James Levin
Sandra R. Levin
Gregory Waddoups
College of Education
University of Illinois
1999, Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 32(2), 256-269.
We describe here the power that multiplicity has in learning and teaching. Multiplicity decreases efficiency in the short run, but encourages the development of powerful new learning and teaching environments in the longer term. If multiplicity is embedded in a systematic evaluation framework, then we can learn from comparisons of what worked and what did not. We will shown how six types of multiplicity (instructional media, instructional formats, student learning activities, assessment techniques, contexts for learning, and evaluation approaches) have been useful for an online Master of Education program we are developing and implementing. The comparisons of multiple ways of learning and teaching encourages the examination of the instructional goals and resources available, and suggests new ways to choose the technology, the activities, the format, the contexts, the evaluation and assessment tools that are most appropriate for these goals and resources. It allows us to determine both formatively and summatively the impact that these educational innovations have on learning and teaching.
New technologies make available new instructional media. Instead of being restricted to face-to-face classrooms and blackboards, we can use computer projection of multimedia, network-based interactions, and more interactive computer-based tools for learning and teaching. One response to a new instructional medium is to try to switch all teaching and learning to that new medium, too often just because it is available. We will describe in this paper a different approach to using new technologies in online education, one that consciously uses the multiplicity of options that these technologies provide as a tool for learning, for teaching, and for understanding the nature of the educational process. We will describe a new online master of education program focusing on Curriculum, Technology, and Education Reform (CTER OnLine), first implemented in the summer of 1998. We will present data from the first three courses that have been taught in this eight course sequence. We will then build upon that to describe a framework for using multiplicity as a force for developing innovative online education.
Too often people use new technologies to build a uniform approach to teaching and learning, based on the perceived advantages of consistency. However, psychological studies of the nature of expertise lead us to be wary of uniformity. Novices typically have a uniform and consistent representation of a domain. Experts, on the other hand, usually have multiple representations of their domain of expertise (Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981). Expert problem solving is usually characterized by the use of a sequence of representations, each of which takes the problem solving further along in the problem solving process (Larkin, McDermott, Simon, & Simon, 1980). Experts have a "representational toolkit", and they select the representational tools to fit the task at hand (Levin, Stuve, & Jacobson, 1999).
What are the implications of this relationship between multiplicity and expertise for online learning and teaching? The new interactive media have created many new possible ways to create powerful educational environments. One tendency when a new technology is developed is to adopt that technology to the exclusion of others. Instead we should add that new instructional medium to the "toolkit" of media that we have, and then choose to use that medium when it accomplishes goals that we have within the constraints of a given setting.
Given that we choose to use a particular new instructional medium, we should consider whether our current instructional format, assessment techniques, student activities, and contexts for learning should remain unchanged or should be modified. The most common tendency given a new instructional medium is to transfer over to it all these aspects of the instructional setting without considering whether any need to be changed. So for example in online teaching, the most common initial effort is the take the instructional format currently being used face-to-face (lecture, most often) and transfer it to the online medium. In some cases this will remain the most appropriate format, but in many other cases, the instructional goals and the new set of constraints will indicate other instructional formats as the most appropriate.
To make this more concrete, we will now describe an online Master degree program we have recently developed, and report data from our evaluation of this program.
The Curriculum, Technology, and Education Reform focus for an online master of education program (CTER OnLine) was created in 1998 at the College of Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Conventional professional development for practicing teachers includes releasing them from their classroom to attend a workshop, institute, or professional conference. The goal of CTER OnLine is to provide practicing teachers with the opportunity to develop professionally through obtaining a Masters of Education degree at home or at their local school through their personal computers and Internet connections. In this way, they can receive professional training without being taken out of their regular classroom or traveling long distances to classes in the evenings, on the weekends or during the summers.
Over the past several years, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) has revised the state's precollege (K-12) curriculum standards, placed a major focus on technology use in schools, and has been encouraging schools and districts to implement education reform. Teachers from around the State have increasingly requested additional courses and programs to keep up with the rapid change in curriculum standards, technology availability, and educational reform issues currently being addressed in their schools. In addition, the College of Education has received increasingly frequent requests from practicing teachers interested in a masters degree program to upgrade their knowledge and skills in these areas, but are unable to do so because their schedules prevent them from attending on-campus classes at the University.
Many universities around the country are beginning to offer courses over the Internet. In order to maintain and increase our student enrollment, the College of Education is interested in offering online courses to reach practicing teachers in Illinois and around the country who do not have the opportunity to attend on-campus courses to obtain a Master of Education degree.
We have used multiple methodologies to evaluate CTER OnLine, including online surveys, case studies, analysis of message traffic, and student evaluations of a course as an assignment of that course. The two main techniques that we will report on here are surveys and case studies. We have given a series of five surveys to the 26 CTER OnLine students. The first was given in early June 1998, before their first class; the second was given at the end of the first class at the end of June 1998; the third at the end of the second class at the end of July 1998; the fourth at the mid-point of the third class in October 1998; the fifth at the end of the third class in mid-December 1998. Each surveys had two parts, a "quantitative part" with a set of questions requiring a numeric response on a Lickert scale of 1 to 5, and a set of open-ended questions.
We are also conducting case studies of four of the 26 CTER students over their two years in the program. These students were selected to span the range of a number of dimensions along which the students varied. In these in-depth studies, one of the authors (GW) has conducted face-to-face or telephone interviews with the case study students, starting in August 1998 and continuing through January 1999.
Here we will report on our analyses of the survey and case study data. We will present the results broken out into different ways in which multiplicity played important roles in the online program and the online courses.
There have been important ways in which multiple contexts for learning have served important roles in CTER OnLine. The learning of CTER students takes place in multiple contexts, each of which has its own kind of impact on the students.
When one thinks of an online class, one might simply think of teaching and learning using electronic networks. This is clearly an important element of teaching and learning online. The "course" and "program" serve as important contexts for student learning. For online courses and programs, some elements of these contexts are similar to those of face-to-face courses and programs, but some are different. The role of space and time in the contexts are different, and this has a pervasive impact across many other elements of the contexts and of the learning that is contextualized. CTER students report that the asynchronous nature of the online course and program context allows them to participate even though they are leading busy work and family lives at the same time. Students report finding time and space "niches" into which they can fit their course and program work.
Another learning context that is relevant is the students' own work settings. Because CTER OnLine has a focus on helping teachers integrate technology in their own classrooms, the work settings of the CTER students (classrooms, schools, districts) have served as a unique learning context for CTER OnLine. Indeed, most of the CTER OnLine students have designed, implemented, and evaluated projects in which the implementation of technology into their work settings has played a central role. This process of turning the students' own everyday context beyond that of the online program into an important context for the online learning is a crucial element for the success of CTER OnLine.
An important context for learning in the two most recent courses in CTER OnLine has been simulated schools and students. In the third CTER course, which focused on the evaluation of information technologies, students served on evaluation teams investigating a simulated school that received a simulated technology grant from a simulated funding agency. Students reported that initially it was difficult to interpret this as a "real" context, but over the course of the semester, more and more of the students reported that this context became more meaningful for them.
From our case studies we have found that online learning cues up face to face interactions that would not otherwise exist. Many of the CTER students arrange for informal face-to-face, telephone, email or conference interactions with other students. One group meets weekly at a local Pizza Hut restaurant Ð they call themselves the "Pizza Hut Group." Other students pair up to create groups they call "study buddies." Each of these groupings create new contexts for learning, different from the ones described previously.
In CTER Online, we have been using multiple instructional media including the use of a variety of different synchronous and asynchronous technologies. The technologies we have used so far have included email, listservs, and web-archived listserves. We have used web pages, both those created by faculty and those created by students. Another important technology has been a commercial web-based conferencing system called WebBoard (O'Reilly Software, 1998) , which includes both a threaded asynchronous conferencing part and a synchronous text chat part. We have used audio and video streaming, using the RealPlayer plug-in (RealNetworks, 1997) to web browsers. We have developed and used a web-based database system called CTERbase, which allows for a much richer interaction between faculty and students in the submission, assessment and display of student work (Levin, Buell, Waugh, Garrett, & Malczewski, 1998). We have used a professional development environment called TAPPED IN, a user-modifiable multi-user virtual world developed and run by researchers at SRI International for teacher professional development (Schlager, Fusco, & Schank, 1998).
CTER students used several interfaces to databases that were developed for CTER OnLine. After each course, an instructor and course evaluation survey was given in an online format. The questions in this survey were based on the questions asked by the standard on-campus instructor and course evaluation survey, but CTER students responded using the web rather than with pencil and paper.
CTER students also responded to an "interactive paper" mechanism for a progress report of CTER OnLine. This "interactive paper" mechanism allows multiple individuals to collaborate on writing and reviewing a paper. The CTER students could read the interactive progress report on the web and comment on any paragraph or to the whole paper. Their commentary was then available to the following readers, who could respond to any paragraph, the whole paper, or any of the previously made comments.
CTER students also used more traditional distance technologies. In their third course, students had access to two different telephone based audio conferencing systems. In each system, a CTER student could call a specific phone number and be connected via an "audio bridge" to other students who had also called that number.
Bruce & Levin have developed a taxonomy of uses of the educational technologies that classifies different uses as media for communication, media for expression, media for inquiry, and media for construction (Bruce & Levin, 1997). The technologies used most by the CTER students can be classified according to these four uses. Because we are viewing the online classroom as a distributed context with multiple learning environments, it is also clear that within this learning system there are multiple technologies being utilized to support teaching and learning.
Survey responses indicated a very positive response to the multiple technologies used for communication. Students were asked to evaluate the communications technologies used after the second and third courses. Twenty-four students evaluated the use of technologies after the second course and 21 responded to this question after the third course. Students responded positively (with very satisfied or satisfied) about the use of these technologies after the second course: 79% in favor of WebBoard, 88% were positive about TAPPED IN, and 100% were satisfied with CTERbase and email reflectors. After the third course, students continued to use some of the same technologies as well as some new ones. After this course, students continued to respond positively (with very satisfied or satisfied) with the initial technologies and less positively about the new technologies introduced: 95% favored the asynchronous and 76% favored the synchronous components of WebBoard, 100% were satisfied with CTERbase, email reflectors and personal email, only 59% were positive about telephone conferencing and 48% were satisfied with audio streaming.
Communication between professor and students and between technical support and students was facilitated larger through synchronous office hours using WebBoard, the telephone and asynchronous email. Students maintained contact with each other via the class email reflector, postings on WebBoard, and telephone contact. In addition, students reported that they met with classmates in their homes or schools when possible. In all classes, there was a great deal of communication between the students and professor and among students.
Topic: STICKIES-completed (1 of 11), Read 70 times
Conf: 387 4c. Final project reports
From: <student's name and email address>
Date: Friday, July 24, 1998 01:54 PM
STICKIES- Students Trained In Creating Kid-centered Individual Electronic Showcases
I have completed my final project and am ready for all of you to view it. I appreciate any feedback or suggestions that you can give me.
Thanks in advance!!
<respondent's name>
I love the name of your project and I'm sure the kids will like it also. What an awesome project--first graders using Power Point would be quite an accomplishment. Your lessons are well thought out and organized. I hope you have great success with your project. I'd love to come by and see the finished product in November.
According to one faculty member, students liked the threaded conferences (as evidenced by the large number of postings and accesses). This format provided a place for students to give thoughtful suggestions to help classmates to improve their work. In addition, the chat mechanism of WebBoard provided a space for virtual office hours. The JavaScript Chat worked well up to about 23 simultaneous users. CTER OnLine has an initial cohort of 26 students. This meant that during the last week of the second class, when there were scheduled sessions for all the students to be on at the same time, the JavaScript Chat worked fine initially, but quickly "ground to a snail's pace when the last couple of students entered the chatroom". Our solution to this problem was to use an IRC chat mechanism that supports larger numbers of simultaneous users.
During the second week of the second course, the students were required to use TAPPED IN in two ways: 1) for professional collaboration among their own subgroups in the class, and 2) to draw upon some of the resources available in TAPPED IN. Students continued using TAPPED IN to meet informally to discuss course related matters. About 2/3's of them attended a session on "Encouraging Girls to Pursue Math and Science". The others attended other sessions organized by the TAPPED IN staff. Several of the CTER students had very positive feedback about educational resources (both human and web-based) available in the Math Forum room and in the ED's OASIS room.
During the last week of second course, TAPPED IN was used as a forum for some of the final project presentations. Students selected whether they wanted to present within TAPPED IN or within WebBoard. Seven decided to use TAPPED IN, and those presentations went very well
According to the report of a faculty member, CTER students started out somewhat dubious about TAPPED IN, because of the complexities of the system, but became much more positive about it as the class proceeded. Twenty one out of twenty three respondents were either very satisfied or satisfied with the use of TAPPED IN.
We have documented CTER students using technologies in their classrooms and more generally in their schools as they work with and share ideas with other teachers. Several of the CTER students were interested in the use of computers for expression, and integrated this into the class projects that they did in their own classrooms. Two CTER students were music teachers, and they developed projects that focused on the uses of technologies for musical expression. Other CTER students, especially those who were teaching an the elementary school level, emphasized the uses of computers by their students in their art work.
Many of the individual student class activities and individual projects involved web searching and "web weaving", the creation of web pages with annotated links to web-based resources that their K-12 students could use in their online research. For example, one group of CTER students created a web site on the Renaissance, to support their project of involving their middle school students in a thematic unit on the Renaissance.
CTER students accessed online readings as well as print readings. They also accessed "guest appearances", which were web-accessible stored dialogs that the students followed. Media for guest appearances included text only (web transcripts of guests), audio-only (recorded telephone dialogs with remote experts), audio-narrated PowerPoint presentations, and streamed video interviews with experts. We used RealPlayer to stream the audio and video files. The advantage of these asynchronous technologies is that students can access them at whatever time is more convenient for them. Given the busy schedules of these educational professional, these times are sometimes in the middle of the night or early in the morning.
Some of the CTER students created major class projects that used technologies for construction. They created libraries of components that other teachers or students could choose to build some new use of technology. For example, one CTER student created a library of Java applets and the supporting tutorials to help teachers select and use appropriate applets on their own instructional web pages. Others created collections of web resources that can be used by other teachers to construct instructional units.
The multiple instructional formats used in CTER OnLine include large and small group discussions, online office hours, simulations, reading text books and web sites, virtual classrooms, remote and face-to-face student presentations, asynchronous discussions via email and web-based conferences, and project progress and final reports. We also have had students who participate in an electronic field trip of a conferencing system designed for professional development of teachers.
In several of the CTER classes, students were clustered into small groups (3 to 4 per group) to conduct group projects. In some cases these groups were formed by the students, in other cases by the course instructors. Group discussions took place in both synchronous and asynchronous technologies. In most cases, the groups reported on their progress, mostly on-line but in one case in a face-to-face poster session.
In some of the CTER classes, students were clustered in fairly large group (10-12 per group) to conduct discussions of class readings. An asynchronous conference was created in WebBoard for each large group, and each group member entered their commentary on readings in his/her group conference and read and responded to the comments of the other members of the group. This provided the critical mass needed for in-depth interaction surrounding the readings being discussed without overwhelming the group members with message postings.
Two formats were used for online office hours. In the first two courses, the text "chat" mechanism of WebBoard was used. The course instructor, sometimes joined by a teaching assistant, entered the chat space at specified times for an hour and CTER students could choose to enter that chat. In the third course, the use of the text-based chat was augmented by the broadcast of the instructors responses via digitized audio (using the RealPlayer plug-in). As with face-to-face hours, students used these online office hours most often to clarify assignments. Sometimes the students used them to seek resources for their class projects.
In two of the CTER courses, simulations were used to support student learning. In one course, a web site was created for a simulated junior high school, and used by CTER students, who served as simulated evaluators of the technology uses in that school. In another CTER class, web pages from a simulated student were used to raise for the CTER students ethical and policy issues.
In several of the CTER courses, the students made presentations to the whole class, reporting on the outcomes of their major class projects. In one class, this was done online using synchronous technologies. In another class, this was done through asynchronous reports that the students created as web pages.
In one CTER class, students electronically gathered in TAPPED IN and were conducted by TAPPED IN staff in two groups on a "field trip" through some of the "rooms" in that virtual world. Since TAPPED IN was specifically constructed for teacher professional development, there were many resources there (both online information resources and experts in a variety of domains) of value to the CTER students.
All of the CTER courses have used online readings and textbooks. (Some have used conventional print textbooks and readings as well). More and more of the most relevant material is appearing on the web, often well in advance of its appearance in print.
What is remarkable about the multiple learning environments that CTER students participate in is that they are not based on traditional lectures. In fact, to this point, the only lectures that students have experienced are a few short guest lectures that were made available to supplement the course readings. In addition, in the face to face meetings there has been very little lecturing. In contrast, there has been large and small group discussions, presentation of projects, and workshops in which students have learned to use specific software packages through experimentation.
Students in CTER OnLine have participated in many learning activities that fall into two categories. First, they have learned to use certain technologies that make participation in the classroom possible. In other words, they learn to use the various kinds of technology necessary for participating in the online classroom. Second, teachers have learned to design and implement lesson plans that integrate technology into their classroom.
The students from CTER OnLine were given a pre-survey to assess their comfort level with the various technologies that they would use to participate in the online classroom. The responses to this survey indicate that many students began the program with very little experience using key applications. For example, 73% (19 of 26) of the students reported having no experience or were beginners in constructing web pages and reported no experience or were beginners in using synchronous discussion technologies. In this same survey, 81% (21 of 26) of the students reported having no experience or were beginners in downloading programs from the Internet.
Although students entered CTER OnLine with very little experience in many key technologies, they acquired competence fairly rapidly in the use of various technologies as demonstrated by their high level of participation in the online classroom and the development of extensive electronic portfolios (ePortfolios). For example, in the first class each student developed a web page and an ePortfolios, and utilized both synchronous and asynchronous communication technologies. In the second class students continued to develop web pages and utilized asynchronous and synchronous technologies including WebBoard and TAPPED IN and each developed a plan for integrating technology into their classrooms. We believe the students developed competence using technologies for a number of reasons. First, CTER OnLine provided excellent technical support. In the surveys conducted at the end of each course, all students reported being very satisfied with the technical support the program offered. This competent technical support was crucial to students' rapid development of technological competence. Second, the first two classes focused on familiarizing students with the use of various educational technologies, providing for a overlap in the content and the delivery of the first two classes. This required students to use many of the technologies such as web publishing, communication software, etc. Third, prior to the first class all students attended a two-and-a-half-day face-to-face orientation during which they were introduced to many of the technologies they would use. At this time, each CTER student was given a CD-ROM with all the software tools they would need to start with (on either Windows or Mac platform). Distributing the software in this way assured faculty and technical support that every students would be using the same versions of the software, which simplified technical support during the first three courses.
Learning does not stop in the online classroom -- the CTER students have also learned to use technologies in the context of their teaching. In a survey most students said that one of the main reasons they had for enrolling in the program included improve teaching (62%), gain more knowledge of technology (46%), and enhance their own students' learning experience (19%). This has been demonstrated in the CTER students' innovative and exciting projects that they are implementing in their own classrooms. As such, the primary focus in CTER classes includes the development of experience and expertise in integrating technology into their classrooms. All of the students have developed a project integrating technology into their classrooms or schools and conducted a formative evaluation of this project. In this regard CTER students have utilized many technologies as a teacher and as a teacher evaluator. For example, one CTER student integrated technology resources into her kindergarten language arts classes. In the language arts unit she developed students utilized computer programs such as KidPix, easy books, Claris Writing Center, and PrintShop to create texts. In addition, her students utilized Internet connections to connect with "fourth grade pals" and their families. Although these technologies did not work perfectly all the time, the teacher reported great progress in learning to integrate technology into her classroom.
Another set of skills learned by CTER students is the use of electronic portfolios for their students. In the first CTER class students constructed their own ePortfolios of work completed in the class. Many teachers transferred this concept into their classrooms. A CTER student had her first grade students construct ePortfolios using PowerPoint presentation software and had students present their portfolios to their parents at a parent teacher conference. Another CTER student utilized ePortfolios in her fourth classroom using PowerPoint, scanners, digital cameras, and illustration software to construct a series of stories. Students then presented their work to other classmates and received constructive criticism. The fact that CTER students were practicing in their own work settings what they learned to do in CTER classes is a very good indication of the effectiveness of the multiplicity in encouraging student learning of transferable knowledge and skills.
Another important feature of learning in the online environment is the multiplicity of assessments students receive about their work. In part, because their work is publicly available, they are open to assessment and feedback from others. The categories of assessment that seem most important include the assessment of self, assessment by classmates, professor, and peers. These different parties assess student work for very different reasons and with very different results. One of the key contributions to the design, development, and implementation of CTER Online is the development of mechanisms for assessment. In sum, assessment has become more like a web where the students assess themselves and are assessed by their classmates, the teacher, and even beyond into a wider audience.
As part of class assignments, students post their responses to WebBoard and receive feedback from other classmates about their work. For example, one of the CTER students posted her proposal for her major course project. According to the records kept by WebBoard, her proposal was read 49 times, and she received feedback from 7 other CTER students over the next 5 days. Most of them contained positive evaluative comments such as "sounds great" or "neat!". Many of them contained concrete suggestions of resources to use or techniques to incorporate into the project. Several of them made connections to the projects being done by the other students. Through this means, this student received much more extensive feedback than could be provided by only the professor.
In addition to the use of WebBoard, we have developed CTERbase, a web-accessible database that provides a place for students to post their work and to receive written feedback from the instructor (Levin et al., 1998). This is the more traditional kind of assessment that often happens in face-to-face classrooms. However, CTERbase helps to make this more of a collaborative activity, since it makes it easier for the student and the professor to conduct a richer interaction in the process of assessment and allows for multiple instructors and teaching assistants to participate in the assessment process.
One method of self-assessment is for students to compare their work with others. CTERbase allows for this type of comparison. Students can view exemplary completions of the assignment by other students. In this way, by seeing exemplars of successful completions by others, the student is able to judge the quality of their own work.
More recently, we have found that the assessment expands beyond the classroom to a larger audience. For example, recently our students have been contacted by other educators who have been interested in and commented on our students' work in the online classroom. One case study student has shown the web pages she developed for CTER to other teachers in her building. Another CTER student forwarded to us an email message she got from a graduate student in California who discovered her page, saying "I was very impressed by your course work. I am a graduate student also; É You have some very resourceful links." The CTER student said "I received this message today and thought it was kind of cool. I so often forget that what we do is on the Internet! It's nice to know others are interested."
We have drawn upon the power of multiplicity in the following six ways in developing an innovative online program:
We have pursued multiplicity for two main reasons. The first is to better understand the new technologies, the new learning and teaching environments they enable, and the goals and resources that each are appropriate for. Secondly, we find that multiplicity is an important element in encouraging expertise. By providing our students with a wide range of multiple contexts, media, formats, activities, and assessments, we can help our students to acquire multiple coordinated representations of the domain (in this case, the integration of technologies into curricula in service of educational reform). As one indicator of the effectiveness of multiplicity, one case study CTER student reported that she learned more during the first two CTER course than she learned during her entire four years as an undergraduate at a nearby university.
Multiplicity decreases efficiency in the short run, but encourages the development of powerful new learning and teaching environments in the longer term. If multiplicity is embedded in a systematic evaluation framework, then we can learn from comparisons of what worked and what did not. We have shown here how six types of multiplicity (instructional media, instructional formats, student learning activities, assessment techniques, contexts for learning, and evaluation approaches) were useful for an online Master of Education program we are developing and implementing. This comparison of multiple ways of learning and teaching encourages the examination of the instructional goals and resources available, and suggests new ways to choose the technology, the activities, the format, the contexts, the evaluation and assessment tools that are most appropriate for these goals and resources. It allows us to determine both formatively and summatively the impact that these educational innovations have on learning and teaching.
Bruce, B. C., & Levin, J. A. (1997). Educational technology: Media for inquiry, communication, construction, and expression. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 17(1), 79-102.
Chi, M. T. H., Feltovich, P. J., & Glaser, R. (1981). Categorization and representation of physics problems by experts and novices. Cognitive Science, 5, 121-152.
Larkin, J. H., McDermott, J., Simon, D. P., & Simon, H. A. (1980). Expert and novice performance in solving physics problems. Science, 208, 1335-1342.
Levin, J., Buell, J., Waugh, M., Garrett, K., & Malczewski, E. (1998). Computer Supported Collaborative Evaluation: Teaching Teleapprenticeships and the redesign of teacher education. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, San Diego CA.
Levin, J. A., Stuve, M. J., & Jacobson, M. J. (1999). Teachers' conceptions of the Internet and the World Wide Web: A representational toolkit as a model of expertise. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 21(1), 1-23. Online at http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/j-levin/Rep-Toolkit-1.10.html
O'Reilly Software. (1998). WebBoard (Version 3.5). Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates.
RealNetworks. (1997). RealPlayer Plugin (Version 5.0): RealNetworks.
Schlager, M., Fusco, J., & Schank, P. (1998). Cornerstones for an on-line community of education professionals. IEEE Technology and Society, 17(4), 15-21,40.
The online master of education program described here is supported by a grant from the University of Illinois' UI-OnLine program http://www.online.uillinois.edu/. We want to thank Sylvia Manning, Burks Oakley and Jeff Stuit for their encouragement and support in making CTER OnLine a reality. We want to thank the College of Education, including the Ed-OnLine program (Cathy Thurston, Mike Williams, and Greg Waddoups) for program planning and evaluation support. The HRE OnLine and the LEEP3 online programs have shared helpful suggestions with us. The TAPPED IN staff has been very helpful in guiding our students through their powerful professional development world. CTER OnLine has been created by the extraordinary efforts of the CTER OnLine faculty (Chip Bruce, Nick Burbules, Paul Thurston, Ken Travers, Terry Tracey, and Michael Waugh, and the authors of this paper, Jim Levin and Sandy Levin), the CTER technical support staff (Nancy Brown-Smith and Brian Pianfetti), and the CTER teaching assistants (Jim Buell, Barbara Duncan, Michelle Hinn, Kevin Leander, Paul Sundberg). Special thanks to the 26 CTER OnLine students who have been patient with the faculty and staff as we go through the implementation and evaluation of CTER OnLine, and who have shown a remarkable ability to learn with us given these multiplicities.