从网上看到的一篇文章，因为现在还没有养成存文章的同时存下地址和作者的习惯，所以只能是一篇没有出处的文章，请作者谅解！
本人现在也在网络学院学习，以前总是在文章中了解远程教育，现在是身体力行了，也有很多感慨。
Comparison and Contrast between SLN and Beiwai Online
This article is going to compare SUNY learning network in the US and Beiwai Online College in China. Based on her learning experience in SLN and her teaching experience in Beiwai Online College, the author is going to focus on the following three aspects:
1. The structure of both systems.
2. The interaction between the students and teachers in both systems.
3. The teaching philosophy of the two systems.
This article will compare and contrast SLN and Beiwai Online College in the above three aspects with the goal to learn from SLN and to make contribution to the future construction and teaching activities of Beiwai Online College.
Key words: Online education; Interaction; Discussion; Tutor; Student centered.
从SLN和北外网院看中外远程教育的异同
本文将基于作者在美留学时在纽约州立大学网络系统的学习经历以及回国后在北外网院上海财大教学点执教的亲身经历，对纽约州立大学网络学习系统和北外网院进行对比,着重研究以下三个方面：
1.这两个网络学习系统的基本构架
2.网络系统中师生之间的互动关系，以及对教学效果的影响
3.这两个网络学习系统不同的教学哲学
希望通过该研究，能吸取国外的先进经验，取长补短，为北外网院的进一步发展做出贡献。
Introduction
With the repaid development of modern information technology, online education has become very popular all over the world. No matter in the US, the most developed country, or in China, the most populated country, more and more people are using distance education to update their knowledge. SLN and Beiwai Online are two representative learning networks in these two countries. Based on my learning experience in the US and my teaching experience in China, I would like to compare and contrast these two learning systems. Hopefully, through this comparison, we can find common laws in distance education and identify the distinguishing features of each individual system.
As we all know, the US is a pioneer in the world in applying technology in education and SUNY learning network is a national leader of online education in the U.S.. It eliminates the constraints of time and location that higher education normally places on students and provides opportunities to people at all ages previously precluded from taking classes due to geographic barriers and busy personal and professional schedules. Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and SUNY System administration office of the Provost-Advanced Learning & Information Services, SLN has created an infrastructure to support asynchronous online courses for the 64 institutions and nearly 400, 000 students of the State University of New York system. Rather than each campus developing its own online interface and support network, SLN has developed and implemented operational and support services that can be shared across the entire SUNY system. Within this consistent interface, students can easily follow the course while instructors still have a great deal of flexibility and powerful tools for developing their own courses. Developing at an amazing speed, currently SLN has more than 40 degree programs and offers 2000 courses and its enrollment of students this year has reached more than 50000.
SUNY learning new work has received the EDUCASE Award for Systemic progress in Teaching and Learning and the Sloan Consortium Award for Excellence in ALN Faulty Development. The advantages of this system can be summarized by the words of Dr. Karen Swan, a professor in State University at Albany, “The students love it and the SUNY Learning Network gives access to higher education to those who previously have not been able to fit college courses into their lives.”
As a graduate from SUNY, I experienced SLN myself. I took several online courses when I was doing the program of Curriculum design and instructional technology at SUNY at Albany. Like in many other programs, a student can get the master degree of CDIT without going to campus so long as he has gained enough credits online from SLN. And this benefited me greatly when I was fulfilling my teaching responsibility in a university in China and doing an American degree via SLN at the same time. In one of my online courses, my instructor said in the virtual community of the course that if there was a competition about the distance between the teacher and the student, he would surely win the championship. At that time, there were very few students taking SLN courses across the Pacific Ocean.
When I came back to China, I had the great honor to work as a tutor for Beiwai Online in the learning center of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and through this job I get to know Beiwai Online. Since Beiwai Online was published in 2000, it has provided new opportunities of English higher education to many people in China who have missed the opportunity of learning English due to various kinds of reasons. Being one of the 67 Chinese online institutes authorized by the Chinese State Education Commission, Beiwai Online is the first Chinese online education college qualified to confer English degrees to students. Currently it offers English diploma program, Bachelor degree Program and English training program. The graduates of Beiwai Online can get the degree certificate officially issued by Beiwai and authorized by the Chinese State Education Commission. At present, it has 44 local learning centers in 22 provinces and it has enrolled more than 8000 students. It has established its own quality control system, tutoring system and study support system.
By using the modern informational technology and outsourcing teaching resources, Beiwai Online has set up a modern, open and multi-level distance learning system for English education, which strongly meet the increasing needs of English study in the Chinese society. It advocates modern teaching methods and emphasizes students' self studies. Beiwai Online has been quite successful since it was first founded and it is expanding amazingly. I feel very honored to be a tutor of Beiwai Online in Shanghai and I was very fortunate getting involved with the activities of such a prestigious online college.
Based on my personal experience with these two learning systems, I am going to compare SLN and Beiwai Online through the following 3 aspects.
I. Comparison of the structure of the two systems.
First let’s have a look at the structure of these two different learning systems. SLN is virtualizing its university and its teaching and learning activities are very similar with a traditional class: students read course materials, write papers, do research and communicate with their instructor and fellow students. The only difference is that the students and the faculty use internet technology to accomplish these tasks. All the classroom activities are conducted in the cyberspace and the teacher and students interact with each other in the virtual classrooms.
Now let’s see how everything in SLN is carried out. When one enters the interface of SLN, he will see the following three big sections.
1) Course Information. This section contains general introduction to this course. It has items such as welcome message, registration information, contact information, overview, course objective, textbook and reading, course learning activities, course schedule, plagiarism, etc..
2) Learning modules.
This section has the following 3 parts.
Discussion. This is a required discussion area for each module. All the students have to post discussion postings according to the thread or the topic of this unit. And the teacher comments on it and grades it immediately. Usually for each module, every student has to supply at least three postings and each posting will count a certain credits.
Talk with the professor. This is a place where the students can ask the teacher all kinds of the questions concerning the content of this unit.
Question area. If a student has any questions concerning the content of the course, he can ask his classmates and the teacher questions in this column.
3) Class Community. This is an area for social activities outside class. The teacher and students can have discussion not only about the content of the lessons, but also about things outside the classroom teaching. It contains the following sections:
Meet your classmates. This is an area for the student to introduce himself to the class and meet the others enrolled in the course. This is a starting place for the class community.
The Bulletin board. This is an area where the students talk and chat with their classmates or with the instructor outside the class. It is similar to students talking in the hallway after a conventional classroom course. The students and the teachers share their experiences both in and outside the class .
Your evaluation. This is a place where the teachers give the grades to students’ homework.
Shared references. This is the place where teachers and students contribute internet resources to the class. Every module, students are required to post a website or some other learning resources for the class so that they can share the references with each other.
The Online Office Hours & your private folder This is a section specifically designed for all private communication between the student and the instructor. All documents created in this area are private and viewable only between the instructor and the individual student.
From the above description, we can see SLN has built up all kinds of channels for the public and private communication and has provided great potential for the interaction between the SLN teachers and students.
Different from SLN network where all teaching and learning activities are conducted together in one platform, Beiwai Online has two separate platforms for teachers and students. Most of the activities of the teacher happen on the teacher's platform while students’ activities take place on the student’s platform so its teaching and learning activities are separated. On the teacher’s platform there are sections such as Announcement, Tutorial, Student Question Management, Assignment, Study Record, Reference Materials, Self-assessment, Chat Room, Grades, Tutor’s Garden, Subject Management, TC Management, Course Evaluation, Calendar, Virtual Classroom. On the student’s platform there are sections as Announcement, Course Content References, Tutorial Materials, Self-assessment, Assignments, Group works, Forum, Course Evaluation & FAQ. Except an interlinked forum, all the other activities in teacher’s platform and the student’s platform are separated. As far as I know, there are two forums in Beiwai Online; one is the interlinked forum in the teacher's and student’s platform, which is for the teachers and students of Beiwai Online, the other one is on the homepage, which is open to all the visitors of Beiwai Online homepage. Basically the students study on their own through books, tapes and CD-ROMs and they attend the tutorial classes in the local learning centers regularly and ask the teachers’ questions in the two forums.
Therefore, we can see that SLN conducts all the activities on one platform while Beiwai Online handles the teaching activities and the studying activities separately in different platforms.
II. Comparison of the interaction styles
As we can see from the previous part, both systems have great potential for interaction, but how do the teachers and students have real confrontation and communication with each other in these two systems? What are the similarities and differences in the interaction channels? The comparison is in the following.
For SLN, the teachers and the students can interact with each other through all the three sections on the interface and according to my experience, the major part of interactions in SLN happen in the following areas:
1.Discussion. This is the most important place in SLN, which has the function of a virtual classroom. Every student has to post at least 3 postings for each module, the teacher grades it and gives timely feedback, which makes sure that the interaction between the students and the teachers go on.
2. Bulletin board. This is an informal place outside the classroom context, where the students and the teachers get socialized with each other and chat about all kinds of things.
3. The online office hour & Private folder. This is a place for the students to have private communication with the instructor, which eliminates the need for and use of unreliable email systems for course related interactions. This is especially useful when a student is afraid of being laughed at in the virtual classroom and wants to ask the instructor questions in private.
Except these official interaction channels in the course, some SLN teachers also try to increase interaction in their own way and create more contact means. I remember that when I was studying in SLN, a very successful teacher offered us many contact methods when a new course got started, e.g. Email, Aol messenger, telephone and fax so that the students can ask her questions all the time . At the same time, she required all the students provide their contact information to her so that she can reach the class whenever needed. In this way, the interaction between the students and the teacher went on all the time. When a difficult module came, she even arranged a TA to give face-to-face help to students. Therefore in her online course, the students feel it is not much different from the traditional face-to-face classroom teaching. I myself also benefited from the interaction with the instructor and the classmates of SLN. Once when I was taking an SLN course from China, I met a technical problem online and did not know what to do. I posted a question on the bulletin board and an American classmate, thousands of miles away in the U.S., guided me through the problem step by step.
Beiwai Online also has a lot of interactions between the teachers and the students, but its style is somewhat different from SLN. According to my understanding and experience of working for Beiwai Online, Beiwai Online’s teaching activities and the studying activities are conducted in different platforms and interactions between the teacher and the students happen through the following channels:
1. Regular tutoring classes conducted by tutors in local learning centers. Most of the students attend the tutoring classes on biweekly basis. In the 2 hour face-to-face tutoring time, the tutor is to supervise and check the learning progress of the students and provides tutoring in accordance to the individual needs of students.
2. Frequent emails sent by students to tutors to seek help and to ask questions. According to a survey I did with my own students, this is the most widely used method for the students to interact with the tutor.
3. VOB interaction. Voice of Beiwai Online is a real time audio interactive service for students and teachers. It offers a variety of forms of chatting, lectures and office hours. VOB is a very good place for real confrontation and communication between the teacher and the students. As a real time voice interaction system, VOB has very strong interactive function, which is more suitable for practicing oral English. Currently many study groups activities have already been conducted on different VOB channels, and it builds up the virtual English community of Beiwai Online.
4. Interwise virtual learning classrooms. Beiwai Online uses interwise software to set up virtual online classrooms, where the teachers can deliver real time lectures to the students and have real time conversation with them. Students and teachers can interact with each other in the interwise Virtual Online Classroom through short messages, voice one-on-one interwise software.
5. The traditional way of telephone. According to the requirements of Beiwai Online, all tutors should give 2 hours fixed office hours to the students by telephone every week. Although according a survey conducted by Beiwai Online, not all the tutors have met this standard, it still shows that the importance of telephone in teacher and student interaction in Beiwai Online.
6. Through the two forums of Beiwai Online. One forum is on the teacher’s and student’s platform, in which the students can form up study groups to share their experiences about English learning. The other one is on the homepage, which is open to all the visitors of Beiwai Online homepage and a lot of activities are conducted there also.
7.The other ways of student – teacher interaction--letters and fax.
From the above we can see, both distance learning systems work very hard to build up the interaction channels between the students and the teachers in order to enhance the studying activities. However, SLN and Beiwai Online distinguish from each other in the following aspects:
1. SLN is an asynchronous learning network while Beiwai Online has both synchronous and asynchronous interactions.
2. Beiwai Online has successfully established audio interaction channels with the students, such as VOB and interwise, which definitely generates more audio communication capacity between teachers and the students than SLN.
3. Beiwai Online has organized all kinds of community activities which have greatly enhanced tutor-student interaction and students’ self studies, such as “May 1 Holiday Tour”, “Distinguished Professors Online”, English star groups etc. All these activities are mainly conducted on the forums of Beiwai Online and in the real voice communication place VOB and the interwise virtual classroom and each of them has relatively specific place and location. Also Beiwai Online has organized many online activities for the tutors, which is very helpful for the work of the teachers all over the country. By contrast, SLN’s academic activities are not as many and various as Beiwai Online.
4. SLN has more text based asynchronous online interaction between the teachers and the students about the course learning materials while Beiwai Online tends to encourage the students to study on their own and discussion about the study materials is mainly conducted in the tutoring classes.
5. SLN also has an online private folder, where the teacher and students can have private conversation. I am not sure if Beiwai Online has any place for private conversation or not, if there is one, it will be very useful for private communication between the instructor and the students.
III. Comparison of the teaching philosophy
Although both SLN and Beiwai online are both distance learning systems, their teaching philosophies are not the exact same. One thing that is similar between these two systems is that both systems advocate the student-centered approach and try to motivate the students to study on their own. In both distance learning environments, the teacher is not only the instructor/ the tutor but also the facilitator, the counselor, the manager and also the organizer. Although SLN teachers arrange to have interactions with the students through various kinds of channels, the major part of their teaching activities are still really done in the virtual classroom “the discussion area ” and activities for the students are organized in the SLN platform. On the same platform, the students ask the teachers questions and get the help from the teachers like in a normal classroom.
Beiwai Online creates a new concept in its teaching philosophy, i.e. the tutor. Beiwai Online tutor is somewhat different from the traditional concept of teacher. His function is to advocate independent studies, motivate the students to study on their own , supervise and control their performance. Different from the SLN virtual classroom, Beiwai Online’s tutoring classes are mainly aimed at checking the studies of the students and let the students demonstrate and practice what they have learned in their self studies during the daily life so as to pave the way for the next stage of the studies. The tutor also has to interact with students through the two hour fixed telephone office hours and home work feedback. Basically Beiwai Online wants to change the students’ reliance on the teachers and the classrooms, while SLN is just the virtualization of the traditional classroom and real teacher. For the Beiwai Online, teachers encourage the students to study independently and use the tutoring classes to let the students demonstrate what they have learned on their own.
Both SLN and Beiwai Online are distance-learning networks and mainly depend on online interaction, but their different teaching philosophies lead to the different amounts of face-to-face interaction involved. SLN doesn’t count on the face-to-face learning activities and only uses it as a supplementary to the regular online courses when absolutely necessary. However, sometimes a moderate amount of it can make the online teaching more effective. For example, I remember that once in SLN, I took a course about research methodology, which is very theoretical, abstract , boring and difficult to understand even if delivered in the real classroom. The instructor, somehow, for technical reasons, replies to the students very slowly, thus accumulating a lot of problems. All the students were very unhappy about this and complained a lot. Finally, she had to arrange several face-to-face instruction sessions so as quench the dissatisfaction of the students. From this we can see that sometimes face-to-face interaction is very important and necessary for distance learning.
For Beiwai Online, face to face tutoring is an integral part of the program, every week, there will be 2 hour face-to-face tutoring class in the local learning center. Since the majority of Beiwai Online students regularly attend the tutoring classes, they can get more help from the real contact with the tutors. Instead of explaining the detailed knowledge points to the students , the tutor encourages the students to practice what they have learned on their own in order to check their achievement and progress.
Discussion and Suggestions
Above presented are the difference and similarities in the structure of the course learning system, in the interaction channels and also in the teaching philosophy of SLN and Beiwai Online. But what is the theoretical significance of these similarities and differences? The following survey done by Dr. Karen Swan can provide us with some insight.
In the spring of 1999, Dr. Karen Swan in SUNY at Albany conducted an online survey with 3800 students enrolled in 264 courses offered through SLN. She found out that three factors are consistently associated with the success of online courses, i.e., a clear and consistent course structure, an instructor who interacts frequently and constructively with students and a valued and dynamic discussion. And the students’ perception of satisfaction and learning in online courses is related to interaction with course content, interaction with course instructors and interaction among course participants.
Karen Swan’s finding has demonstrated some inner laws of universal significance to the distance education all over the world. For example, according to Karen Swan’s survey, consistent course design is very important for the success of the online learning. Due to lacking face-to-face communication, if instructional design is not very clear, it is easy for students to get confused or lost in complex course structure, thus making interaction with content more difficult. Therefore, we suggest that the Beiwai Online course design interface should remain consistent so that it will be easier for the students to navigate and the technicians should make sure that the platform is stable so that the students will not have difficulties submitting the homework. It is important that the structure of the instructional design system must be consistent, clear and in good order. Therefore, course designers should keep this mind and strive for simplicity and redundancy both for platform design as well as the course design.
Karen Swan’s findings also suggest that shared discourse among students and between students and instructors is positively related to student satisfaction with courses. The survey’s results generally support the importance of creating opportunities for interacting among classmates in online courses.
Therefore, I would also like to suggest that Beiwai Online increase interaction channels between the students and the teachers on the platforms so that there will be more interaction between the teachers and the students and more discussion and more social activities held on the online community.
Although Karen Swan’s findings is done with the student population of SLN, its finding has revealed some common laws that are important to both online learning systems. Clarity of system design, more interaction with the instructors or tutors, more discussion are very important to the success of the distance learning students both in China and in the US . These common principles should be observed by distance learning educators all over the world.
Conclusion
No matter in China or in the world, distance learning has a very promising future because of its flexibility and convenience. It saves our time, energy and money. The purpose of comparing the two important online learning systems in the US and China is to explore the common principles in distance learning and to let systems learn from each other . SLN is a distance learning system in the US and it may not be very suitable to transplant it into the Chinese context, but its experience in distance learning can definitely benefit Beiwai online. If the US distance educators and Chinese distance educators can learn from each other about instructional innovation and utilization of technology, this will surely benefit both countries .If we make efforts to further explore the inner laws of distance leaning and learn from other countries, distance learning in China will develop much faster. I hope that through all our efforts, Beiwai Online will become a more convenient and effective learning system, which can provide high quality English education to the Chinese society - at anytime and at any place.
Bibliography
[1] Bei Chengjie, Wang Guangxing. How to establish effective interaction in online environment China Educational Technology. 2002.5. 60-62.
[2]Bernard, Robert M & Lundgren – Cayrol, Karin, Computer Conferencing: an Environment for Collaborative Project Based Learning in Distance Learning. Educational Research and Evaluation 2001, Vol 7 No 2-3 241-261
[3] Gao Reili, Kong Weihong, The Academic Interaction in Online Learning Context China Educational Technology. 2003.2. 73-75.
[4]Leem, Jung hoon, Effects of Different Types of Interaction on Learning Achievement, Satisfaction And Participation in Web Based Instruction
Innovations in Education and Teaching International, May 2002 Vol 39. Issue 2, 153-163
[5]Miller, W Wade & Webster, Jill King, A Comparison of Interaction Needs and Performance of Distance Learners in Synchronous and Asynchronous Classes . Paper presented at the American Vocational Association Convention, 1997.
[6] Offir & Lev, Teacher - learner Interaction in the Process of Operating DL (distance learning) Systems. Education Media International Published by Routledge, Ltd. June 99, Vol 36, Issue 2 132 -137
[7]Swan, Karen, Building learning communities in Online courses, the importance of Interaction . Education, Communication & Information, May 2002,Vol, 2, Issue 1, 23-50
[8] Wang Tong. YangLiu, A Survey Analysis on Online English Teaching Quality. Media in Foreign Language Instruction. June 2003. No. 91 P22-26.
[9]Http://www.sln.suny.edu.
[10]http://www.sysadm.suny.edu
本人现在也在网络学院学习，以前总是在文章中了解远程教育，现在是身体力行了，也有很多感慨。
Comparison and Contrast between SLN and Beiwai Online
This article is going to compare SUNY learning network in the US and Beiwai Online College in China. Based on her learning experience in SLN and her teaching experience in Beiwai Online College, the author is going to focus on the following three aspects:
1. The structure of both systems.
2. The interaction between the students and teachers in both systems.
3. The teaching philosophy of the two systems.
This article will compare and contrast SLN and Beiwai Online College in the above three aspects with the goal to learn from SLN and to make contribution to the future construction and teaching activities of Beiwai Online College.
Key words: Online education; Interaction; Discussion; Tutor; Student centered.
从SLN和北外网院看中外远程教育的异同
本文将基于作者在美留学时在纽约州立大学网络系统的学习经历以及回国后在北外网院上海财大教学点执教的亲身经历，对纽约州立大学网络学习系统和北外网院进行对比,着重研究以下三个方面：
1.这两个网络学习系统的基本构架
2.网络系统中师生之间的互动关系，以及对教学效果的影响
3.这两个网络学习系统不同的教学哲学
希望通过该研究，能吸取国外的先进经验，取长补短，为北外网院的进一步发展做出贡献。
Introduction
With the repaid development of modern information technology, online education has become very popular all over the world. No matter in the US, the most developed country, or in China, the most populated country, more and more people are using distance education to update their knowledge. SLN and Beiwai Online are two representative learning networks in these two countries. Based on my learning experience in the US and my teaching experience in China, I would like to compare and contrast these two learning systems. Hopefully, through this comparison, we can find common laws in distance education and identify the distinguishing features of each individual system.
As we all know, the US is a pioneer in the world in applying technology in education and SUNY learning network is a national leader of online education in the U.S.. It eliminates the constraints of time and location that higher education normally places on students and provides opportunities to people at all ages previously precluded from taking classes due to geographic barriers and busy personal and professional schedules. Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and SUNY System administration office of the Provost-Advanced Learning & Information Services, SLN has created an infrastructure to support asynchronous online courses for the 64 institutions and nearly 400, 000 students of the State University of New York system. Rather than each campus developing its own online interface and support network, SLN has developed and implemented operational and support services that can be shared across the entire SUNY system. Within this consistent interface, students can easily follow the course while instructors still have a great deal of flexibility and powerful tools for developing their own courses. Developing at an amazing speed, currently SLN has more than 40 degree programs and offers 2000 courses and its enrollment of students this year has reached more than 50000.
SUNY learning new work has received the EDUCASE Award for Systemic progress in Teaching and Learning and the Sloan Consortium Award for Excellence in ALN Faulty Development. The advantages of this system can be summarized by the words of Dr. Karen Swan, a professor in State University at Albany, “The students love it and the SUNY Learning Network gives access to higher education to those who previously have not been able to fit college courses into their lives.”
As a graduate from SUNY, I experienced SLN myself. I took several online courses when I was doing the program of Curriculum design and instructional technology at SUNY at Albany. Like in many other programs, a student can get the master degree of CDIT without going to campus so long as he has gained enough credits online from SLN. And this benefited me greatly when I was fulfilling my teaching responsibility in a university in China and doing an American degree via SLN at the same time. In one of my online courses, my instructor said in the virtual community of the course that if there was a competition about the distance between the teacher and the student, he would surely win the championship. At that time, there were very few students taking SLN courses across the Pacific Ocean.
When I came back to China, I had the great honor to work as a tutor for Beiwai Online in the learning center of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and through this job I get to know Beiwai Online. Since Beiwai Online was published in 2000, it has provided new opportunities of English higher education to many people in China who have missed the opportunity of learning English due to various kinds of reasons. Being one of the 67 Chinese online institutes authorized by the Chinese State Education Commission, Beiwai Online is the first Chinese online education college qualified to confer English degrees to students. Currently it offers English diploma program, Bachelor degree Program and English training program. The graduates of Beiwai Online can get the degree certificate officially issued by Beiwai and authorized by the Chinese State Education Commission. At present, it has 44 local learning centers in 22 provinces and it has enrolled more than 8000 students. It has established its own quality control system, tutoring system and study support system.
By using the modern informational technology and outsourcing teaching resources, Beiwai Online has set up a modern, open and multi-level distance learning system for English education, which strongly meet the increasing needs of English study in the Chinese society. It advocates modern teaching methods and emphasizes students' self studies. Beiwai Online has been quite successful since it was first founded and it is expanding amazingly. I feel very honored to be a tutor of Beiwai Online in Shanghai and I was very fortunate getting involved with the activities of such a prestigious online college.
Based on my personal experience with these two learning systems, I am going to compare SLN and Beiwai Online through the following 3 aspects.
I. Comparison of the structure of the two systems.
First let’s have a look at the structure of these two different learning systems. SLN is virtualizing its university and its teaching and learning activities are very similar with a traditional class: students read course materials, write papers, do research and communicate with their instructor and fellow students. The only difference is that the students and the faculty use internet technology to accomplish these tasks. All the classroom activities are conducted in the cyberspace and the teacher and students interact with each other in the virtual classrooms.
Now let’s see how everything in SLN is carried out. When one enters the interface of SLN, he will see the following three big sections.
1) Course Information. This section contains general introduction to this course. It has items such as welcome message, registration information, contact information, overview, course objective, textbook and reading, course learning activities, course schedule, plagiarism, etc..
2) Learning modules.
This section has the following 3 parts.
Discussion. This is a required discussion area for each module. All the students have to post discussion postings according to the thread or the topic of this unit. And the teacher comments on it and grades it immediately. Usually for each module, every student has to supply at least three postings and each posting will count a certain credits.
Talk with the professor. This is a place where the students can ask the teacher all kinds of the questions concerning the content of this unit.
Question area. If a student has any questions concerning the content of the course, he can ask his classmates and the teacher questions in this column.
3) Class Community. This is an area for social activities outside class. The teacher and students can have discussion not only about the content of the lessons, but also about things outside the classroom teaching. It contains the following sections:
Meet your classmates. This is an area for the student to introduce himself to the class and meet the others enrolled in the course. This is a starting place for the class community.
The Bulletin board. This is an area where the students talk and chat with their classmates or with the instructor outside the class. It is similar to students talking in the hallway after a conventional classroom course. The students and the teachers share their experiences both in and outside the class .
Your evaluation. This is a place where the teachers give the grades to students’ homework.
Shared references. This is the place where teachers and students contribute internet resources to the class. Every module, students are required to post a website or some other learning resources for the class so that they can share the references with each other.
The Online Office Hours & your private folder This is a section specifically designed for all private communication between the student and the instructor. All documents created in this area are private and viewable only between the instructor and the individual student.
From the above description, we can see SLN has built up all kinds of channels for the public and private communication and has provided great potential for the interaction between the SLN teachers and students.
Different from SLN network where all teaching and learning activities are conducted together in one platform, Beiwai Online has two separate platforms for teachers and students. Most of the activities of the teacher happen on the teacher's platform while students’ activities take place on the student’s platform so its teaching and learning activities are separated. On the teacher’s platform there are sections such as Announcement, Tutorial, Student Question Management, Assignment, Study Record, Reference Materials, Self-assessment, Chat Room, Grades, Tutor’s Garden, Subject Management, TC Management, Course Evaluation, Calendar, Virtual Classroom. On the student’s platform there are sections as Announcement, Course Content References, Tutorial Materials, Self-assessment, Assignments, Group works, Forum, Course Evaluation & FAQ. Except an interlinked forum, all the other activities in teacher’s platform and the student’s platform are separated. As far as I know, there are two forums in Beiwai Online; one is the interlinked forum in the teacher's and student’s platform, which is for the teachers and students of Beiwai Online, the other one is on the homepage, which is open to all the visitors of Beiwai Online homepage. Basically the students study on their own through books, tapes and CD-ROMs and they attend the tutorial classes in the local learning centers regularly and ask the teachers’ questions in the two forums.
Therefore, we can see that SLN conducts all the activities on one platform while Beiwai Online handles the teaching activities and the studying activities separately in different platforms.
II. Comparison of the interaction styles
As we can see from the previous part, both systems have great potential for interaction, but how do the teachers and students have real confrontation and communication with each other in these two systems? What are the similarities and differences in the interaction channels? The comparison is in the following.
For SLN, the teachers and the students can interact with each other through all the three sections on the interface and according to my experience, the major part of interactions in SLN happen in the following areas:
1.Discussion. This is the most important place in SLN, which has the function of a virtual classroom. Every student has to post at least 3 postings for each module, the teacher grades it and gives timely feedback, which makes sure that the interaction between the students and the teachers go on.
2. Bulletin board. This is an informal place outside the classroom context, where the students and the teachers get socialized with each other and chat about all kinds of things.
3. The online office hour & Private folder. This is a place for the students to have private communication with the instructor, which eliminates the need for and use of unreliable email systems for course related interactions. This is especially useful when a student is afraid of being laughed at in the virtual classroom and wants to ask the instructor questions in private.
Except these official interaction channels in the course, some SLN teachers also try to increase interaction in their own way and create more contact means. I remember that when I was studying in SLN, a very successful teacher offered us many contact methods when a new course got started, e.g. Email, Aol messenger, telephone and fax so that the students can ask her questions all the time . At the same time, she required all the students provide their contact information to her so that she can reach the class whenever needed. In this way, the interaction between the students and the teacher went on all the time. When a difficult module came, she even arranged a TA to give face-to-face help to students. Therefore in her online course, the students feel it is not much different from the traditional face-to-face classroom teaching. I myself also benefited from the interaction with the instructor and the classmates of SLN. Once when I was taking an SLN course from China, I met a technical problem online and did not know what to do. I posted a question on the bulletin board and an American classmate, thousands of miles away in the U.S., guided me through the problem step by step.
Beiwai Online also has a lot of interactions between the teachers and the students, but its style is somewhat different from SLN. According to my understanding and experience of working for Beiwai Online, Beiwai Online’s teaching activities and the studying activities are conducted in different platforms and interactions between the teacher and the students happen through the following channels:
1. Regular tutoring classes conducted by tutors in local learning centers. Most of the students attend the tutoring classes on biweekly basis. In the 2 hour face-to-face tutoring time, the tutor is to supervise and check the learning progress of the students and provides tutoring in accordance to the individual needs of students.
2. Frequent emails sent by students to tutors to seek help and to ask questions. According to a survey I did with my own students, this is the most widely used method for the students to interact with the tutor.
3. VOB interaction. Voice of Beiwai Online is a real time audio interactive service for students and teachers. It offers a variety of forms of chatting, lectures and office hours. VOB is a very good place for real confrontation and communication between the teacher and the students. As a real time voice interaction system, VOB has very strong interactive function, which is more suitable for practicing oral English. Currently many study groups activities have already been conducted on different VOB channels, and it builds up the virtual English community of Beiwai Online.
4. Interwise virtual learning classrooms. Beiwai Online uses interwise software to set up virtual online classrooms, where the teachers can deliver real time lectures to the students and have real time conversation with them. Students and teachers can interact with each other in the interwise Virtual Online Classroom through short messages, voice one-on-one interwise software.
5. The traditional way of telephone. According to the requirements of Beiwai Online, all tutors should give 2 hours fixed office hours to the students by telephone every week. Although according a survey conducted by Beiwai Online, not all the tutors have met this standard, it still shows that the importance of telephone in teacher and student interaction in Beiwai Online.
6. Through the two forums of Beiwai Online. One forum is on the teacher’s and student’s platform, in which the students can form up study groups to share their experiences about English learning. The other one is on the homepage, which is open to all the visitors of Beiwai Online homepage and a lot of activities are conducted there also.
7.The other ways of student – teacher interaction--letters and fax.
From the above we can see, both distance learning systems work very hard to build up the interaction channels between the students and the teachers in order to enhance the studying activities. However, SLN and Beiwai Online distinguish from each other in the following aspects:
1. SLN is an asynchronous learning network while Beiwai Online has both synchronous and asynchronous interactions.
2. Beiwai Online has successfully established audio interaction channels with the students, such as VOB and interwise, which definitely generates more audio communication capacity between teachers and the students than SLN.
3. Beiwai Online has organized all kinds of community activities which have greatly enhanced tutor-student interaction and students’ self studies, such as “May 1 Holiday Tour”, “Distinguished Professors Online”, English star groups etc. All these activities are mainly conducted on the forums of Beiwai Online and in the real voice communication place VOB and the interwise virtual classroom and each of them has relatively specific place and location. Also Beiwai Online has organized many online activities for the tutors, which is very helpful for the work of the teachers all over the country. By contrast, SLN’s academic activities are not as many and various as Beiwai Online.
4. SLN has more text based asynchronous online interaction between the teachers and the students about the course learning materials while Beiwai Online tends to encourage the students to study on their own and discussion about the study materials is mainly conducted in the tutoring classes.
5. SLN also has an online private folder, where the teacher and students can have private conversation. I am not sure if Beiwai Online has any place for private conversation or not, if there is one, it will be very useful for private communication between the instructor and the students.
III. Comparison of the teaching philosophy
Although both SLN and Beiwai online are both distance learning systems, their teaching philosophies are not the exact same. One thing that is similar between these two systems is that both systems advocate the student-centered approach and try to motivate the students to study on their own. In both distance learning environments, the teacher is not only the instructor/ the tutor but also the facilitator, the counselor, the manager and also the organizer. Although SLN teachers arrange to have interactions with the students through various kinds of channels, the major part of their teaching activities are still really done in the virtual classroom “the discussion area ” and activities for the students are organized in the SLN platform. On the same platform, the students ask the teachers questions and get the help from the teachers like in a normal classroom.
Beiwai Online creates a new concept in its teaching philosophy, i.e. the tutor. Beiwai Online tutor is somewhat different from the traditional concept of teacher. His function is to advocate independent studies, motivate the students to study on their own , supervise and control their performance. Different from the SLN virtual classroom, Beiwai Online’s tutoring classes are mainly aimed at checking the studies of the students and let the students demonstrate and practice what they have learned in their self studies during the daily life so as to pave the way for the next stage of the studies. The tutor also has to interact with students through the two hour fixed telephone office hours and home work feedback. Basically Beiwai Online wants to change the students’ reliance on the teachers and the classrooms, while SLN is just the virtualization of the traditional classroom and real teacher. For the Beiwai Online, teachers encourage the students to study independently and use the tutoring classes to let the students demonstrate what they have learned on their own.
Both SLN and Beiwai Online are distance-learning networks and mainly depend on online interaction, but their different teaching philosophies lead to the different amounts of face-to-face interaction involved. SLN doesn’t count on the face-to-face learning activities and only uses it as a supplementary to the regular online courses when absolutely necessary. However, sometimes a moderate amount of it can make the online teaching more effective. For example, I remember that once in SLN, I took a course about research methodology, which is very theoretical, abstract , boring and difficult to understand even if delivered in the real classroom. The instructor, somehow, for technical reasons, replies to the students very slowly, thus accumulating a lot of problems. All the students were very unhappy about this and complained a lot. Finally, she had to arrange several face-to-face instruction sessions so as quench the dissatisfaction of the students. From this we can see that sometimes face-to-face interaction is very important and necessary for distance learning.
For Beiwai Online, face to face tutoring is an integral part of the program, every week, there will be 2 hour face-to-face tutoring class in the local learning center. Since the majority of Beiwai Online students regularly attend the tutoring classes, they can get more help from the real contact with the tutors. Instead of explaining the detailed knowledge points to the students , the tutor encourages the students to practice what they have learned on their own in order to check their achievement and progress.
Discussion and Suggestions
Above presented are the difference and similarities in the structure of the course learning system, in the interaction channels and also in the teaching philosophy of SLN and Beiwai Online. But what is the theoretical significance of these similarities and differences? The following survey done by Dr. Karen Swan can provide us with some insight.
In the spring of 1999, Dr. Karen Swan in SUNY at Albany conducted an online survey with 3800 students enrolled in 264 courses offered through SLN. She found out that three factors are consistently associated with the success of online courses, i.e., a clear and consistent course structure, an instructor who interacts frequently and constructively with students and a valued and dynamic discussion. And the students’ perception of satisfaction and learning in online courses is related to interaction with course content, interaction with course instructors and interaction among course participants.
Karen Swan’s finding has demonstrated some inner laws of universal significance to the distance education all over the world. For example, according to Karen Swan’s survey, consistent course design is very important for the success of the online learning. Due to lacking face-to-face communication, if instructional design is not very clear, it is easy for students to get confused or lost in complex course structure, thus making interaction with content more difficult. Therefore, we suggest that the Beiwai Online course design interface should remain consistent so that it will be easier for the students to navigate and the technicians should make sure that the platform is stable so that the students will not have difficulties submitting the homework. It is important that the structure of the instructional design system must be consistent, clear and in good order. Therefore, course designers should keep this mind and strive for simplicity and redundancy both for platform design as well as the course design.
Karen Swan’s findings also suggest that shared discourse among students and between students and instructors is positively related to student satisfaction with courses. The survey’s results generally support the importance of creating opportunities for interacting among classmates in online courses.
Therefore, I would also like to suggest that Beiwai Online increase interaction channels between the students and the teachers on the platforms so that there will be more interaction between the teachers and the students and more discussion and more social activities held on the online community.
Although Karen Swan’s findings is done with the student population of SLN, its finding has revealed some common laws that are important to both online learning systems. Clarity of system design, more interaction with the instructors or tutors, more discussion are very important to the success of the distance learning students both in China and in the US . These common principles should be observed by distance learning educators all over the world.
Conclusion
No matter in China or in the world, distance learning has a very promising future because of its flexibility and convenience. It saves our time, energy and money. The purpose of comparing the two important online learning systems in the US and China is to explore the common principles in distance learning and to let systems learn from each other . SLN is a distance learning system in the US and it may not be very suitable to transplant it into the Chinese context, but its experience in distance learning can definitely benefit Beiwai online. If the US distance educators and Chinese distance educators can learn from each other about instructional innovation and utilization of technology, this will surely benefit both countries .If we make efforts to further explore the inner laws of distance leaning and learn from other countries, distance learning in China will develop much faster. I hope that through all our efforts, Beiwai Online will become a more convenient and effective learning system, which can provide high quality English education to the Chinese society - at anytime and at any place.
Bibliography
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[9]Http://www.sln.suny.edu.
[10]http://www.sysadm.suny.edu
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