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Modularity
Modularity is the idea that an entity we consider to be a single unit is in fact composed
of separate and independent parts. For example, computers are to a large degree modular.
Various components can be plugged in, switched, swapped, or replaced with better parts.
In the same manner, online courses will be modular. A course - especially from the designer
level - will no longer be seen as a single unit, but rather, as a collection of component parts,
each of which may be replaced or upgraded as the need arises.
The predominant model for course design
will resemble the architecture of contemporary computers. There will be
a backbone, analogous to the computer's
motherboard, which establishes the basic structure of the course. Into
the backbone will be plugged in various learning
modules, communication tools,
and student information systems.
Customized courses
will be the first major application of a modular approach to course design.
In the first instance, customized courses will be designed to meet the
needs of particular clients. For example, a college offering a selection
of business and computer courses may assemble a customized package for
a corporate training client.
Suppose a Business course consists of modules on Business Writing, Financial Accounting,
and Customer Service. And support a computer course consists of modules on Word
Processing, Email, and HTML Design. A new course could be constructed by selecting
desired course modules, say, a Corporate Communications course consisting of
modules on Business Writing, Customer Service, Word Processing and Email.
As custom course design hits its stride, the demand for individual courses will arise.
Students may need supplementary material in areas where they are week, or additional
material matching their interests or aptitudes. Abridged courses may be offered to
people with strong backgrounds in the field. Variations on the same course may
be used for students working in different disciplines.
Menuization, a concept today employed primarily in the
area of course selection, will in the
future be employed in the area of course
construction. Students or other training clients, perhaps working
with an educational consultant or designer, will assemble courses, and
programs of courses, from a menu of course components.
Indeed, the concept of the course itself
will gradually be seen as an arbitrary division. The primary unit of instruction
will be the module, and programs will
be seen as large collections of modules. Viewed in this way, it may be
seen how a program could be highly individualized.
Modules themselves will be modular. A learning module
will essentially consist of a collection of educational materials, mechanisms
for communication and interaction, and an assignment or evaluation component.
Module design will consist of two
major tasks: the selection of module components, and the ordering of module
components.
The idea here is that a module is best thought of as the assembly of a sequence of
educational activities. For example, a student may be required to read some material,
engage in a simulation, write a report, participate in a discussion and complete a quiz.
Each of these activities in turn requires the support of some educational materials. The
task of the module designer will be to select those materials, and then to present them in a sequence.
Distributed design. Because the
internet will support high speed data transfer, there will be no requirement
that instructional components reside on the same computer - or, for that
matter, in the same country - as the course being offered. For example,
suppose there exists a high quality multimedia dissection of a business
letter at an educational web site in Singapore. The module designer will
have the option of plugging that resource into the online course.
This is already happening. Educational
resource sites are springing up across the internet. The best
example of this is Canada's Schoolnet, which provides a comprehensive
set of media resources. Virtual Frog, a pioneering internet effort, is
used in biology classes worldwide. My own Guide to the Logical Fallacies
is widely used in logic and rhetoric courses.
Not only content based sites are employed in online courses. Companies such as
Hotmail offer free email addresses, which are used by students worldwide.
Online communities such as Geocities provide free web space, most of which
is used by students. Chat servers, bulletin boards, personal pagers: all of these
are available from suppliers who willingly allow their use in online courses.
What has not yet happened - but which will, in the future - is that these
resources will be added to online courses in a formal manner. By that,
I mean they will satisfy educational object
protocols.
Educational Object Protocols are the rules which govern how educational
objects will interact with each other. The development of these protocols is
already under way, led by the Educom/NLII IMS (Instructional Management System).
Of interest for course and module developers are two major components.
First, all educational resources will be accompanied by metadata.
Metadata is data about the data. For example, an article about Saturn
would contain data about Saturn - it has rings, it is a gas giant, and
so on. Metadata would be data about the article - it was written by Fred
Jones, it is located at saturn.com, and so on.
Second, educational resources will be written in XML
(eXtensible Markup Language). XML is similar to HTML, but while
HTML concerns itself mostly with how a document is formatted and displayed,
XML is used to indicate the role of document components. Thus, authors,
for example, will use XML to identify questions, asides, definitions,
or any of a variety of other structural definitions.
Metadata and XML will be enormously useful for intelligent
search agents, and these agents will be used increasingly for
a variety of purposes: assembling specialized data, compensating authors,
monitoring student progress - in short, anything which requires a structured
retrieval of data from a variety of online sources.
Of concern to educational software developers will be the standard set
of function or object protocols. These
will determine what information an educational object requires in order
to be invoked by a remote system, and what information that object will
return to the remote system. Consider, for example, how a user logs into
the educational system. A student login would be handled by a login object,
which expects as input (from the student) a user name and password, and
returns (to the system and to the student) a user object. The user object,
in turn, based on student or system input, interacts with other system
objects to produce on screen displays, update student records, send messages,
and a variety of other educational tasks.
The way in which these objects communicate with each other will be standardized.
This means that online learning systems of the future will be composed of separate,
interchangeable objects, each dedicated to a specific task. And what will happen in
practise is that various software vendors will market programs consisting essentially
of sets of these objects. Thus, for example, Web Crossing will market an online
conferencing system which interacts with the remainder of an online course
in a predetermined and structured manner.
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