Home PublicationsJRTEPast IssuesVolume 32 Number 2

Edited by Dr. David J. Ayersman, Mary Washington College, and Dr. W. Michael Reed, New York University

formerly Journal of Research on Computing in Education

JRTE, Volume 32, Number 2, Winter 1999
Multiplicity in Learning and Teaching: A Framework for Developing Innovative Online Education

James Levin, Sandra R. Levin, and Gregory Waddoups
University of Illinois

Abstract

We describe here the power of multiplicity in learning and teaching. Multiplicity decreases efficiency in the short run, but it 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 show how six types of multiplicity have been useful for developing and implementing an online master of education program. The comparisons of multiple ways of learning and teaching encourage the examination of the instructional goals and resources available and suggest new ways to choose the technology, activities, format, contexts, and evaluation and assessment tools that are most appropriate for these goals and resources. They allow us to determine both formatively and summatively the effects these educational innovations have on learning and teaching.

Contributors

James Levin is a professor of educational psychology and a faculty affiliate at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on finding ways to improve problem solving through collaboration through networks and to help people learn to be better problem solvers by providing powerful distributed learning environments. He has developed several innovative models of learning, including the concept of teleapprenticeships. He has recently been studying “teaching teleapprenticeships,” instructional frameworks that allow education students to learn within the context of remote K–12 classrooms. He has been exploring ways to use advanced technologies to improve education locally, nationally, and internationally.

Dr. Sandra Levin is the project coordinator and a course instructor for CTER OnLine. For the past three years, she has coordinated and taught courses and workshops that focus on the use of computer and network technologies as they relate to furthering educational reform in the classroom. As a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education at the University of Illinois, she is also involved in organizing and implementing technology in the Teacher Education Certification program. Her research currently focuses on the use of networking technologies as a delivery method and as a collaborative mechanism for learning. Before her involvement in CTER OnLine, she was the assistant director of the Illinois Alliance of Essential Schools, an organization developed to further educational reform issues in middle and high schools. She has been conducting qualitative and quantitative evaluations on the use of computer and networking technologies in education since 1994, when she received her PhD in education at the University of Illinois. Other research interests include identifying barriers teachers face when integrating technology into the classroom, documenting how teachers have overcome these barriers, and looking at the use of technology to further the educational change process.

Greg Waddoups is a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Psychology and the Center for Writing Studies at the University of Illinois. He has a long-standing interest in sociocultural approaches to language and literacy, and he has recently turned his research interests to the contexts of teaching and learning in telecommunication environments. Greg has broad interest in theories of communication and culture, educational anthropology, and program evaluation.

Address: Sandra R. Levin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 311 Education, 1310 S. 6th Street, Champaign IL 61820; slevin@uiuc.edu.

Web Links

CTER Online:
www.ed.uiuc.edu/ed-online/cter/index.html

TAPPED IN:
www.tappedin.org

University of Illinois’ UI-OnLine program:
www.online.uillinois.edu

Examples of student work:
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/lgilmore/ci335

http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/jmccrthy/ci335

http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/jacobs2/stickieseval.html

http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/tjelmela/ci335/4a.html

Reference

Levin, J. A., Stuve, M. J., & Jacobson, M. J. (in press). Teachers’ conceptions of the Internet and the World Wide Web: A representational toolkit as a model of expertise [Online document]. Journal of Educational Computing Research. Available: www.ed.uiuc.edu/people/jim-levin/Rep-Toolkit-1.10.html.

Note. The Web sites listed in this page were valid when this issue of JRCE  went to press. We have no control over these sites, though, and the Web is very volatile. Please let us know if you finda broken link, and we’ll do our best to update it.

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Copyright © 1999, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). All rights reserved.