Managing an Online Continuing Professional Education Program

By Terrence R. Redding, Cynthia Blodgett-McDeavitt, Valerie Dunn, Eileen Robinson, and Jack Rotzien.

Education and training content delivered over the Internet are becoming more common. This paper will focus on the core topic of managing an online learning continuing education program. It will include the subtopics of:

• Why do I have to worry about online learning?

• Screening online learners – or does one size fit all?

• Orienting online learners – tell them what to expect.

• Removing barriers to online learning – technical support.

• Where is the trainer in online learning – subject matter expert support.

• Validating training – from the online learner’s perspective.

This paper will expose you to but one perspective on managing online continuing education programs. Elsewhere I have discussed developing online courses and comparing the educational outcomes associated with online courses. One common thread for each of these presentations is my commitment to the notion that all adult students are self-directed learners to one degree or other.

My particular perspective is focused on creating and delivering highly effective skill and process oriented educational content to adults who are continuing their education. It is based on 20 years of experience as a military trainer for the US Army, and its training centers and commands, my educational background as an educational psychologist and instructional designer, and most recently my experience as the founder of an online training institution. The online institution provides courses designed to prepare individuals to pass state insurance agent licensing exams, basic adult education courses leading to a GED, continuing professional education courses, and over 300 online computer courses designed to teach applications and network administration. I am also committed to the notion that online learning transcends borders and can be delivered via the Internet from anywhere to anywhere on the planet. Thus, while our continuing education courses and insurance licensing courses are delivered primarily in the USA, our basic adult education courses and computer courses are delivered to educational markets world wide.

Why do I have to worry about online learning?

The knowledge explosion is real. The need to learn new things and to stay current in a particular discipline is essential. The pace at which new knowledge is being created is literally mind-numbing. Consider the following chart (insert figure 1).

Figure 1

Figure 1. This graphic depicts the increase in man’s knowledge across the Agricultural Age, 10,000 years in length, the Industrial Age, 400 years in length, and the beginning of the Information Age. Adapted with permission, OLT, 2002.

The chart illustrates the rapid increase in the amount of knowledge possessed by mankind. Only 5% of the world’s knowledge was acquired in the first 10,000 years. A gradual slow pace. During the 400 years of the Industrial Age only another 25% of the world’s knowledge was acquired. However, in just the last 50 years, 70% of the world’s knowledge was acquired, and the pace at which new knowledge is being produced is increasing – with no slowdown in sight.

The increase in knowledge requires that its distribution and assimilation be handled as efficiently as possible. The Internet was designed to serve several purposes, one of which was to be a method for storing in a distributed manner the knowledge of mankind. Converting a system designed for distributive storage to an information distribution system was not an obvious step. Originally access to the Internet was limited to government, military, and educational research institutions. The cost of access was thought to be too prohibitive to permit universal access to ever occur. The commercialization of the Internet in the late 80’s and early 90s changed that, permitting both commercial companies and private citizen’s full access and use of the Internet. Now only about 30 years old, the Internet has transformed the distribution of data and communications. Having an e-mail address today is as important as having a postal address.

Screening online learners – or does one size fit all?

Various strategies are employed to match learners with content, and style of learning with method of delivery. This section addresses the obligation of the online learning provider to screen all potential students and insure that the content to be presented online is appropriately structured for most learners. Managing online learners begins with the realization that one size does not fit all.

A key component of a successful online learning operation is the screening of potential students. This is a people intensive activity. Initial screening is best done over the phone, by a training representative, who understands the training products to be

delivered, and who those products have been designed to serve. The following subtopics will be discussed in this section.

• Course description

• Course prerequisites

• Costs

• Completion policy

• Student support

• Student records

The reality is most of the screening occurs through a series of e-mail exchanges. The e-mail exchange is normally initiated by a potential student after viewing a course description online. The screening process may occur over the phone. In both cases the format is virtually the same. Enough information must be exchanged to ensure the student is enrolling in the right course to satisfy his or her continuing education needs.

The course description is important and should contain enough information to tell the student what is included in the training, who the training is structured for, list any prerequisites that must be met by students wishing to enroll, and list the course’s cost. Often students are unfamiliar with the terminology associated with a particular subject to be taught and thus may not understand what is being offered, and what prerequisites if any are required.

Content being taught in a given subject area is often organized as introductory, intermediate, or advanced. Some courses may attempt to expose a student to all three levels of material, while other curriculums may separate the content into three courses, with each course designed for students of varying background. For example, the introductory material may be suitable for all new hires in a particular profession. The intermediate material may be suitable for those who are assuming middle management roles. And, finally, the advanced material may be designed primarily for students in upper management who will engage in decision making and planning which will provide direction to the organization.

Identifying and articulating course prerequisites during the screening process is increasingly important when offering intermediate and advanced courses. The training manager is interested in placing students in the correct course level for at least three reasons. First, certain courses can only be taken by qualified people in the proper sequence. Second, students should often be grouped by years of experience, level of existing expertise, or skill level in order to engage some types of content. Third, some topics are so complex that members of the class must be of similar backgrounds in order to effectively interact with the content and each other.

The process of screening must include a method for evaluating costs. Most often cost are thought of in terms of a dollar value. But online learning costs should also consider length of time, when time must be scheduled, level of effort, and other resources that must be committed to the learning process. Cost as a dollar amount is decreasing as a value consideration. Time is increasingly the resource most limited in supply. Thus, when screening a potential student the advisor must be able to describe how effective or efficient the online learning experience is going to be.

A completion policy ensures students exit the course at the appropriate point in time. If a completion policy has not been established it is possible a student will remain in a course for an extended period of time trying to score 100% on the final comprehensive exam, when a score of 80% would have completely satisfied the course requirements.

Student support has to be tailored to meet the needs of the individual student. One size does not fit all. New students may require a substantial amount of help initially to access the course. Returning students may not even require a course orientation if courses offered have been standardized sufficiently. Student support will be covered elsewhere more thoroughly.

New tools allow student records to be automatically maintained by the online course software. This makes it possible to a continuing professional education student to review his or her mandatory education requirements, see which courses have been completed, and determine which courses are available which will satisfy additional continuing professional education requirements.

Orienting online learners – tell them what to expect.

Online learning is still new. Most people have never taken an online learning course over the Internet. And, even if they have, the variation in delivery methods, instructional designs and technologies employed mean that each student may still not know what to expect.

At the beginning of an online learning experience it is important to tell the students what to expect. Provide a comprehensive outline of the knowledge they will encounter and the methods that will be used to explore and gain mastery over that knowledge. Provide the students with a clear understanding of what they are expected to do, and what to expect as a response from the instructional system.

Setting the expectations of the student is one of the primary ways the instructor,

or instructional design team, manages the learning environment. Six areas should be covered with every student as you set their expectations.

• Time

• Place

• Content

• Method of instruction

• Technology

• Support

Time – is the course self-paced (asynchronous) or does it meet on a schedule at a pre-set time (synchronous)? As indicated above, time considerations may be the key factor used by a student to determine if and when they will enroll in an online learning course. If enrollment is mandatory, it may also be the key factor for determining if a student is satisfied or dissatisfied with the online learning experience. Specifying the specific time to be engaged in a course may be acceptable if the content and instructional design selected for the subject are best handled in an asynchronous format. However, increasingly, students prefer to have control over when they study and for how long they study.

Place – where must the student be to participate in the course. Can they access the course from anywhere they have access to the Internet? Or, are they required to be at work, or at home when they access the course? Are they required to access the course from a specified computer lab or training facility? Each of these questions should be clearly answered for the student to ensure that their expectations are fully satisfied by the course. Restricting access to a course, by requiring the student to be in their individual cubical, a training center, learning center, or specific computer lab may be frustrating for an adult student who feels completely competent to engage in the course content from a location they have selected. However, specifying the place of instruction may be appropriate if the telephone is to be used during the course for conferencing or other resources specific to a particular place are needed to facilitate the instruction.

Content – is always an important element, which must be fully explained to the student. Explaining what is to be learned, to what degree it will be learned, and who should learn it allows the students to confirm in their own mind that they are engaged in the correct course.

Method of instruction – is a key element of information for both the student and the instructional design team. Preparing online learning courses is a time consuming process. The level of deliberation and thought given to presenting information online should be intensive. The method of instruction should have “apparent logic.” That is to say, it should appear logical to the student in order to foster confidence in the students that they will effectively and efficiently learn the content being taught. Some methods of instruction are closed, permitting no interaction between the student and the instructor. These are typically self-paced courses, delivered via the Internet, are limited in scope and complexity, but can be highly effective. Other instructional designs can be intensely interactive, engaging the student and the instructor at increasing levels of complexity (Bensusan, 2002) on a wide variety of subjects asynchronously over an extended period of time.

Technology – as a term is increasingly used to identify hardware, software, and networks. Its broader meaning includes all aspects (techniques) of an endeavor. I am using it here under the narrower definition. Online learners want to know whether their particular computer meets the technical specifications to be used in an online course. Normally specified in terms of minimum requirements, online learners need to know if their processor is fast enough, whether their operating system (OS) is supported, whether they have enough memory (Random Access Memory – RAM), if multimedia is required (sound, full or limited motion video), and whether their connectivity (bandwidth to the Internet) is sufficiently high to accommodate the instructional strategy and technology. A good rule of thumb when designing an online learning course is to intentionally use the least amount of technology required to deliver the optimum amount of appropriate content to the largest possible number of potential students.

Support – is too often not considered in preparing students for online learning. Online courses have the reputation of being sterile and delivered in isolation with no interaction between the student and another living soul. While most courses may be designed to be done as a self-paced course, with no student/instructor interaction, support will continue to be important. Support is most important at the beginning of a course when students are first trying to gain access. The online learning provider should always provide a help-desk and student support both through the use of e-mail and the telephone. Initially, many students need to call a live person on the phone for help. But eventually, they discover that e-mail allows them to ask the question when most convenient for the student, and that it also permits a deliberate written response that the student can then file and refer back to as needed. Often an online learning provider may respond to an e-mail message with a phone call – if that appears to be what is needed to meet the students’ expectations and aid them in making progress in the course. New students always require more support than returning students. Often, knowing there is someone available to help is all that is needed. It permits the student to engage in the course and begin making progress through the content.

Removing barriers to online learning – technical support.

This section expands to some degree on the information just covered above. In the previous section we were discussing setting student expectations as part of the way the learning environment is controlled in order to foster learning. Online learning is a new experience for most students. For those new to online learning just the anxiety associated with turning on their computer, connecting it to the Internet, and getting online may be enough of a barrier that they avoid engaging in online learning. Establishing a help desk and providing both e-mail based and telephone based support can aide in removing these major barriers to online learning.

Technical support and student screening can be performed by the same element of your organization or treated as completely separate functions. OLT has found it helpful to combine the two functions. This approach increases the consistency of interaction between the online training group and the student. However you choose to structure your organization to manage online learning, you should understand that the preparation does not end with their enrollment. Continuing support is required for some students.

The following items are the seven most common kinds of support questions asked for by students engaged in online learning.

• How do I find the starting point for the course?

• How do I enter the user name and password to access the course?

• How do I can I get back to where I was in the course?

• How do I save my work?

• How can I resume work?

• How do I submit work?

• How do you know where I am in the course?

As an online course provider, I see all of these questions as barriers to learning. If the student is concerned with these questions they are most likely not engaged in the educational content. Thus it is important to remove these learning barriers.

Most online training sites use what is known as a frequently asked questions (FAQ) list. Creating such a list and indexing it so that it is easy to use can reduce the number of questions normally fielded by your student help desk. Of course, it wont be able to answer all of them, and the number of questions you include in the FAQ list will increase over time. However, be cautioned, if you put too many question in the FAQ list you will eventually reach a point of diminishing return.

An effective way to use the FAQ list is to provide the student with the universal resource locator (URL – address) to the specific answer to the students question in an e-mail telephone response. Over the phone, the student should be guided to the answer. In e-mail, the student should be able to “click” on the link (select) and automatically have the browser go to the FAQ list on the web. This serves two purposes. First it provides the answer to the student’s question. And second, it shows the student where to go to find answers to other questions as they arise.

Where is the trainer in online learning – subject matter expert support.

Online learning, when done synchronously, always associates teachers with students. But the move is away from synchronous online learning courses towards asynchronous courses that permit the student to control when and from where they engage in learning. The asynchronous format does not necessarily have to isolate the learner from the subject matter expert. Three instructional design models for online learning asynchronously have emerged. The first is one-on-one. The second is group one-on-one. The third is isolated learning with access to the instructor. Each of these three instructional models will be discussed in terms of how you manage the online learning experience.

Students new to online learning may believe they need an instructor to teach them the material. It is the instructional model they are most likely familiar with. It is the one most often used in public and parochial schools. Individuals with a home schooling background may, however, be very familiar with some aspects of online learning, and have little need for the instructor, if the content is presented in a logical way.

The first model listed above, one-on-one, may be used with self-paced online content that is presented in a modular fashion. The student is introduced to the online learning instructor who explains the various aspects of the course and describes how the student and instructor will interact. The course is designed as a self-paced course, with quizzes and tests automatically graded, with the grades reported to the both the student and the instructor. The instructor monitors the student’s progress through the course and consistently encourages the student to do his or her best. Some aspects of the course may require course work to be submitted to the instructor for subjective grading. This model is suitable for basic course work with students who may require more assistance. At OnLine Training (OLT) it is used in our basic adult education series to teach reading, writing, math, science, art, literature, and social studies. Under this model one instructor can monitor the progress of up to 200 students a month who are moving through the same type of course. Interaction is consistent and occurs on a daily basis between actively engaged students and the instructor.

The second model, group one-on-one, is used with intermediate and advanced students who, once started in a course require little or no contact with the instructor. In this model the course content is presented in a modular self-paced fashion with most of the course interaction and feedback provided only to the student. The instructor can monitor end-of-paper and end-of-course exams and is readily available through e-mail and a scheduled online chat room should a student have a question that requires a response from the subject matter expert. This model allows one instructor, working full time, to monitor up to a 1,000 students a month as they progress through the various courses.

The third model, isolated learner with access to the instructor, is used only for cram courses and test preparation courses. In these courses the student wishes to interact only with the online content by practicing exams and going through test practice material. The subject matter expert is available but seldom receives e-mail from or has contact with a student. Thus, there is no real limit to the number of students capable of engaging in isolated learning asynchronous instruction.

Because online learning is done over a network contact between the subject matter experts and the students provides an opportunity to quickly receive feedback from students and improve course content based on student comments. Over time the course improves to the point where further improvements are less frequent. Else where I have labeled and described this instructional design methodology as Iterative.

Validating training – from the online learners perspective.

Adult students typically decide what they wish to learn and to what degree they wish to learn. They decide when and where they will learn. In other words the adult student allocates his or her own learning resources. One important aspect of assuming responsibility for one’s own learning is valuing the knowledge – or – deciding when you have learned enough.

In a traditional learning model, the instructor or the institutions sets the standards. In an online learning environment, often the student will want to decide not only what to learn, when to learn, and where to learn, but also to what degree they need to learn. It is up to the online learning institution to satisfy this information need. Well designed courses should include a method for assessing the level of learning that occurs. One way to do this is to provide a pre-test and a post-test. OLT does this for our basic adult education students under the one-on-one model described above. This permits the student and the instructor to evaluate the state of a student’s knowledge within a particular domain of knowledge at the beginning of a course of instruction. With this information the instructor can advise the student as to how to approach the course, and what to expect in terms of setting expectations for completing the course. By using a post-test, the instructor and the student can likewise determine whether, at the end of the course, the student has learned enough material to be able to pass a particular external exam such as the GED examination.

In other courses, such as OLT’s insurance licensing course, a method is provided for generating practice exams that closely resemble the kind of exam the state licensing agency will require the student to pass before issuing a state insurance license. Of course it is essential that there be a high correlation on the exams administered by OLT at the end of a course and the “official” exam administered by an outside agency. Indeed, if an error is to be made, it is better to make the end-of-course exam administered online harder than the actual exam to reduce the possibility of failure on the actual exam.

In any case, whether the online learning course provides a method for validating the educational content delivered during the course, or not, the student will evaluate the course. It is a good policy to provide a formal mechanism for acquiring such student feedback. Normally two evaluations should be requested. The first should evaluate institutional support, and the second should evaluate the online learning delivery.

Summary

In this paper I have sought to provide you with an online learning vendor’s perspective on managing online continuing professional education courses. I included a section that explored why you should be interested in online learning. Of importance is the notion that knowledge is increasing faster and faster. There is more knowledge today, than there was last year or ten years ago. In order to stay current in a chosen field we all must engage in effective and efficient learning activities.

In another section screening learners was addressed, as was the importance of orienting them on the content and the manner of instruction so that their expectations would be met. Of particular interest are ways an online learning institution can manage the learning environment, remove learning barriers, and provide students with appropriate levels and types of technical and instructional support.

Finally, I addressed validating instruction. In particular I stressed the importance of providing the online learning student with the tools and information they would require in order to properly value the online learning in which they have engaged.

Reference:

Bensusan, Guy (2002). Trochaic/Iambic Heptameter. USDLA Journal, United States Distance Learning Association. Vol 16, No 1, January 2002

OnLine Training (2002). Don’t forget to fly the plane! Keynote address by John Hibbs, and panel presentation. WebCT conference, Melbourne, Australia, March 2002