CMS in General

Since the mid 1990’s the institutions of higher education in the North America started using web technology to distribute their course courses for distance learners/students. Usually adults who have a job and a family and who want to have college credits or courses for their career change, position advancement, or job certification, those distance learners cannot afford to take regular college courses in the classroom. American colleges and universities, especially those which have offered for years to the adult learners with correspondence courses by mailing, decided that they were going to meet the needs of those adult learners andprovide them timely E-learning on the Internet with email and web technology. Ohio University (OU) is one of those universities, and has more than 80 years of experience offering distance courses, college credits and college degree, first using correspondence and now technology. I was hired in 1997 as the Electronic Instructional Design Specialist at the division of Lifelong Learning at OU. Unfortunately despite my wishing for it, there was no CMS in place at that time. For a single web course, I had to write pure HTML3 code and use different software to create the course frame work and interface, upload it onto the web course site which was protected by password, and set up a different system for professor/student communication and interaction on a secure server. With the limited Internet technology at the time, it was a difficult task to CREATE, DEVELOP and WIDELY DELIVER a web course .

CMS in distance education or E-learning is a very good system for content presentation, online communication and online self-testing or self-evaluation. The most important function in all CMS is that it provides tools for three major interactions online: Student –Content interaction, Instructor –Student interaction, and Student –Student interaction. The distance/adult learners are away from classrooms during the time they are taking a web/online course. Consequently, the lack of face-to-face interaction in class is a considerable source of criticism about E-learning in North America. In order to answer this criticism, almost all commercial or in-house created course management systems now contain a synchronous4 tool, such as Virtual Chat or Virtual Classroom; and an asynchronous5 tool, such as Discussion Board or Bulletin Board. For instance, Virtual Chat means that the instructor and students in the E-learning course can get online at the same time. Virtual Chat can be brought into play for the course instructor as virtual office hour and for distance students to work together with their group projects/assignments. The Discussion Board enables the instructor and students in the E-learning course get online at their preferred time. Discussion Board can be utilized for faculty to post major topics of reading in the course so that distance learners are able to contribute their thoughts, comments, reflection to the topic in their reading. CMS is not only a good tool for course content distribution in distance, but also an effective system for faculty to apply classroom teaching strategies online, for example, problem/case-based learning, critical thinking, team work, and active online learning in a learner-centered6 environment.

Ohio University & Blackboard

Ohio University was chartered at Athens by the state of Ohio in 1804 and is the oldest university in the Northwest Territory. OU consists of a main campus and five regional campuses with 10 colleges (which include 18 schools and 38 departments.) More than 1,900 faculty and instructors are teaching about 30,000 students. Because of the geographical and economical limitation, many students in the southeast Ohio area cannot come to campus for the courses they like to take, especially the courses offered ONLY at the Athens main campus and not at the regional campuses. Even more people in other States or from other countries cannot quit their jobs and move to Athens area for certain OU courses. A system on the web which could bridge the geographic gap and supply distance learners with the courses they need was added to the agenda of the OU administrators. Needs of students required us to pick a tool for delivering E-learning college courses. As it is known to educators no matter which country they are located, instructors and professors are the key for the success of the education in an university. And since the start of our using CMS, i.e. Blackboard, we have determined that faculty members are the crucial force in teaching and learning with technology at an institution like OU. Therefore, we have been focusing on faculty development and support ever since.

In 1999 summer, OU adopted the Blackboard CourseInfo (version 2.1) which was the early model of CMS. CourseInfo7 (CI) at the time was only for course account creation and user Batch enrollment without the portal8 function. Then I began working at the CITL and was put in charge of the faculty training with CourseInfo – pilot group, seminars and workshops, account creation and faculty user support during the school year when the CourseInfo courses were offered. At the beginning of fall 1999, there were about 30 Blackboard CI courses online for OU students. Gradually, more and more faculty chose to teach with Blackboard and OU students have given us very positive feedback of taking courses with Blackboard.Right now, every quarter (OU academic system) there are about 400 courses offered through Blackboard. About 27,000 users (faculty, staff and students) are working in the CMS environment.

Blackboard for Chinese E-learning

I was born and raised in China. My entire education, kindergarten to undergraduate college, was completed there. After college, I taught English in a foreign language school for about nine years. From my personal experience in China and my working practice with Blackboard at a higher education institution in the States, I sincerely believe that Blackboard is a very good tool for the Chinese educational system, and the Chinese government and people will benefit greatly from this online technology, particularly with a huge population to work with. The advantages that I see are listed below:

1. Because of the restriction of Chinese National Entrance Examination, many high school graduates cannot get a college education. If regular colleges or universities provide courses on Blackboard, those high school graduates can take the courses online at their home city or town, and at their preferred time they can finish the assignments and submit them online to the professors. This is another option to expand the existing university system.
2. People who are already graduates from college and work in a certain profession, can still take an online Master's or Ph. D degree on the Blackboard system from a prestigious university. The famous universities in China have a limited number of enrollments for graduate students even though the number is enlarged every year. I am sure there is a huge demand of this kind in China now. People would appreciate getting a graduate degree at home from a top university.
3. Big corporation and government agencies are able to utilize Blackboard for their employee professional training, such as certification and promotion programs. Of course, this effort can be combined with universities' faculty members. Employees take the courses at home, at work during their lunch break, or two-four hours a week off work. Their working units would not be impacted by lack of personnel or reduced productivity.
4. E-learning business is an extraordinary asset if you know how to run it. The profits from the E-learning business can help the institution with new computer facility setup as well as funding for new classroom buildings. The online courses offered with Blackbaord by a college/university are revenue for faculty besides their daily load of teaching.
5. Distance learners in China will gain not only the knowledge, college credits anddegree from the E-learning courses but also will profit financially from the lower cost of taking those courses at work/home, saving the expenditure of traveling, room and board if they went physically to another city or province for those courses.

Overall in order to succeed in E-learning, efficient use of the CMS Blackboard, a university should start with faculty development (training), followed with curriculum planning and course design, which is about combining the class teaching experience with the online/E-learning technologies. The Information Technology (IT) team is a strong element in the Elearning business with their behind-scene server update/maintenance and user support. The collaboration of the training staff and IT team (front line and back support) is another invaluable element to make E-learning work. With the talent and hardworking spirits, I am positive that Chinese educators and IT staff will make full use of the functionality of CMS, and become successful in E-learning. I am eager to see a big growth of Blackboard application in hundreds of Chinese colleges and universities in the near future.

More Information

To take an OU distance course, check this web site: http://www.ohiou.edu/independent/

For a demo Blackboard course at Ohio University, contact the author bi@ohio.edu

For information about Blackboard in China, email CERNET-Blackboard (cbb@cernet.com) or contact Karl Engkvist (Email: karl@blackboard.com)

2 CMS is a flexible, integrated environment where students can use the latest technology to foster inquiry,encourage discourse and inspire collaboration. Meanwhile, CMS allows instructors automatically to control the progression of an online class through the course material delivery and evaluation, interactivities with their students as well as online student information system application.

3 HTML, an acronym for Hypertext Markup Language, is the language that all web browsers use to format web pages.

4 Synchronous (from Greek syn-, meaning "with," and chronos, meaning "time") is an adjective describing objects or events that are coordinated in time. In CMS, synchronous communication means that both students and the instructor are logged into the system and communicate with each other at the same time.

5 Asynchronous (from Greek asyn-, meaning "not with," and chronos, meaning "time") is an adjective describing objects or events that are not coordinated in time. In CMS, asynchronous communication means that students and the instructor can get onto the system at any time they want, post their discussion, comments or opinion for others to view later.

6 Learner-centered environment or learner-centered procedures are instructional design and teaching practices based on what we know about learning (a permanent change in capability) and cognition (the processes by which we receive information from the outside world, organize, retain and retrieve it). Courses designed with learnercentered procedures encourage meaningful learning and create environments in which people learn best.

7 CourseInfo was the software created by three graduates from Cornell University in 1996. It was the early prototype of Blackboard.

8 Portal function in CMS enables greater self-service and automates auxiliary service activities through the power of the Web combined with timely information delivery with a customizable tab/module interface.Blackboard portal system at OU connects the Registrar’s data warehouse, the Student Information System and Blackboard course data, and automates the data uploading daily to serve the needs of teaching/learning at OU.