Institute for Educational Transformation

        The students in this study are the 1998 graduating class from the Master’s in New Professional Studies for teachers located within the Institute for Educational Transformation (IET), renamed Initiatives in Educational Transformation in 1998.  IET was started in 1990 as a part of George Mason University’s Graduate School of Education.

        For the faculty and staff of IET, transformation introduces changes into the system.  It is about new systems new products, new experiences, new approaches and new roles.  Transformation is not about reform; it is about seeing the world and its possibilities differently.  This orientation toward transformation led IET to an articulation of its task.

IET’s central task is to find ways in a local context to break up 19th century gridlock within which public education is trapped and

• To re-examine every structural and substantive assumption about educational provision,
• To create fluid and responsive structures adapted to fast-changing educational needs,
• To foster a partnership with a creative dynamic across schools and universities with community and business participation,
• To redefine who teaches and who learns, how and when, and
• To use state of the art technology as the engine for developing new learning environments.  (1990, IET Proposal)

        The Master’s degree is a new program dedicated to a base in moral, rather than empirical thought.  It focuses on professionalism and inquiry.  It emphasizes philosophy over psychology, partnership with schools over individual expertise, and moral thought as a process for thinking about teaching.  The program has among its courses six that are required in moral professionalism, epistemology, culture and language, technology qualitative research methods and a workplace based research project.

        The program is based on seven features:

1. Individual teachers are not recruited.  The program selects teams from schools.  This method builds support and collaboration within the school breaking down the isolation that teachers often feel within the school.
2. Half of the formal structure of the degree is committed to school-based work.  Teachers are recognized for their expertise as professionals.  University faculty serve as coaches assisting the teachers in the research of their teaching. Faculty meet with students in the schools as well as maintain interaction over email.  Teachers report that their role as teacher-researcher changes their approach to pedagogy.  The teachers become reflective learners.
3. The semester-credit-hour structure was abandoned in terms of the character of the student’s learning experience.  While there are 10 courses and 30 credits to the Master’s program, this does not reflect the schedule.  The program uses “short-fat” and “long-thin” courses that are offered over a two year period of time.  Students meet four days a semester and two weeks for three summers in a summer institute.   Everyone in a class or group starts and ends at the same time.
4. A teaching partnership is created between academic faculty and the teachers.  One faculty position is used to hire an exemplary practitioner with a teaching and research background for four years.  The summer institutes have a teaching team of four practitioners and two or more academics.
5. The program has a focus on new pedagogy.  For example, one developed and used frequently with the early groups, dubbed the “Pasca pedagogy,” divides a day into four blocks: presentation, analysis, strolling critique, and collaborative argument.  In the presentation, the instructor describes information to a cohort (25 students) or to a plenary of all cohorts.  The students take notes, listen, reflect and raise questions.  The group then breaks into five cohorts (with six or seven teams integrated by school division and grade-level work) to explore the content of the presentation.  Students connect ideas from the presentation to their own personal and professional experiences.  They clarify content, understanding, and elaborate, expand and extend the content.  Additional questions are also identified.  After lunch, the “strolling critique” occurs in school teams.  It offers students the opportunity to walk around and talk together to further explore concepts, ideas and questions, express opinions and feelings, discover dilemmas and problems, identify additional questions, and write in journals.  Collaborative argument occurs in either the cohort or plenary session to probe aspects of the day’s work.   It is based on Richard McKeon’s ideas on “the architecture of learning” applied to a puralist framework.  Students explore perspectives, evaluate concepts and ideas, suggest changes and build theory, develop a dialogic framework to probe issues from the day's work and describe emerging plans of action.
6. The faculty are searching for a new assessment that offers an alternative to traditional grading.  The assessment is based on “targets of quality” that is described in a matrix of five areas and three levels of understanding.  Teachers are invited to assess their own work based on this matrix.  The basic motivation is for continuous improvement based on ideas promoted in the Total Quality movement.
7. Technology has become an ever-present aspect in our private and professional lives.  The near ubiquitous Internet, offers new options for information, research and connection.  For the Master’s Program it provides teachers with a way to connect with one another across space and time eroding some of the isolation and barriers of the K-12 teacher.  Preparing teachers to use technology empowers them to teach and create in new ways.  The WCC provided a way to connect teachers who were geographically distant.  It gave them a space to continue class discussions and explore ideas outside the traditional classroom.

Web-based Computer Conferencing

We gather
       in electronic spaces
       trading words
       formed from bits and bytes
       available
       for all to see.
We pass from space to another
                       hoping to find a place
                       that has meaning
                       where I know you
                                  and you know me…
                       a safe place
            to learn together.

        Web-based computer conferencing (WCC) is the type of software that the students in this study use for an on-line learning environment.  The specific WCC software is Caucus.  The software is installed on a Metanet server.  Metanet is a company located in Fairfax, Virginia.  Among the many services offered by Metanet, they provide internet access and hosting of the Caucus learning environment for a fee to each user.  Students pay a monthly fee to Metanet that allows them access to the Institute for Educational Transformation WCC spaces.

Historical Evolution of WCC

        On-line collaborative learning environments did not begin with the web-based software.  WCC is an evolutionary step in the progression of computer mediated conferencing (CMC). The first CMC system was designed and implemented by Murray Turoff in 1970 (Hiltz & Turoff, 1978).  This CMC system involved twenty people across the United States over a period of thirteen weeks.  It was structured as a Delphi discussion process using an iterative series of questionnaires and feedback facilitated exploration of a complex topic  (Linstone & Turoff, 1975).  This was the beginning of EMISARI (Emergency Management Information and Reference Index) which evolved into the first CMC system that included personal messaging, discussion conferences, and a synchronous messaging component.  Several CMC systems were subsequently developed until today there are over 250 available.

        CMC course application did not occur until the early 1980s when packet-switched networks made the cost of accessing these systems more affordable for educators and students (Feenberg, 1993).  CMC was first used in educational settings for noncredit mini-courses, executive training programs, and classroom-based college courses (Harasim et al., 1995).  Educational applications of CMC were adopted and continue to operate across a continuum that ranges from a supplement to a traditional classroom course to a primary portion of a course to the environment for an entire course.

    In the past five years, the use of the Internet, particularly the graphical interface of the Web, has reached a critical mass.  The low cost of access has encouraged thousands of individuals to connect their personal computers to the Internet.   The Web provides a flexible graphical interface that is cross-platform in structure.  Educators, who were not interested in CMC because of its textual limitations and access issues, became excited about its application when CMC software developers began to design their systems using web-based technology (WCC).   Caucus, the system used by the students in this study, is just one among many WCC systems (e.g., First Class, WebCT, Course Info, Virtual-U, etc.) that now offer a web-based learning environments.

IET and WCC

        The WCC spaces in IET are available through a main page (see Figure 1 below) which link to site and group spaces.

Figure 1 GMU/IET Main WCC Page

        The students in my study are part of the Prince William Institute Class of 1998.  The Plenary (see Figure 2 below) and Café Conferences offer conference discussions for the entire class.  The Cohort Conferences are established for the specific cohorts in the class, but anyone with access to this main page can enter any space linked to this page.  The Other Conferences are support conference spaces.  Administration contains the faculty conference spaces.  Frequently Asked Questions is a conference space created to minimize answering the same questions about logistics or technical issues.  KRAP is a conference where students can complain about the technology.  Finally, the Archives offers access to conferences that are completed, but archived for students or faculty to view.

Figure 2 IET Prince William Institute 1998 Plenary Conferences

        The Plenary Home Page offers links to all of the group discussion spaces.  The students can see at a glance the discussion topics, the instructor (Author) who created the discussion or conference and the number of messages that are posted to each conference.  In this Plenary area seven conferences are in this example offered.  The numbers next to the title indicate when the conference was created in relation to other conferences in the IET space.  For example, the conference on “The influence of epistemology on our lives” is the 36th conference to be created in the IET space.  There are 164 messages posted to this conference. Students click on the linked title of the conference and are taken to either an index of messages for that conference or all of the messages on one continuous page (students can choose how they want to view the messages).

Figure 3 Message Posted in Conference 8 (Item 8) in PWI98 Archive

        Once a conference discussion space has been entered (see Figure 3 above), students can choose to see all of the messages, go to the previous message, the first message of the conference, the last message, or the next message.  Students are given the option to edit any personal messages that have been posted to the conference.  They can not edit messages posted by other students in the conference space.   They can choose to respond to this message (see Figure 4 below) or any other message posted by students in this conference space.

Figure 4  Response Box

        The response box allows students to respond to a specific conference space or a specific message within that conference.  Students either type or cut and paste their message in the box or they can choose to upload a file into the space.  They can choose to post and view the message they have posted (Post + View) or they can return to the Archive Home page (Post + Go).  If students want to redo their message they can clear the box.  Students can choose to see who has seen the item they have posted by clicking on the link in the bottom right hand corner.  The response a student makes to a conference space is available to anyone who can enter the IET space (see Figure 1) asynchronously, i.e., at any time from any location where the person has web access.  The student can choose to edit or delete their message within the conference at any time.

        The WCC provides a shell or a space for students to interact.  How can it become a place for students to gather together?  How does the interface influence body, time, space/place and the relations between students?   Does this space encourage interaction or does it increase feelings of isolation between students?  How does the faculty role shape the experience of students within WCC?  Does pedagogy need to be reshaped in an on-line learning environment?

IET Faculty and Web-based Computer Conferencing

            IET is committed to the importance of teachers’ autonomy and moral agency.  Working toward that end, the Master’s program is wrapped around a moral professionalism frame.  The moral approach includes experimentation, reflection, making mistakes and starting over again.  It is an iterative approach where there is no “right way” to do something.  The approach is opposed to the technical approach that dominates education today.  Moral professionalism provides a frame for student treatment as well as collegial treatment and treatment of those outside the schools in the community.  The third aspect of the moral approach is related to a focus on inquiry where education is open to continuous dialog and debate.

        A continuous struggle exists to answer philosophical questions that have no obvious solution.
This frame requires the faculty to not only teach topics that reinforce moral professionalism, but also model what it means to be a moral professional within the Masters program.  This task can be daunting given the teachers and faculty have been educated and continue to practice within a system based on technical assumptions about education.  While the ideals of moral professionalism are admirable, it is difficult to support a philosophical rather than a psychological model for reform and empowerment within a system dominated by a technical frame.  It appears that innovative programs which empower faculty and teachers to reform the system from within are often doomed to be re-structured into the system they are attempting to reform.  Questions began to pummel the faculty and administrators who were part of the IET innovations.  How does one work within a structure to reform it without being part of the structure?  Is it possible to escape from or move beyond technical language within education?  If tenure and pay increases are based on a technical and individualistic model of evaluation, then how can collaborative team efforts be evaluated and recognized on their own merit?  How does one gain recognition or promotion?  How do the students evaluate a faculty member in a team when the university system only provides for evaluation of the individual?  How can faculty apply a moral professional approach in the university power structure, particularly when the faculty, in the case of IET, are all junior grade?  Can such an innovation survive and under what conditions?  Does the community want to reform education and to what end?  Perhaps this vision of reform lies only in the hopes and dreams of a few and remains remote from the realities of educational life?

        IET faculty taught in teams of four to seven faculty.  The faculty work collaboratively to design and implement the curriculum for a group of students over the two-year Master’s program.  Four classes are required within a ten-course frame: ethics, epistemology, qualitative research and a workplace project.  Each faculty member is an advisor for a cohort of 20-25 students within the overall group.  Advising includes not only academic tasks of teaching, evaluating student work, answering questions regarding the program, and shepherding students through the program, but also meeting regularly with students in their schools.

        It is within this structure that the use of WCC is embedded.  WCC is part of a schedule of face-to-face meetings.  Since the schedule is innovative and designed to fit teachers’ schedules, WCC offers a way to keep students connected with each other and the materials when they are not in class.   Several conference or discussion spaces were created by the faculty to support course topics.  Of these spaces, only two were mentioned repeatedly by students: a conference on pop-culture and a conference on epistemology.  Students were encouraged to create discussion spaces, but only a few created the spaces.  Only one, a conference on favorite books, was mentioned in my conversations with students.

        The WCC discussion on pop-culture was created to support an open-ended discussion on pop-culture.  Students did not have a specific assignment, but could pose questions and reflect on the topics that were discussed in both plenary and group sessions in class.  Faculty presence was minimal to give students the opportunity to create this discussion space in a manner that supported student learning.  While the faculty encouraged students to participate, they were not evaluated on their discussion contributions.  Most of the students liked this approach, but others wanted a more “academic” structure and direct faculty guidance throughout the discussion.

        The epistemology conference was more structured in its design.  Students were presented with four questions from which they were required to choose one.  The questions were based on class reading assignments and materials presented in class sessions.  Each question was placed in its own discussion space.  The students were required to make four-250 word posts in response to the question they chose.  The faculty member actively guided students.  He would comment when students went in the wrong direction, suggest resources for them to read, and tie together the comments of several students.  The students who wanted a more “academic” environment were elated.  Most of the students were intimidated by the topic, felt exposed and vulnerable in their responses, and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information they were required to read and absorb.

        Both of these approaches were experiments that supported particular teaching styles.  In the spirit of IET where there is no “right way” within education, how does one shape an on-line environment to support the learning process for students?   Upon reflection, how can the faculty approach WCC after these two assignments?  How would you approach them?