Beginning in the Fall 1996 academic semester, Sun Microsystems and the California State University, Chico entered into a partnership involving the use of computer and video systems for instructional purposes. The collaboration provides a technology learning lab for the Department of Communication Design to operate as a specific research branch of Sun.

Overview

The implementation of broadband networking protocols such as ATM bring the opportunity to effectively explore the use of hypermedia platforms and techniques in the offering of education across both local and wide area networks. Much work has been done in the past on a variety of platforms and networking techniques testing the viability of distributed education. Results have shown that both use and effectiveness has been greatly constrained by the available networking speeds and media platforms which have been available. While many organizations have focused on live instruction delivery, Sun has chosen to focus on a technique of delivering facilitated video instruction to a distributed student environment. This technique will optimize the use of the critical human "content expert" resource as well as environment connected via broadband networks.

Objective

The primary purpose of this project is to compare the instructional effectiveness of Distributed Tutored Video Instruction (DTVI) with its face-to-face counterpart, Tutored Video Instruction (TVI).

The secondary purpose of this project is to investigate the interaction between the level of facilitator content expertise and the detection and correction of incorrect student inferences about the content domain during the TVI and DTVI processes. If DTVI is as effective as TVI, and less expensive facilitators with limited expertise are approximately equivalent at detecting and correcting student errors, then DTVI has created a new benchmark for a cost-effective training method for corporations.

The third purpose is to generate user feedback on the effectiveness of the communication model and the design of the user interface in the DTVI condition.

Description Of Systems

There are two learning systems involved in the project. The first, Distributed Tutored Video Instruction (DTVI) consists of seven students and a facilitator at individual seperate computer stations. Each member of the group collectively views a videotaped lecture and uses the computer based learning system to interact with one another via visual/audio means. The individuals become a support group in learning the information.

The second group, Tutored Video Instruction (TVI), uses the same group interaction with the videotaped lecture to learn the material. However, the TVI group members are physically in the same room and use interpersonal (rather than computer based) communications skills for interaction

Research Questions

Is DTVI as effective as TVI?

As an instructional method, TVI has been shown to be a cost effective means for capturing expertise and distributing it at multiple remote sites. It has shown to deliver learning levels equal to or greater than live classroom instruction. Sun believes one of the primary reasons for the success of TVI is the high level of learning-oriented interaction among participants in a TVI environment. These interactive processes appear to be dependent on participants having visual access to each other. The advent of new networking protocols such as ATM make it technically feasible to deliver the platforms which provide two-way, multi-point audio/video communication. This makes it possible to conduct TVI sessions distributed to multiple points across a network. Given a broadband networking environment, the chief advantage of DTVI is economic in the it reduces the travel expenses that are normal incurred by students

How does the amount of content expertise of the facilitator affect learning?

A standard assumption in education is that instructor has to have content expertise in order to be effective in translating the conceptual content contained in the textbook to the students. The lower the content expertise of the instructor, the higher the possibility that students will learn faulty or incomplete knowledge, particularly in conceptually difficult domains. In the ideal case, on would minimize the possibility for learning faulty knowledge by providing instructors with a great deal of content expertise. Since access to expertise is expensive, corporate training is faced with having inadequate resources to provide a constantly changing supply of content experise to assist in employee training. Since a video record of a lecture contains an expert explaining a domain's conceptual content, it is possible that the facilitator or tutor, may need less content expertise that ordinarily assumed. Rather, the facilitator's primary skill would be that of facilitating the group interaction to encourage the collaborative learning approach which is central to the TVI method. The primary assertions to be tested in this area are:

• Acquiring the expertise on videotape is a one time cost.
• Instructional development costs are restricted to the production of the video tape.
• Subsequent training only requires the videotape and a less expensive facilitator.
• A single facilitator with good interpersonal skills can lead DTVI sessions over many different content areas.

Research Plan

The research for this project is being conducted in conjunction with SERA Learning Technologies of Palo Alto. Sun is also collaboration with the California State University, Chico and SunU. Sun is providing overall project management for the research as well as the provisioning of the various learning centers with the appropriate hardware and software. SERA is responsible for providing the research design, student interface design and experiment management for the project. SunU and CSU-C are providing course content, facilities, facilitators, and most importantly, students to participate in the various stages of the research.

Value To Sun Microsystems

The value to Sun for this project falls into a number of areas:

• Sun, as are our clients, is faced with escalating needs for training. The business environment and technology is changing at an ever increasing pace. To keep pace with the change, companies are in need of new methods methodsdin providing education for the work force.
• The cost of training, along with the pace, is also increasing at a rapid rate. Sun as well as other companies must find effective methods to lower the cost of training employees.
• Broadband technologies appear to provide an effective platform for delivering a variety of services which require and this experiment, as moves into later stages, will demonstrate the use of ATM networks in a learning environment.

Value To California State University, Chico

There are three academic areas within the Department of Communication Design that have curricula related to this project. The areas, Media Arts, Instructional Technology, and Information Systems, have faculty and students who research and study media systems and audience participation. This project provides a laboratory situation with unique and innovative technology which benefits each of the academic programs. Because of current collaboration with Sun Microsystems.

Resource Narrative

The primary human resources for this project are overall project management by Sun, research design and management by SERA, and finally, the providing of a student base by CSUC and SunU. Hardware resources include a seven workstation network, with video and audio capability, switches, hubs, etc..

Staff And Roles

John Dutra	(Director, Network Architecture) Overall Project Management
Rob Pannoni	(Manager, SERA) Experiment Design, analysis
Aaron Bor	(Project Director, CSUC) Project Management of Sun Learning Systems projects at CSUC