Taylor and fifth generation distance education

Ross Woods, 2018

In 2001, James Taylor published a case study of the vision for on-line learning of the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). He called it "Fifth generation distance education" and contrasted it with previous kinds. He claimed that an e-university has the potential to improve both economies of scale and the "pedagogical quality and responsiveness of service to students" (p.8). Most ideas were visionary and are still valid.

One of the most admirable qualities of the USQ approach was that it was strategically planned, systematically integrated, and institutionally comprehensive. Taylor contrasts this to most online education, which he characterized as random acts of innovation initiated by risk-taking individual academics (p. 7).

The driving question seems to have been, "If a university needs to do it, how do you put in online and make it scale up?" USQ proposed an integrated set of online services that included:

• enrollment,
• administration,
• commerce (billing and payment),
• repositories of information,
• publishing (which is an application of information repositories),
• teaching and learning, and
• student relationship management, also known as e-care or e-service (pp. 4, 6).

USQ also proposed a range of online delivery technologies: interactive multimedia, access to resources, communication, automated response systems, and a user-friendly personalized portal access to institutional processes and resources. (He specifies that it is a campus portal, because campus students also access services in the same way.)

He described automated response systems as the process of storing students’ questions and comments in a relational database where they can be mined by keyword (pp. 5, 6). That is, USQ recycles them to achieve a cumulative long-term benefit.

All these technologies were developed to have the following characteristics:

• They were flexibile for time, place, and pace of learning. (This seems to mean, "study any time, anywhere, and at your own pace.")
• All materials were highly refined.
• Delivery was interactive.
• USQ’s variable costs approached zero, that is, USQ incurred minimal extra costs when it added more students.

Implementation of some of USQ's ideas are now commonplace. The idea of online billing and payment is common, and the practice also automates some accounting processes. Modern LMSs have functionalities for online interaction, and online repositories of publications are easy to find. Most modern western universities run an administration portal, and many administration processes use policy-based software.

In contrast, the notion that university administrative costs could approach zero is still quite realistic but has yet to be implemented. It means that all student administration processes could be automated, with the possible exception of complaints.

A few USQ ideas now appear to be unworkable or overly optimistic. First, when pace of learning is "study at your own pace," most students need a cohort of peers with whom they can interact. Second, students normally want some face-to-face interaction with instructors. Third, I would separate online assessment from teaching because they are distinctly different. Fourth, the idea of variable costs approaching zero is the basis of modern MOOCs. However, it is still doubtful whether it works for academic coursework units, where at least some instructor supervision is still necessary. It does not work so well for students writing theses and dissertations. While institutions can reduce costs per student, individual personal attention is unavoidable and variable costs cannot approach zero.

Since then, automated response systems have had a mixed history. Google offers a list of the most common questions to any topic entered into the input box. The stackoverflow.com/ website allows users to add new questions. The website lists each question and invites users to give answers. Users can then rate questions on their helpfulness, so that the best answers appear at the top of the list. However, in online education sites where students are expected to help each other, the tone can become negative unless someone is responsible to moderate comments.

The role of responsiveness to individual students is a double-edged sword. Software-based approaches can be as flexible as the software permits, but no more. The analysis of big data permits individualized pathways and early identification of risk of failure or dropout. On the other hand, students online have little or no personal contact with staff, and automated administration has no allowance for some kinds of individual circumstances. Put another way, it can be highly individualized, but not easily personalized.

 

Reference

James C. Taylor. "Fifth Generation Distance Education." Higher Education Series. Report No. 40, (June 2001).