerged in the reflections that faculty would welcome more such opportunities to dialogue on pedagogy. Based on this small sample, it may be suggested that faculty participating in interdisciplinary faculty development may uncover evidence of integrative and applied learning when implementing the rubric in their classrooms, as well as approach those competencies in their classroom informed by their development activities.
Reference List
Association of American Colleges & Universities. VALUE: Valid assessment of learning in
undergraduate education. Retrieved on April 12, 2011 from
Using registration and transcript data, the authors explored differences in online course enrollment across different student groups. This study revealed that minority students do not enroll in online courses to the same extent as their White student peers, but the effect size for the difference in participation rates was small. However, the actual difference between minority students online vs. face-to-face enrollment was five percentage points, a difference equivalent to about 150 minority students per year, given the College’s current enrollment rates, so the impact of this small difference is not insignificant. An even greater issue is that Black and Hispanic students, regardless of the course delivery medium, continue to have lower G.P.A. s than their White and Asian/Pacific Islander (PI) student peers. This finding reinforces prior research that suggests Black and Hispanic student groups need additional support in order to be successful in college, and that greater recruitment efforts for online courses are needed for all minority groups.
Prior research has also shown that students who enroll in online courses at the college have higher G.P.A.’s than students who enroll in face-to-face courses; however, this study reveals a notable exception to this pattern. Black, Hispanic and White students who select online courses are better prepared (as denoted by G.P.A.) than students who select face-to-face courses, suggesting that the weaker students in these groups are influenced by academic experience in their decision not to enroll in online classes. Among Asian/PI students, however, there is no significant difference between students who select face to face versus online courses, suggesting that there are differences in the factors that determine online enrollment in this group compared to others. This leaves open some important questions about online enrollment and its relationship to student G.P.A. among different ethnic groups. In this case, why are Asian/PI students with higher G.P.A.’s choosing not to register for online courses at the same rate as students from other ethnic groups?
Introduction
With recent social and economic changes in the United States, higher education has never been in greater demand. College enrollments in the fall of 2008 increased at rates not seen in the past 40 years, led by growth in community colleges, increased enrollment of minority students and the rise of online classes. Overall enrollment in community colleges in 2008 grew 11%, continuing their mission to provide access for minorities, students of lower socio-economic status and those students not served by traditional four year colleges and universities (Shannon & Smith, 2006). Minority student enrollments in higher education that year, particularly Hispanic and Black students, increased 15% and 8% respectively, continuing a trend of higher high school graduation rates and college enrollments for these populations (Fry, 2010).
Faced with unprecedented demand, yet also constrained by economics and space, colleges are responding by offering more courses online. Unlike in the past, when colleges added to their existing bricks and mortar to meet demand and a mature community college system was described as one in which 90-95% of the population resided within 25 miles of the campus, today’s community colleges no longer define themselves by geographic limitations, and facing fiscal constraints, look to technology to expand course offerings (Cohen and Brawer, 1996; Jones, 2003). The result is an explosion in online course enrollments, surging more than 20% in the last school year alone and outpacing higher education enrollments overall for the past seven years (Allen & Seaman, 2011).
Providing another pathway to higher education, online learning courses have become a core feature of services offered at most colleges and universities (Downes, 2005). Leading the way in this method of instructional delivery are public community colleges, with nearly all community colleges currently offering some form of online education (Parsad, Lewis & Tice, 2008). Community colleges as early adopters is not surprising, as online learning has been touted as a potential agent of social change, offering minorities an opportunity to attain previously inaccessible education while addressing the unique needs of underrepresented, isolated and frequently marginalized cultures (Langier, 2003). Students from minority cultures have been shown to exhibit feelings of isolation from the majority culture found on most campuses (Enger, 2006; Langier, 2003) and online learning may offer a social process that can allow students and faculty to transcend cultural barriers.
However, the promise of online learning for traditionally underrepresented groups is under-researched and perhaps not being realized. Buzzetto-More & Sweat-Guy (2006) conducted an extensive review of the literature that revealed that there is a substantial lack of research focusing specifically on Black college students with respect to online learning. Additionally, there is relatively little research on Hispanic college students in the distance learning environment, and what is available suggests that community college online learners are typically not of Hispanic origin (Halsne & Gatta, 2002). And at least one study found that ethnicity was not a factor in online course completion (Aragon & Johnson, 2008), however, these results have not been substantiated with further research. Overall, despite the rapid growth in online course offerings and the large numbers of community college students coming from traditionally underrepresented groups, there is very little knowledge about enrollment patterns in online courses in general (Frankola, 2001; Maxwell, 2003), and of minorities at community colleges in particular. It seems clear from the gap in the literature that not enough is known about inclusiveness in online learning and that research is needed to guide potential interventions.
Purpose of the Study
Instruction which relies heavily on technology may appear to be culturally neutral but in fact may make assumptions based on the dominant culture. The internet is dominated by both English language and Western ideologies, and can also emphasize learning autonomy, all of which might disadvantage students whose identity is with a non-western culture or a culture which encourages cooperative learning or relies on external referents (Chen, et al., 1999; Joo, 1999). African American and Hispanic cultures are more field dependent (reliant on external referents) for example than Anglo-Americans, even though all three groups may have been raised in close geographic proximity to one another (Duroyde and Hildreth, 1995). Given the rise of online learning at the community college level, combined with high minority populations as enrollees, it is important to address differences in student demographics in order to determine if the rise of online courses offers the intended goal of equity and inclusion. This study seeks to assess if students from traditionally underrepresented groups are accessing online courses, specifically:
· Do Black and Hispanic students have lower enrollment rates in online courses, once G.P.A., course and instructor are controlled?
· To what extent does prior college success, as measured by G.P.A., interact with ethnicity to predict online enrollment?
If there are differences in access for minority groups in online learning, it lends support to the argument that the digital divide is still a valid educational concern in higher education and that online learning may not yet be meeting the unique learning needs of minority students. Such a finding could have great impact on directing attention to culturally-sensitive online course design, the need for targeting recruitment efforts and the need for providing additional support services for traditionally underrepresented students who enroll in online courses.
Review of the Literature
The Digital Divide
For many years, interest has focused on the digital divide, which is “patterns of unequal access to information technology, based on income, race, ethnicity, gender, age and geography” (Mossberger, Tolbert & Stansbury, 2003, p.27). During the last two decades, research has supported the existence of a digitaldivide in schools within the United States, with higher-needs schools typically having less access to technology than their lower needs counterparts (Chapman, Masters & Pedulla, 2010). Within schools, data indicate disparities with traditionally underrepresented students, particularly African-American and Hispanic populations. In addition to access, ethnic differences in online interactions have been noted as a factor (Shachaf & Horowitz, 2006; Raymond & Blomeyer, 2007).
There are, however, a number of researchers who suggest that the digital divide is “disappearing on its own” (Compaine, 2001, p.334). They point to data that poor families are adopting the internet at a faster rate than rich families as support for minimizing government and educational intervention or data which shows internet use in the U.S. growing faster among Blacks and Hispanics than among Whites and Asians (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2002). Yet, this contention may not be accurate. Recent U.S. statistics indicate that ethnic background and other demographic characteristics still have substantial impact on the availability and use of computers by students outside of the school classroom (Morgan & VanLengen, 2005). Blacks and Hispanics are less likely to have computers in the home than either Whites or Asians, a disparity which is even greater among children than adults. The leading causes for this disparity are education and income (Fairlie, 2007).
Regardless of the debate on the digital divide, there is no debate that minority students, particularly Hispanic and African American students, attend college at a lower rate, and graduate at a lower rate, than their White peers. Among students who began at a two-year college, Black and Hispanic students had the lowest rate of degree attainment after six years, at 28% and 34%, compared to an overall degree attainment rate of 41% (NCES, 2003). Given this disparity in graduation rates, the increase in community college enrollments led by minority students, and the growth of online enrollments, more data on minority student enrollment in the online environment is crucial in order to better understand, and meet, the needs of different student populations.
Black and Hispanic Students in Higher Education
During the last three decades, college enrollments among Black and Hispanic students rose significantly. The biggest gainers were Hispanic students, who accounted for 4% of college students in 1976, and 11% in 2007. Black student enrollment also grew, from 9% to 13% during the same time period (U.S. Department of Education, 2009a). Yet despite gains in access, graduation rates for these student groups lags behind that of their White student peers. For students who began college between 1996 and 2004, degree completion rates among Black and Hispanic students at both two-year and four-year colleges were lower in every cohort. Graduation rates were measured at 150% of the time required to complete the degree, or in the case of community colleges at 3 years versus 2 years. The lowest graduation rates were at public two-year institutions, much like the one in this study. For the most recent cohort, only 20% of students nationally received either a degree or certificate in three years, with Black and Hispanic students faring much worse at 11.5% and 15% respectively (U.S. Department of Education, 2009b).
Grade Point Average as a Predictor of Student Success
Several researchers (see Rovai, 2003 for a review) have noted a significant relationship between previous academic performance (as denoted by G.P.A.) and completion of online learning courses. Some studies point to a lingering effect of poor first-year college performance, with a very high risk of drop out if students have a first-year G.P.A. below 2.0 (Nora, Barlow and Crisp (2005). This is supported by research by Diaz (2002), who found that successful students in an online course had a higher average G.P.A. prior to enrollment (avg. G.P.A. = 3.02) than unsuccessful students (avg. G.P.A. = 2.25) and Muse (2003), who cites G.P.A. as one of several significant factors affecting online retention at the community college level.
Background
A preliminary investigation of data taken from 2007-2008, which prompted this study, revealed that both the percentages of students of each racial/ethnic group enrolled in online courses and the rates of completion for online courses by race/ethnicity show statistically significant variation among the different groups. For example, online courses contain a higher percentage of White students and a lower percentage of all other ethnic groups than is present in the college’s population at large, and this difference is statistically significant for all groups (see Table 1).
These preliminary data suggest that further research is necessary in order to determine if students in certain minority groups truly are enrolling in online courses at different rates. Without a more controlled study, it is impossible for us to know if the trends in the preliminary data will hold once we control for G.P.A., instructor and course type.
Table 1. Percentage Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity, Spring 2008
White
Black
Hispanic
Asian/Pacific Islander
Online Classes (N=1024)
24.0
34.0
29.0
12.0
Student Body (N=19,611)
16.0
37.0
32.0
14.0
z-statistic
5.99
-2.03
-2.12
-1.97
P-value
<0.0001**
0.0212*
0.0170*
0.0244*
p < .05, **p < .01
Methodology
The Institution
The college which is the focus of this study is a large urban community college, classified as both a Minority Serving Institution and a Hispanic Serving Institution. The Higher Education Act of 1965 gave special recognition as Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) to postsecondary schools whose enrollment of a single minority or a combination of minorities exceeds 50 percent of the total enrollment. The term ‘‘minority’’ is defined as American Indian, Alaskan Native, Black (not of Hispanic origin), Hispanic (including persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central or South American origin), Pacific Islander or other ethnic group (Higher Education Act, 1965). The college studied is also classified as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). HSI’s enroll the majority of Hispanic students in the United States (Santiago, 2006) and are defined as “institutions that have at least a 25% Hispanic undergraduate (FTE) enrollment, with at least 50% of its Hispanic students coming from a low-income background and being first generation in their family to attend college and an additional 25% being low income or first generation” (Poley, 2008, p.76). Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), although they account for less than 3% of colleges and universities, educate approximately 35% of the U.S. minority population. MSIs often have low graduation rates because their students share many of the risk factors that result in high attrition: part-time attendance, full-time employment, lack of parental support and a gap in enrollment after high school (Cook & Cordova, 2006; O’Brien & Zudak, 1998).
The community college in this study enrolls approximately 23,500 students from more than 150 countries, with 85% of students self-identifying as minority. Black students comprise one-third of the enrollment, Hispanic students constitute 37%, Asian and White students each represent 15%. The size of the institution studied is also noteworthy. Large institutions, those with greater than 15,000 total enrollments, constitute 14% of all institutions with online offerings, but educate nearly two-thirds (64%) of all online students (Allen & Seaman, 2010). The college’s mission to “extend higher educational opportunity to a diversified urban population…and to sustaining full access” speaks directly to the reasons cited by two-thirds of all colleges for offering online courses: to meet student demand for flexible schedules and to provide access to those who might not otherwise be able to attend college (BMCC, n.d.; Parsad, Lewis & Tice, 2008).
Data for this research was provided by the College’s Office of Institutional Research. Online courses are those in which at least 80% of the course content is delivered online. Traditional courses are those which deliver the primary content orally or in writing, though these courses may have some online component (the instructor may post a copy of the syllabus online or accept assignments electronically) (Allen & Seaman, 2011).
Specifically, data was requested for 122 course sections, half of which were taught online and the other half of which were taught face-to-face. The online course sections in this data set were chosen from a larger pool in the following way: First all online courses taught at the college from 2004-2010 in either the fall or spring semester were identified. Next, the list of courses were reduced to include only those course sections for which the same instructor taught the same course both face-to-face and online in the same semester. Then the selection was further limited to only those courses for which there were at least three semesters during which pairs of online and face-to-face course sections were taught by the same instructor. A wide distribution of courses that covered both upper and lower level courses in career, liberal arts, STEM and non-STEM disciplines across a distribution of course subjects were identified. Then, from this selection of courses, a random number generator reduced the number of courses until for each course there were exactly three pairs of online and face-to-face sections, so that each pair was taught by the same instructor in the same semester. Additionally, the sample was reviewed and reduced such that no one course by discipline, level of difficulty or instructor was disproportionately represented in the sample, and to ensure that the sample was representative of the breadth of the college’s online (and insofar as possible, face-to-face) course offerings.
For every student enrolled in the courses on this list, information was collected on the student’s ethnicity and G.P.A. at the beginning of the semester in which the course was taken. Ethnicity is self-reported by students on their admission forms. In instances where ethnicity is not reported, the variable is imputed by the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (OIRA) at the University of which this College is a part. OIRA uses a statistical procedure called Discriminant Analysis[1] to assign a race/ethnicity value to students who did not report their race/ethnicity.
Student data was provided without identifiers and with unique identification numbers. This resulted in a total data set with 2330 participants; an overview of the dataset can be seen in Table 2. For some students, G.P.A. was missing, so the actual N for many analyses was reduced (see individual analyses for specific N). Certain categories were reduced to a smaller number of levels so that the subsample sizes could be large enough for reasonable analysis. In particular:
For ethnicity, there were four categories: Asian or Pacific Islander (often abbreviated as Asian/PI), Black, Hispanic, and White. The college also has one additional category of classification, “American Indian or Native Alaskan,” but there were only three students total in this category in the sample, so this category was removed.
G.P.A. was treated as a categorical variable for some analyses in order for the statistical methods to be more tractable; in these cases, the following groups are used: <2.5, 2.5–3.49, 3.5-4.0.
[1]Discriminant Analysis “classifies cases into one of several mutually exclusive groups based on their values for a set of predictor variables” (SPSS For Windows, 1999) which for ethnicity imputation, includes college attendance, gender, full-time/part-time status, class standing, degree status, residency, last name and zip code. Information for students whose race/ethnicity is known is used in the classification phase of Discriminant Analysis. Then based on the classification data, probabilities are assigned to each unknown case .
Table 2. Dataset Overview
Categories
N
%
face-to-face
1329
57.0
online
1001
43.0
Asian/PI
311
13.4
Black
835
35.9
Hispanic
768
33.0
White
413
17.7
G.P.A. <2.5
638
31.7
2.5-3.49
982
38.8
3.5-4.0
394
19.6
Results and Discussion
Analyzing Enrollment Patterns
The differences in enrollment based on ethnicity which were present in the preliminary analysis above still appear when instructor and course taken are controlled, although the effect size is smaller. We began by looking at enrollment percentages by ethnicity for both online and face-to-face courses and assess whether the percentage of each ethnicity enrolled in online courses is statistically significantly different from the percentage enrolled in face-to-face courses. The results are shown in Figure 1 and Table 3.
Figure 1. Student Enrollment Percentages in Face to Face and Online Classes
The differences between online and face-to-face percentages for each group are not large enough to be statistically significant, and we can see that the effect sizes are fairly small. Because a similar pattern was observed in other samples of online students at the college (White students have an increased percentage of online enrollment at the expense of all other ethnic groups), we suspect that the differences would be statistically different with a large enough sample size (probably at least double the size of the current sample).
Table 3. Student Enrollment by Ethnicity in Face to Face and Online Courses Showing Significance and Effect Size
Ethnicity
Face-to-face %
N
Online %
N
z
p
d
Black
36.9
489
34.6
346
0.69
ns
0.05
Asian or Pacific Islander
14.0
185
12.6
126
0.35
ns
0.04
White
15.6
207
20.6
206
-1.31
ns
-0.13
Hispanic
33.6
445
32.3
323
0.38
ns
0.03
Because these patterns may be non-significant simply because sample sizes in each subgroup are too low to reach the threshold of significance, we compare White face-to-face vs. online enrollments and pool all other ethnicities together to compare face-to-face vs. online enrollments. When Asian, Black and Hispanic students are pooled together, there is a highly statistically significant (α=0.01) result, with a p-value of 0.0025 (see Table 4).
Table 4. Pooled Student Enrollment by Ethnicity in Face-to-face and Online courses.
Ethnicity
Face-to-face %
N
Online %
N
z
p
d
White
15.6
207
20.6
206
-1.31
ns
-0.13
NonWhite1
84.4
1119
79.4
795
2.81
0.0025**
0.13
** p < .01
1 Black, Hispanic and Asian Pacific Islander
This suggests that the proportion of non-White ethnic groups is in fact smaller in online courses than face-to-face courses, although the effect size is small, indicating that these differences are relatively minor (much smaller, for example, than the differences in G.P.A.’s among different ethnic groups), which is why the sample size was not sufficiently large to detect differences for the individual Black, Hispanic and Asian ethnic groups individually. Therefore, it can be concluded that there probably is a small difference in enrollments among different ethnic groups (but that this difference is relatively minor in comparison to other areas in which minorities are often underrepresented, such as many STEM fields). However, even a small effect can be significant in its impact; for example, in this study, the difference in minority enrollment online vs. face-to-face is five percentage points. Because the college’s online courses enroll several thousand students each year, which amounts to approximately 150 minority students each year who are missing the opportunity to engage in online learning.
Analyzing Ethnicity and G.P.A. Patterns
The next goal of this study was to see to what extent G.P.A. varies by ethnicity, so as to determine to what extent any differences in enrollment among different ethnic groups online and face-to-face might be due to underlying G.P.A. differences rather than ethnicity directly. We began by analyzing whether students in different ethnic groups have different G.P.A. distributions at the college, both overall and when looking at subgroups of online and face-to-face students. The distribution of G.P.A. is displayed in Table 5 and Figure 2, and the results of the ANOVA in Table 6 below.
Table 5. Mean G.P.A. Distribution by Student Ethnicity
Ethnicity
Mean G.P.A. of Students Selecting Face to Face Courses
N
Mean G.P.A. of Students Selecting Online Courses
N
Black
2.54
469
2.84
331
Hispanic
2.51
424
2.85
306
Asian/Pacific
2.99
181
3.01
123
White
2.98
196
3.26
201
By looking at Figure 2 several interesting trends are observed. Overall, Asian/PI and White students have much higher G.P.A.’s than Black and Hispanic students. Among students who elect to enroll in online courses, Black and Hispanic students have much lower G.P.A.’s than White students, and Asian students are somewhere in the middle. In addition, for most ethnic groups, there is a clear G.P.A. gap between students who elect to enroll in online courses versus face-to-face courses; students choosing to take courses online tend to have higher G.P.A.’s.
This result is not surprising, since it repeats results encountered in previous research (Hachey, Wladis & Conway, in press). However, there is one interesting exception to this trend: Asian/PI students do not seem to have this gap; while their G.P.A.’s in face-to-face courses are relatively high compared to other groups, their G.P.A.’s online are more towards the total group average for all ethnicities while the G.P.A.’s of Asian/PI students who selected face-to-face courses are relatively high compared to other groups, the G.P.A.’s of Asian/PI online students are close to the total group average for all ethnicities. To determine whether any of these patterns were statistically significant, we ran a two-factor ANOVA with G.P.A. as the dependent variable and online/face-to-face status and ethnicity as the two independent variables.
It is clear that the overall model is significant, since the p-value of the F statistic returned by the ANOVA is <0.0001 (see Table 6). Details about which factors were significant are shown in Table 7, where it is evident that both course delivery type and ethnicity were highly statistically significant (α=0.01), with p-values of <0.0001, and that the course type by ethnicity interaction was statistically significant (α=0.05) with a p-value of 0.026.
Table 6. Two-Factor ANOVA with G.P.A. as Dependent Variable
F
Pr>F
25.95
<0.0001**
**p < .001
This suggests that not only do the course delivery type and ethnicity individually correspond to marked differences in G.P.A., but that the differences in G.P.A. in each ethnic group when comparing online to face-to-face students are also different in both magnitude and possibly direction (this corresponds to different slopes for different ethnic groups in Figure 3 below).
Table 7. Type III Sums of Squares Analysis For Two Factor ANOVA with G.P.A. as the Independent Variable
Source
DF
Sum of squares
Mean squares
F
Pr > F
course type
1
23.977
23.977
41.070
< 0.0001**
ethnicity
4
66.620
16.655
28.528
< 0.0001**
course type*ethnicity
3
5.413
1.804
3.091
0.026*
p < .05, **p < .01
Figure 3. G.P.A. by Course Delivery Method Selected and by Ethnicity
As shown in Table 8, the differences among most of the ethnic groups are highly statistically significant (α=0.01); in fact, there seems to be a clear divide between Asian/PI/White students and Black/Hispanic students based on these results.
Table 8. Pairwise Comparison Test for Single Factors
Contrast
Difference
Standardized difference
Critical value
Pr > Diff
Hispanic vs White
-0.439
-8.832
2.569
< 0.0001**
Hispanic vs Asian/PI
-0.322
-5.895
2.569
< 0.0001**
Hispanic vs Black
-0.011
-0.267
2.569
0.993
Black vs White
-0.428
-8.734
2.569
< 0.0001**
Black vs Asian/PI
-0.311
-5.762
2.569
< 0.0001**
Asian/PI vs White
-0.117
-1.919
2.569
0.220
*p < .05, ** p < .001
In Tables 9 and 10, the results of pairwise comparison tests (Tukey HSD tests performed post hoc on selected interaction terms) are shown. Table 9 shows that the difference in G.P.A. between students selecting online and face-to-face classes holds for Black and Hispanic (highly statistically significant with α=0.01) and White (statistically significant with α=0.05) students, but not Asian/Pacific Islander students, for whom the difference in G.P.A. is nonsignificant.
Table 9. Pairwise Comparison Tests for Interactions: Comparing Ethnicity in Different Course Environments
Contrast
Difference
Standardized difference
Critical value
Pr > Diff
F2F*Hispanic vs online*Hispanic
-0.34
-5.82
3.10
< 0.0001**
F2F*Black vs online*Black
-0.30
-5.36
3.10
< 0.0001**
F2F*White vs online*White
-0.28
-3.45
3.10
0.016*
F2F*Asian/PI vs online*Asian/PI
-0.02
-0.21
3.10
1.000
*p < .05, ** p < .001
Given the trends in other ethnic groups, we would expect the G.P.A.’s of Asian/PI students taking courses online to be about three-tenths of a point, or about one-third of a letter grade higher than they actually are.
Table 10. Pairwise Comparison Tests for Interactions: Comparing Ethnicities in the Same Course Environment
Contrast
Difference
Standardized difference
Critical value
Pr > Diff
F2F*Hispanic vs F2F*Black
-0.03
-0.57
3.10
1.000
F2F*Hispanic vs F2F*Asian/PI
-0.48
-6.83
3.10
< 0.0001**
F2F*Hispanic vs F2F*White
-0.472
-6.758
3.102
< 0.0001**
F2F*Black vs F2F*Asian/PI
-0.453
-6.504
3.102
< 0.0001**
F2F*Black vs F2F*White
-0.441
-6.428
3.102
< 0.0001**
F2F*White vs F2F*Asian/PI
-0.012
-0.142
3.102
1.000
online*Black vs online*Hispanic
-0.01
-0.15
3.10
1.000
online*Hispanic vs online*Asian/PI
-0.160
-1.928
3.102
0.594
online*Hispanic vs online*White
-0.406
-5.739
3.102
< 0.0001**
online*Black vs online*White
-0.415
-5.929
3.102
< 0.0001**
online*Black vs online*Asian/PI
-0.169
-2.052
3.102
0.507
online*Asian/PI vs online*White
-0.246
-2.736
3.102
0.135
*p < .05, ** p < .001
In addition, as shown in Table 10, for students selecting face-to-face courses, there is a highly statistically significant difference (α=0.01) between G.P.A.’s for Black/Hispanic students vs. Asian/PI/White students; for students selecting online courses, there is a highly statistically significant difference (α=0.01) between G.P.A.’s for Black/Hispanic students vs. White students (Asian/PI online students have G.P.A.’s that are closer to Black and Hispanic students compared to White students, but which are not statistically significantly different from any of the other ethnic groups).
Implications
For Practice
This research suggests that increased effort is needed in recruiting non-White ethnicities into online courses if we are to achieve completely representative participation in the online environment for all ethnic groups.
In addition, the overall lower G.P.A. in both the face-to-face and online environment for Black and Hispanic students suggest that more resources may need to be allocated to the support of these groups specifically. By contrast Asian/Pacific Islander students tend to have higher G.P.A’s overall, but in the online environment have lower G.P.A.’s than might be expected given the pattern evidenced by other student groups. This suggests that for Asian/PI students their underrepresentation in online courses may be due to factors other than G.P.A.
For Future Research
The differences in enrollment by ethnicity in online courses which were observed in this study were only detected when non-White ethnicities were pooled together to create a larger sample size. An obvious next step would be to obtain a larger sample size and to see if the same statistically significant differences could be observed in individual ethnic groups, and to see if the resulting effect sizes are still small. Ideally, a sample would be large enough to delve further into the differences among ethnic groups, because labels, such as Asian, Hispanic and Black, span a multitude of ethnic groups, and do a disservice to all ethnicities. Additionally, racial and ethnic differences should also be considered in the context of English language skills and differences of economics and family education.
In addition to enrollment patterns, future research should explore both success as measured by grades in the online environment and retention for these student groups. Given the controls for both instructor and course in this study, results that indicate higher overall G.P.A. in the online versus the face to face environment also warrant further investigation.
Limitations
This research was conducted on a specific sample of courses at the college which is the focus of this study, which could limit the applicability of these findings, since not all courses at the college were included. In addition, the college which is the focus of this study has a particular environment that is extremely diverse. The student population is overwhelmingly composed of groups that have traditionally been underrepresented in higher education, and a number of faculty, staff, and senior administrators at the college come from these groups as well. As a result, differences in G.P.A., among different ethnic groups may be less (or more) pronounced than at other institutions, and therefore the applicability of these results to other online learning programs has some limitations.
Several of the results of this paper involved pooling two or more ethnic groups in order to obtain the number of entries needed in each cell to have suitable statistical power; however, this may have blunted some important distinctions between ethnic groups that were pooled together: for example, if there are any important distinctions between success rates for Black and Hispanic students in online courses with the same G.P.A., this study did not contain enough detail to pick up on these differences.
Conclusion
At the college in this study, minorities enroll in online courses at rates that are lower than White students by a small but statistically significant amount. The proportion of non-White ethnic groups enrolled in online courses is significantly smaller than in face-to-face courses, although the effect size for this difference is small, indicating that these differences are relatively minor. However, even minor differences contribute to inequity (especially when the College’s online enrollments are in the thousands each year). As a result, the five percentage point difference found in this sample between minority online and face-to-face enrollments amounts to approximately 150 minority students each year who are losing the opportunity to take courses online. This suggests that recruitment efforts to enroll students from all minority groups in online courses should be an important part of any e-learning program.
G.P.A. is also significantly different across ethnic groups, in both online and face-to-face courses, and there are some notable patterns when looking at the changes in G.P.A. when different ethnicities select to particpate in the online environment. Asian/PI and White students have significantly higher G.P.A.’s than Black and Hispanic students overall, and prior research has also shown that students who enroll in online courses at the college have higher G.P.A.’s than students who enroll in face-to-face courses.
However, this study reveals a notable exception to this pattern once we look at ethnicity in detail. While Black, Hispanic and White students have comparable gaps in G.P.A. online vs. face-to-face (with significantly higher G.P.A.’s for students selecting online courses), Asian/PI students actually have the same G.P.A. whether they choose take a course online or face-to-face. It seems that for some reason, Asian/PI students with the highest G.P.A. s are choosing not to take courses online at the same rates as students with equivalent G.P.A. s from other ethnic groups.
This discrepancy raises a host of important questions. Is the gap in G.P.A. between students who take courses online and students who take courses face-to-face a good thing, because online courses often require a higher level of discipline and organizational skills, which are more likely to be prevalent among students with higher G.P.A. s? In other words, is this a sign that students are doing a good job of accurately assessing ahead of time whether or not the online environment might be right for them? Or is it something we should try to change, because with the ever-increasing importance of technology and the internet today, all students, regardless of G.P.A., should perhaps have online as well as face-to-face academic experiences? Does the fact that Asian/PI students who choose to register for online courses have the same G.P.A. s as face-to-face students mean that we should try to create structures which incentivize students from all ethnic groups to choose online courses in the same way? Or is it a sign of something out of balance – does it indicate something holding back certain higher G.P.A. students in this group from taking courses online?
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Kimberly A. Gargiulo, Coordinator of Institutional Research and Assessment at Borough of Manhattan Community College for her support.
Financial support for this study was provided by a Borough of Manhattan Community College E-Learning Grant.
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By: Dr. Katherine Conway, Dr. Claire Wladis and Dr. Alyse Hachey
This discussion will examine how the introduction of the online hybrid environment of the Blackboard Learning System into the traditional classroom learning site impacts the writing processes of students at a mid-sized Hispanic Serving Institution on the U.S.-Mexico border. Rather than relying on Blackboard to enrich or supplement traditional writing practices, within Blackboard, HSI students construct a new writing and learning space that is at once real and imagined. In the HSI environment, Blackboard exists as an alternative thirdspace located (nestled) among the spaces of students’ lifeworlds. Using examples drawn from Blackboard-based writing of over 100 students, I show that within Blackboard as an alternative space for writing, students’ and instructors’ goals come into alignment creating a learning environment that allows HSI students to successfully negotiate their home, work, and educational spaces. Students’ writing behavior within Blackboard allows a substantive view into how students at a large HSI campus, which is also a commuter campus, reconstruct themselves as writers, moving toward higher levels of writing achievement in the context of this hybrid learning environment.
Reconstructing Spaces for Writing at an HSI:
How Blackboard Transforms Students’ Writing Behavior
Introduction: Writing in the Era of Cyberspace
The proliferating integration of electronic technologies into the production of writing has changed the college writing class landscape and the delivery of college writing instruction. Where once upon a time, the delivery of writing instruction depended on handwritten drafts and literal cut-and-paste activities, electronic venues have revolutionized the way students perceive and use spaces where writing happens. Today, it is impossible to conceive of writing instruction in spaces that do not include cyberspace “writing tablets.”
In a quantum leap that has left the traditional classroom behind, an increasing number of writing courses are being taught completely online with student-teacher interactions occurring completely in cyberspace. It is not likely that we will ever backtrack toward the traditional (now antiquated) method of delivering college writing where students wrote dutifully at their desks and submitted handwritten essays at the end of the period. Today, when we are not in a totally cyberspace environment, we operate in hybrid spaces that retain some of the aspects of the traditional writing classroom while introducing new pedagogies and reconfiguring student-teacher interactions within the alternative space of web-enhanced teaching, such as that provided via the Blackboard Learning System.
However fluid and innovative writing instruction becomes as new technologies reconfigure the production of writing, there are several constants:
(1) For a multiplicity of reasons, many students do not feel comfortable with writing; many overtly admit that they hate writing.
(2) A great deal of time and effort is required to produce effective writing.
(3) Students’ perception of the writing classroom as an unsupportive environment impacts their attitude and achievement in writing.
(4) For students from non-mainstream backgrounds, the traditional writing process is necessarily disrupted—and in many cases truncated—because of the forces that pull students away from full attention to writing demands.
This discussion will examine how the introduction of the Blackboard Learning System into the traditional classroom environment impacts the writing processes of students at a mid-sized Hispanic Serving Institution on the U.S.-Mexico border. Drawing on theories of spatiality (Soja, 1996; Reynolds, 2004), theories of writing pedagogy (Elbow, 1973; Trimbur, 2000; Matsuda, 2006), and theories of learning (Wesch, 2007; Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005; Ambrose, Bridges, Lovett, DiPietro, & Norman, 2010), I suggest that rather than relying on Blackboard to enrich or supplement traditional writing venues, HSI students, within Blackboard, construct a new writing and learning space that is at once real and imagined. As the cornerstone of my hypothesis, I use E.A. Soja’s theory of “thirdspace,” which he defines as “an-Other way of understanding and acting to change the spatiality of human life, a distinct mode of critical spatial awareness that is appropriate to the new scope and significance being brought about in the rebalanced trialectics of spatiality-historicality-sociality,” (Soja, 1996, p. 10). Soja’s term invites us to envision important spaces metaphorically, seeing those spaces not only as physical space that is occupied but also as sites constructed by “occupiers” to perfectly fit exigencies created by that particular place/space. By extension, there is the possibility that for spaces occupied by multiple users, there will be areas of common reconstruction but distinctly individual reconstructions for each user. This thirdspace construct seems suited to exploring the ways our multiple student users have appropriated the space of Blackboard to reconstruct a new learning site for the production of writing. I suggest that in the HSI environment, the Blackboard Learning System exists as an alternative thirdspace located (nestled) among the spaces of students’ lifeworlds where the writing process is reconstructed as students “make adjustments and compromises . . . in the process of accommodating to [this hybrid learning] place” (Reynolds, 2004, p. 14). Within this alt-space for writing, students’ and instructors’ goals come into alignment creating a learning environment that allows HSI students to successfully negotiate their home, work, and educational spaces.
The HSI Environment
Students at Hispanic Serving Institutions defy easy categorization. Historically, HSIs evolve because they are located in regions with large Hispanic populations; however, HSI mission and/or vision statements rarely make direct reference to an institution’s Hispanic enrollment (Laden, 2001, p. 74) which means that if accommodations are to be made for this special population of students, they are made at the instructor level only if the instructor is willing and able to make adjustments. For institutions with a predominantly Hispanic population, such as my institution, the HSI designation becomes the most salient aspect of the institution’s ambiance. My south Texas institution has an 89% Hispanic student population, well in excess of the U.S. Department of Education 25% Hispanic full-time FTE requirement (UTPA Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness, 2010; U.S. Department of Education, 2011). Additionally, as a regional institution, my institution draws 93% of its students from the four-county area of deep South Texas known as the Rio Grande Valley—and the majority of these students live at home and commute to campus. The conflation of the commuter campus environment (where students come and go to campus around home and work exigencies) and the HSI environment (where students feel the inexorable pull of familia) creates an educational landscape that pragmatically and pedagogically embraces Blackboard as a thirdspace for teaching and learning, allowing students to triangulate the spaces of family, work, and education.
Commuter students many times appear to be indifferent students, but they aren’t; they are “just-in-time” students, driving into campus from home or work only minutes before class starts and frequently still arriving late to class. Unlike the on-campus residents, commuter students interrupt other activities (work and family) to drive to campus, sometimes for a single class. Because their real work and home lives are off campus, as soon as the last class is over, they exit; no time is allotted for studying in the library, working in computer labs, or conferencing with professors during office hours not because they do not want to participate in such traditional academic activities but because they must attend to family and work demands. Admittedly, the commuter issues apply to any institution that draws the majority of its student body from the local community or contiguous larger region. However, when that local community is predominantly Hispanic and predominantly working class, the learning ambiance of the HSI/commuter campus is significantly influenced by these two factors. In other words, HSI/commuter students must not only uphold cultural expectations that sometimes interfere with institutional, educational demands, but they must also negotiate the realities of coming and going to campus while sustaining normalcy in their “real” world lifespaces.
The real world work demands faced by HSI students are a direct consequence of the way Hispanic students finance their education. National statistics reveal disturbing details about how Hispanic students pay for college: (1) they receive the lowest cumulative financial aid awards of any racial/ethnic group; (2) they receive the lowest federal aid awards; (3) they are less likely than all other students to take out loans (30% vs. 35% of all other students) (Santiago, 2008, p. 34). Laudably, the strong Latino work ethic propels Hispanic students into the work force early so as to contribute to the family coffers and to finance their education. My institution has no published statistics on the number of students who work while attending the university despite the fact that mandatory student evaluations of teaching ask students to fill in the number of hours they work each week; anecdotally, however, we know from the explanations and excuses offered for late submissions, for absences, and for non-submissions that well over half the students in any given class have full or part-time jobs. Many students leave the university each day to go straight to work for an eight-hour shift which puts them back home late at night, and that’s when they start their school work. Other students work night shifts. Others work full time jobs and secure permission from employers to leave work for a class here and there. Others work all day and then come to campus for back-to-back evening classes starting at 4:30pm and ending at 10:00pm. Many stagger work hours around class time, frequently driving to campus for a single class and then immediately leaving to return to work.
In addition to the work issues, there are the issues related to family obligations. Because of their strong ties to la familia, Hispanic students sometimes appear to be distracted by family issues (and they frequently are). At my South Texas university, it is not at all unusual to have absences attributed to having no babysitter, to having to take a parent or grandparent to the doctor, to having to sit with a hospitalized family member, to having to collect a younger sibling from school—the list goes on and on. And because Hispanic familias are closely knit, a tragedy in even a distant part of the family resonates among all members; so the metaphorical and material immediacy of family considerably changes the learning landscape. One of my first-year writing students missed two weeks of class recently because his grandmother was dying in Mexico and the whole family went to be with her. During his protracted absence, he missed so much instruction and so many assignments that he was on the verge of failing the class. A female student missed one of our once-a-week classes, but she walked in tearfully at the end of the period: her child had been left at daycare past the closing time because the person she had entrusted to pick up her four-year-old son had failed to show up. Child protective services had called my student as she was on her way to class. In tears, she told me, “I can just see my little boy waiting there, thinking no one was ever going to come pick him up.” Another student missed many classes because her cousins were in a horrific automobile accident. The examples are endless. While these examples are drawn from an HSI student population, clearly these problems are not unique to Hispanic students. My point is that at a campus where the population is 89% Hispanic and almost 100% commuter, these examples are not once-in-a-while situations, but are instead the norm, calling for teaching and learning adjustments that seem to be perfected in the thirdspace of Blackboard.
Perhaps the most distinct difference between HSI students at my South Texas institution and traditional students at predominantly white institutions is the number of Spanish dominant speakers who populate our classrooms. The English Language Learner label is not applied to college-level students because the untested and to date undocumented assumption is that if an ELL is able to get into college, he/she has attained a level of competency in L2 to succeed in university-level work. The reality at HSI campuses located in borderland areas is that many of our students are immigrants, many of them having been in America for only a few years. They have remarkable stories of achievement, not just in mastering English, but in succeeding in other curricular areas. One of my recent first year writing students had been in the U.S. only since his sophomore year in high school—and he ended the course with an A! Another student, a dual enrollment student in another FYW class, had been in the U.S. only two years; if he were an elementary school student, he would have still been considered a newcomer (Hodge, 2001).
Most poignant are the stories of immigrant students from Mexico for whom the classroom space is promoted as a place of hope but then is transformed into a hostile environment. One of my advanced composition students described her experience of moving from Mexico to the U.S.:
When I was seven years old, I left Veracruz, México, with my mother, big sister, and my brothers. Arriving to Texas, I knew my journey would be difficult, twice as difficult, to find a voice in a language and a land not mine. I was no longer living in my mágico world. I was now invisible; at least that is how I felt for a few years. Mother, always told me that just . . . living in the United States was a privilege and knowing el ingles would give me power, it would put me in the race for competitiveness,and progress.
Another advanced comp student wrote about the trauma and “otherness” of being an immigrant student, with vivid details about the way the classroom space becomes a hostile space when teachers punish non-native English speakers:
Writing for me has been very challenging especially because I am an immigrant from Mexico. Back in 1984 when I first started school . . . at “S.” Elementary, Spanish was not acceptable in class. The way the teacher would ground me was during class by either facing the wall during recess or be put in a corner in class for speaking Spanish. Learning to read, write and speak English was very difficult mainly because the teacher was always getting after me, since I did not understand or spoke any English. I do not remember having any good experiences when I did writing in elementary school. The thing that I disliked most in school was when the teacher would ask for my journal and made me read it in front of the class, which I did, but sometimes I was too embarrassed to share with the class. I went home and cried alone without telling anybody. One day I even asked my parents to get me out of school but they told me that schools in the United States will give me an excellent education.
Certainly, not all HSI students, even at a borderlands campus, are actual ESL students (Newman, pp. 23-24). Anecdotal evidence from my campus indicates that up sometimes, up to one-fourth of our students in any given class are true ESL students, having acquired L1 literacy in Spanish by living in Mexico and attending at least a few years of school there before immigrating to the U.S. Such evidence comes to light in classes where literacy development is a salient component of the classroom discussion, such as in English, rhetoric, linguistics, language, sociology, and education courses, admittedly small classes of approximately 30 students, where conversations about literacy matter and ultimately inform the learning experience. No institutional data is formally collected on the provenance of the students’ English language acquisition at this campus; however, professors for whom such information matters are keenly aware of the rich literacy stories that students bring to their classes and their education in general.
Other students were born in the U.S. to immigrant parents, raised in homes with non-traditional literacy practices where the child becomes the literacy coach for the parent, and where even after several generations of U.S. residency, the family preserves Spanish as the home language. Though born in the U.S., children from these families are raised in Spanish-only homes, so entering the school system is a traumatic experience—so scarring that years later they remember it vividly and painfully. In a talk at my institution, South Texas writer Viola Canales, born in the U.S. but raised in a Spanish-dominant home, recounted the trauma of her first days in school: “I used to cry every morning before going to first grade. . . . School didn’t reflect my world. There was no mirror in first grade” (Newman, 2009, p. 67).
Hispanic students, especially those with backgrounds and life circumstances (such as low socioeconomic backgrounds, literacy histories shaped by having little English language support at home, and persistent memories of the traditional writing classroom as a hostile learning environment) must become experts at negotiating the academic spaces they inhabit. Unfortunately, in higher education, we do not readily make adjustments for students whose language, cultural background, and lived experiences do not match the hypothetical educational hegemony; instead, we assume a linguistic homogeneity that fails to take into account the linguistic diversity of our students (Matsuda, 2006, pp. 637-638). In the absence of instructor-generated pedagogical practices that recognize cultural, linguistic, and experiential diversity, HSI students must autonomously make adjustments if they are to successfully triangulate home-work-education spaces. In the context of writing in the university environment, HSI students have demonstrated remarkable abilities of adaptation as learners in replacing the traditional classroom and its traditional blackboard with the success-oriented cyber Blackboard as a preferred site for writing.
The Traditional Blackboard: “The information is up here”
The Blackboard Learning System appropriates the label for what used to be one of the most recognizable sites in a classroom: the old-fashioned slate blackboard (now widely replaced by the laminate whiteboard and the screen for projecting media-based lessons). If we consider the way blackboards have been used literally and metaphorically in the delivery of instruction, we can begin to move toward conceptualizing the cyberspace Blackboard as a liminal thirdspace for writing and learning for HSI students.
In “A Vision of Students Today,” a video produced by Michael Wesch and his introductory cultural anthropology students at Kansas State University (2007), several frames focus on a teacher at the bottom of a large, tiered lecture hall, writing on the blackboard, “the information is up here.” This short, declarative statement captures the pedagogical contradictories represented by the traditional blackboard: without the blackboard, there would be no vehicle for delivering the information that students need; however, to get the information, students must be actually looking at the blackboard. In an extension of the statement, we could almost say that the information exists only if and when it is written on the blackboard. The traditional blackboard, thus, is not just a classroom instructional site; it is also a symbol of knowledge and learning. Additionally, it functions simultaneously as an exclusionary as well as inclusionary device, depending on whether students’ eyes are trained on it or have strayed from the focal learning site in the classroom. Furthermore, when the teacher assumes students have prior knowledge and mastery of a concept and therefore does not put that information on the board, the students who do not have adequate or appropriate prior knowledge are excluded.
Within the spaces of historicality, sociality, and spatiality (Soja, 1996, p. 6), the blackboard metaphorically and realistically represents the dynamics of distribution and allocation of power in the classroom. Historically, instructors’ use of the blackboard exists on a continuum, at one extreme as a site for punctuating a formal lecture or extended lesson with occasional words and phrases that the instructor wants to emphasize to the other extreme as a site for writing an entire lecture or extensive notes for students to copy, in some cases with the blackboard completely and overwhelmingly covered with teacher writing. (Today, in the age of ubiquitous PowerPoints, the blackboard has been more or displaced by PPT lessons, but, like the blackboard, PPT exists on a continuum from well-planned effectuality to unconsidered overkill.)
Socially, the blackboard has offered an opportunity for students to communicate random messages, usually surreptitiously, usually anonymously, before the teacher walks in, or as a site for reminders of all sorts, always with the appended “Do Not Erase,” or as a disciplinary venue when, in lower grades, students’ names are written on the board as a result of inappropriate behavior.
Geographically, the blackboard moves the teacher from behind the desk when he/she approaches the board to illustrate a lesson, thereby actually, physically delivering the lesson. The blackboard moves students to the front of the room as active learners when they are asked to demonstrate learning by working out a math problem on the board or writing a sentence. However, the traditional blackboard site is also fraught with possibilities for failure in situations when a teacher writes something on the board and asks for volunteers to answer; a public incorrect response can trigger embarrassment for the learner. In short, the blackboard as a classroom staple has existed in multiple dimensions, with these various configurations simultaneously existing and being perceived by students and teachers in a sort of “triple dialectic” (Soja, 1996, p. 6) but always with the teacher and students positioned in real time and real space in this environment and always as a symbol of teacher authority.
The blackboard persists as an iconic representation of classroom dynamics. Consider the students who must be moved closer to the board so they can see; this movement marks them as deficient and different from the learners who can see the blackboard perfectly well from the back of the room. Consider the students who sit at their desks with no pencil or paper in defiance of the tacit teacherly expectation that things written on the blackboard should be copied down and saved as learning resources. Consider the students who choose to sit at the back of the room distancing themselves from the teacher—and concomitantly from the blackboard. Historically, a student’s choice to sit at the back of the room signals resistance to the usual power dynamics of the classroom. However, choosing to sit at the back endows the student with a certain amount of power. The teacher, noticing the resistance, is compelled to “win over” the student, to try extra hard with this learner—or in an unfortunate turn of events, in disciplinary action; regardless, the resistance results in attention. Consider the students who copy everything the teacher writes on the board in unconsidered allegiance to the usual power structure symbolized by the blackboard; after all, if it’s on the blackboard, it must be important and must be copied.
Consider the teacher who, in deft and powerful appropriation of the blackboard dynamics, uses the board as a way of wrenching the students’ attention away from each other and toward the teacher at the front of the room. A scene from the movie Dangerous Minds (Simpson & Bruckheimer, 1996) offers a perfect example of blackboard as attention-getter (and power-establisher). New teacher Louanne Johnson, standing helplessly and ineffectually in front of a class of students indifferent to her presence, quiets her rowdy class by writing on the board, “I am a U.S. Marine. Does anyone know karate?” Later, in a verb conjugation lesson she writes, “We _____ green beans for supper,” but the noisy students go on about their business talking so loudly to each other that her voice can’t be heard over theirs. She pulls their attention toward her by erasing the first sentence and writing, “We choose to die.” The blackboard, then, represents teacher power and student submissiveness: writing on the blackboard forces students to look toward the teacher and, at least for a moment, to pay attention to what is on the blackboard. In the case of Louanne Johnson (a white female teacher), she wielded the authority of the blackboard to reconfigure the power dynamics of the classroom: until she wrote her attention-getting sentences on the board, the students (Latino and African American), noisy, disruptive, cohesive as a group, had ownership of the class and they had no intention of letting her teach them anything or even of acknowledging that she was in the classroom.
The distribution of classroom power traditionally represented by the blackboard is particularly relevant for Hispanic students who have to negotiate language barriers raised and maintained by the teacher. Such barriers keep the learner silent and excluded from classroom activities and transform the classroom into an unfriendly, frightening place, as illustrated in this passage written by the student whose comments about moving to the U.S. were cited earlier:
I am seven years old, in Mission, Texas in Mrs. P’s first grade classroom. Mrs. P. writes an arithmetic problem on the board. I raise my hand, in hopes that she would pick me. Mrs. P., unsentimentally smiles and says, “M., Do you know the answer?” I do not answer. I stand with a phony bravado and I feel the gringo children looking at me. “M., do you know the answer?” I stand there silent, wanting the earth to swallow me slowly. My heart wants to scream, “La respuesta es ocho!!…la respuesta es ocho!! (The answer is eight!! The answer is eight)! Beginning to wish the teacher understands my sign language, I start drawing a big circle in the air. Giggling, laughing, pointing, they cannot seem to keep their eyes off of me. Are they laughing at something I did, or something I am? I return to my desk, feeling degraded, humiliated, and overwhelmed with a longing for my native tongue. Defeated, I retreat into silence for the rest of the long, lonely school year.
The student-teacher dynamics described in this story are emblematic of the worst type of student-teacher interactions, with the learner feeling powerless, voiceless. In this story, the traditional blackboard is the trigger for the experience, reminding us that the traditional blackboard can transform private achievement or failure (for example, writing or quizzes that students produce individually at the privacy of their desks) into public achievement or failure, with potentially disastrous consequences for Hispanic students trying to position themselves in the space of the American classroom.
The traditional blackboard, then, functions symbolically as a fulcrum for shifting long-established (frequently negative) attitudes about the classroom toward reconceived notions about learning when a new system, such as the Blackboard Learning System, is introduced. In the context of the HSI, Blackboard positions students in an imagined-and-real space where the traditional classroom (and its blackboard) is replaced with a far more student-friendly cyberspace site in which students reconstruct themselves as learners and writers.
Blackboard as a Thirdspace for HSI Writers
The trialectics of historicality, sociality, and spatiality of the traditional blackboard transfer easily in reconceived form to the electronic dimension of Blackboard. In many ways, the tensions of power dynamics represented by the traditional, physical blackboard are reconfigured and elided by the cyberspace Blackboard. In the traditional writing classroom, the teacher, associated with distribution and control of knowledge, is too often perceived as a critic bent on finding fault with student writing or as a presumed expert unwilling to guide students to satisfying and successful writing experiences as the following student comments show:
The words of a first year writing student: I do not like writing because I have never excelled in it. When I was in 4th grade, I got a 2 on my writing composition and in 7th grade, a 3 (I have always wanted to get a 4 but the stories I write are never good enough). Grammar—that’s one of the things I don’t like about writing because if you mess up on part of a sentence, every single little thing in the sentence is messed up. When I was in 8th grade, my English teacher tried to make the whole class like writing, but, with me, she failed.
The words of a junior in an advanced composition class: When I was in Middle School I had an English teacher named Ms. M. who was severely demanding and hard headed with the way she wanted us to write our essays. It was her way or the highway; she wouldn’t let us use our past experiences when writing essays in her class. She pretty much said “forget about what you learned in middle school and elementary in regards to writing.” I can remember learning as a young writer in middle school to always try and write in detail and add more to the story, but Ms. M. would always put me down by saying “You’re just blabbing on and on about useless nonsense, it doesn’t make sense.” But in my opinion that was very crucial and useful nonsense because it shows more character to the point I was trying to get across.
The words of a senior in an advanced composition class: Throughout my elementary, middle school, and high school education, I’ve carried the trauma of my writing assignments being stamped on with red, circle pen marks and never positively commented on. Discouragement was the end result of my fourth grade year. Frequently being told “you’re not doing this right” or “you’re not doing it the way I showed you” and having my TEACHER writing all these red marks everywhere and to top it off in front of my classmates made me a discouraged writer. As soon as I would turn in my assignments, there she was marking my paper with all these red scribbles. Dreading to walk up to her desk!
These students’ comments point to the long-lasting negativity associated with the traditional school writing environment, an environment in which the teacher manages the distribution and control of knowledge and students associate the writing classroom with failure. Stories like these are, unfortunately, not uncommon in the HSI environment. Hispanic students are taught to respect authority, especially their teachers, and to accept the judgment (grades) unquestioningly (Newman, 2007, p. 20), a situation that promotes the adversarial relationship between learner and teacher that can occur in the traditional classroom when learners’ needs clash with teacher dictates. In the writing classroom, particularly after years of enduring “arbitrary authority” wielded by the teacher, and particularly when that authority figure is a member of the dominant white culture and the student a member of a minority group, students come to see the writing teacher as someone who is preventing them from achievement and from access to power (Gale, 1996, pp. 8-9). Adjusting this unequal distribution of power is vital to promoting students’ writing achievement.
In the realm of writing instruction, the reconstruction of pedagogical positions endows the learner with a powerful tool for controlling manifestations of the writing process. Blackboard space functions liminally as a “real-and-imagined” thirdspace that creates “another mode of thinking about space that draws upon the material and mental spaces of the traditional dualism but extends well beyond them in scope, substance, and meaning” (Soja, 1996, p. 11). In other words, understanding of the real blackboard with its long-standing representation of the power dynamics of the classroom makes the cyber Blackboard the preferred learning space. Consider the way we position the traditional blackboard: we talk about the blackboard, with the definite article giving it a realness and a fixed spatiality in the classroom. But, cyberspace Blackboard is referred to sans article, positioning it everywhere and nowhere; each user constructs the real-and-imagined thirdspace by bringing together exigencies of space-historicality-sociality into this new learning venue.
Something that is missing in Blackboard is a representation of the teacher: there is no teacher “visible” when the student opens up the Blackboard site, as shown in Figure 1 (the homepage for my first year writing class):
Figure 1. Blackboard Page
Even if I included an actual photograph of myself, it would operate as an avatar, for it would be a cyber representation: I’m not really there; my “presence” is manifested by my name, course information, and assignments. In the traditional classroom space, the teacher presence can easily dominate the space, as evidenced by my analysis of the symbolic and real pedagogical implications of the old-fashioned blackboard noted above. But in the Blackboard cyberspace, the teacher is a disembodied presence, and that creates a new learning environment for students, albeit an environment to which they easily adjust Blackboard, the teaching/learning space remains figuratively a “teacherless” writing class such as the ones described by Peter Elbow in his classicWriting Without Teachers (1973)in which he argued for shifting focus away from teacherly didacticism toward self-motivated writing behavior:
The teacherless writing class is a place where there is learning but no teaching. It is possible to learn something and not be taught. It is possible to be a student and not have a teacher. If the student’s function is to learn and the teacher’s to teach, then the student can function without a teacher, but the teacher cannot function without a student. (p. ix)
Elbow’s metatext is that the traditional, spatially fixed classroom can be an antagonistic space that interferes with the real process of writing; he suggests that based on the years of school experience which teaches students to suspect that everything they write is error-laden, student writers erect a sort of filter and this filter interferes with the “natural way of producing words . . . voice—which is the main source of power in . . . writing” (p. 6).
Clearly, there is a teacher in Blackboard, but he/she exists only as the student chooses to conceive of that individual. In the absence of the spatiality of the real classroom—with its traditional blackboard (or white board) at the front of the room, students desks, teacher desk at the front, teacher with the red pen—the student writer is free to create an imagined writing space. In Blackboard, students reconstruct the traditional writing process in ways that give HSI students remarkable control over achievement, accomplishment, and self-satisfaction. The cyberspace Blackboard easily usurps the real classroom space as a traditional learning site, as a social site, and as a site in which teacher-student interactions are carried out; now all of this is productively reconstructed in the thirdspace of Blackboard. While much of this reconstruction may reflect the “migrating” of effective classroom interactions into the online environment (Warnock, p. ix), ultimately, when the walls and limitation of the traditional classroom fall away in Blackboard, students consistently seem to reconstruct themselves as empowered, diligent, successful learners, regardless of how they may have conducted themselves in the traditional classroom site.
How Students Write in Blackboard
Writing in the thirdspace of Blackboard pivots on three fundamental reconstructions of classroom dynamics: (1) reassignment of the space where real learning happens; (2) revised manifestations of student effort and motivation; (3) reconfigured student-teacher dynamics.
Blackboard: Where Real Learning Happens
Since I’ve begun using Blackboard as my vehicle for writing instruction, I observed how students relocate themselves in this academic thirdspace. Two student stories, one from a colleague and one of my own, shed light on how students reassign the space of real learning Blackboard.
My colleague’s story: A student in my sophomore literature class sent me a writing question on Blackboard, but I didn’t have time to write a response before class. I expected she would approach me in class to ask the question, but she didn’t. Previously, she had sent me a question about one of her Blackboard discussion question grades, again a question she could have asked in class. Instead, she chose to continue her questions about this grade over several Blackboard queries. In class, she acted as if we weren’t having this exchange over Blackboard, but I still left it up to her to bring it up in class—she never did.
My story: A student in my FYW class brought to our in-class conference a writing segment I found deficient, mostly because as demonstrated by the product he showed me, he had not done his assignment. He didn’t say anything; he walked silently back to his desk—and I went on to my next in-class conference. Late that night, I got a Blackboard message from him:
I did put forth plenty of effort in my paper. I included a strong topic sentence and thesis, but did not expand to the 500 words. I did, however, struggle with finding solid material on which to base my essay, starting and restarting my essay several times. What I mean to say is that I in fact spent quite some time in developing what I believe to be a very strong beginning to my essay.
These stories suggest that for both of these students the space of real engagement has been deferred to Blackboard; the traditional classroom space, perhaps because of the historical associations, seems an inhospitable place where student goals clash with the instructor’s goals, so students choose silence rather than assertiveness. For example, my colleague’s story suggests a mismatch between instructors’ and students’ views of raising questions in class. For the instructor, questions from students signal engagement and provide an opportunity to clarify points. As instructors, we welcome questions, but probably because of past classroom experiences in which a question became an opportunity for public humiliation (and my students offer endless stories of such classroom interactions), students seem reluctant, perhaps even afraid, to ask questions. For many HSI students, in part because of the power dynamics represented by the traditional classroom, asking a question in class involves risk-taking: the instructor might label the questioner as deficient or inattentive, or, worse, the instructor might humiliate the questioner (“you should already know that” or “If you were listening . . . “). While the instructor might not respond this harshly, an insecure student prefers not to take the risk. My story reveals a similar situation: by rejecting my student’s incomplete submission, I created a non-supportive classroom environment; but instead of defending his effort in the classroom site, during our face-to-face conference, he chose silence, and probably felt powerless, voiceless, and angry. Both of these writers, however, relocated themselves in the thirdspace of Blackboard as serious, diligent students, and created a cyber instructor, faceless and presence-less in Blackboard, but more caring, less intimidating, more receptive to their needs.
When Blackboard is an option for learning and writing, the real classroom is no longer seen as the primary learning site, so much so that students avoid classroom learning interactions and defer their engagement to the Blackboard site. I come back to the need for this “deferment”—at an HSI that is also a commuter campus, the time investment of getting to class is intrusive; in many cases, students have far more important things to do than to show up for class. This reality requires adjustment on the instructor’s part: on one hand, this reconstruction appears to be a rejection of traditional delivery of instruction (and concomitant resistance to the subject matter of the course). However, I believe this reconstruction more accurately signals evidence of students’ interest in learning and achievement. In short, when students prefer the Blackboard site as the place where their learning takes place, it is a pedagogical plus—as long as we recognize and adjust to the change.
Blackboard: The New Writing Community
In pre-Blackboard times, conferencing with a student on a written draft involved one-on-one class time; he/she went back to his desk to tinker with the draft and exchange drafts with classmates while I worked with other students individually. In the traditional classroom writers’ community, the conferencing and peer review contributes vitally to the sociality of the writing process: so much so, that for years, this approach has been the staple of most compositionists’ pedagogy (Yancey, 2006, p. 5). That scenario has changed dramatically with Blackboard. Although I continue to conduct in-class one-on-one conferences, students resist working actively on their drafts in class following our conferences. Despite my repeatedly entreaties that they use our class time to refine their writing and ask me questions, they choose instead to chat with each other.
What has happened is that Blackboard has become a thirdspace in which the writing process has been reconfigured. While as a professor I value class time as valuable for revision and on-site conferences, my commuter students see this class time as an interruption, an unnecessary wrinkle in the triangulation of their work-home-education spaces. In the context of thirdspace, the sociality and spatiality of the writing classroom is no longer a time for improving writing in the presence of and with the assistance of the professor/coach and with feedback from peers, but instead for prepping for writing by sharing stories with other writers and by incubating rather than working directly. From my perspective, it seems that they are wasting classroom time; however, I believe what they are really doing is deferring the real work of writing for Blackboard at the time and hour and physical space when they choose to inhabit that space. In the context of the production of writing, this act of deferment is a manifestation of the student writer’s need to withdraw from the immediate situation, to close his/her eyes so as to concentrate intently on the writing task at hand and to block out influences that might inhibit successful completion of the task (Ong, 1975, p. 10; Elbow, 1987, p. 50-52). At this point, I have considerable anecdotal evidence that this deferment of true learning activity to Blackboard is resulting in increased achievement in student writing: the 100 plus students on whose writing this current study is based have shown sustained improvement in depth of thought, quality of expression, development of ideas, critical thinking, and overall engagement with their writing tasks, the sort of improvement and growth that marks the progression of student writer from novice to expert (Sommers and Saltz, 2004). (I am currently working on a study that examines the quantitative and qualitative improvements in writing evidenced in the Blackboard environment.)
Blackboard expands writing time and space metaphorically and realistically. For one thing, deadlines, which I now allow my students to set as a class, are no longer anxiety-inducing for them. In allowing students to set the deadline (albeit within some parameters), teacher authority is relinquished somewhat, but the trade-off is writers who are more participatory. In Blackboard, drafts and final copies and other assignments are not due at absolute times as they are in the traditional classroom. While there is a Blackboard dropbox due time and date, the liminal space of Blackboard makes all deadlines fluid. The traditional turning-in-your-paper-at-the-beginning-of-class in the real classroom creates a fixed, rigid deadline controlled by the teacher and resisted by the student (consider all the times students skip class because they were unable to complete the assignment by the deadline). The fluidity of the Blackboard deadlines stems from the freedom students feel to work within the writing spaces they have created—sometimes at 10pm, sometimes at 2am, sometimes at 5am. They routinely vote for a midnight deadlines, explaining that they work until late evening hours. And the glitches possible because of Blackboard in many ways ease the submission anxiety: in cyberspace, there’s always an acceptable, viable excuse (“I had technical problems; I know my paper is three minutes late [or x number of hours late], but I hope you still accept it”). Somehow, a comment like this one pulls the instructor into the thirdspace of Blackboard and the “excuse” is not a feeble request for more time but instead evidence of student diligence. Rhetorically, the student is posing as a serious, committed student whose work is there somewhere in cyberspace but just not in the dropbox; he/she is constructing me (the cyberspace instructor in the thirdspace of Blackboard) as an understanding professor who is more interested in the process of completing the writing assignment than in having the assignment in the dropbox by the cutoff time. If we juxtapose this with the resistance to on-time submissions that students demonstrate in traditional classrooms, the thirdspace of Blackboard is a decidedly friendlier pedagogical space.
Blackboard: Where Every Student Is a Real Writer
Blackboard also has transformed my role as reader of student writing. Perhaps not all Blackboard instructors read drafts and papers as they come in, but I do. Students have on-demand feedback—and they expect it. One student wrote in his end-of-class essay that, on the day he submitted a writing assignment he found particularly challenging, he was checking Blackboard every 20 minutes to see if I had posted his grade—an assumption of my instantaneous availability. While no instructor can be available on demand, this student’s comment points to his interest in reader feedback, a mark of a writer who has moved beyond the novice stage and is progressing toward the maturity of a writer who recognizes the connection between the instructor/reader/expert’s commentary and the potential for writing improvement. Another student grew nervous when her friends from class had already received their feedback for a major draft and she hadn’t; she sent me her draft again, just in case. What I see in such student behavior is assumption of ownership not just of the submission but of the writing process. In the thirdspace of Blackboard, students seem much more focused on succeeding on the assignment—and on being rewarded for that diligence—than they do in the traditional classroom setting. When Blackboard becomes a major venue for instruction and learning, the power dynamics of the traditional classroom are reconfigured significantly. Students take a far more active role in their learning and they seem far more interested in having their accomplishments acknowledged.
Working in the Blackboard thirdspace, empowers learners to see themselves as serious participants in the writing community. I offer the story of “Sammy”, a first year writing student. For his first major writing conference, he had written only one sentence (he was supposed to have a 350-word segment), and he had no explanation, no questions, and unfortunately, we couldn’t have a productive conference if all he had written was a single sentence. He just shrugged his shoulders. Back at his desk, he pulled out his phone and spent the rest of the period texting and chatting with the kids in his group. It is difficult not to think of such students as disinterested underachievers. Sammy surprised me, however. At 2:30am that night, he sent his Blackboard submission with a comment: “I’m still working on this but I have 500 words now. I can’t work anymore; my brain is pooped.” Sammy’s comment points to the way student writers locate themselves in the thirdspace of Blackboard. In class that day, his behavior, his lack of preparation, his apparent disinterest in his own success had given me reason to think of him as a potential failure. In the classroom, because he was unprepared, he was unable to participate meaningfully in our class interactions; however, at home, in the space of Blackboard, he was a writer, proud of what he’d accomplished and he moved into my own writing world (I know what a “pooped” brain feels like after a long writing stint).
A student in my advanced composition class included reflections about her completion of the assignment each time she submitted a draft or a final version, such as this one submitted with a short childhood experience narrative:
I enjoyed writing this narrative more so than the expository essay. I was able to expand a little more because I had details I could include but then again, I couldn’t keep it at one page. I tried to re-read it to see where I could cut out information but I found that everything I included was relevant to the story. I tried, but the length was a disappointment I guess since it should have been one page. It was fun though. I’m sharing it with my cousin as soon as I can. Thank you!
Another student, who had to work until midnight, submitted his draft at 1:29am with a note: “I know its late and i apologize. Thank you for accepting it.” The notable thing about this message is that the student somehow envisioned me at the other end of his message—why else would he be apologizing for the late hour. He crafted an image of his professor as someone eagerly awaiting (and receptive to) his submission: he didn’t say “please accept this.” No, he pre-empted the acceptance by thanking me for it, not giving me a chance to refuse the submission (perhaps not even considering that I might refuse the submission). While this may be evidence of the student trusting the instructor to want the assignment regardless of the time of submission, it is a trust that seems to be enhanced by Blackboard where time and space—and submission—boundaries are relaxed. In contrast, the fixed beginning and ending time of the traditional classroom meeting can create a distrust in the student: if he/she doesn’t have the assignment on time, there is no submission and, while the instructor may accept a late submission, in the immediate temporality of the classroom, the student is marked as non-participatory, unprepared, disinterested. Blackboard eliminates those markings.
These students have found in Blackboard an entré into the community of writers. Telling me about the experience of writing is a self-selected option. In the old, pre-Blackboard days, when I collected drafts in class, no one said anything about the process of producing the drafts (unless I asked them for a short reflective piece); they just added their submission to my pile of essays. And, if they didn’t have a submission, that was that. Perhaps, this absence of the visual pile of essays is significant in Blackboard. Students see their submission in isolation; they envision me receiving only their submission. Where once upon a time in the world of the brick-and-mortar classroom, just getting the work in was the primary goal, now, the processes of producing and delivering the writing seem to be as important as the actual writing, eliminating a perceived problem in composition instruction: the isolation of writing from the actual conditions of production and delivery of writing (Trimbur, 2000, p. 189).
The Blackboard submission format seems to have created an exigency non-existent in classroom submissions. In Blackboard, when students deliver/submit their writing, they are communicating: the dropbox exists in letter format (to: instructor, from: student), and the comment box perhaps compels students to talk, albeit in cyberspace, explaining their submission and their process. When they write comments about the process of producing their writing, they clearly are positioning themselves as a writer writing to another writer. I see this as a reconfiguration of the student-teacher dynamic facilitated within the thirdspace of Blackboard where time and space boundaries are elided and student-teacher transactions become writer-to-writer communication informed by mutual trust born in a new pedagogical thirdspace, where the student projects the best teacher qualities onto the fictional/imagined cyberspace instructor. In Blackboard and other cyberspace writing venues, the student’s professor is always a fiction, an extension of the writerly task of creating an imagined audience for every writing task (Ong, 1975, pp. 9-11). In Blackboard, students assume the task of creating an imagined teacher in a way not required by the immediacy and reality of the traditional classroom where the teacher is there, present in real form before the students. Clearly, a student who has had actual classroom interaction with an instructor will be better able to construct a cyber instructor fashioned from the best teacher qualities the student has observed; interestingly, however, operating in the blended environment of face-to-face instruction and online learning, students seem to ignore the teacher qualities that might jeopardize student success, instead, constructing an imagined instructor tailor-made to meet the student’s pedagogical needs.
This creation of the fictionalized but ideal instructor enables students to erase and reconstruct the dynamics of traditional classroom interactions which frequently lead to opposition between instructor and student goals. Students have learned through years of reinforced experience how to navigate the traditional classroom space. When students enter a classroom, they are entering not just that particular classroom, but, in the context of Soja’s spatiality-historicality-sociality trialectic, every other classroom they have ever entered. The real-and-imagined space of the traditional writing classroom activates pre-existing negative perceptions of writing classrooms and writing instructors, triggering students to demonstrate work avoidance by submitting substandard work (Ambrose, Bridges, Lovett, DiPietro, & Norman, 2010, pp. 68-72): they admit to dashing off their work 10 minutes before class; they arrive late because they have been working in the computer lab up to the last minute; they wave their flashdrive before me and tell me, “my essay is in here”; they had to study for a test and “didn’t get” to the essay. Unfortunately, perhaps in an effort to avoid confrontations or perhaps in an effort to reward students even for a little effort, instructors frequently accept such excuses, thereby reinforcing avoidance behavior. Work avoidance creates feelings of failure all around: instructors chide themselves for accepting substandard work and perhaps see students as lazy or disengaged while students submit substandard work just to get the work done, knowing they could have done a better job if circumstances and motivation had permitted it (Ambrose, Bridges, Lovett, DiPietro, & Norman, 2010, pp. 67-68).
In the year that I’ve been using Blackboard, these work avoidance issues have diminished significantly. Blackboard seems to have created a space where student and instructor goals are idealized and synchronized. Students seem to reconstruct themselves as learners and writers: in Blackboard, drafts are almost always longer than the minimum required wordcount. Non-submissions are almost non-existent; and when someone does fail to submit an assignment, I immediately contact the student and almost always, the submission shows up.
Admittedly, I am surprised—and quite pleased—with the higher level of student participation that I’ve seen in Blackboard. My explanation is that Blackboard has allowed students to create an unboundaried thirdspace for writing. In the HSI environment, the home-work-school spaces grind against each other resulting in students’ resistance to writing because they have to interrupt activities in work and home spaces to comply with deadlines and productivity expectations. So, the classroom (and by extension the instructor) becomes intrusive and hostile. In the thirdspace of Blackboard, however, students reconfigure the writing process and reconstruct themselves as motivated writers within that triangulation. In the unboundaried space of Blackboard, student achievement rises: the writer replaces his/her reduced expectations for success (quite common among student writers) with heightened expectations for success (Ambrose, Bridges, Lovett, DiPietro, & Norman, 2010, pp. 69-72).
It could be that what I am seeing as a reconstruction of the writing process in this thirdspace is actually a manifestation of the larger shift toward learning contextualized in technology, a necessary shift given the way students variously labeled Net Gen or Generation Y have been immersed in technology from the time they were born, students who feel more comfortable producing and discussing their writing online than in the traditional classroom (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005, p. 1.2; Warnock, p. xxii). Evidence from my study and observation of the approximately 100 college writing students on which I’ve based my comments here suggests that Blackboard is much more than an extension of NetGen students’ technological savvy. Blackboard does indeed position students in a thirdspace where the old realities of their frequently negative experiences with writing instruction in writing classrooms give way to a new reality of student-centered, learner-managed writing. My study of these college writers as they have repositioned themselves in the world of writing via Blackboard resonates with the findings of the U.S. Department of Education’s analysis of online learning (U.S. Department of Education, 2010): student writers feel more control over their writing efforts and accomplishments in the online environment; additionally, the opportunities for reflection about their writing—their comments about completing the writing task when they submit the assignment—move the writer toward a self-consciousness about writing that is vital to growth toward “expertise” (Sommers and Saltz, 2004).
Conclusion: Writing and Teaching in the Thirdspace of Blackboard
My analysis of how Blackboard impacts students’ participation in writing is firmly grounded in my observations of the way students at my HSI commuter campus have adeptly located themselves in the thirdspace of Blackboard. Blackboard encourages learners and teachers to reposition themselves within reconstructed dynamics of classroom power. Ironically, while the traditional slate blackboard represents the historically authoritarian means of distributing knowledge, the cyberspace Blackboard offers a means of democratizing the pedagogical field.
This democratization is particularly important for Hispanic students whose achievements are frequently tentative and whose completion rates at institutions of higher learning lag significantly behind their white counterparts: in 2010, college completion rates ranged from 39% for whites to 19% for African Americans to 13% for Hispanics (U.S. Department of Education, 2011). Given the interruptions and interferences experienced by many Hispanic students as they navigate their way through college, it seems appropriate to take note of Blackboard’s potential for helping HSI students succeed. For students whose lifeworlds (family, cultural expectations, work) function as constraints in traditional learning environments, Blackboard expands learning time, space, and opportunity.
Without question, the evidence I have provided in this discussion is anecdotal rather than psychometric, but it is a starting point in considering how online instruction, even if it is simply blended into traditional instruction, can enhance the learning experiences of the vast numbers of Hispanic students at HSIs. And at HSIs such as my institution, where other issues (commuter status, limited financial resources, and literacy background, for example) significantly impact the general institutional ambiance, Blackboard and other online learning venues hold the promise of higher levels of student achievement and positive reconstructions of student-learner dynamics.
As I have reconstructed my professor persona in the thirdspace of Blackboard, I have watched my students emerge as more confident writers within that liminal space that they control and that gives them ownership of their writing. Consider the way one student described his thoughts about our FYW classroom before he even entered the physical space: “My first thought [was that this] English 1301.03 class was a dreadful and condensed room with harsh teaching and un-wanted attention. This very thought was due to past experiences and teachers’ negative influences.” This comment encapsulates the trialectics of spatiality (the writing classroom as uncomfortable space)-historicality (the writing teacher as antagonist)-sociality (the learner’s adversarial relationship with writing instructors). Happily, at the end of our Blackboard-enhanced course, this student replaced his disturbing description with an image of a confident writer: “This semester may be over but I am going to continue to use my new outstanding skills in writing to help better myself for the future. I’m leaving this English class with a better attitude because the rhythm of writing is at the tip of my fingertips now and my confidence has risen from what it once was and will forever stay that way.”
Clearly, numerous variables figure into transforming a reluctant writer into a confident writer. While my discussion is focused on writing, my analysis of HSI students’ facile adaptation to the online learning environment of Blackboard suggests that we should look critically at online learning venues as routes to higher levels of achievement for Hispanic students: why do HSI students so readily position themselves in the thirdspace of Blackboard? How do HSI students make the necessary pedagogical adjustments that lead to success in this cyber thirdspace? What can we learn from these adjustments and adaptations that will enable us to promote achievement among Hispanic students? HSI students are by no means unique, but they do bring to the forefront of our national discussions on access and equity the need to create and sustain learning environments that promote achievement for historically underrepresented groups. As transition from traditional classroom spaces into cyberspace classrooms and cyberspace blackboards, we need to pay critical attention to how this repositioning can improve teaching and change learning. Blackboard, I believe, is a powerful tool for reconstructing teaching so that students’ writing goals are met and writing becomes a vehicle for academic and personal growth rather than an occasion for failure. In the context of an HSI, where many students’ literacy histories are tinged with unpleasant memories of classroom spaces, it seems appropriate to embrace the cyber thirdspace of Blackboard as a venue for successful teaching and learning. In such an environment, student writers position themselves in the newly constructed dynamics of Blackboard as a real-and-imagined cyber thirdspace in which writing happens successfully and meaningfully.
References
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By: Dr. Beatrice Mendez Newman
Author Note:
Beatrice Mendez Newman is Professor of English at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, TX.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Beatrice Mendez Newman, Department of English, The University of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg, TX 78541. Email: bmendez@utpa.edu
Summer Faculty Immersion: A Program with the Potential to Transform Engineering Education
Abstract
This paper describes a faculty development program that was recently funded by the U.S. Department of Education as part of a $4.34 million Title V, Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) -STEM grant to Universidad del Turabo in Puerto Rico. The overarching goal of the grant is to increase the graduation rates of Hispanic engineering students. The specific objective of the faculty development program is to ignite innovative teaching in engineering and physics courses to assist students in achieving deep learning of fundamental engineering concepts. The summer program was proposed as a solution to recent research findings that show that, although innovative teaching methodologies are available and well researched, adoption by faculty is rare because it exceeds substantially the normal course preparation. The summer session will start with a two-day workshop on inductive learning methodologies by a highly esteemed researcher and innovator in engineering education. It will be followed by a one-month immersion to continue studying additional learning methodologies, and to prepare the innovations for two courses per faculty member. The effects of the innovations will be assessed to determine the efficacy of the proposed methodology. Details of the summer faculty immersion program, as well as the assessment plan, are presented in the paper. Additional features of the grant, which complement the summer immersion program, are also presented.
Reflection and Metacognition in First Year Experience at Queensborough Community College
In data provided by Victor Fichera, Principal Investigator of Academy Assessment Protocol at Queensborough Community College, it is reported that students enrolled in courses in which reflection and metacognition are used in projects that engage active learners, students are retained at higher levels of passing grades. In these projects technology is used in collaboration with scaffolded tasks that result in the student production of a “web object,” in this case a digital story. It is our thesis that the use of technology in parallel relation to reflection amplifies and makes visible the metacognitive work. In our project, The Student Wiki Interdisciplinary Group, students use ePortfolio learning spaces to build an identity in terms of both personal goals and the roles they assume within the academic community in the classroom.
La retención y la deserción en línea: fenómeno de un modelo educativo virtual
Abstracto
Para las instituciones postsecundarias, conocer e identificar los factores que actualmente contribuyen a fomentar que sus estudiantes en línea culminen satisfactoriamente sus cursos, es una prioridad para evitar el efecto contrario y adverso de la deserción.
The societal goals of the institution of education are to transmit knowledge, to teach all students skills and values that will enable them to live fulfilling lives, participate in the labor force, and contribute to the functioning of society. Currently, however, the institution of education in the United States is in crisis. This article addresses the status of public education and raises questions about its capacity to meet the educational and social requirements of future generations for all its members. Since every society’s future is tied to its educational system, it is essential that we respond critically to the segregation and discrimination that still exist in American society and especially in our public schools. We need to seriously consider the consequences of continuing to inadequately educate minority children when, in the not too distant future, the minority population will be the majority. Changes in educational outcomes are still possible but it will take considerable effort from many different segments of society to make a significant impact. This article addresses one technique with far-reaching potential: Bring lessons from the field into the college classroom.
Inequities in Public Education
Sustainability Threatened
It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.
Brown v. Board of Education, Supreme Court of the US
Unless we adequately educate all segments of American society, our individual and collective abilities to sustain ourselves economically will be severely compromised. This article addresses the status of public education in the United States and raises questions about its capacity to meet the educational requirements of future generations. Since every society’s future is tied to its educational system, it is essential that we respond critically to the segregation and discrimination that still exist in many American public schools. As a sociologist, I make that critical evaluation a part of my Introduction to Sociology (SSS100) classes at LaGuardia Community College. Two recent volunteer experiences have fueled assignments which I developed for this course.
Over the years that I have taught sociology at LaGuardia, I have volunteered in a number of educational settings. In August 2007, I volunteered for two weeks with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in St. Louis, Missouri, in an impoverished, struggling school district whose students were largely African American. I worked directly with teachers, providing emotional support and hands-on help as they prepared classrooms for the approaching school year with very limited resources. In 2009, I volunteered closer to home, as a judge at the annual New York City Science and Engineering Fair (NYCSEF). My experience in St Louis sharpened my awareness of how the term “failing schools” is often tied to schools serving people of color. I subsequently brought that heightened awareness to the Science Fair, where I was sensitive to which groups were contenders at the Science Fair and which groups were not. This paper describes in further detail the nature of my volunteer experiences in St. Louis public schools and at the New York City Science and Engineering Fair, what I learned from them about public education, and how I incorporated these lessons in my Introduction to Sociology classes at LaGuardia Community College.
In St. Louis, I joined educators from around the country, recruited by the AFT, to assist in their “back-to-school” efforts, which focused on failing schools located in low-income neighborhoods and in need of practical and moral support. Upon arrival in St. Louis, we became aware that the predominately African American St. Louis public schools had recently lost accreditation because of low test scores, and had two school boards – one elected and one appointed by the mayor. We also learned that high school students, parents, and teachers had protested the state takeover of their schools in the spring of 2007, just two short months before graduation, and had conducted five days of sit-ins at the mayor’s office. Many graduating students feared that, as graduates of now non accredited high schools, they would lose their places in the colleges where they had been accepted. We discovered that students had been arrested for their protest actions, sprayed with mace by the police, subjected to insults and demeaning behavior, and lied to by public officials.
One of the ways we assisted the St. Louis schools in their back-to school efforts was by helping first-year teachers set up their classrooms. In some cases, the enterprise turned out to be more than challenging since the teachers were issued very limited supplies. In some classrooms, we hung colorful borders, cut out pictures, and helped arrange educational material, but in one school, we made the display borders ourselves out of hand-me-down construction paper since there were no funds to purchase anything. In another classroom, we assisted a teacher with great supplies but quickly discovered that she had purchased them with her own money: A brand new teacher who had not even received her first paycheck had already spent $250 on materials that should have been provided by the school district. In another school, although teachers appreciated our decorating skills, we found that some of them had a different request – for help with various computer tasks. One problem we could not solve was that not enough computers had been issued to the teachers, yet they were expected to access lesson plans online via the school’s intranet. One teacher we assisted told us that he computer she was working on at school was a personal computer she brought from home.
In 2009, I joined other City University of New York professors invited to be judges at that year’s New York City Science and Engineering Fair (NYCSEF). The fair is the “largest high school research competition in NYC [and] is sponsored by the New York City Department of Education and the City University of New York.” In the words of Jeanette Kim, director of the 2009 fair, it showcased work based on research in “categories including the biological sciences, behavioral and social sciences, physical sciences, computer sciences, engineering, and mathematics.”
This highly organized event featured inviting displays by 500 students and made me wish to jump into my assignment to evaluate projects that related to the social sciences. However, I decided, before starting to look at individual projects, to get an overview of the entire fair. I walked up and down the aisles, scanning the projects and the young scientists. That was when I noticed that something was missing. To make sure that I was not seeing something that could not be substantiated, I started taking pictures. As evidenced by my observations and photos, here were few Hispanics or blacks competing in the fair. Blacks were the very group that populated the troubledSt. Louis [13]public schools and both Hispanics and blacks were well represented in my LaGuardia classes. According to the “Fall 2009 Ethnicity Breakdown” in LaGuardia’s 2010 Institutional Profile, 41% of LaGuardia students in that semester were Hispanic and 17% were black (5).
Lessons from the Field
Segregation and Discrimination in Public Schools
Initially surprised by the absence of groups prominent in my classes, I remembered that the New York City Science and Engineering Fair traditionally represents the most academically prepared students, often coming from New York City’s elite public schools. It is well known that the populations in these schools do not reflect the diversity of New York City school students. A 2008 New York Times article, “Racial Imbalance Persists at Elite Public Schools,” reports these statistics:
In this city [New York] of 1.1 million public school students, about 40 percent are Hispanic, 32 percent are black, 14 percent are Asian and 14 percent white. More than two-thirds of Stuyvesant High School’s 3,247 students are Asian (up from 48 percent in 1999). At Brooklyn Technical High School, 365 of the 4,669 students, or 8 percent, are Hispanic; at the Bronx High School of Science, there are 114 blacks, 4 percent of the 2,809-student body. (Hernandez)
Thus, my observations in St. Louis and at the Science Fair reminded me of the segregation that exists in public education despite the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Jonathan Kozol wrote in 2006 that “[s]egregation has returned to public education with a vengeance;” he backed his claim by noting that the “percentage of black children who now go to integrated schools has dropped to its lowest level since 1968.” Pointing a finger at New York State and New York City, Kozol wrote:
New York State is the most segregated state for black and Latino children in America: seven out of eight black and Latino kids here go to segregated schools. The majority of them go to schools where no more than two to four percent of the children are white….The level of segregation statewide is due largely to New York City, which is probably the country’s most segregated city.
In a 2009 report entitled Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge, Gary Orfield, Professor of Educationand co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles atUCLA, writes about the implications of the resegregation of Americaneducation: “Segregated black and Latino schools have less preparedteachers and classmates, and lower achievement and graduation. Segregatednonwhite schools usually are segregated by poverty as well asrace” (6).
Recently, a new twist has been added to an already highly inequitable institution: More local school districts require visas and passports to register children. Twenty-eight years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all children have a right to public education regardless of whether they are in the country legally (Plyler), the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) “surveyed New York State’s 694 school districts . . . and discovered that at least 139 are asking, either directly or indirectly, for proof of a parent or child’s immigration status before a student may be enrolled in school” (“NYCLU”). Requiring documentation such as social security numbers, visas, passports, and citizenship status to register students is clearly against the law, yet apparently common practice in many school districts, adding another layer to the level of inequity in public education.
Statistics pointing to New York City’s failure to prepare large groups of students to enter competitive arenas are part of a wider national failure signaled by high school dropout rates in the United States. In remarks made to a joint session of Congress on February 24, 2009, President Barack Obama cited the statistics and emphasized the potentially dire consequences of the United States high school dropout rate:
In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity– it is a pre-requisite. Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish.
This is a prescription for economic decline, because we know the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow. That is why it will be the goal of this administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education – from the day they are born to the day they begin a career.
In my Introduction to Sociology classes, my students’ accounts of their own experiences in public education, combined with my experiences in St. Louis and at the New York City Science and Engineering Fair, have intensified my concern that public education, increasingly characterized by racial segregation and other inequities, is failing to prepare large segments of the population to enter and excel in competitive arenas. Ultimately, that failure poses a threat to the livelihood of individuals. According to Kaleem Caire, President and CEO of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, “[c]hildren who do not graduate with a high school diploma stand little chance of sustaining themselves or a family in today’s economy” (i). On a larger scale, as articulated by President Obama and noted above, the failure threatens the ability of the United States to sustain itself in the global marketplace.
Lessons in the Classroom
At LaGuardia Community College, students in Introduction to Sociology (SSS100) are mostly Liberal Arts majors, fulfilling a requirement of their major. They frequently take the course during their first year at the college, often entering the course with a great deal of personal experience in and very little academic knowledge about a subject central to sociology – the impact of societal institutions on groups and individuals.
One of my goals in teaching Introduction to Sociology is to provide students with an understanding of the roles of institutions. I also wish to heighten student awareness of the role of activism in ensuring that American institutions fulfill their roles equitably. In order to fulfill these goals, I ground my lessons in difficult-to-teach sociological theory. In introductory sociology classes, the syllabus covers dominant theoretical viewpoints, both macro (the social structure or organization of society) and micro (how social organization impacts the individual). Generally, I attempt to present opposing viewpoints – one side focusing on the expected order of things and how equilibrium needs to be maintained, especially when change is occurring, and the other side focusing on issues of power, control, domination, and how change may occur to benefit a few at the expense of the many.
Understanding theory – what constitutes a theory and theoretical assumptions, how theories are formulated and applied, how theories change – is often new and difficult for students. They generally have difficulty comprehending that differing points of view can be applied to the same situation and that neither is “right” or “wrong.” Usually students want to think that one position is the correct one and the other incorrect. In Introduction to Sociology, students are encouraged to see theories, different sociological viewpoints, as tools for understanding behavior or phenomena.
For example, students are introduced to structural functionalism, sometimes referred to as functionalism, a major sociological theory popularized at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim. Durkheim asserted that society was like an organism and “much the way each organ in the body contributes to the survival of the organism, each part of a society contributes to the successful functioning of society” (Pampel 74). This paradigm also suggests that societal institutions, analogous to spokes on a wheel, provide the necessary structure and support needed by society. And just as a wheel becomes unbalanced if a spoke breaks, so does society suffer if its institutions do not function properly. By applying functionalism to a real-life situation such as public education that is not fulfilling its societal obligations, students can come to appreciate the necessity of remedying educational problems and the need to implement reform quickly in order for America to keep up with the rapid technological and economic advances taking place in other countries.
On the other hand, conflict theory helps students appreciate how disregard for the inequities in public schools, especially as they affect lower-income and minority students, relates to the power structure of American institutions. Conflict theory, originating in the ideas of Karl Marx, stresses imbalance of power within a society, struggle over resources, and control by people in positions enabling them to exercise it. From a conflict viewpoint, institutions are structured to benefit those in positions of power at the expense of those on the opposite side of the spectrum. Students therefore learn the significance of the frequently applied sociological adage that, in order for significant social change to occur, it must occur at the institutional level. Thus, with regard to civil rights, for example, individuals did not change racist ways; the government had to pass legislation. Similarly, with regard to the economy, government involvement is needed to foster hoped-for recovery.
From Theory to Application
Classroom discussion and research assignments are important to my application of sociological theory to the problem of failing schools. I often try to use the students’ first-hand experiences with societal institutions as a starting point for the academic study of those institutions. Reviewing the structure and functions of the institution of education provides for lively discussions in Introduction to Sociology classes. As we approach assignments focusing on educational institutions, students tell their stories. Prominent in the stories of students who went to public schools in New York City are accounts of violence and attempts on the part of school personnel to prevent violence. Students sometimes comment on how some of their classmates obtained good grades and were promoted merely by not being disruptive in school.
For students at LaGuardia Community College who attended schools in other countries before coming to the United States, the topics of searches, metal detectors, weapons, and violence are surprising. In their countries of origin, such searches and violations of privacy are unheard of.
A very important point regarding the structure of institutions, including the institution of education, is that institutions typically reproduce ideas of the privileged while disadvantaged groups frequently remain passive (Margolis et al. 7). As a means of helping students understand this point and to illustrate what happens when people take action rather than remain passive, I give the students information about the St. Louis school system. I provide a verbal account of my 2007 experiences. I assign a New York Times article, “State Takes Control of Troubled Public Schools in St. Louis,” (Gay) in addition to the chapter about the institution of education in the Introduction to Sociology text, Society:The Basics (Macionis). Students also read a paper I wrote and presented at the 2007 annual meeting of the New York State Sociological Association, “A Case Study of Advocacy at St. Louis Public Schools.” Finally, students view a live YouTube video clip about the 2007 five-day sit-in at the office of St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay (Exclusive). The St. Louis experience specifically shows the failure of an educational institution to promote a fair and equal society and to address adequately issues that concern primarily people of color. The St. Louis experience also illustrates advocacy that was successful in addressing that failure. Having set the stage, I go on to place students’ experiences with public education and the experience in St. Louis in a broader context, one that requires an understanding of sociological theories.
Research Assignment
In addition to grounding the students in basic sociological theory, the Introduction to Sociology course seeks also to train students in skills essential to sociological research. As part of a research assignment, I have students apply sociological theory after assessing educational data on the website of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). By reviewing the NCES’s Characteristics of the 100 LargestPublic Elementary and Secondary School Districts inthe United States:2008–09 (Sable, Plotts, and Mitchell) and their locations on maps available through the School District Demographics System of the National Center for Education Statistics, they must determine the following:
• Locations of the country’s largest school districts and student enrollment in each
• Overall ethnicity of students in the largest school districts
• Number of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals (as an indication of students’ family income)
• High school graduation rates by states identified
• How graduation rates are calculated
After they find answers to the above questions, I ask students to reflect on what they have learned by applying some of the assumptions of conflict theory mentioned above and to include their reactions to the discovery of the composition of school districts across the United States and national graduation statistics.
The second part of the research assignment asks students to review national and international data on the NCES website (“Fast Facts”; US NCES. Condition 86, 210). Here they review and compare the following:
• America’s mathematics and reading literacy rankings with those of other world nations
• How the number of scientists in the United States compares internationally
Again, after the students find answers to these questions, I ask them to reflect on what they have learned, this time by applying some of the aforementioned assumptions of functionalist theory. I also ask them to write about their reactions to the international rankings and the number of scientists worldwide. This assignment encourages students to research socioeconomic, residential, and international data and to reflect on quality of education and the consequences of educational inequities. The assignment also encourages them to think critically about educational outcomes, including some of the consequences of inequities in public education, and to apply sociological theories by engaging in abstract thinking. And, not unintentionally, the assignment also engages students in quantitative reasoning with the goal of increased quantitative literacy.
Such an assignment contributes not only to the development of basic academic skills and important life skills but also to the empowerment of students who, often, have been the victims of inequities in their education. In a report on the requirements of 21st century education, the Center for Public Education (CPE) stresses the importance of acquiring traditional academic skills, including science, social studies, and strong math and English skills, in order to succeed in work and life (Jerald). In addition, based on employer surveys and other evidence, the CPE identified four kinds of “broader competencies” that are essential today:
• The ability to solve new problems and think critically;
• Strong interpersonal skills necessary for communication and collaboration;
• Creativity and intellectual flexibility; and
• Self sufficiency, including the ability to learn new things when necessary (Jerald).
Students who have attended failing schools often internalize the failure of those schools. It is especially important for these students to see the sociological reasons for their poor preparation for college and to see where American public education stands in relation to education in other societies. Conducting the research makes vivid and clear to students sociological concepts and how they can be viewed from different perspectives. Thus, from a functionalist viewpoint, the education system should be doing a better job. From a conflict perspective, the institution of education is there to enhance the role of people in power and not necessarily designed to benefit students from all walks of life. My Introduction to Sociology course is designed not only to teach students the skills associated with the discipline, but also the outlooks and theories that will help them understand critical information in order to make sound decisions and empower them to take action in the face of inequities.
Conclusion
In the fall of 2008, according to the 2009 Digest of Education Statistics compiled by the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics, nearly 50million students (Table 2) headed off to approximately 99,000 publicelementary and secondary schools (Table 5), and before the school yearwas over, an estimated $596 billion would be spent on their education(Table 27).
The societal goal of the institution of education is to transmitknowledge, to teach all students skills and values that will enablethem to live fulfilling lives, participate in the labor force, and contributeto the functioning of society. As a nation, we may wish to ponder whatthe consequences will be of not adequately educating minority childrenwhen, in the not too distant future, the minority population will be themajority. The United States Census Bureau recently released revisedprojections for the composition of the population over the next three decades. By the 2040s, minorities will make up more than one-half of the United States population, up from the present 34%. The largest gains will be in the Latino, Asian, and African American sectors (“U.S. Minorities”).
Although public education in the United States remains discriminatory and segregated, and fails to meet the needs of countless numbers of low-income students, mainly students of color, changes in educational outcomes are still possible. It will take considerable effort from many different segments of society to make a significant impact; one technique with far-reaching potential is to bring lessons from the field into the sociology classroom.
Works Consulted
Brown v. Board of Educ. 347 US 483–96. Supreme Court of the US. 1954. Supreme Court
Collection. Legal Information Inst., Cornell U Law School, n.d. Web. 6 Mar. 2011.
Caire, Kaleem. Foreword. High School Graduate Rates in the United States. By Jay P. Green,
Rev. New York: Black Alliance for Educ. Options, Apr. 2002. Web. 6 Mar. 2011.
Community Colleges Growing Importance in STEM Education Benefits Hispanics
Community colleges have become key players in the effort to train a highly skilled and diverse workforce in STEM fields. Organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NFS), have acknowledged the importance of the two-year sector by awarding millions of dollars to community colleges to fund scholarships in STEM areas, especially for underrepresented students. In addition, the NFS plans to give $100 million to Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) for Stem and Articulation Grants to support transfer between two- and four- year colleges and to enhance STEM education at these institutions.
By: Prof. Jillian Abbott, MFA Queensborough Community College (CUNY)
Best Practices: Using Popular Media for Active Learning: Engaging Students Outside of the Classroom
Abstract: Creating engaging, interactive, online learning models may be a good first step to improving classroom success and possibly student learning outcomes. One way this can be achieved is by using SoftChalk, an educational software program that allows teachers to create user-friendly interactive lessons delivered via any standard web browser. The lesson discussed in this paper, “Eminem is Not Afraid,” engages students by recreating the experience of surfing the internet while guiding them through the stages of researching and writing a paper in a Freshman English composition class.
By: Prof. Jacqueline Saldaña, MBA, CALLA, DM-ABD Ana G. Méndez University System- Florida Campus
Community, Practice, and Domain Behaviors, and the Moderator Influence of Information Technology among global Communities of Practice: A Meta-Analysis
Abstract
The theory of Communities of Practice (CoPs) emerged in the middle 1990s through the work of Etienne Wenger and other contemporary authors (Wenger, 2004; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002; Wenger & Snyder, 2000). Domain, practice, and community are the main dimensions of CoPs, each with a set of defined behavioral dynamics that allow communities of learners to develop continued growth and sustainability. Professional associations and educational institutions are using online CoPs to engage industry and academia in contributing with innovative solutions to everyday problems. The knowledge management theory has defined groups that meet to produce knowledge solutions in response to common interests as invisible colleges, epistemic communities, learning communities, and CoPs. A meta-analysis of 84 research designs dated from 2000 to 2011, and representing 18 geographic areas in more than 20 industries, demonstrated that professional CoPs manifest distinctive behaviors in all CoP structural dimensions as described by Wenger et al. (2002). Reflective collaboration (e.g., community), sense of common purpose (e.g., practice), and innovation, creativity, and solutions to everyday problems (e.g., domain) are the behaviors present with more frequency among global CoPs. The moderator role of information technology for collaboration and knowledge creation is evident in the observed CoP behaviors and dynamics of this meta-analysis. The use of technologies to promote CoPs creates new challenges for organizations, which willbe providing more technological services and support to the diverse CoPs’ memberships.
Key terms: Communities of Practice, knowledge management, information technology
Introduction
The theory of Communities of Practice (CoPs) emerged in the middle 1990s through the work of Etienne Wenger and other contemporary authors (Wenger, 2004; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002; Wenger & Snyder, 2000). Wenger (2000) coined the communities of practice term to explain how professional groups seek common solutions for organizational innovation. The definition of CoP, according to Wenger (et al., 2002), is “…groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis” (p. 4). Wenger (2000) used observations from technical clubs in motor companies to explain how practitioners self-organize to practice continuous learning through collegial relationships (Mintzberg, 2003) or the standardization of professional skills. Domain, practice, and community are the main dimensions of CoPs, each with a set of defined behavioral dynamics that allow communities of learners to develop continued growth and sustainability. Community, practice, and domain are the structural dimensions of CoPs (Wenger, 2004; Wenger et al., 2002; Wenger & Snyder, 2000).
Professional associations and educational institutions are using CoPs to engage professionals and students alike to contribute with innovative solutions to everyday problems. The advent of Web 2.0 technologies provide contemporary CoPs with expanded opportunities for global collaboration and innovation. CoPs present ideal conditions for group innovation because they usually possess culturally diverse participants, interdependent collaborative networks, and opportunities for shared leadership and participation, all elements of high-performing teams (West, 2009). Challenges emerge in relation to dynamics of institutionalization (Wenger et al., 2002) or the alignment of community goals to organizational objectives. The social structure of CoPs loses part of its organic nature when organizations try to legitimize the role of CoPs through policies or guidelines.
Within the context of more formal networks, institutionalization (Wenger et al., 2002), information technology (IT) (Moreno, 2001), and managerial support (Siebert, Mills, & Tuff, 2009) constitute additional variables with influence over CoPs’ social structures. Most professional CoPs use IT platforms to facilitate distance communication. New technologies such as the Internet are interactive in nature, contributing to exchanging roles, developing mutual discourse, and facilitating flexible communication that overcomes spatial and geographical distance (Everett & Allbritton, 1995). Positive experiences with technologies influence the way community participants develop shared meaning and common language (Hawk, Zheng, & Zmud, 1999). Technologies have shown to enable knowledge sharing and serve as repository of knowledge and vehicle for effective dissemination of new practices (Abdullah, Sahibudin, Alias, & Selamat, 2005; Griffith, & Sawyer, 2006; Hew & Hara, 2007). A meta-analysis of 84 research designs dated from 2000 to 2011, and representing 18 geographic areas in more than 20 industries (see Appendix A), demonstrated that professional CoPs manifest all of the behavioral dimensions described by Wenger et al. (2002).
Theoretical Background
Theories about groups of individuals who meet to produce solutions and knowledge in response to common interests, problems, and passions exist before Wenger et al., (Wenger, 2004; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002; Wenger & Snyder, 2000) proposed the theory of CoPs. Scholars tried to define communities of practitioners as invisible colleges (Price & Beaver, 1966; Crane, 1972), epistemic communities (Adler and Haas, 1992), and learning communities (Marshall & Peters, 1985). Theoretical frames one each of these concepts share characteristics that Wenger identified as part of the social structures of CoPs.
Invisible Colleges
Price (1966) and Crane (1971) theorized about groups of scholars and researchers collaborating through informal communication channels to share specific interests and goals usually related to scientific advancement. Price (1966) suggested the idea of invisible colleges as organizational strategy to produce and steward organizational knowledge. Invisible colleges relate directly with groups of intellectuals in the 16th century Europe sharing scientific knowledge to address common concerns, and which became a platform for the foundation of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom. Price conducted bibliometric studies to prove that groups of practitioners with similar interests develop naturally tendency to collaborate through social interaction; an activity that influences group cognitive intelligence (Goel, Johnson, Junglas, & Ives, 2010). Members in invisible colleges organize by choice of specialty and direct activities to specific community goals within conditions of closeness, communication, and dissemination of ideas (Casey & McMillan, 2008).
Invisible colleges’ theories (Price & Beaver, 1966; Crane, 1971) show parallelisms with Wenger’s CoP concept (2004). Both invisible colleges and CoPs can trace part of their theory ideas of (a) social diffusion of knowledge (Crane, 1972; Khun, 1996) and Schon’s (1989) reflective practices theories. Invisible colleges, like CoPs, exhibit social networks, centered leadership, peripheral groups of collaborators, and connectedness that overcomes geographic and spatial segregation (Zuccala, 2005). Invisible colleges emerge during critical times in which the need for immediate expertise is necessary to advance science or to share resources to overcome mutual challenges, although theycan acquire certain visibility when they get organized (Zuccala, 2005).
Epistemic Communities
Adler and Hass (1992) defined epistemic communities that emerge independently from governmental spheres and have direct influence on policy-making. Epistemic communities are professional networks composed of subject matter experts (SMEs) with competence over specific domains (Adler & Haas). Epistemic communities share normative beliefs, value-based social dynamics, analysis to solve problems, shared notions of validity of knowledge, shared practice domain, and a set of common practices. Epistemic communities comprise of members developing professional identity, sharing knowledge, networking, and mentoring younger professionals. Epistemic communities follow a social exchange of three distinctive activities, (a) assessment of uncertainty, (b) interpretation of the conditions, (c) and institutionalization of new practices (Adler & Haas).
Adler and Haas (1992) reported that a classic example of epistemic community is the first group of experts that raised concern about the polluting quality of chlorofluoro-carbons (CFCs) after 1972. Observations form an ecological epistemic community alerted about the damage of CFS’ over ozone and its future effect in global warming. Efforts culminated in the 1989 Basel Convention, resulting in worldwide commitment to reduce CFCs. Most countries have enacted public policy to protect the environment from the dangers of CFC (e.g., United States Clear Air Act of 1990). Adler and Haas associated the role of epistemic communities to policy innovation and dissemination of new practices. Dunlop (2009) clarified that learners in epistemic communities seek knowledge from multiple derivations to build solutions at their own pace. Epistemic communities negotiate knowledge, perception of risks, and procedural lawfulness (Stauffacher & Moser, 2010).
Learning Communities
A learning community is a group of individuals who share a common practice and develop a right understanding in the appropriate context to learn from each other (Brower, 2003). Senge (as in Namjaidee, Manmart, Apichatwallop, & Peerasit, 2010) defined that members of a learning community possess five characteristics, (a) mental models, (b) shared vision, (c) personal mastery, (d) collective learning, and (e) system thinking. Senge, among other instructors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, promoted the learning community model as a way to create knowledge sharing organizations (Senge, 1993; Koffman & Senge, 1991). Senge (1993) described the process of a learning community, first, as a shared vision that emerges from numerous places but lastguides a learning vision. This shared vision drives thinking, acting, and sustaining dialogue to integrate diverse viewpoints. When members of a community build this shared vision, they develop a sense of empowerment that enables good decisions through the design of learning processes.
Senge (1993) adjudicated the origin of knowledge-sharing organizations to the work of Japanese firms with total quality management (TQM) systems, especially those related to thinking and acting at manylevels, a learning collaborative style among high technology companies in Japan. In these, the increased integration of thinking and acting promoted an evolution in quality management evidenced by the works of Nonaka and Nishiguchi (2001) about knowledge creation in the organization and the way companies help channel workers’ tacit knowledge into explicit or formal knowledge. For these Japanese thinkers, knowledge is not simply a cognitive construct but expertise inseparable from the pragmatism of action.
Learning communities have evolved into powerful creative networks successful in companies such as Toyota and in the work with high-politics situations, such as the leaders of the Guatemala Guerilla (Arthur, Day, Jaworski, Jung, Nonaka, Scharmer et al., 2002). Learning organizations create a space of innovation similar to the Japanese concept of Ba, a shared context that arises from interactions and relationships (Nonaka & Nishiguchi, 2001). Learning communities see knowledge as an organizational element that cannot be managed(Scharmer, 2007). Learning communities operate under the assumptions of the (a) behavioral level of reality, (b) the behavioral level of social reality, and (c) the deep tacit level of knowledge. Theorists call this last one the “blind spot” (Arthur, et al., 2002, Scharmer, 2007), or a deeper space from which a systems of individuals can create new paradigms.
CoP Emergent Theory
Theory of CoPs has foundation on Jean Lave’s ideas of situated learning (1991). Situated learning proposed that organizational knowledge happens in circumstances of social interaction, in which the cognitive abilities of participants interrelate with group social structure, environmental context, and previous knowledge of participants (Goel, Johnson, Junglas, & Blake, 2010). Dynamics of situated learning involve practitioners, activities, cognition, meaning, knowing, and learning. Communities of practitioners bring a pre-existent socially and culturally structured world that becomes an analytical process of learning. Shared learning activities promote identity based on skills and expertise of participants.
Situatedness refers to the interaction of situation, agent, and cultural context (Rohlfing, Rehm, & Goecke, 2003). Lave (1991) proposed that learning is a process of interpretive view, in which individuals negotiate meaning, language becomes a social activity (as opposed of simply the medium to transmit ideas), and personal interests appeal to cognition. Situatedness is not a physical location, but a relationship of individuals and their environment, which, in turn, influences those individuals’ process of learning and developing. Lave (1991) recommended the study of situated learning as a way to master apprenticeship among communities of practitioners.
Brown & Duguid (1998) developed theories on CoPs deriving interpretation from Orr’s ethnography of copier repair technicians. Julian Orr (as in Budery, 1998) proposed that individuals from a same profession, such as communities of technicians, share characteristics inherent to their craft. This sameness provides cohesion to occupational communities. Through observation and interviews to equipment technicians in Xerox Corporation, Orr declared in 1996 (as in Budery) that technicians become work cultures in which individuals share similar interests and values. Participants in work communities can transcend their organizational settings and establish links with practitioners from other organizations.
Industries related to knowledge markets such as engineering, technology, advanced electronics, computer software, biotechnology, and health careare using the power of professional collaboration as a knowledge management strategy with the objective of developing competitive advantage through the creation and transfer of knowledge. Organizations that understand and promote learning structures in which professional groups co-create through the natural environment of networking develop learning loops, continual innovation, and quick adoption of practices (Stuart, 1995, 2006). Wenger et al., (Wenger, 2004; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002; Wenger & Snyder, 2000) proposed a social structure based on three main components of domain, practice, and community.
Wenger and Lave (1991) challenged organizations with the concept that acquiring knowledge is more than the accumulation of factual information. Knowledge is an epistemic experience in which personal preferences and organizational situatedness have a defining influence during the learning process. Organizational members with same interests, expertise, and craft become members of a community, develop collective culture, and participate in the acquisition, production, and dissemination of knowledge (Contu & Willmot, 2003). This process happens within the context of knowledge activities, shared practice, and cultural expression such as activities, stories, and artifacts. Observations with different CoPs or apprenticeships such the Yucatan midwives, US Navy, Alcoholics Anonymous, and other trade workers (e.g.,tailors, meat-cutters) drove these first theories on communities of practice.
Lave and Wender(1991) theorized the concept of legitimate peripheral participation or circumstances of mutual participation. As community participants increase their expertise, they increase their participation on central activities. Wenger et al., (2004) coined the term legitimate peripheral participation to explain relationships of apprentices and masters, different levels of expertise, and the development through time of cultural artifacts and identities that emerge from socio-practices inside a community of practitioners. Peripheral participation reflects community participants’ trajectories of learning, identity, social forms, and relationships of power (Lawless, 2008). Peripherality is a movement throughout a community from low to high expertise and from discrete to more intensive participation as opposed to a central location. Although CoPs represent multiple opportunities for participation, most members of CoPs remain passive participants, as observers and users of practices but without producing knowledge (Wenger et al., 2002). A lesser amount of members are active and involved directly to opportunities to conform epistemic realities.
CoP Literature Meta-Analysis (2000-2011)
A meta-analysis of 84 research designs dated from 2000 to 2011, and representing 18 geographic areas in more than 20 industries (see Appendix A), demonstrated that professional CoPs manifest all of the behavioral dimensions described by Wenger et al. (2002). The areas represented in the meta-analysis with more frequency were the United States (35.7%), United Kingdom (17.9%), multinational companies (11.9%), and Canada (6%). Industries in the emergent CoP research with more frequency were education (39.3%), technology (17.9%), consulting firms (7.1%), and health care (4.8%).
Using as base the core and peripheral groups diagram described by Wenger et al. (2002, p. 57), figure one incorporates the elements of domain, practice, and community in relation to CoP structural dimensions and external forces observed during this meta-analysis. Emergent literature demonstrated the force that technology and institutionalization exercise over CoP behavioral dynamics. After this analysis, researcher obtained a deeper insight into what are specific behaviors and characteristic manifest as part of the development of professional CoPs in contemporary organizations, specifically in the dimensions of community, practice, domain, and the moderator role of IT.
Figure 1: CoP Social Structure Observed from Meta-Analysis
Discussion of Results
Results of a CoP emergent literature meta-analysis (2000-2010) evidenced the manifestation of the three elements identified by Wenger (2000) as main components of a CoP by the presence of behaviors and expressions in the three categories of community, practice, and domain (see Figure 2). Information technology manifested as an enabler for community participation.
Figure 2: CoP Meta-Analysis Outcomes
Community Behaviors
CoPs are loose and informal structures; self-managed groups related by collegiality and lack of business purpose even if organizations purposely establish these communities. The emergence of today’s global markets propitiates geographically dispersed communities, in which technology acquires special significance. Most contemporary CoP members share Websites, communicate regularly by e-mail, or use teleconferences to communicate. As CoPs increase membership, subgroups, and peripheralgroups emerge and strong local identities emerge (Wenger et al., 2002). The community component represents the roles and activities a CoP performs regularly. The element of community serve as the social learning structure in which members build relationships, bring their individual perspectives, and help each other to solve problems. Is in the community that members embed roles and activities, legitimizing the role of the CoP through specific outputs and overlap with other fields.
D
uring the analysis of 84 research designs, CoP members operating under real-life circumstances produced five main community activities (see Table 1): (a) reflective collaboration (19%), (b) professional networking (16.9%), (c) mutual engagement and connectivity (12.2%), (d) long-term relationships (9.2%), and (e) embedded communication paths (7%). Additional community behaviors observed with less frequency were group autonomy, existence of peripheral and informal groups, and peer-to-peer collaboration (5.6% each), self-organization (4.2%), teamwork (3.5%), face-to-face contact (2.8%), and improved communication, low conflict, participation, and reduced silos effect (2.1% each).
Table 1: CoP Community Behaviors (2010-2011)
From these community behaviors, reflective collaboration was the community behavior repeated with more frequency during the study of CoPs’ main components (see Figure 3).
Reflective collaboration manifested with more frequency in the fields of education (58.7%) and consulting firms (11.8%), appearing mostly in the United Kingdom (33%), the United States (28.7%), and multinational companies (14.4%) (see Appendix B).
Figure 3: Community Behaviors Frequency (2010-2011)
Reflective Collaboration. Open source interactive systems’ CoPs have adopted reflective collaborative approaches to explore how software developers perceive usability problems, process constraints, identify difficulties to process innovation (Bach & Carroll, 2010), and attain collective growth knowledge (Lee & Cole, 2003) within the open source culture. Work experiences within open source practitioners demonstrated that CoPs could use reflective collaboration as tool to expand the scope of domain, establish a better framework to guide social capital, and understand decisions that involve power structure analysis.
Blanton and Stylianou (2009), on the other hand, found that reflective collaboration develops a stronger culture of professional development because practitioners had the opportunity to reflect routinely about how to use practice, artifacts, and discipline content. Reflective collaboration challenged educators to shift to an inward mental status, connect deeper with problems and solutions (Blanton & Stylianou, 2009), improve their practice and expertise (Kisiel, 2010; Wright, 2007), improve their use of available technologies (Murugaiah, Azman, (Ya’acob,& Thang, 2010), make new cognitive connections (Vavasseur & MacGregor, 2008), and learn informally and experientially (Viskovic, 2006).
Focus group interviews among music and art CoPs demonstrated that participants could both reflect and articulate experiences to find pluralistic viewpoints and facilitate social interaction that results in opportunities for innovation (Dabback, 2010). Reflective collaboration provides opportunity to develop a deeper insight about the different perspectives conforming traditional and novel practices. Moreover, practitioners can use reflective collaboration to develop awareness of CoP dimensions (e.g., negotiated enterprise, mutual engagement, shared repertoire) and development lifecycle (Carey, Smith, &Martin, 2009). Collective reflection supports also decision-making skills necessary to develop practices and policies to support shared enterprise. Leadership decision-making paradigms such as the Vroom-Yetton or the normative decision-making model (Nahavandi, 2009) address the importance of involving followership in the prescription of solutions as opposed to following a traditional unilateral leadership approach.
Practice Behaviors
Practice represents working models, practices, and professional culture (Wenger et al., 2002). Practice organizes knowledge in a way understandable by community members, creating joint enterprise, stories, professional behaviors, and working methods. Nicholls (2006) stated that explicit and implicit knowledge lack value unless practitioners of a field develop shared methods to deliver such knowledge. The emergent literature of CoPs demonstrated that sense of common purpose and negotiated enterprise are main expressions of contemporary communities of learners (see Table 6). Wenger et al., (2002) described how practitioners develop an increased sense of “craft intimacy” (p. 122). Members from a same community of professionals share commonalities that increase their sense of belonging and develop feelings of common ground.
The analysis of 84 research designs reported that CoP members operating under real-life circumstances produced five main practice activities (see Table 2): (a) sense of common purpose (14.3%), (b) negotiated enterprise (13.2%), (c) shared stories (13.2%), (d) professional identity (12%), and (e) production of cultural artifacts (11%). Other CoP practice behaviors present in less frequencies (see Figure 5) are artifacts (11%), shared stories (10%), organizational policies (8%), embedded cultural identification and professional roles (6% each), egalitarian culture and shared repertoire (4% each), culture transfer (3%), and cultural sensitivity (2%).
Table 2: CoP Practice Behaviors (2010-2011)
From these practice behaviors, sense of common purpose was the community behavior repeated with more frequency during the study of CoPs’ structural dimensions (see Figure 4).
Sense of common purpose manifested with more frequency in the fields of education (58.7%) and consulting firms (11.8%), appearing mostly in the United States (35.3%), and Australia, New Zealand, Spain, and United Kingdom with equal distribution of averages (11.7 each) (see Appendix C).
Figure 4: Practice Behaviors Frequency (2010-2011)
Sense of Common Purpose. Among other authors, Price (2005) stated that sense of common purpose is the element of cohesion within CoP members who share understanding about a practice or subject matter field. Sense of common purpose in organizational structures provides workers with common meaning and familiarity necessary to increase participation and accountability (Adkins, Bartczak, Griffin, & Downey, 2010; Topousis, Murphy, & Holm, 2008). Allen (as cited in Bowen, 2010) emphasized that common purpose is an essential step for CoPs to emerge organically (Bowen, 2010). Studies with Six Sigma leaders demonstrated that groups could understand and fulfill expectations of effectiveness when members couldarticulate rationally their common goals, increasing their ability to share knowledge (Bowen, 2010).
CoP members developed deep sense of common identity by combining their personal, social, or professional concerns (Buckley & Du Toit, 2009) and through their mutual passion for a field of knowledge or professional enterprise (Hayes & Fitzgerald, 2009; McElya, 2011).Members of studied CoPs indicated that belonging to a community of practitioners nurtured among them feelings of belonging and made them “part of a family” that decides to remain in collaboration for long time (Hayes & Fitzgerald). Educators who worked together for extended periods created a purposeful integration of members and community elements (Linehan, 2010; Wright, 2007) and felt more innovative and productive even if they operate with limited resources (Price, 2005), and regardless of participants’ gender (Tomcsik, 2010).
Sense of common purpose increased feelings of accountability among CoP members, facilitating shared practice (De Palma & Teague, 2008). The willingness to work as part of the group became a driving sentiment from which members derived fulfillment and comfort (Tomcsik, 2010). De Palma and Teague recommended keeping dialogue alive as activity essential for CoP sustainability. Members of educational CoPs used dialogue to utter community affirmations reflecting the values and principles of those specific groups (Linehan, 2010) and to overcome the barriers of cultural distance (Yu et al., 2009). Simultaneously, participation, cooperation, and decision-making abilities decreased when common sense of purpose declined in professional CoPs, diminishing as well the quality of outcomes (Gausdal, 2008).
To maintain renovated common sense of purpose, CoP core members should consider that the vision of the community is a prevailing context in which CoP members become increasingly engaged in accomplishing collective goals. Members of the No Child Left Behind program used vision statements to create coherent work frames within complex educational systems (Linehan, 2010). A CoP with a well-aligned vision cultivate stronger relationships that contribute to expand knowledge sharing in different settings, build membership pride (McElya, 2011), and encourage collaborative learning (Mobanagan & Columbaro).
CoP members with increased commitment to the common purpose of the community become usually part of the core or central group (e.g., champions) that produces the majority of the work for the benefit of less active and peripheral groups within a same community (O’Kane). In this environment, knowledge transfer flows better between different active and peripheral groups and manifests in the patterns of mentoring relationships, peer-to-peer guidance, and collaboration that satisfies the cognitive needs of participants (Tomcsik, 2010; Vega & Quijano, 2010).
Domain
Domain, or area of expertise, deals with the CoP dimension related to structural ability to safeguard knowledge. Domain represents a topic, a work specialization, an industry, or a subject matter that matters a group of professionals. Groups of experts operating within socio-technical structures construct epistemic realities from logic, linguistics, contexts, and knowledge (Noriko, 2006). CoPs seem to be fertile ground for creative solutions and innovation (see Table 3).
Table 3: CoP Domain Behaviors (2010-2011)
Contemporary scholars of knowledge management (Nonaka & Nishiguchi, 2001) demonstrated that the creation knowledge structures are important to achieve innovation and competitive advantage through examples of global multinational enterprises that achieved efficient knowledge creation, overcoming challenges related to cross-border communication within geographically dispersed memberships.Evolved CoPs showed similar practice phases during their lifecycle development (see Figure 5), including situated learning (14.5%), information technology as enabler for knowledge sharing (10.1%), knowledge dissemination (7.7%), knowledge management processes (6.8%), best practices (6.3%), building new skills (5.8%), structured goals, and activities(5.3%), flexibility to learn and change (3.9%), facilitators and training(2.9%), and managerial support (2.4%). Creativity, innovation, and knowledge creation manifested with higher statistical relevance in the fields of education (39.8%) and technology (17.2%). The outcomes of domain over creativity, innovation, and knowledge creation were evident in the United States (30.4%), the United Kingdom (17.6%), and South Africa (13.3%) (see Appendix D).
Figure 5: Domain Behaviors and Characteristics Frequency (2010-2011)
CoPs exist as ancillary structures within organizations sustained by volunteer participation. Different levels of participation represent different positions of power but CoPs should be a representation of egalitarian cultures (Yan & Assimakopoulos, 2006). Wenger et al. (2000) warned that the dimension of domain could induce to defective CoPs when individuals demonstrate the legitimacy of the community through exclusivity and arrogance (Wenger et al., 2000). Communities of practitioners can avoid this detrimental pattern of behavior by establishing strategic perspective and values, linking community activities to organizational goals, offering inspiring vision, practicing shared leadership in decision-making, exposing members to divergent perspectives, and making members accountable for community’s reputation.
Creative Solutions, Innovation, and Knowledge Creation. Existing literature demonstrated abundant examples of how CoPs are fertile ground for creative solutions, innovation, and knowledge creation in numerous industries. CoP structures pose with the advantage of a collaborative learning environment in which inventors and end-users join to create, prototype, and test technical innovations (Abdullah, Sahibuasdin, Alias, & Selamat, 2005; Lavoue & George, 2010). The Linux kernel case study is an example of how a group of practitioners can create new products and test their effectiveness. Thousands of volunteers geographically dispersed developed and tested a high-quality software operating system within a community-based progressive knowledge creation network driven by peer-to-peer critic and error-trial efforts (Lavoue & George, 2010). CoPs allowed professional service firms to analyze new practices, identify critical generative elements, combine learning pathways to networks, and promote knowledge-based organizations (Anand, Gardner, & Morris, 2007; Jawitz, 2009). These innovative structures can offer a unique viewpoint regarding professional advancement in which participants can leverage inquiry and expertise (Ash, Brown, Kluger-Bell, & Hunter, 2009; Dabback, 2010) whereas breaking old practice paradigms to learn new practices (Bosa, 2008).
Organized CoPs canpromote change in bureaucratic environments such as public health care by promoting entrepreneurial impetus and channeling it into modern tools, radical change, and refined techniques (Bosa, 2008; Elmualim & Govender, 2008). Empirical evidence from longitudinal studies in different industries (from call center organizations to complex innovation working environments) demonstrated that professional CoPs supported the identification of best practices and creative solutions to everydayproblems, enabling an environment of innovation and competitiveness (Corso, Giacobbe, & Martini, A., 2009) for private and public organizations alike (Gambarotto &Cammozzo, 2010). Goldstein and Butler (2010) concluded that CoP structures promote stakeholder-based cooperative models, equipping governmental agencies with more diversified collaborative planning tools. This is only possible within a work frame of open communication and participation. CoP structures in modern organizations challenge managerial enterprise to build organizations adept to nurture innovative perspective, positive attitude, and triple loop-learning (Gambarotto &Cammozzo, 2010).
Members in CoP structures establish learning experience boundaries using the principles of constructivism and hands-on training approaches, effective models for professional training (Hodgkinson-Williams, Slay, & Siebörger, 2008). Monaghan (2007) and O’Kane. Paine, & King, (2008) dwelled on how CoPs provide real-time context from multiple perspectives to expand learning experiences. CoP structures are effective to link knowledge with practice because members engage systematically in cooperation while sharing a repertoire of working methods that they can use cooperatively to innovate (Iverson & McPhee, 2008) in real life. This working environment has proven to be successful for members of a regulated field (such as special education) in establishing practice standards, policies, and change (Linehan, 2010). Nevertheless, these collaborative networks seem to work better among individuals who come from the same culture, field of professional expertise, or similar thinking processes (Lee & Cole, 2003). South African countries are using the concept of CoPs to promote collaborative learning in local communities through higher education efforts (Buckley & DuToit, 2009; Hodgkinson-Williams et al., 2008; Jawitz, 2009).
Members of CoPs develop epistemic parameters that maintain collective meaning. Knowledge creation, creative solutions, and innovation happen in contexts of rich information and membership connectivity, all of which enhances knowledge capabilities (O’Kane et al., 2008). This means that organizations must design working environments recognizing the social aspect of knowledge creation in which members define knowledge strategy, link strategy with operational programs, leverage the different dimensions of CoPs, and give careful attention to organizational context. The challenge of modern management is to create these organizational structures free from the intervention of policymakers (Thompson, 2005), avoiding the constraints of traditional structures while maintaining production control.
Information Technology as Enabler of Domain
The study of CoP emergent literature demonstrated that the third most important element of domain is the role of information technology (IT) in enabling learning environments (see Table 11), after innovative solutions for everyday problems and situated learning. Technology capacitated CoPs to track concept maps, document activities, and created visual language inherent to a content discipline (Akoumianakis, 2009). CoP archives of presentations, best practice case studies, and shared tools function as repositories for content knowledge and proved to be critical in knowledge stewardship (Guldberg & Mackness, 2009). IT bestows collaborative learning because it caters to groups of practitioners multiple communication outlets (e.g., chat rooms, wiki-spaces, blogs), especially useful for knowledge creation amidst groups of practitioners geographically dispersed such the armed forces (Adkins et al., 2010) and multinational companies (Anand et al., 2007). However, research (Akkerman, Petter, & De Laat, 2008; Kasper, Mühlbacher, & Müller, 2008) revealed that some CoP members need face-to-face meetings to reinvigorate enthusiasm. CoP members in multiple industries and countries enhanced their abilities to create knowledge with support of IT tools and communication outlets, with more relevance in the fields of education (35%), technology (17.2%), and more preeminence in the United States (39.5%) and multinational companies (17.2%) (see Appendix E).
Organizations from numerous industries design their own software to support CoP activities (Akoumianakis, 2009) or explore alternative technologies such as interactive digital television (De Melo, Santos, Ferreira, & Dantas, 2010) as communication platforms. Akoumianakis (2009) alerted that technology offers plethora of communication methods to intensify connectivity among members including instant messengers, virtual worlds, online games, multi-user domains, screening-sharing capabilities, and specific domain languages. Other virtual communication platforms are Web 2.0, Web crossing, and video conferencing technologies (Sarirete & Chikh, 2010). Technology creates a new order of CoP artifacts entitled to satisfy the needs for creation among different groups. Mastering these technology tools contributed to increased participation (Clark, 2010) and self-efficacy (Clark, 2010; Murugaiah, 2010) among virtual CoP members. Corso et al. (2009) defined virtual tools as main motivators to maintain connectivity that boost membership participation, involvement, and commitment. Scarso, Bolisani, & Salvador (2009) denominated the technological dimension as one of the four pillars of CoPs, along with the organizational, cognitive, and economic dimensions.
The use of technologies test the capabilities of organizations interested in establishing CoPs because community stakeholders will need from augmented, customized, and cost-effective technical support to maintain continual negotiated enterprise (Goldstein & Butler, 2010; Mizintseva & Gerbina, 2009). Guldberg and Mackness (2009) indicatedhow organizations involved in supporting CoPs could monitor members’ participation to understand performance and offer variety of virtual environments. Hew and Hara (2007) studied electronic mailing lists to understand how literacy teachers shared knowledge through virtual communication, types of knowledge, and knowledge flow, discovering that lack of knowledge about technologies and competing communication outlets are main barriers to sustained participation. Mork et al. (2008) found that ability of community participants to access equipment and support are characteristics of successful cross-disciplinary practices. Early adopters of CoP technologies in teacher communities showed more ability to build online networks of professional learning whereas requiring support that is more technical over time (Riverin & Stacey, 2007).
Technology expands the capabilities of practitioners for which some school systems have made mandatory for teachers to have free access to Internet, technology tools, and communication technology training (Riverin & Stacey, 2007). The online delivery of professional CoPs is convenient because it allows immediate access to other members, professional expertise, and advice, and cost-effective communication platforms (Vavasseur & MacGregor, 2008). However, the use of technologies supports practice but not the formation of CoP identity (Noriko, 2007). Vavasseur and MacGregor (2008) alerted organizations working with CoPs should not confuse professional identity with the building of technical skills. Findings of Norika research reflected that IT itself is not conducive to knowledge creation unless the elements of socialization, negotiated enterprise, and professional identity are present. Beyond modern IT systems, surveyed CoP members seek primarily for professional advancement, expertise, collegiality, and innovation opportunities.
Conclusion
Wenger (2000) proposed a CoP theorysimilar to previous gremial groups, such as invisible colleges, epistemic communities, and learning communities. Invisible colleges are groups of scholars and researchers channeling their specific interests and goals into industry advancement, rooted on the 16th century scientific movement in Europe. In modern management, Price (1966) continued this line of thought with studies about practitioners collaborating to industry advancement through social interaction. Crane (1972) produced a book about the capacity of invisible colleges to diffuse knowledge. Kuhn’s ideas (1996) about knowledge diffusion are well known in the scientific world, with practitioners identifying anomalies that led to scientific innovation. Invisible colleges share with CoPs some fundamental characteristics, such as core leadership, peripheral groups, and connectedness that overcome geographic and time zone barriers. The development of contemporary CoP (Wenger, 2004; Wenger et al., 2002; Wenger & Snyder, 2000) theory relate the existence of CoPs with developmental stages similar to those present in the traditional life cycle paradigms (e.g., inception, high-growth, and maturity.
Epistemic communities are networks of professionals who possess specific domains and influence policy-making (Adler & Haas, 1992). Members of epistemic communities share professional beliefs and values related to domain competence. Epistemic communities take interest in the betterment of industry and society, promoting the institutionalization of new practices. Professional participants in epistemic communities aim to identify sources and methods to produce and manage knowledge. Like-minded professionals share common characteristics as they master similar practices and possess similar mental models, vision, and system thinking. Senge (1999) associated learning communities to Japanese total quality management (TQM) philosophies (i.e.Toyota), which attempted to transform organizations into collaborative learning spaces to capitalize on workers’ tacit knowledge. Members of learning communities bring with themselves intuition and elements from epistemic understandings and personal experience. Contemporary leadership theories (Cashman, 1998; Scharmer, 2007) recommend intuition and personal mastery as nonconventional strategies to promote innovation.
Wenger et al., (2002) brought the concept of CoP to the attention of modern industries as learning and social structures able to steward knowledge. Theories of situated learning (Lave, 1991) inspired Wenger’s vision of CoPs, in which organizations acknowledge that learning happens within a social context and from previous working experiences. The 1990s saw also a proliferation of CoP research in the works of Orr (as in Budery, 1998), and Brown and Duguid(1998). Research with technical groups demonstrated that situation and culture influence cohesion among practitioners. Cultural context provides to the members of the community a common ground for enterprise negotiation, social interaction, and common language andartifacts. As members of the CoP collaborate and communicate, a semantic environment evolves and promotes among members creative ideas to common problems. Wenger recommended organizations to exploit the capabilities of CoPs as if these are innovation assets. Knowledge is an epistemic experience and workers learn and produce better when the organizational culture supports a social learning environment.
A fundamental characteristic of CoPs is the distribution of participant groups. At the core of the community, a smaller group of champions initiate activity whereas peripheral groups and passive participants demonstrate less participation but benefit from new ideas and knowledge. Regularly, level of expertise is the trigger to participation. CoPs rely on the experience of more knowledgeable members to direct activities. In general, members of the CoP develop professional identity and sense of common purpose. Wenger et al. (2002) defined the basic elements of the CoP as community, practice, and domain. A meta-analysis of 84 research designs dated from 2000 to 2010 and representing 18 different countries in more than 20 industries demonstrated that professional CoPs manifest a specific order of behaviors and characteristics in the dimensions of community, practice, domain, and IT as enabler of collaboration.
In the dimension of community, the behavior observed with more frequency was reflective collaboration. Reflective collaboration is an effective strategy for innovation because it expands the mental capabilities of workers who canidentify constraints and opportunities. Practitioners who reflect regularly about procedures and artifacts improve expertise, make new cognitive connections, and learn experientially.
In the dimension of practice, the behavior observed with more frequency was sense of common purpose. Sense of common purpose represents a space of craft intimacy; in which practitioners share common meaning and familiarity and professional identity. Studies reported that sense of common purpose is necessary to build self-organization, values of accountability, motivation, and self-fulfillment. Elements such as vision, leadership, and clear expectations and goals contribute to solidify sense of common purpose.
In the dimension of domain, the behavioral characteristic observed with more frequency was the existence of creative solutions, innovation, and knowledge creation. CoPs demonstrated to be fertile ground for identification of problems, ideation of new processes, prototyping tools and methods, and validation of practice results. Case studies such as those related to open-source software (e.g., Linux) are examples of how CoPs can achieve technical innovation through collaborative trial-error approaches. Organized CoPs members could produce innovation in private and public organizational environments. The principles of constructivism and hands-on learning common within CoPs are similar to those related to real-time context to expand practice perspective.
It was evident during the literature meta-analysis the role of IT in the maturity and expanded capacities of contemporary CoPs. IT enables the domain element because it serves as repository of emergent knowledge, tracking device for progress, and multi-outlet communication media. Professional organizations design unique software and communication platforms to support the work of specific groups of practitioners. Technology intensifies connectivity among CoP members, although parallel research indicated that face-to-face interaction reinvigorates the enthusiasm of CoP members. The use of technologies to promote CoPs creates new challenges for organizations, which willbe providing more IT services and support to the different CoPs’ memberships.
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Appendix A: CoP Research Geographic Area and Industry Distribution
Appendix B: Reflection Collaboration
Appendix C: Sense of Common Purpose
Appendix D: Creative Solutions, Innovation, and Knowledge Creation
Por: Dra. Omayra Caraballo Pagán Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico – Recinto de Ponce
Evaluación de Programas de Aprendizaje @ Distancia como Medición de Calidad
Resumen
Las instituciones educativas incluyen la evaluación de sus programas como una de las actividades más importantes del quehacer educativo. A pesar de que se considera un proceso arduo, es fundamental si se quiere asegurar la calidad de los servicios que se ofrecen. Ésta se establece como una herramienta fundamental para la toma de decisiones en las diferentes fases de ejecución de los programas, desde su concepción y diseño hasta su posterior valoración en términos de logros e impactos. También, ésta puede ser formativa y sumativa y existen varios modelos para ser utilizados en la misma. Además de la conceptualización en el proceso de evaluar un programa, un investigador debe anticipar los dilemas éticos a los que se puede enfrentar durante su estudio. Finalmente, en la evaluación de programas de aprendizaje @ distancia se señala que la última medida de su calidad es el aprendizaje logrado por quienes utilizan sus recursos.
Palabras claves: evaluación de programas, aprendizaje a distancia, modelos de evaluación, calidad.
Introducción
Los programas académicos contextualizan la visión, misión y objetivos de una institución educativa de manera coherente, formando así una estructura que permita el desarrollo y formación del estudiante, personal administrativo y docente que labora en ésta (Mendoza, como se cita en González, 2006). Coincidiendo con esto, Jason (2008) enfatiza que la evaluación es una herramienta para determinar si la extensión o el currículo del programa son efectivos e, igualmente, provee dirección para tomar las decisiones en los aspectos que no contribuyan al desempeño exitoso del estudiante.
Las instituciones educativas incluyen la evaluación de sus programas como una de las actividades más importantes del quehacer educativo. A pesar de que se considera un proceso arduo, es fundamental si se quiere asegurar la calidad de los servicios que se ofrecen (González, 2006). La pertinencia o utilización de los procesos de evaluación en el sistema educativo así como las discrepancias se fundamentan en una variedad de aspectos que le son imputados a la evaluación (Montero, 2004). Ésta se establece como una herramienta fundamental para la toma de decisiones en las diferentes fases de ejecución de los programas, desde su concepción y diseño hasta su posterior valoración en términos de logros e impactos.
Por su parte, Fitzpatrick, Sanders & Worthen (2004) presentan la evaluación de programas con el propósito de determinar o fijar el valor, para examinar o juzgar. Mientras, para Stufflebeam y Shinkfield (2007) ésta es la provisión de información a través de medios formales tales como criterios, medidas y estadísticos con el propósito de proveer una base racional para hacer juicios inherentes a las situaciones de decisión.
Además de clarificar la definición del concepto de evaluación, también es necesario diferenciar entre evaluación e investigación. Según Fitzpatrick et al. (2004) han surgido muchos métodos de evaluación en la investigación en las Ciencias Sociales. Sin embargo, estos métodos han tenido que diferenciarse entre lo que conceptualmente es investigación y evaluación.
Por ejemplo, una de las diferencias entre estos conceptos es asociado al propósito, ya que “la investigación y la evaluación tienen fines distintos. El propósito principal de la investigación es darle un valor añadido al conocimiento del campo para contribuir en el crecimiento de la teoría. Mientras, la evaluación ayuda emitir un juicio o tomar una decisión” (Fitzpatrick et al., 2004, p. 7). Aún así y a pesar de la aclaratoria anterior, en algunas ocasiones la evaluación y la investigación se interponen. Por tanto, es importante reconocer que la investigación puede añadir conocimiento de las leyes o teorías en una disciplina y la evaluación puede informar y formar nuestros juicios para tomar decisiones con respecto a un programa.
En esta dirección, la educación a distancia es un medio que ha alcanzado una gran demanda en los últimos años (Allen & Seaman, 2006), por lo que se hace necesario considerar la evaluación de los programas bajo esta modalidad. Esto, porque permite ofrecer una retroalimentación de valor educativo a la gestión y administración que llevan adelante los profesores y el personal a cargo de tomar las decisiones sobre el rol adecuado, y el impacto de la tecnología en un sector de la población estudiantil del programa. Además, proveerá las guías necesarias para lograr su éxito.
Necesidades, Propósito y Metas de la Evaluación de Programas de Aprendizaje @ Distancia
El análisis de la educación a distancia apunta a una estructura más compleja que la representada por la formación tradicional (Mir, Reparaz y Sobrino, 2003). En sus comienzos, esta modalidad fue pensada para proveer alternativas de estudio a estudiantes que por su lejanía geográfica no podían llegar a los centros universitarios (Volery & Lord, 2000). En esta dirección, Vilaseca y Castillo (citados por Álvarez, 2005) manifiestan que el aprendizaje a distancia debe verse como una oportunidad de impartir enseñanza a aquellos que con necesidades particulares. De modo que, es responsabilidad de todas las instituciones asegurarse que sus ofrecimientos satisfagan las expectativas de las personas a quienes van dirigidas, considerando los recursos y limitaciones de los receptores de esa educación.
Sin embargo, a pesar del aumento en la oferta académica en esta modalidad, ésta no va a la par con la evaluación de la misma. Constantemente, se habla sobre la pertinencia o utilización de los procesos de evaluación en el sistema educativo y las discrepancias se fundamentan en una variedad de significados que le son imputados a la evaluación. Esto se debe a que la evaluación es una herramienta fundamental para la toma de decisionesen las diferentes fases de ejecución de los programas e intervenciones, desde su concepción y diseño, hasta su posterior valoración en términos de logros e impactos (Montero, 2004).
La evaluación de programas pretende proporcionar la información recopilada como fundamento para la decisión y ejecución de las opciones adecuadas para el mejoramiento de éste. Por otro lado, se podrán identificar las fortalezas y debilidades con el fin de tomar decisiones que conduzcan a la optimización del mismo. Además, proporcionará información que facilite la toma de decisiones con respecto a la implementación de futuros programas.
Determina si los objetivos han sido logrados o no y en qué grado.
Plan de Evaluación e Implementación
La evaluación de programas pretende proporcionar la información recopilada como fundamento para la decisión y ejecución de las alternativas adecuadas para el mejoramiento de éste. Igualmente, según se muestra en la Figura 1, podrá (González, 2006; Graf & Albright, 2007):
Figura 1: Propósito de la Evaluación de Programas
Por otro lado, para conducir una evaluación se determinan ciertos pasos a seguir, como por ejemplo: selección de institución a evaluarse, utilizar un modelo validado o una teoría en la que se base la evaluación (Nichols, J. & Nichols, K., 2005), hoja de consentimiento, recopilación de datos, tabulación, análisis de los datos para detectar fortalezas y debilidades, y por último, emitir juicios valorativos que permitan hacer recomendaciones dirigidas a la toma de decisiones.
Modelos de Evaluación
La evaluación de programas puede ser formativa -orientada a la mejora- y sumativa -centrada en el impacto y los resultados del programa- (Fitzpatrick, et al., 2004). Existen varios modelos que pueden ser utilizados en la evaluación de los programas. Estos modelos tienen como propósito los siguientes aspectos: seguimiento, identificación de problemas, desarrollo de programas pilotos para mejorar eficacia, identificación de diferencias por población y la determinación de relevancia del programa (Jason, 2008). A continuación se describen algunos de éstos de acuerdo a su enfoque, según se describen en la Figura 2:
Figura 2: Modelos de Evaluación
Fitzpatrick, et al. (2004) presentan las siguientes cinco precauciones a tomar en consideración sobre los diferentes enfoques de evaluación: los enfoques no son modelos ni teorías, es peligroso concentrarse en un modelo en particular de evaluación, no hace sentido hacer un llamado a abandonar el pluralismo y consolidar los enfoques de la evaluación en uno genérico, la selección de un enfoque de evaluación no puede ser en base a un estudio empírico, y las comparaciones negativas sobre algunos enfoques de evaluación pueden causar efectos secundarios negativos. Cada uno de los marcos conceptuales sobre la evaluación ofrece distintas perspectivas que pueden aplicarse a algunas, pero no a todas las situaciones que se estén considerando. Así que, los evaluadores no deberían concentrarse en un enfoque específico de evaluación, sino por una combinación de distintos enfoques que complementen el proceso (Fitzpatrick, et al., 2004).
La selección de un enfoque de evaluación no puede ser en base a un estudio empírico (Fitzpatrick, et al., 2004).
Asimismo, es crucial hacer mención al hecho que en la evaluación de programas es posible realizar dos tipos de evaluación: la formativa y la sumativa (Caraballo, 2010). “La evaluación formativa tiene como propósito principal proveer información para el mejoramiento del programa” y, “la evaluación sumativa provee información para tomar decisiones o ayudar a emitir juicios acerca de la adopción, continuación o expansión de un programa” (Fitzpatrick et al., 2004, p. 17). En este sentido, la evaluación del programa puede ser más completa e integral en todos los aspectos que lo conforman.
Recopilación de Datos
Es importante determinar el instrumento que se utilizará para recopilar los datos. El evaluador puede utilizar un instrumento existente o de la misma forma, si éste no existe, es necesario desarrollarlo, validarlo y administrarlo a los participantes y así poder recopilar toda la información necesaria para presentar unas recomendaciones confiables.
La recopilación de datos de los participantes puede realizarse a través de una encuesta. Ésta permitirá obtener una descripción numérica o descriptiva de las tendencias, actitudes y opiniones de éstos en relación al programa. La encuesta puede ser de diseño tipo transversal (la recopilación de datos se efectuará para un término académico) o longitudinal (implica la existencia de medidas repetidas -más de dos- a lo largo de un seguimiento).
Para la administración del instrumento, especialmente en un programa @ distancia, Mertler (2002) recomienda la administración del mismo vía Internet. Éste destacó las siguientes ventajas: alto grado de respuesta, marco de tiempo corto para recopilar las respuestas, y ahorro en tiempo y costos.
Análisis de datos. Además de la revisión y análisis bibliográfico y de la literatura recopilada, es posible presentar el análisis de los datos empíricos recopilados mediante la aplicación de los instrumentos en varios pasos. En primer lugar, mostrar una tabla que refleje el número y por ciento de los sujetos encuestados, comparando los que contestaron versus los que no contestaron. En segundo lugar, demostrar el efecto, si alguno, de los cuestionarios que no se respondieron y la acción a tomar. Indicar si es necesario hacer un segundo intento a través del teléfono y evaluar si los datos de la muestra ya recopilada cambian sustancialmente. En tercer lugar, se incluir un análisis descriptivo de los datos para las variables independientes y dependientes. Por último, mostrar un análisis estadístico de los datos recopilados utilizando algún programa estadístico, como por ejemplo, SPSS.
Recomendaciones de la evaluación.Se deben elaborar estrategias que puedan ser utilizadas para mejorar el diseño del programa y los hallazgos deberán ser diseminados a los accionistas (stakeholders) involucrados en el andamiaje del programa a evaluarse, como también a los participantes. Esto confirmará el interés del investigador en que sus ideas o aportaciones sean tomadas en consideración para el mejoramiento del programa implantando las acciones correctivas necesarias.
Principios Éticos a Considerar
Además de la conceptualización en el proceso de evaluar un programa, un investigador debe anticipar unos dilemas éticos a los que se puede enfrentar durante su estudio (Creswell, 2003). La mayoría de las investigaciones involucran seres humanos como participantes en experimentos, encuestas, entrevistas y estudios. Aún cuando se revisan muchos materiales, se involucra a personas, las cuales tienen derechos como sujetos de un estudio. De manera que los estándares éticos deben pretender asegurar que la evaluación se lleve a cabo legalmente, con ética y en beneficio de los involucrados en ésta y de quienes son afectados por sus resultados (Ramlow, s.f.). Esta autora señala que es importante considerar los siguientes aspectos éticos: orientación al servicio, compromisos formales, derechos humanos, interacciones humanas, valoración completa y justa, divulgación de los hallazgos, conflicto de intereses, y responsabilidad fiscal.
Durante el proceso de análisis e interpretación de la información recopilada es necesario garantizar el mantener el nombre de los participantes bajo anonimato. Se considerarán las reglas de ética, para mantener los archivos como resultado de la investigación y evitar que se utilicen de manera inapropiada. Los mismos se mantendrán entre 5 a 10 años, periodo recomendado por Sieber (citado por Creswell, 2003), y de ser factible, custodiados por personas ajenas al proceso de investigación realizado.
Igualmente, al redactar el informe final se tomará en consideración la utilización de las palabras y el lenguaje correcto de modo que no se interprete que se atenta o discrimina por razones de género, raza o grupo étnico, orientación sexual, impedimento o edad (American Psychological Association,2002).
Respeto a los derechos de los participantes.Es preciso destacar que la evaluación debe realizarse dentro de un marco de confianza y respeto. Para garantizar el cumplimiento de los requerimientos éticos que conlleva una investigación que involucra individuos y de no exponer a los encuestados a ningún tipo de riesgo, el instrumento que vaya a ser utilizado en el proceso de investigación debe ser sometido y aprobado por la Junta de Revisión Institucional, conocida por sus siglas IRB (Creswell, 2003; Hernández, Fernández-Collado y Baptista, 2006). Asimismo, estos autores señalan que el investigador está obligado a proteger a los participantes de riesgos, daños y amenazas que pudieran enfrentar ellos y el equipo de investigación.
De acuerdo con los Principios éticos y el Código de conductade la American Psychological Association (2002), los participantes en una investigación tienen los siguientes derechos: estar informados del propósito de la investigación, negarse a participar en el estudio y abandonarlo en cualquier momento y su anonimato debe ser garantizado.
En la investigación notienen cabida el racismo o la discriminación. Todos los participantes, de cualquier género, niveles socioeconómicos y orígenes étnicos son igualmente importantes y merecen el mismo respeto. Asimismo, es necesario ser sensibles a la cultura de los participantes. Por último, los resultados deben reportarse con honestidad (sin importar cuáles hayan sido) y es fundamental reconocer las limitaciones de la investigación y las del investigador (Hernández, et al., 2006).
Conclusiones
Es evidente el aumento de liderar instituciones donde el personal interesa recopilar datos y aprender sobre qué funciona o no en sus programas, para así mejorar las capacidades organizacionales y los servicios prestados (Wholey, Hatry & Newcomer, 2004). Por lo que, se debe incluir en el informe final los siguientes aspectos identificados o investigados: fortalezas, debilidades, retos, oportunidades, recomendaciones y discusión de hallazgos (Graf & Albright, 2007). Del mismo modo, la evaluación debe proveer el análisis de los procesos y las herramientas utilizadas que puedan proporcionar datos válidos, confiables y creíbles, de manera que aclaren dudas sobre la ejecución del mismo y contribuyan en la toma de decisiones futuras (Nichols, J. & Nichols, K., 2005).
Finalmente, en la evaluación de programas de aprendizaje @ distancia se señala que la medida última de su calidad es el aprendizaje logrado por quienes utilizan sus recursos; la evaluación del sistema como tal y de su infraestructura y recursos se realiza con el fin de inferir la capacidad del sistema para producir aprendizaje significativo con el objetivo de mejorar la calidad de vida de quienes aprenden (Silvio, 2006). Igualmente importante, este autor acentúo que pueden evaluarse los programas de educación @ distancia con diversos criterios que contienen indicadores acerca del grado en el que el programa se ajusta a las normas de calidad en varios aspectos significativos para su desempeño como programa. En esta dirección, la aplicación de programas de evaluación en programas a distancia garantizan una mayor satisfacción y calidad en los procesos de enseñanza, aprendizaje y utilidad institucional (Caraballo, 2010). También, promueven una percepción favorable hacia los programas a distancia en relación a sus recursos, reclutamiento y retención estudiantil.
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Caraballo Pagán, O. (2010). Evaluación del Nivel de Satisfacción de la Gestión de un Programa de Aprendizaje a Distancia Aplicando el Modelo CIPP: Caso del Programa de Administración de Sistemas de Oficina de una Universidad Privada de Puerto Rico. Disertación doctoral no publicada, Nova Southeastern University – Fischler School of Education and Human Services, Fort Lauderdale-Davie, FL.
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Por: Dra. Omayra Caraballo Pagán Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico – Recinto de Ponce
Evaluación del Nivel de Satisfacción de la Gestión de un Programa de Aprendizaje a Distancia Aplicando el Modelo CIPP: Caso del Programa de Administración de Sistemas de Oficina de una Universidad Privada de Puerto Rico
Resumen
La evaluación, como instrumento pedagógico, diagnostica y provee dirección para tomar las decisiones curriculares y de gestión educativa adecuadas entre las comunidades universitarias, además es una herramienta de vital importancia para determinar la efectividad de sus programas. Durante el año académico 2009-2010 se realizó la evaluación de un programa de aprendizaje a distancia, con aproximadamente 20 años bajo la modalidad presencial, implantado en agosto de 2006 bajo la modalidad a distancia y con un total combinado de aproximadamente 409 estudiantes-presencial y a distancia.
Para conducir esta evaluación se utilizó el Modelo de Toma de Decisiones CIPP y la base teórica de Bates sobre la gestión del cambio tecnológico. El estudio permitió una identificación de un nuevo perfil estudiantil que demanda una educación universitaria cada vez más flexible y variada. Refleja la necesidad de referir a una facultad hacia el uso de nuevas destrezas y conocimientos para asumir nuevos roles ante estas tecnologías. Crea la necesidad de considerar los procesos de evaluación como un elemento prioritario en los planes estratégicos universitarios. Resalta la importancia de continuar con el fortalecimiento de las distintas estructuras de apoyo – académico, administrativo y tecnológico. Apoya la hipótesis de que la educación a distancia es el futuro de la educación superior en Puerto Rico y que en esa dirección, será fundamental reinventar la universidad de estos tiempos.
La evaluación institucional y educativa son procesos muy importantes, especialmente si se realizan en instituciones universitarias que desean el desarrollo exitoso de sus programas. La evaluación, como instrumento pedagógico, diagnostica y provee dirección para tomar las decisiones curriculares y de gestión educativa adecuadas entre las comunidades universitarias, además es una herramienta de vital importancia para determinar la efectividad de sus programas.
En las organizaciones educativas se observa que los programas académicos contextualizan la visión, la misión y los objetivos de la instituciones de manera coherente, formando una estructura que permita el desarrollo y la formación del estudiante, el personal administrativo y docente que labora en éstas (González, 2006). Igualmente, se reconoce en el aprendizaje un componente crítico para el éxito de sus gestión, por lo que, según Huertas (s.f.), las nuevas estructuras organizacionales tienen ante sí el reto de apoyar un buen aprendizaje y sus respectivas evaluaciones.
Partiendo de estas apreciaciones generales se dirigió este estudio a la evaluación de un programa de aprendizaje a distancia en una institución de educación superior de la región sur de Puerto Rico. Esta contaba con una matrícula aproximada de 6.200 estudiantes, de los cuales 812 son estudiantes a distancia y 2.442 toman algún curso bajo esta modalidad educativa.
Revisión de literatura
La revisión de literatura reveló que este programa se inició en el 1995 e incluyó un plan de implantación y evaluación de tres años. Se estima que el programa comenzó con la iniciativa de una profesora, quien al buscar resolver el problema de la escasa matrícula en sus cursos de especialidad y establecer un nicho en su disciplina, se aventuró a trabajar cursos bajo esta modalidad (Torres, 2007).
El problema que atendió el estudio es el de la evaluación del nivel de satisfacción de la gestión del Programa de Aprendizaje a Distancia de Administración de Sistemas de Oficina de una institución de educación superior de la región sur de Puerto Rico. El mismo tenía 20 años bajo la modalidad presencial, en agosto de 2006 se implantó bajo la modalidad a distancia y contaba con un total combinado de aproximadamente 409 estudiantes-presencial y a distancia.
La investigación realizada reflejó que no hay evidencias documentales de evaluación sobre este programa. En consecuencia, resultó importante estudiar la efectividad de su implantación y su desarrollo posterior, así como identificar sus áreas y necesidades actuales con el propósito de mejorar su gestión y fortalecer la modalidad a distancia en la institución.
Referentes de la Institución Objeto de Estudio
La pertinencia o utilización de los procesos de evaluación en el sistema educativo, así como las discrepancias, se fundamentaron en una variedad de aspectos que le son imputados a la evaluación (Montero, 2004). Ésta se estableció como una herramienta fundamental para la toma de decisionesen las diferentes fases de ejecución de los programas, desde su concepción y diseño hasta su posterior valoración en términos de logros e impactos.
Torres (2007) destacó que los programas de aprendizaje a distancia en el sistema educativo en Puerto Rico son una modalidad relativamente reciente. Esto significa que podrían presentarse inconvenientes para utilizarse como alternativa educativa, entre estas se pueden mencionar; resistencia al cambio entre los estudiantes y miembros de la facultad. Sin embargo, este autor planteó que en el país existen pocos estudios relacionados con el tema de la educación a distancia que demuestren este tipo de indicadores u otros.
La falta de estudios de evaluación en la educación a distancia en Puerto Rico no ha permitido referentes para crear nuevos programas adecuados a la realidad institucional que los exige, al igual que a las necesidades del desarrollo de recursos humanos necesarios al país. Por el contrario, ha provocado que instituciones, por ejemplo como la objeto de este estudio, establezcan políticas institucionales particulares,a través desu Junta de Síndicos. Políticas, que de acuerdo a los documentos recopilados, aprueban y establecen entre otros aspectos, que la modalidad de estudios a distancia se movió hacia la transformación en sus procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje. De la misma forma, desarrollaron nuevos enfoques educativos con la integración de la tecnología y la incorporación al programa de aprendizaje a distancia.
Del mismo modo, se estableció que cada unidad académica debe desarrollar un proceso continuo de evaluación y validación de la calidad académica de las actividades de aprendizaje implantadas. Sin embargo, Torres (2007) acentúa que, aún cuando existe una gran cantidad de documentos institucionales, éstos no proveen suficiente información sobre el programa de evaluación de la educación a distancia.
Para tener una idea más clara hacia dónde se dirige la institución estudiada se puede mencionar que, en su visión se destaca que la institución busca proyectarse como el centro de educación a distancia por excelencia en el Caribe e Hispanoamérica. Igualmente, en su misión se establece que para la preparación de profesionales no se tomará en cuenta las barreras de tiempo y espacio. Además, en sus metas, entre otros aspectos, se menciona el promover una educación integral que se encamine a la utilización eficaz de los avances tecnológicos y, por último, se señalan las políticas institucionales que guiarán los programas a distancia a implantarse.
Descripción del programa objeto de estudio. El Programa objeto de este estudio responde a la necesidad de satisfacer la demanda del mercado por profesionales de apoyo administrativo con dominio en el manejo de sistemas electrónicos, conocimientos, técnicas, procedimientos y destrezas requeridas para desempeñarse exitosamente en la oficina. Este Programa ofrece el trasfondo cultural y los conocimientos fundamentales de la administración de oficinas que permiten al profesional de apoyo administrativo participar efectivamente en la toma de decisiones, el análisis de datos, el manejo y procesamiento de la información, la comunicación verbal y escrita y el establecimiento de relaciones interpersonales efectivas.
Para el caso que ocupa este estudio se entiende que el desarrollo de una oferta académica bajo la modalidad de aprendizaje a distancia requiere de una estructura más compleja que la representada por la formación tradicional (Mir, Reparaz & Sobrino, 2003). En su inicio, esta modalidad fue desarrollada con la intención de proveer alternativas de estudio a estudiantes que por su lejanía geográfica no podían llegar a los centros universitarios (Volery & Lord, 2000). Sin embargo, a pesar del aumento en la oferta académica de esta modalidad, la evaluación de la misma no va en igual dirección a su progreso (Torres, 2007).
Ahora bien, la educación a distancia debe verse dentro de un contexto determinado y, por supuesto, el aprendizaje que ella genera, según se explica a continuación.
La Educación a Distancia, su Contexto y Definición de Aprendizaje
La educación a distancia se visualiza como un concepto nuevo por muchos educadores (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright & Zvacek, 2006). No obstante, este concepto posee una historia aproximada de 160 años.
Peters (2003) escribió que las universidades virtuales utilizan nuevos medios tecnológicos con los cuales pueden completar el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje a través de un sistema integrado. Mientras que Rovai, Ponton y Baker (2008) coincidieron al resaltar que cada vez más hay estudiantes con compromisos laborales, sociales y familiares que usan este sistema, con una clara tendencia a aumentar.
Las computadoras representaron otra etapa en el desarrollo de la educación a distancia. En esta dirección, Ackermann y Hartman (2002), como se cita en Simonson et al. (2006), destacaron que acentuaron que este medio ha permitido la conexión al Internet mediante redes de personas a través del mundo. Estos autores destacaron que, en Estados Unidos, la American Open University, Nova Southeastern University y la University of Phoenix son reconocidas como líderes en proveer educación a distancia. Igualmente, la British Open University, FernUniversität of Germany y la University of Twente in The Netherlands se reconocen como líderes en Europa. Hoy día, existen muchas universidades del mundo, inclusive en Puerto Rico, que ofrecen cursos y/o programas académicos totalmente a distancia.
Por otra parte, las universidades a distancia han asumido un rol significativo en impulsar la modalidad a distancia.Las nuevas demandas educativas ejercieron presión en ampliar la oferta académica a adultos con interés de estudiar pero con unas necesidades particulares (Rovai et al., 2008). Esto provocó que las universidades evolucionaran y crearan o modificaran sus servicios para atender estudiantes con un nuevo perfil, lo que provocó el surgimiento de las universidades virtuales (Álvarez, 2005). Esta tendencia queda validada por el Departamento de Educación de Estados Unidos (Gilbert, 2001), al señalar que para el 1999 el 90% de los colegios y las universidades que ofrecieron cursos a distancia matricularon más de 10,000 estudiantes. Mientras, Rovai et al. (2008), agregaron que durante el 2005, aproximadamente 3.2 millones de estudiantes tomaron al menos un curso en línea, lo cual refleja un aumento en relación al año anterior, en el que se matricularon 2.3 millones de estudiantes.
Necesariamente, el desarrollo tecnológico es irreversible, por lo que, podría afirmarse que la educación a distancia ha estado y seguirá sujeta a la evolución continua que experimenten los medios tecnológicos (Mir et al., 2003).
Por último, Vilaseca y Castillo (2003), como se cita en Álvarez (2005), resaltaron la importancia que tiene actualmente la educación a distancia al configurar una nueva forma de distribución de la educación. Esto, inaugurando una serie de transformaciones necesarias en el ámbito de los recursos pedagógicos y tecnológicos asociados al proceso de desarrollo de la actividad educativa.
Esta autora manifestó que el aprendizaje a distancia debe verse como una oportunidad de impartir enseñanza a aquellos que tienen necesidades particulares. Por lo tanto, es responsabilidad de todas las instituciones velar que sus ofrecimientos estén acordes con las expectativas de las personas a quienes van dirigidas, de modo que estas instituciones puedan tomar en consideración los recursos y limitaciones de los receptores de esa educación.
Modelo de Evaluación: CIPP
Existen varios modelos que pueden ser utilizados en la evaluación de los programas. Estos tienen como propósito los siguientes aspectos: “seguimiento, identificación de problemas, desarrollo de programas pilotos para mejorar la eficacia, identificación de diferencias por población y la determinación de relevancia de los programas” (Jason, 2008, p. 4). Dentro de los modelos revisados en la literatura la Figura 1 destaca los siguientes (Fitzpatrick et al., 2004):
Figura 1: Modelos de Evaluación
Luego de estudiar estos modelos se llegó a la conclusión que, de acuerdo a la aportación que se esperaba brindar, el modelo más adecuado era el de Daniel Stufflebeam (2007). El mismo hace énfasis en el criterio que maneja la toma de decisiones. Este énfasis tiene como interés que los resultados de la investigación sirvan referencia para la toma de decisiones institucionales, luego de una evaluación continua del programa a distancia mencionado. En esta dirección, Rovai et al. (2008) aseguraron que este modelo se puede utilizar evaluaciones formativas y sumativas.
El modelo CIPP de Daniel Stufflebeam fue seleccionado para la evaluación del programa por su pertinencia y facilidad de adaptación a los programas de educación a distancia (Miguel, Rodríguez, Benhamu & Miguel, 2005).
Si se considera por ejemplo la evaluación del programa estudiado, el propósito de utilizar el Modelo CIPP, orientado a la toma de decisiones (Fitzpatrick et al., 2004), fue el de evaluar la eficiencia de éste en relación a las metas que se plantearon originalmente. Asimismo, comparar si los objetivos que se trazaron inicialmente fueron logrados, confirmar, por otro lado, si los recursos que se plasmaron como necesarios son los existentes o cuán distantes están de las necesidades actuales, y validar si el costo-efectivo calculado fue el adecuado. Igualmente, analizar el efecto en el reclutamiento/retención/deserción de los estudiantes en Puerto Rico o si hoy es necesario establecer cambios.
Por otro lado, cabe destacar que las instituciones de educación superior de Puerto Rico se nutren de fondos federales. En esta dirección, en la Ley de Educación Superior del 2008 (Middle States Association, 2010) se ha considerado un aumento en el marco regulador para la rendición de cuentas (accountability) por parte del Congreso y del Departamento de Educación de Estados Unidos para las instituciones educativas y las agencias acreditadoras. Esta rendición de cuentas exige que se evidencie el uso de los fondos en contraste con el logro de los usuarios del sistema educativo, en este caso los estudiantes, e incluye el impacto de los programas a distancia.
El uso de este modelo de evaluación permitió aportar una retroalimentación que sirvió para apoyar el requerimiento que hace el Departamento de Educación de Estados Unidos, así como les permitirá mejorar los programas y, por consiguiente, la sociedad la cual atienden. Esta retroalimentación contempla cómo replantear los inicios del programa, desarrollo, función y logros; áreas que forman parte del modelo seleccionado.
En resumen, con la aplicación del Modelo CIPP, se evaluó la pertinencia del programa y sus contenidos en relación a las exigencias educativas y laborales del sector de oficina. Igualmente, el comportamiento de la facultad, su congruencia o incongruencia con lo establecido y realizado, los recursos disponibles para implantar el programa, el rendimiento estudiantil e institucional, y los resultados esperados en comparación a lo logrado.
La Tabla 1, describe las preguntas que se incluyen en cada fase de este modelo, con las cuales se dirigió la evaluación de este programa.
Tabla 1 Descripción del Modelo CIPP
Fase
Descripción
Contexto
Provee información sobre todo aquello que rodea al programa: ¿Qué tiene? ¿Cómo está estipulado el programa? ¿Cuáles son las necesidades educativas de los estudiantes?
Insumo
¿Cuáles son los recursos que hacen que el programa trabaje? Las estrategias, actividades y procedimientos desarrollados, ¿están alineados al programa?
Proceso
Determina si el programa funciona. ¿Cómo es la función del programa?
¿Hasta qué punto el programa se desarrolla cómo se había planificado?
Producto
¿Cuáles son los logros obtenidos? ¿Cuál es el valor del programa? ¿Cuáles son los resultados medibles? ¿Cuál es su relación con las metas y objetivos del programa?
Nota. De “Evaluation, theory, models, & applications”, por D. L. Stufflebeam y A. J. Shinkfield, 2007, p. 32.
Conjuntamente con la aplicación de este modelo, se evaluaron los aspectos relacionados al cambio tecnológico que debieron ocurrir en el programa o la institución donde éste tiene su desarrollo.
Gestión del Cambio Tecnológico de Bates
La revisión de literatura y la lectura de algunos aspectos de las bases teóricas adecuadas y utilizadas para apoyar el análisis de esta evaluación, incluyó:
El estudio independiente de Wedemeyer y Moore (Schlosser & Simonson, 2009) en el que el aprendizaje es autodirigido, lo que exige cierta autonomía del aprendiz.
La andragogía de Knowles (Schunk, 2008), la cual representa una disciplina que busca suplir la educación y el aprendizaje del adulto.
La industrialización de la enseñanza de Peters (2003), la que expone que la educación a distancia transformó las estructuras organizacionales de las instituciones educativas con un incremento de la automatización (Simonson et al., 2006).
El cambio tecnológico en Bates (2000), en el que se evalúa el impacto de la integración de nuevas tecnologías.
El conectivismo de Siemens (2005, 2004), que hace énfasis a la era digital (Ferreyra & Pedrazzi, 2007).
La equivalencia en Simonson, Schlosser y Hanson (1999), la que destaca la igualdad de experiencias de aprendizaje en la educación a distancia en comparación con la educación en el salón de clases.
Luego de esta revisión, se determinó seleccionar como apoyo a la base teórica del estudio algunos criterios presentados por Bates. Éstos acogen los criterios teóricos que se pueden utilizar para gestionar el cambio tecnológico en las instituciones o centros universitarios, en atención a los siguientes aspectos: acceso y flexibilidad, costos, perfil de la enseñanza y el aprendizaje, interactividad y respeto por el usuario, organización, novedad y rapidez (resumidos en el acrónimo ACCIONAR).
Bates (2000) expuso que es preciso atender rápidamente los valores esenciales de la academia. Así también, que para tener éxito en la puesta en práctica de nuevas tecnologías, las estrategias de planificación y gestión requieren un cambio de cultura. Esto, al tomar en consideración que la nuevas tecnologías juegan un papel fundamental en el mundo actual, por lo que las instituciones educativas tienen la necesidad de encontrar nuevas formas de responder a la creciente demanda de una enseñanza permanente (p. 56).
Asimismo, esta referencia teórica se utilizó para evaluar el proceso de planificación estratégica flexible y continua, requerido en la adopción e implantación de la educación a distancia. De los aspectos mencionados por Bates (2000), se tomó en consideración si el uso de las nuevas tecnologías puede significar un mejoramiento en la eficacia de los costos, al permitir llegar a nuevos estudiantes y alcanzar unos resultados de aprendizaje de mayor calidad con bajos costos.
Igualmente se comparó, entre otras variables, el poder adquisitivo de los estudiantes en relación con el costo de los métodos de la enseñanza tradicional. Además, se consideró la infraestructura tecnológica disponible para atender las necesidades administrativas y académicas. Esto, al reconocer que es esencial la inversión en infraestructura tecnológica que influye tanto en las prioridades académicas, como en las administrativas.
En resumen, de acuerdo a los criterios teóricos de Bates (2000) acerca de la gestión del cambio tecnológico en los centros universitarios, se observó, en particular, cómo la institución objeto de este estudio ha asumido lo que se refiere a: “a) la necesidad de hacer más con menos, b) las necesidades de aprendizaje cambiantes de la sociedad, y c) el impacto de las nuevas tecnologías en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje” (p. 26). Planteó que los resultados que se obtengan podrán medir varias áreas. Éstas áreas se pueden dividir en el acceso del estudiante al sistema, el análisis de costo-beneficio del programa, la relación entre las diferentes aplicaciones de la tecnología y los diferentes resultados de aprendizaje, al equilibrio entre la docencia directa y la basada en la tecnología.
Ahora bien, para finalizar vale la pena hacer mención a la relación que se presenta entre los aspectos teóricos de Bates, arriba mencionados, con el modelo CIPP, especialmente en atención al contexto, proceso, insumo y producto de los programas tecnológicos y a distancia.
Relación Conceptual del Modelo CIPP y el Cambio Tecnológico de Bates
En términos generales, según Henckell (2007), “las evaluaciones de la educación a distancia facilitan la información necesaria para apoyar a los programas de educación a distancia en el cumplimiento de las necesidades de los estudiantes” (p. 25). Además, contribuyen a que continúen considerándose como un medio alternativo de entrega educativa a diferentes sectores de la población por parte de las instituciones de educación superior.
La combinación del Modelo CIPP y el criterio teórico sobre el cambio tecnológico de Bates (2000) articuló de una manera profunda la evaluación. Ambos complementaron y dirigieron una evaluación más coherente en vías de lograr un análisis apropiado del programa objeto de estudio. Muchos de los modelos y conceptos teóricos presentados se ajustaban a la educación a distancia. Sin embargo, el modelo y concepto teórico seleccionado apuntaron a una idoneidad y combinación muy dirigida al programa estudiado. Esto, al recordar que dicho programa se distingue por la falta de evaluaciones anteriores, una implantación de varios años y la particularidad de que éste posee cursos que a nivel mundial tradicionalmente han sido ofrecidos de forma presencial.
De manera que, al tomar en consideración el marco teórico descrito en la revisión de literatura, se resalta la importancia de la evaluación del programa a distancia de Administración de Sistemas de Oficina al utilizar el Modelo CIPP y la gestión del cambio tecnológico.
Al efecto, la combinación entre el Modelo CIPP y el cambio tecnológico de Bates permitieron evaluar la pertinencia del programa y sus contenidos en relación a las exigencias educativas y laborales del sector de oficina. Esto hizo posible la identificación de las fortalezas y debilidades del programa, a través de la evaluación, de modo tal que pudieran hacerse recomendaciones que permitieran tomar las decisiones necesarias para mejorar la gestión académica y administrativa en el mismo, proveyendo, a su vez, las guías necesarias para lograr que sus actividades a distancia sean exitosas.
Implantación a Distancia de los Programas de Administración de Sistemas de Oficina
López (2007), docente de un programa de Sistemas de Oficina en Puerto Rico, señaló que la profesión del asistente administrativo sufre unos cambios vertiginosos en este momento histórico debido a la explosión de la tecnología, al igual que por los cambios en la manera de hacer negocios. Igualmente resaltó que este profesional “necesita posicionarse en la administración, de manera que pueda responder adecuada y eficientemente a estas nuevas destrezas y conocimientos que la organización del Siglo 21 requiere del asistente administrativo o del futuro administrador o gerente de oficina” (p. 3). Y agregó que “esta trayectoria inexorable exige un profesional que responda a la globalización, al que se le provea una ventaja competitiva a través de un programa de estudios que se reinvente y se atempere a las demandas educativas y empresariales del nuevo siglo” (p. 10).
La sociedad se encuentra en una época donde la economía y la fuerza laboral se encuentran digitalizada, virtualizada y la automatización en la producción de bienes se observa en muchas áreas. Dados estos escenarios, cada trabajo que se conoce actualmente será afectado. Y el desarrollo profesional de egresados, según López (2007), demandará un cambio curricular y un cambio en las estrategias y métodos de enseñanza.
Conforme a esto y parafraseando a Huertas (2006), las instituciones de educación superior tienen ante sí el reto de reenfocar sus ofrecimientos y servicios, al tener como una de sus prioridades la internacionalización no simplemente de sus servicios, sino de su currículo. En este sentido, esta autora, resaltó que el programa de Sistemas de Oficina debe responder a estas demandas sociales, tecnológicas y políticas que implican realizar cambios o reinventar sus ofrecimientos.
Huertas (s.f.), igualmente, puntualizó que en “los programas de Sistemas de Oficina en Puerto Rico, todavía no se investiga la percepción del departamento y de los estudiantes que se encuentran matriculados en este programa acerca de su implantación a través de la educación a distancia” (p. 7). También destacó que:
No se puede perder de perspectiva que en la medida que los estudiantes y profesores estén satisfechos con su participación en la toma de decisiones sobre los ofrecimientos académicos que tienen las universidades, aceptarán más positivamente los cambios e innovaciones en el currículo. Esto a su vez redundará en el ofrecimiento de un programa de alta calidad académica, con posibilidades de expansión y la utilización efectiva de los recursos económicos. (p. 7)
Esta misma autora destacó la percepción de la implantación de un programa a distancia en Administración de Sistemas de Oficina. Ésta dividió su estudio en las áreas de infraestructura, servicios, currículo y clientela a la que atiende. Como resultado señaló que además del apoyo de la tecnología, una universidad necesita establecer una infraestructura administrativa que apoye las necesidades especiales de los estudiantes y la facultad involucrada en el programa.
En consecuencia, y en concordancia con lo planteado por Hayes (1997), esta autora expuso que para establecer una política de implantación de un programa de educación a distancia hay que considerar la percepción de los afectados, quienes darán un significado genuino en el proceso de planificación. Puntualizó, de igual manera, que la National Business Education Association (1999) consideró que el avalúo de un programa de educación a distancia debe contemplar el sistema utilizado, las competencias del aprendiz, los estándares de los cursos y la efectividad del docente.
Sherry y Morse (1995) apoyaron el hallazgo de Huertas (s.f.) al resaltar la importancia de realizar una evaluación de las necesidades de todos los actores (facultad, administradores u otras personas que estén involucradas en el programa a distancia). Esta autora señaló que en la Facultad de Sistemas de Oficina es necesario considerar estos planteamientos a la hora de escoger un sistema de educación a distancia como un sistema de enseñanza y, recordó que no todos los cursos ni todos los estudiantes se benefician necesariamente de estos programas. Por estas razones, también destacó que es importante determinar qué conocimientos y destrezas pueden adquirirse efectivamente a través de este sistema, cómo la educación en sistemas de oficina puede estimular a los estudiantes a desarrollar las competencias que necesitan, qué cursos son apropiados para enseñar en este sistema y cómo se establece un balance entre la eficiencia económica y la efectividad del aprendizaje en un ambiente a distancia. Esto por considerar que tradicionalmente, los cursos de este programa han sido ofrecidos de forma presencial.
Cónsono con estos últimos planteamientos, Bates (2000) puntualizó que el proceso de cambio no finaliza con la mera implantación de un programa, por bueno que éste pueda ser. Una vez se han implantado los cambios, la organización deberá evaluarlos para determinar si se han logrado los objetivos que se pretendían. A tenor con lo planteado por Bates, Duart y Argüelles (s.f.), sugieren volver la mirada hacia el servicio y hacia el participante, y tratar de encontrar soluciones a sus necesidades, en lugar de perderse en planificaciones redactadas para ser aprobadas en consejos asesores de las universidades. Este servicio será posible cuando se asuma como política oficial la evaluación de los programas educativos.
Tendencias en la Evaluación de los Programas a Distancia
El estudio de las tendencias en la evaluación de los programas a distancia es importante para no descontextualizar los hallazgos sobre el particular, así como mantenerse actualizado ante las nuevas expectativas que suponen el desarrollo tecnológico y su impacto sobre estos programas. Igualmente, estudiar este asunto permite objetivar cualquier evaluación.
Silvio (2006) expresó que en el 1999, la educación virtual y a distancia ocupaba alrededor de un 6% de la población estudiantil en la región de América Latina, mientras en el 2004, no avanzó mucho más que un 10%. Ante esto, este autor se preguntó por qué una innovación tan prometedora y portadora de bienestar y futuro de una mejor calidad de vida ha evolucionado tan lentamente. No obstante, ante las posibles respuestas que puedan darse al respecto, éste agregó que hay que reconocer “la existencia de una tendencia hacia la evaluación de la calidad de los programas a distancia y el desarrollo de sistemas de acreditación de éstos, los cuales prometen un mejor futuro para esta modalidad” (p. 6).
En relación a la evaluación de los programas a distancia, los escasos recursos y los déficits presupuestarios han presentando muchos desafíos entre los directivos y administradores para que estos mantengan sus programas (Fitzpatrick et al., 2004). Cada administrador de un programa necesita conocer cuán bien trabajan las diferentes partes del mismo; sus recursos, administración e inversión, entre otras cosas, para proceder a evaluar la gestión.
De manera que, según expresaron Fitzpatrick et al, (2004) “el propósito de la evaluación es emitir un juicio acerca del valor de lo que vaya a ser evaluado” (p.10). El propósito central del acto evaluativo es determinar el mérito o valor de algo. En la misma dirección, Mark, Henry y Julnes (1999), como se cita en Fitzpatrick et al. (2004), articularon cuatro diferentes propósitos de la evaluación, a saber: “1) evaluación del mérito o el valor, 2) descuido y conformidad, 3) programa y mejoramiento de la organización y, 4) desarrollo del conocimiento” (p. 11).
Para el caso especifico de la evaluación de programas a distancia que nos ocupa, y parafraseando a Silvio (2006), la última medida de su calidad es el aprendizaje logrado por quienes utilizan sus recursos. Este autor destacó que la evaluación del sistema, su infraestructura y recursos se realizan con el fin de inferir la capacidad del sistema para producir un aprendizaje significativo con el objetivo de mejorar la calidad de vida de quienes aprenden. En esta dirección, acentúo que pueden evaluarse los programas, proyectos y actividades de la educación a distancia con diversos criterios que contienen indicadores acerca del grado en el que el programa se ajusta a las normas de calidad en varios aspectos significativos para su desempeño como programa.
No obstante, Silvio (2006, p. 5), afirmó que “la evaluación es sólo un aspecto relativamente estático del problema; lo importante es asegurar, mantener y mejorar continuamente la calidad de la educación a distancia, y que para ello debe realizarse una buena gestión”. Además, precisó que, “la base de una buena gestión de la calidad de la educación a distancia en la educación superior es, sin duda, un sistema eficiente de evaluación de su calidad”.
En la misma dirección, Briceño (2005) planteó que la discusión de los procesos de evaluación de la gestión académica en las instituciones que ofrecen estudios a distancia requieren de una reflexión crítica debido al reto que enfrentan éstas en cuanto a su visión, misión y paradigma educativo. También, por sus requerimientos para garantizar la calidad, el grado de aceptación y credibilidad social.
Igualmente, este autor hizo énfasis en que existe una necesidad por asegurar la calidad de los programas de educación a distancia. Asimismo, se refirió a varias organizaciones, entre ellas: The Commission on Higher Education, The Institute for Higher Education Policy y el Centro Virtual para el Desarrollo de Estándares de Calidad para la Educación Superior a Distancia en América Latina y el Caribe, las cuales desarrollaron un sistema de estándares de calidad para orientar a las instituciones en el desarrollo de sus políticas, prácticas y procedimientos que les garantizaran la calidad de la instrucción y de los servicios que ofrecen. Esto, de forma tal que puedan a su vez, mejorar y administrar con éxito el desarrollo de los programas de educación a distancia con niveles de excelencia y de acreditación.
Además de la evaluación de la calidad en las instituciones de educación a distancia, igualmente en programas como el que nos correspondió investigar, se encuentra la necesidad de evaluar y medir los aprendizajes adquiridos por los estudiantes. Esta evaluación y medición de aprendizaje tiene que considerar muchos aspectos, entre otros, tecnológicos, pedagógicos, instruccionales, de modo que se estudien todos los efectos de éstos en los procesos de aprendizaje.
Bates (2000), como investigador en la gestión del cambio tecnológico, señaló la existencia de varios elementos en la evaluación en la educación a distancia, los cuales deben ser considerados para garantizar la calidad en sus procesos de enseñanza y el aprendizaje.
Al respecto se mencionan los siguientes elementos (Bates, 2000, pp. 90-91):
“Valor del contenido para atender la demanda o necesidad de conocimiento.
Uso apropiado de recursos y de producción de materiales de enseñanza.
Diseño instruccional adecuado que facilite la conexión entre el alumno y los materiales de aprendizaje.
Disponibilidad y accesibilidad de los materiales para accederlos fácilmente.
Apoyo técnico para que el estudiante pueda utilizar los recursos de la plataforma educativa (facilidad en la navegación e interacción de estudiante-estudiante y estudiante-docente).”
Otro autor, Macksoud (2008), en una conferencia sobre las nuevas tendencias en acreditación y calidad en la educación, señaló que “las instituciones deben medir el aprendizaje de los estudiantes de manera cabal y demostrar que tienen procesos instituidos para evaluar y mejorar los resultados del aprendizaje y la efectividad institucional de forma continua” (pp. 6-7). Además, destacó que existe la tendencia de establecer una cultura de assessment y evidencia como fundamento al mejoramiento continuo del aprendizaje.
En relación a este tipo de evaluación de los aprendizajes, este autor resaltó que es necesario otorgar un mayor énfasis en autoestudios que analicen de forma sistemática y longitudinal los procesos existentes (e.g. planificación estratégica, evaluación de programas y gerencia de servicios a estudiantes). De esta forma, se facilitaría el proceso formativo para identificar áreas que mejoren algunos aspectos del aprendizaje, en lugar de presentar informes limitados en un momento dado.
Asimismo, este autor argumentó que hasta hace poco los estándares de acreditación ligados a la evaluación se enfatizaban principalmente “en los recursos y procesos: oferta académica, calificaciones de la facultad, instalaciones, servicios” (p. 6). Más aún, no se consideraba si las instituciones lograban resultados acordes con su misión. Además, destacó que los nuevos estándares de la Middle States Association (MSA), agencia que evalúa y acredita a las instituciones educativas de Puerto Rico y adscrita a la Commission on Higher Education of U.S.A., requieren que las universidades se ocupen de evidenciar productos o resultados educativos.
En este sentido, el Consejo Nacional de Evaluación y Acreditación (CONEA) de Ecuador, inspirado en las recomendaciones de la UNESCO (2002), enfatizó en evaluar la calidad de los programas de educación a distancia y expuso la falta de una normativa que regule el funcionamiento de estos programas (Bastidas y Rosero, 2008). CONEA destacó que hay que incrementar la experiencia en la autoevaluación por parte de las instituciones de educación superior y la complejidad de ésta por los constantes cambios tecnológicos.
Ahora bien, en relación a la situación de la educación a distancia y su calidad en Puerto Rico, se puede decir que ha aumentado el número de instituciones extranjeras con ofrecimientos de estudios a distancia. Sin embargo, muchas de éstas no poseen una infraestructura y se desconoce cómo y quiénes las acreditan. En este sentido, “existe una preocupación por la calidad de la educación en línea ante la proliferación a una velocidad sorprendente de instituciones en línea y de educación a distancia” (Korniejczuk, 2003, p. 35).
Korniejczuk (2003) manifestó que la práctica de la acreditación institucional fue, es y seguirá presente como un elemento de control de calidad importante. De igual forma, agregó que:
En la medida en que se establezcan estándares nacionales e internacionales que regulen la educación superior ofrecida a distancia a través de la Internet, se garantizará en gran medida una oferta de calidad que podrá competir sanamente con los productos tradicionales de la educación presencial, lo que validará los estándares indicados anteriormente. (p. 48)
En este sentido, el Consejo de Educación Superior de Puerto Rico (2004) planteó en un Seminario Regional sobre el Diagnóstico de la Educación Superior, invitado por el Instituto Internacional de Educación Superior para la América Latina y el Caribe, que la educación a distancia en el país ha gozado de un crecimiento vertiginoso, continuo y diversificado. Asimismo, que existe una tendencia marcada hacia el uso de la educación a distancia como una herramienta instruccional y complementaria a las experiencias educativas presenciales. Sin embargo, esta organización planteó que, aún cuando se han establecido políticas para la autorización de programas extranjeros, hace falta fortalecer y promover una nueva cultura de investigación en la que la evaluación permanente y colaborativa juegue un rol cada vez más importante.
Es referirse, como bien expuso Ferreiro (2002), a que la educación a distancia no debe reducirse a la integración de la tecnología, sino que debe hacerse un buen uso de ésta para que se logren los resultados esperados y que se justifique plenamente la inversión realizada. De modo que, conforme la implantación de programas a distancia continúe en aumento debido a que la población estudiantil tiene demandas y necesidades particulares, será necesario considerar la percepción de los estudiantes y profesores ante estos cambios (Huertas, s.f.).
En este sentido, interesó resaltar en esta investigación lo referido a la satisfacción, el reclutamiento, la retención y la deserción estudiantil del programa objeto de este estudio. En esta dirección, los resultados de Merena (2006) en su estudio de disertación doctoral acerca de la satisfacción de los estudiantes reflejaron que ésta aumenta la motivación y que este incremento provee resultados más altos en las tasas de éxito. En sus observaciones señaló que si las instituciones se enfocan en las actividades, métodos y estrategias que redunden en mayor satisfacción en los estudiantes, la presunción será que habrá un crecimiento en el éxito del estudiante, lo que propiciara un aumento en las tasas de retención.
Según este estudio de Merena (2006), la interacción con el instructor, la calidad de los materiales del curso, el mejoramiento de los métodos de evaluación, los métodos de entrega y las disciplinas, son factores que inciden en la satisfacción del estudiante y el éxito en el entorno de la educación a distancia. Mientras, Towles, Ellis & Spencer (1993) mencionaron que la interacción estudiante-docente es un factor que afecta la retención en los programas de educación a distancia. En esta misma dirección mencionaron que para Tinto (1975), quien se ha caracterizado por realizar estudios e investigaciones acerca de la deserción/retención estudiantil, la integración académica y social de los estudiantes, es un aspecto determinante en la permanencia de éstos para completar su meta académica. Igualmente, estos autores indicaron que este aspecto se corrobora en un estudio de Garrison (1987), quien relaciona el sentimiento de los estudiantes de aislamiento social y académico con la deserción en la educación a distancia.
En esta dirección, Belton (1994) (como se cita en Huertas, s.f.) realizó un estudio sobre la interacción entre profesores y estudiantes en programas de educación a distancia, y concluyó que la frecuencia con la que éstos interactúan y con la que se ofrece la retroalimentación está directamente relacionada con la retención de los estudiantes en los programas.
No obstante, en el reclutamiento, Henckell (2007) subrayó que entre los aspectos de los programas de educación a distancia que preocupan se incluye la forma de dirigir los esfuerzos de mercadeo de los mismos, esfuerzos que se verán reflejados en el reclutamiento de estudiantes.
Finalmente, se interesa enfatizar que los diferentes aspectos antes descritos, forman parte de lo que se ha denominado como las tendencias en la evaluación y sus aplicaciones en la educación a distancia. Aspectos seguidos para la construcción de explicaciones posteriores acerca de las mejores guías en los procesos de evaluación y desarrollo del objeto estudiado.
Preguntas de Investigación
Con el propósito de evaluar el nivel de satisfacción de la gestión de un programa de aprendizaje a distancia de Administración de Sistemas de Oficina en Puerto Rico, con la aplicación un modelo de evaluación sobre la gestión, administración y uso de las tecnologías de un programa de formación a distancia en Administración de Sistemas de Oficina, se redactaron las preguntas de investigación que se muestran en la Figura 2.
Figura 2. Preguntas de Investigación
Metodología
Diseño de la Investigación
Esta investigación fue mixta y de carácter no experimental con un diseño transeccional o transversal descriptivo. Esto permitió manejar los enfoques cualitativo y cuantitativo. Para ambos enfoques se emplearon “procesos cuidadosos, sistemáticos y empíricos para generar conocimiento” (Hernández, Fernández y Baptista, 2006, p. 62), según se muestra en la Figura 3.
Figura 3: Cuestionario
Se utilizó como instrumento un cuestionario tipo encuesta para recopilar la información empírica del programa bajo estudio. Sus resultados fueron útiles para el análisis y la evaluación posterior. La investigación, por sus características, incluyó un tipo de muestreo no probabilístico, casual (Hernández et al., 2006), que tomó en cuenta a los estudiantes y al personal que interviene en el programa objeto de estudio.
Esta investigación incluyó preliminarmente la a) selección de la institución a evaluarse, b) redacción de una carta de consentimiento, c) recopilación de datos, d) tabulación o descripción y análisis de los datos, y e) emisión de juicios valorativos que permitieran ofrecer recomendaciones dirigidas para la toma de decisiones al utilizar el Modelo de Stufflebeam, conocido como CIPP. De este modelo se utilizaron sus cuatros fases con sus respectivos componentes a evaluar: contexto, insumo, proceso y producto.
En relación a los factores considerados para medir el nivel de satisfacción en la gestión del cambio tecnológico, cónsono con Bates (2000), se utilizó lo que corresponde a los conceptos de acceso y flexibilidad, costos, aspectos de enseñanza y aprendizaje, interactividad y respeto por el usuario, organización, novedad y rapidez.
Participantes y Delimitación en la Investigación
Participantes.El estudio consideró a los estudiantes y colaboradores del Programa de Administración de Sistemas de Oficina de un sistema universitario privado de la región sur de Puerto Rico. Para propósitos de este trabajo la población estuvo representada por 409 estudiantes y 23 colaboradores.
La muestra no probabilística o muestra dirigida, la cual supone un procedimiento de selección informal (Hernández et al., 2006) fueron 188 estudiantes matriculados en algún curso en línea durante el semestre de enero a mayo de 2010, lo que representa una tasa de respuesta de un 46% y un nivel de precisión entre un 5% y 6% (Agricultural Education and Communication Department, 2009); y 16 colaboradores (personal administrativo y facultad) del programa, lo que representa una tasa de respuesta de un 70%.
Representación demográfica de los participantes. Para efectos de representar los datos demográficos de la muestra véase la Figura 4.
Figura 4: Perfil Demográfico
Acuerdo con los participantes. Éstos participaron voluntariamente de la investigación y se le garantizó su anonimato. Fueron orientados y protegidos puesto que la investigación estuvo regida por los más estrictos códigos de ética (McMillan y Schumacher, 2007).
Cabe destacar que a los participantes no se les ofreció incentivo ni beneficio alguno por su participación. La evaluación con estos sujetos de estudio se realizó dentro de un marco de confianza y respeto. Durante el estudio, se mantuvo un proceso que siguió las normas establecidas por la Asociación Americana de Psicólogos (APA), la Junta de Revisión Institucional (IRB) y Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Program, tanto de Nova Southeastern Universitycomo de la institución bajo estudio.
Delimitaciones. El sistema universitario al cual pertenece el programa, cuenta con más de 10 unidades académicas y una oficina de Administración Central. Sin embargo, para propósitos de este estudio se consideró solamente una de las unidades académicas, ya que ésta representa una de las unidades con mayor incursión en la educación a distancia.
Por otra parte, no se consideraron otras instituciones en Puerto Rico que están en proceso de implantar el mismo programa en línea. Asimismo, sólo se consideró la evaluación de un programa académico a distancia.
Instrumentos para la Recopilación de Datos
Se destaca que para recopilar toda la información necesaria y presentar recomendaciones, se diseñó, validó (por un panel de expertos) y se administraron dos instrumentos estilo cuestionario. Estos instrumentos contemplaron las siguientes categorías: contexto, insumo, proceso, producto y la gestión del cambio tecnológico. Para cada una de éstas, se formularon, al menos, 9 preguntas específicas. Además, se contemplaron preguntas sobre los datos demográficos para conocer la población a ser encuestada. Un total de 41 preguntas para los estudiantes y 36 para los colaboradores fueron la clave para investigar acerca del nivel de satisfacción del programa a evaluar.
El diseño de los instrumentos fue de la autoría de la investigadora. En él se contemplaron las cuatro fases del Modelo CIPP y algunos criterios teóricos de Bates sobre el cambio tecnológico. Uno de los instrumentos fue administrado a los estudiantes y el otro, a miembros de la facultad y personal del área de Sistemas de Oficina y del programa en línea.
Validez. Como parte del proceso de la construcción de estos instrumentos, se tomaron en consideración y se incluyeron las recomendaciones que hicieron los expertos en sus juicios y en la precisión de la validez de contenido de los instrumentos. Asimismo, se tomaron en consideración los resultados de la prueba piloto. Ésta se aplicó a una muestra tomada al azar representada por un 5% de los estudiantes (17 personas) y por un 10% de los colaboradores (4 personas) para determinar si en efecto se midió lo que se deseaba con los reactivos y el instrumento en general (véase Figura 4).
Confiabilidad. A éstos se les administró un cuestionario por cada grupo. Para determinar el nivel de confiabilidad de éstos se calculó el Alfa de Cronbach (Hernández et al., 2006), lo que reflejó un .926 % en la prueba piloto. Por su parte, el instrumento final de los estudiantes, similar a la prueba piloto, reflejó un .949% , y el instrumento de los colaboradores reflejó un .805% (véase Figura 4). Por razones de anonimato, no se hizo referencia a los nombres de los cargos ocupados por ellos, ni de sus incumbentes.
Proceso de análisis e interpretación de la información recopilada.Luego de la revisión y el análisis bibliográfico de los documentos normativos y políticas establecidas de la institución bajo estudio, evaluaciones e informes realizados por otros investigadores, lecturas de revistas profesionales, y la administración de los cuestionarios, se realizó el análisis de los datos empíricos los cuales se reflejan e ilustran en tablas y gráficos estadísticos en el siguiente capítulo. Éstos se realizaron con la utilización del programa estadístico SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), mediante los resultados obtenidos por la muestra no probabilística o casual tomada en cuenta. Además, se realizó una descripción estadística donde se caracterizaron e ilustraron los resultados obtenidos al utilizar las medidas de frecuencias de datos, desviación estándar y elaboración de gráficas, entre otros.
De la información recopilada se hizo una descripción de las características de la institución y el programa objeto de estudio. Igualmente se realizó una correlación bibliográfica de evaluación de programas a distancia y de estudios sobre el área de Administración de Sistemas de Oficina en Puerto Rico.
Finalmente, se presentan los resultados sobre el objeto de estudio, e interpretan y comparan teórica y estadísticamente los mismos en relación a las expectativas y propósitos de algunos aspectos de la investigación planteada.
Limitaciones
En la realización de esta investigación, se encontraron algunas limitaciones cruciales para su desarrollo. Inicialmente, la poca disponibilidad de estudios relacionados con la educación a distancia en Puerto Rico. Asimismo, la falta de evaluaciones anteriores que brindaran dirección a la implantación del programa bajo estudio.
De igual forma, existió otra limitación en la redacción y validación de las preguntas del instrumento que se diseñó para esta investigación por la falta de experiencia en su diseño. La investigación tenía que asegurar que las preguntas delineadas en el cuestionario contemplaran todas las fases que componen el modelo a utilizarse: Modelo CIPP y algunos criterios de la base teórica de Bates sobre la gestión del cambio tecnológico. Además, que a su vez, las respuestas de los participantes contestaran las preguntas de investigación que contemplaba esta evaluación.
A esta limitación, se añade el tipo y tamaño de la institución a investigar y desde cuándo existe el programa a distancia, fueron otros factores que limitaron el estudio. Esto porque aún el número de estudiantes del programa es limitado.
Sin embargo, aún con estas posibles limitaciones, se pretendió lograr un enlace entre el programa de educación a distancia de la institución educativa representada y la investigadora y así contar con el apoyo necesario.
Discusión y Análisis de los Resultados en Relación con las Preguntas de Investigación
Esta investigación mixta de carácter no experimental con un diseño transeccional o transversal descriptivo tuvo como participantes a los estudiantes y colaboradores de un programa a distancia de Administración de Sistemas de Oficina, anteriormente descrito. La representación de la población se muestra en la Figura 5.
Figura 5. Representación de la Población
La aplicación de un modelo de evaluación sobre la gestión, administración y uso de las tecnologías de un programa de formación a distancia en Administración de Sistemas de Oficina permitió la redacción de las siguientes preguntas de investigación:
Pregunta de investigación #1.¿Cuál es el porcentaje del nivel de satisfacción de sus usuarios en los procesos de enseñanza, aprendizaje y utilidad institucional?
Para contestar esta pregunta se discutieron varias premisas que expresaron opiniones relacionadas mayormente a las etapas de insumo (qué hace que trabaje), proceso (cómo funciona) y producto (logros obtenidos) del Modelo CIPP. Además, contempló el marco teórico sobre cambio tecnológico de Bates (2002), según se muestra en Figura 6.
Figura 6: Relación del Marco Teórico con la Pregunta de Investigación 1
La Figura 7 demuestra los datos más significativos reflejados en las respuestas de los participantes a esta pregunta de investigación.
Figura 7. Respuestas más Significativas para la Pregunta de Investigación 1
Pregunta de investigación #2.¿Cuál es el nivel de congruencia entre la filosofía, misión, metas y objetivos del programa a distancia de Administración de Sistemas de Oficina con los porcentajes de satisfacción de los usuarios del sistema en el proceso de reclutamiento y la retención estudiantil?
Para contestar esta pregunta se discutieron varias premisas que expresaron opiniones relacionadas mayormente a las etapas de contexto (estipulación del programa), insumo (qué hace que trabaje) y proceso (cómo funciona) del Modelo CIPP y algunos criterios sobre el cambio tecnológico de Bates (2002), según se muestra en la Figura 8.
Figura 8: Relación del Marco Teórico con la Pregunta de Investigación 2
Igualmente, la Figura 9 demuestra los datos más significativos reflejados en las respuestas de los participantes a esta pregunta de investigación.
Figura 9: Respuestas más Significativas para la Pregunta de Investigación 2
Pregunta de investigación #3.¿Cuál es la percepción de los estudiantes, administradores, personal docente y directivos del programa de educación a distancia de Administración de Sistemas de Oficina, en cuanto a su pertinencia y viabilidad, instalaciones adecuadas, racionalización de recursos y proyección institucional?
Para contestar esta pregunta se discutieron varias premisas que expresaron opiniones relacionadas en su mayoría a las etapas de insumo (qué hace que trabaje), proceso (cómo funciona) y producto (logros obtenidos) del Modelo CIPP, según se muestra en la Figura 10.
Figura 10: Relación del Marco Teórico con la Pregunta de Investigación 3
Finalmente, la Figura 11 demuestra los datos más significativos reflejados en las respuestas de los participantes a esta pregunta de investigación.
Figura 11: Respuestas más Significativas para la Pregunta de Investigación 3
Estos hallazgos apoyan también la postura de Sherry y Morse (1995) sobre la importancia de realizar una evaluación de las necesidades de todos los actores (facultad, administradores u otras personas que estén involucradas en el programa a distancia) para de esta forma continuar con un alto nivel de satisfacción entre los usuarios del programa.
Conclusiones
Según se muestra en la Figura 12, en relación al Modelo CIPP de Stufflebeam y la base teórica de Bates se puede concluir que:
Figura 12: Utilización del Modelo CIPP y la Base Teórica de Bates
En conclusión, los elementos de mayor consideración en esta evaluación comprendieron:
Una de las bases fundamentales para la calidad de un programa de aprendizaje a distancia y un alto de nivel de satisfacción en los participantes debe incluir un sistema eficiente de evaluación de sus programas.
El desarrollo profesional del egresado de un programa a distancia será el resultado de estrategias y métodos de enseñanza atemperados a esta modalidad, así como a una selección apropiada de la facultad y de los recursos disponibles.
La retroalimentación adecuada es un elemento fundamental en el desarrollo de nuevos conocimientos y en el nivel de retención estudiantil en los cursos a distancia.
El programa bajo estudio evidenció un alto nivel de congruencia con la filosofía, visión, misión y metas de la institución bajo estudio.
El programa a distancia representa alternativas de estudio viables para el reclutamiento y la retención de estudiantes con un nuevo perfil universitario que de otra manera no serían atendidos.
La implantación adecuada de un programa a distancia requiere el desarrollo de planes y prioridades que garanticen la atención a las exigencias académicas, administrativas y estudiantiles. Este plan debe asegurar la asignación y distribución de recursos humanos, fiscales y tecnológicos apropiados para estas nuevas modalidades educativas.
Los servicios de apoyo (académico, tecnológico y estudiantiles), así como la estructura organizativa que brinda la institución al programa a distancia representa un valor añadido a la experiencia educativa de los estudiantes.
Por último, el estudio confirma la importancia de considerar la evaluación de todos los actores que forman parte en la implantación de un programa de educación a distancia. Todo esto requerirá que las instituciones educativas redirijan sus esfuerzos en estrategias que redunden en una mayor satisfacción entre los estudiantes. También, la utilización de enfoques administrativos que integren y adapten las estructuras existentes a las nuevas modalidades de estudio. Esto brindará un mayor incremento en el éxito institucional y por consiguiente una mayor tasa de retención estudiantil.
Implicaciones de los Resultados
Esta investigación representa el primer estudio sobre la evaluación de un programa a distancia que se lleva a cabo en la institución donde se realizó el estudio. Los hallazgos del mismo serán útiles para promover la utilización de distintas herramientas de evaluación para los programas académicos, presenciales o a distancia. Asimismo, permitirá a la institución continuar con el trabajo y mejoramiento de su plan de evaluación para la educación a distancia.
Por otro lado, el modelo utilizado fue la base para la construcción de los dos instrumentos utilizados en el estudio y podrán ser utilizados en la evaluación de otros programas en línea.
Además, el estudio ha permitido la identificación de un nuevo y exigente perfil estudiantil que demanda una educación universitaria cada vez más flexible y variada. Refleja la necesidad de identificar una facultad con nuevas destrezas y conocimientos para asumir nuevos roles ante las tecnologías.
Crea la necesidad de considerar los procesos de evaluación como un elemento prioritario en sus planes estratégicos tanto de sus unidades académicas como del sistema universitario central, resaltando la importancia de continuar con el fortalecimiento de las distintas estructuras de apoyo – académico, administrativo y tecnológico.
Así mismo, demuestra la necesidad de mantener una cultura de capacitación y adiestramiento continuo para todos los componentes universitarios, apoyando la hipótesis de que la educación a distancia es el futuro de la educación superior en Puerto Rico y que en esa dirección, será fundamental reinventar la universidad de estos tiempos.
Finalmente, en el caso de los estudiantes, la aplicación de programas de evaluación en sus cursos a distancia le garantizan una mayor satisfacción y calidad en los procesos de enseñanza, aprendizaje y utilidad institucional. También, promueven una percepción favorable hacia los programas a distancia en relación a sus recursos, reclutamiento y retención estudiantil.
Limitaciones
Algunas limitaciones incluyeron, por ejemplo, la tasa de respuesta, la que representó el 46%. Esto requirió la necesidad de realizar un gran esfuerzo y seguimiento para lograr que la muestra fuera significativa. Al mismo tiempo, la investigadora tuvo que depurar exhaustivamente la lista de estudiantes matriculados en los cursos, ya que el número total de estudiantes en los cursos era en conteo repetido (el mismo estudiante matriculado en varios cursos). Además, no todos los estudiantes eran del programa objeto de estudio, algunos tomaban el curso como electivo y otros como parte de su especialidad. Por lo que, hubo que depurar una lista de 659 estudiantes para que finalmente se contara con 409 estudiantes, el número oficial de estudiantes bonafides para el estudio.
Recomendaciones
A continuación se presentan algunas recomendaciones para la institución objeto de este estudio:
Incluir un plan de adiestramiento en el manejo de estrategias de enseñanza efectivas para dar énfasis en la comunicación e interacción en los cursos a distancia.
Asegurar la selección de profesores conocedores de estrategias efectivas en el aprendizaje a distancia.
Realizar estudios de viabilidad dentro de la población estudiantil que forme parte de los programas presenciales que vayan a convertirse en programas a distancia.
Continuar con el fortalecimiento de la estructura organizacional del programa, de forma tal que pueda asumir la atención de servicio que requiere la población de este y otras programas a distancia.
Evaluar otro programa a distancia que posea la institución bajo estudio y así poder comparar los hallazgos con esta investigación e identificar planes de acción efectivos.
Realizar un estudio comparativo sobre facultad con o sin experiencia/adiestramiento previo en la educación a distancia para determinar futuros planes de capacitación.
Evaluar el mismo programa con la utilización de otros modelos teóricos para seleccionar el que más se atempere a la institución.
Evaluar programas con una estructura administrativa y tecnológica distintas a la de la institución objeto de estudio para conocer el impacto de otras posibles variables.
Considerar como variable adicional la evaluación de los centros de apoyo tecnológico que posee la institución bajo estudio, los cuales están fuera de sus instalaciones.
Proponer estudios similares con la aplicación de este modelo en otras instituciones del país (públicas o privadas), incluyendo instituciones con estructuras completamente virtuales.
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Inter American University of Puerto Rico, Ponce Campus
Resumen
Este artículo discute los esfuerzos realizados por una institución de educación superior (IES) de Puerto Rico de PR en su continuo compromiso para ofrecer servicios de calidad, validar continuamente sus procesos y fortalecer la integridad del proceso educativo en la educación a distancia. Para esto, la autenticación de los estudiantes en cursos y/o programas a distancia representa un compromiso ineludible. Por lo que, para cumplir con las normativas de la Middle States Comission on Higher Education (MSCHE, 2011), las políticas institucionales y la misión del recinto, se presentan la implantación varios métodos que se utilizan para asegurar la autenticación de los estudiantes a distancia. Entre éstos se mencionan los siguientes: correos electrónicos oficiales, salas virtuales, webcam, sistema electrónico para el manejo de solicitudes de custodios, sistema de datos con información del estudiante (incluyendo su foto), emisión de identificación de estudiantes que residen fuera de Puerto Rico y custodios virtuales (tecnologías biométricas – reconocimiento de rasgos); entre otros.
Igualmente, se resume la experiencia de un campus universitario presentada y transmitida en vivo en el 2013 Hets Virtual Best Practices Showcase (Caraballo, 2013).
Descriptores: autenticación estudiantes a distancia, identidad estudiantes a distancia, cursos en línea, rigor, integridad académica
Introducción
La aparición de las tecnologías de la información han motivado una nueva revolución en la concepción del modelo educativo para la enseñanza superior y han determinado, asimismo, nuevas reglas de juego para la oferta y demanda de las disciplinas universitarias (Caraballo, 2010). Vilaseca & Castillo (2003, según citado en Álvarez, 2005), resaltan la importancia que tiene actualmente la educación a distancia al configurar una nueva forma de distribución de la educación. Esto, al destacar la necesidad de transformación en el ámbito de los recursos pedagógicos y tecnológicos asociados al proceso de desarrollo de la actividad educativa.
Sin embargo, las instituciones de educación superior tienen una gran responsabilidad y son muchos los retos a los que se enfrenta al momento de integrar en sus planes estratégicos la educación a distancia como una alternativa educativa (Caraballo, 2010). Según las Guías Interregionales para la Evaluación de la Educación a Distancia (MSCHE, 2011, p. 14), y como parte del Higher Education Opportunity Act (US Department of Education, 2008), es necesario “asegurar la integridad en la oferta del aprendizaje a distancia”. Para esto, se requiere que se establezcan procedimientos efectivos que aseguren que el estudiante que está matriculado en un curso o programa a distancia es el mismo estudiante que participa y completa el mismo, y por el cual recibe crédito académico.
Igualmente, se enfatiza en que las instituciones que ofrezcan programas de educación a distancia deben demostrar que cumplen con este requerimiento federal. Esto incluye que los servicios que reciben los estudiantes a distancia sean de igual calidad que los ofrecidos a los estudiantes presenciales (MSCHE, 2011).
Es importante mencionar que un estudio publicado en el Faculty Focus (Patterson, 2010) resalta que la falta de honradez se ha convertido en un asunto de proporciones asombrosas. En este se reseña que el 75% de los estudiantes expresaron que habían cometido en alguna forma deshonestidad académica.
Este artículo describe varios de los procedimientos desarrollados en el recinto de Ponce de la Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico (UIPR-Ponce) para asegurar el cumplimiento de las normas y procedimientos requeridos por la institución, por las agencias que licencian y/o acreditan la misma, así como requerimientos federales de Título IV.
Breve Revisión de Literatura
Evolución e impacto de la educación a distancia
El desarrollo tecnológico es irreversible, lo que obliga a hablar de otras etapas (Mir, Reparaz & Sobrino, 2003 según citado en Caraballo, 2010). Estos autores destacan que resulta evidente que la educación a distancia ha estado y seguirá sujeta a la evolución continua que experimenten los medios tecnológicos.
El Departamento de Educación de Estados Unidos valida esta tendencia al señalar que para el 1999 el 90% de los colegios y las universidades que ofrecieron cursos a distancia matricularon más de 10,000 estudiantes (Gilbert, 2001, según citado en Caraballo, 2010). Mientras, Rovai, Ponton & Baker (2008), agregaron que durante el 2005, aproximadamente 3.2 millones de estudiantes tomaron al menos un curso en línea, lo cual refleja un aumento en relación al año anterior, en el que se matricularon 2.3 millones de estudiantes.
Más recientemente, Allen & Seaman (2011) destacan en el Sloan Consortium que para el 2007 la matrícula en cursos en línea en EE.UU. aumentó a un 31.3%. En proporción a esta tendencia, se resalta que para el otoño del 2011, 6.1 millones de estudiantes tomaron al menos un curso en línea.
Responsabilidad educativa
El Higher Education Opportunity Act (MSCHE, 2010) establece la necesidad de asegurar la integridad en la oferta del aprendizaje a distancia. Para esto, se requiere que se establezcan procedimientos efectivos de autenticación, los cuales deben asegurar que el estudiante que está matriculado en un curso o programa a distancia es el mismo estudiante que participa y completa el mismo, y por el cual recibe crédito académico. Igualmente, se enfatiza en que las instituciones que ofrezcan programas de educación a distancia deben demostrar que cumplen con este requerimiento federal. Según esta legislación, la Figura 1 demuestra los métodos que pueden adoptarse para estos fines.
Figura 1: Métodos para validar identidad
Experiencia de un Campus Universitario
El recinto de Ponce de la Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico ha implantado varios métodos para asegurar el cumplimiento de las normas y procedimientos requeridos por la institución y por las agencias que licencian o acreditan la misma. Como parte de las estrategias utilizadas en el proceso de autenticación se ha contemplado el uso de sistemas electrónicos para el manejo de solicitudes de custodios, webcam, correos electrónicos oficiales, salas virtuales, pantallas del sistema de datos con información del estudiante (incluyendo su foto), emisión de identificación de estudiantes que residen fuera de Puerto Rico y custodios virtuales (incluyen tecnologías biométricas – reconocimiento de rasgos), etc.
Es importante destacar que, según describe la Figura 2, es un proceso continuo para el cual que se hacen necesarias unas acciones generales.
Figura 2: Acciones generales para el cumplimiento y la atención de necesidades
Este campus universitario está tomando medidas adicionales para asegurar el cumplimiento de estos requisitos. A continuación se describen 7 procesos que utiliza este para validad la identidad (autenticar) durante la vida universitaria de un estudiante a distancia.
Procesos de Autenticación de los Estudiantes en Programas y/o Cursos a Distancia
Proceso de admisión. A nivel de recinto, se ha establecido un procedimiento al solicitar admisión a un programa a distancia para asegurar la identidad del estudiante admitido al mismo. Se trata de un proceso que se lleva a cabo a través de un medio virtual que incluye audio e imagen. Durante la sesión, el estudiante certifica su identidad (nombre) y muestra a la cámara como evidencia una tarjeta de identificación con foto (licencia de conducir, pasaporte o tarjeta de residencia), validando con el personal autorizado por el recinto para este propósito. Igualmente, se establece que el proceso será grabado con este único propósito y que se protegerá su privacidad. Es importante destacar que los estudiantes deberán completar el proceso de autenticación conjuntamente con su primer registro de cursos (matrícula). La Figura 3 describe el proceso establecido.
Figura 3: Autenticación admisión de estudiantes a distancia
Aquellos estudiantes que por motivos de seguridad o protocolo (i.e. militares) no puedan participar en el proceso de identificación por este medio virtual que incluye audio e imagen, tienen la opción de someter una carta oficial del supervisor certificando y validando su identidad.
Actualmente, este procedimiento forma parte del proceso de admisión de los estudiantes que optan por programas a distancia en este campus.
Correo electrónico (email) oficial. El campus le otorga una cuenta de correo electrónico oficial a todos los estudiantes admitidos, la cual es requerida para las comunicaciones oficiales. Procesos como la selección de matrícula, aceptación de cargos, solicitud de préstamos, solicitud de custodios y la comunicación con el personal del campus pueden ser tramitados a través de la misma.
ID Estudiante @ Distancia.El recinto desarrolló e implementó un procedimiento para la creación y otorgación de una tarjeta de identificación para los estudiantes en programas a distancia y que residen fuera de Puerto Rico. Esto mediante una solicitud electrónica en la que el estudiante indica sus datos y envía su foto (http://ponce.inter.edu/ed/studentid.html). Una vez recibida su solicitud, se lleva a cabo un proceso de validación de sus datos. Esto, mediante el sistema electrónico de datos de la institución para certificar que es un estudiante bonafide y, la posterior autenticación. Este último, es un proceso similar al que se lleva a cabo en el proceso de admisión y en la autenticación de los custodios.
Acceso único: El recinto cuenta con una plataforma educativa que permite el acceso único de cada estudiante utilizando nombre de usuario y contraseña privada, según se presenta en la Figura 4.
Figura 4: Acceso plataforma educativa
Evaluaciones custodiadas. El recinto ha establecido que los cursos a distancia requieren la incorporación de evaluaciones custodiadas como parte de los esfuerzos en asegurar la integridad del proceso educativo. Igualmente, forma parte de uno de los métodos utilizados por el recinto para validar la identidad de los estudiantes que optan por esta modalidad. Los estudiantes que residen fuera de Puerto Rico deben identificar una biblioteca, escuela, colegio, universidad o algún centro dedicado a estos fines para poder tomar sus exámenes. La Figura 5 demuestra algunas de las vías utilizadas.
Figura 5: Vías para tomar evaluaciones custodiadas
Validación y autorización de los custodios (proctors). Como parte del rigor en el proceso de validación y certificación de los custodios (proctors) para los estudiantes que residen fuera de Puerto Rico, el recinto desarrolló e implementó un sistema mecanizado para recibir, certificar y monitorear las solicitudes de estos. El Sistema para el Manejo de Solicitudes de Custodios y Autorización de Contraseñas para las Evaluaciones Custodiadas permite manejar con mayor rigurosidad la autorización y autenticación de los custodios. Para esto, se desarrollaron políticas de uso correspondientes. Una vez el estudiante identifica un posible custodio, éste debe completar la solicitud electrónica para la posterior evaluación y aprobación.
Como parte de la validación de datos, existe un proceso de autenticación de los custodios. Uno de los procesos que se lleva a cabo es a través de un medio virtual que incluye audio e imagen, según se presenta en la Figura 6. Durante la sesión el estudiante o el custodio (proctor) lee un texto pre-establecido en el que certifica su identidad (nombre) y muestra a la cámara como evidencia una tarjeta de identificación con foto (licencia de conducir, pasaporte o tarjeta de residencia), certificando que están solicitando ser custodio del estudiante X.
Figura 6: Validación identidad del custodio
Custodio virtual. Con el propósito de mitigar las dificultades que enfrentan los estudiantes para encontrar un custodio se ha adoptado la utilización de un custodio virtual (remote proctor). Entre las dificultades identificadas se destacan: estudiantes con necesidades especiales y/o inconvenientes de salud, inconvenientes para viajar a lugares distantes donde puedan tomar los exámenes y/o dificultad económica para pagar (en la mayoría de los casos un mínimo de $25 por cada examen, $50 por hora o el pago por adelantado de un semestre, etc.), para tomar sus exámenes en línea en una localización certificada por el campus universitario.
En agosto de 2011, el recinto comenzó un proyecto piloto con la utilización de este dispositivo para atender las necesidades de los estudiantes a distancia en el proceso de sus evaluaciones custodiadas (https://ead.ponce.inter.edu/ead/portal/remoteproctor/). Esto, asegurando que se proveyera la rigurosidad e integridad necesaria en el proceso educativo y en la autenticación de los estudiantes a distancia.
La Figura 7 muestra algunas respuestas a una pequeña consulta que se realizó y validó lo anteriormente planteado sobre las necesidades de los estudiantes (consulta electrónica (noviembre/diciembre – solamente en 10 días – 351 respuestas).
Figura 7: Consulta electrónica utilización del dispositivo
De otra parte, la Figura 8 muestra las respuestas de algunos participantes sobre la utilización y evaluación del dispositivo, posterior al proyecto piloto antes mencionado.
Figura 8: Recomendación sobre la utilización del custodio virtual
Como resultado, todo esto requiere que las instituciones educativas redirijan sus esfuerzos en estrategias que redunden en una mayor satisfacción entre los estudiantes (Caraballo, 2010) y que, a su vez, cumplan con el rigor y la integridad que se requiere en la educación a distancia (MSCHE, 2011; WCET, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c).
Finalmente, la Figura 9 resume los medios utilizados por este campus universitario, los cuales se compartieron en el 2013 Hets Virtual Best Practices Showcase (Caraballo, 2013) e incluyen, pero no se limitan, los métodos mencionados en el Higher Education Opportunity Act (MSCHE, 2010).
Figura 9: Medios utilizados
Comentarios finales
Este artículo describe los procesos y métodos que se han implantado en una IES de Puerto Rico para autenticar el estudiante que se matricula en un curso y/o programa a distancia.
Específicamente, las instituciones de educación superior que ofrecen cursos y/o programas a distancia tienen una responsabilidad de cumplimiento. Sin embargo, más allá del cumplimiento, tienen un deber de prevención (WCET, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c), pues la función principal no es la sanción sino la educación, la formación de profesionales íntegros. Como se puede concluir, se trata de ser responsables en asegurar el rigor y la integridad académica requerida en todo proceso educativo.
En resumen, no se trata meramente de que se cuente con un acceso único o con evaluaciones que requieran la intervención de un custodio (proctor), sino que también se asegure el rigor requerido (WCET, 2009b) durante el proceso. Existe una línea fina en la utilización de una persona como intermediaria y la integridad en el proceso de las evaluaciones custodiadas.
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Caraballo Pagán, O. (2010). Evaluación del Nivel de Satisfacción de la Gestión de un Programa de Aprendizaje a Distancia Aplicando el Modelo CIPP: Caso del Programa de Administración de Sistemas de Oficina de una Universidad Privada de Puerto Rico. Disertación doctoral no publicada, Nova Southeastern University, Fort-Lauderdale-Davie, FL.
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