Perspectives on Online and On-Site Pedagogy: The Impact of Technology Now and in the Future

doi:10.4236/adr.2013.12001

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Art and Design Review

2013. Vol.1, No.1, 1-5

Published Online August 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/adr) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/adr.2013.11001

Perspectives on Online and On-Site Pedagogy: The Impact of

Technology Now and in the Future

Marion G. Ben-Jacob1, Tyler E. Ben-Jacob2

1Department of Mathematics and Computer Information Science, Mercy College, New York, USA

2Medical School, American University of Antigua, University Park, USA

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Received June 3rd, 2013; revised July 5th, 2013; accepted July 29th, 2013

Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Technological advances of this millennium have allowed for enhanced learning experiences for students.

Technology has and continues to be integrated into the educational environment from many perspectives

and to different degrees with the use of different electronic tools. This paper discusses the capabilities and

uses of the more popular tools and some of the pedagogical issues that both faculty and students need to

be cognizant of when using these educational boons. The effects on life-long learning and global respon-

sibility are discussed. The perspectives of on-site and online learning are addressed with regard to teach-

ing strategies and goals. An understanding of the impact technology will have in the future is discussed as

well.

Keywords: Pedagogy; Technology; Life-Long Learning; Multi-Valued Logic

Introduction

Advance in recent technologies in communication and com-

puting affect pedagogy and learning. The influence of technol-

ogy on the learning environment of this millennium cannot be

over emphasized. Courses of study that are completely online,

hybrid, blended, and even those onsite rely to some degree on

technology, be it via research assignments or online tutorials.

With the integration of technology into pedagogy come many

benefits but concerns as well, as with any significant measure

of progress. This paper will present many of the latest advances

with regard to pedagogy as a result of technology as well as

some of the issues. It will present a multi-valued logic as a

necessity for understanding the impact of future technology on

learning.

One of the major overarching benefits of technology is that it

affords the world the opportunity to engage in global learning.

Global learning allows for learning 24/7. It is multicultural and

intercultural. It supports tolerance and diversity. It engages

those involved with varied perspectives on politics, religion,

ethnicity, and race. In addition to increasing the knowledge of

the students involved in the specific subject matter, it is a step-

ping stone for universal acceptance and peace.

Learning is social. Learning is based on different opinions

and discussion. Learning is forming inferences as a result of

giving rational thought to different sources of information and

arriving at conclusions. The integration of technology into

pedagogy is sometimes referred to as virtual learning. This can

include using Google to search for an answer, reading an e-text,

or taking a course online.

Technology

Onlinelearning platforms, e.g. Blackboard, allow for asyn-

chronous learning supported via the posting of lecture notes, a

discussion area, and a synchronous chat room. One is able to

post announcements, interact via email and make use of tools

for the facilitation of grading and tracking of student posts

(“Blackboard”, 2013). Some of the pedagogical benefits af-

forded by online learning include time for students to think

before responding, usually greater participation as students tend

to be less shy online, and easy means of assessment as the cour-

se progresses. Online learning is no longer a glorified corre-

spondence course. The lecture notes need not be of the standard

variety because technological advances have led the online

instructors to incorporate the use of such tools as Adobe Flash

Player, software for integrating animation, interactivity, and

video into the coursework (Adobe, 2009). Software such as

Adobe Connect or Elluminate allow for note writing inadvance,

text messaging, interactive whiteboard-import images and

PowerPoint slides, illustration in real time with built-in draw-

ing tools, clear, two-way audio over the Internet, and polling

features for interactivity as well (Adobe, 2013; Elluminate,

2013).

Blogs, short for web logs, are another technological tool be-

ing integrated into pedagogy. They are onlinemessages ordered

by the time of posting. They support text, links, images and

media. An initial message is posted and readers can add their

comments to the posts. They provide a mechanism for reflec-

tion and support learning through writing, peer-to-peer sharing

of knowledge, knowledge communities and provide a mecha-

nism for faculty to use for communication of coursework

(Blogs, 2009; Levin, 2008).

Clickers are another popular technology tool that has been

integrated into the pedagogical environment. Students can se-

lect their answers to multiple choice questions. These answers

can be identified with each student individually or just collected

M. G. BEN-JACOB, T. E. BEN-JACOB

as group responses. Clickers can be used for surveys, multiple

choice tests, and recently, for formative assessment of student

learning (iclicker, 2008).

Wikis are collaborative websites where the content can be

edited by anyone who has access to the site. Many professors

use wikis for communicating with their on-site students as op-

posed to developing a blended course or making use of a tool

such as Blackboard. Wikis support browser based viewing and

editing and tracking of changes. Wikis support group work and

peer review and editing. They allow for assembly of notes and

shared information. They support faculty collaboration for re-

search, projects, and course development. Students can use

wikis for the creation and editing of lecture notes collabora-

tively, for community building, and for group projects. It is

interesting to note that in general students are reluctant to

change each other’s texts and instead create their own pages.

Some of the more well-known wiki sites include PB wiki, and

Wetpaint, both of which have no fee associated with them. The

most famous wiki is Wikipedia (Levin, 2008; Wikipedia, 2011).

Twitters can be considered a combination of blogging, social

networking, and text messaging. The emphasis is on brevity.

One is supposed to tweet one’s answer, i.e. respond in 140

characters or less. People tweet via text messages on cell

phones and on twitter sites, such as Twitter (Twitter, 2009).

Students also have the ability to “follow” people on Twitter,

and as such, receive messages that allow them to be aware of

the status updates and posts of their peers. E-Portfolios are an

electronic means of collecting one’s work over a period of time.

One can design one’s own portfolio with folders and subfolders

as necessary. Most e-portfolios systems have a set of rubrics

associated with the courses for which a student is using the

portfolio. This facilitates the assessment of a student’s work

and provides a mechanism for the professor to supply formative

assessment to his students (Taskstream, 2011).

Given all these advances in technology that facilitate teach-

ing and learning come the associated issues that educators must

address and raise the awareness of students as well. These in-

clude the fact that user-created content is subject to mistakes,

bias, and inconsistencies. Anyone can publish on the Internet

and so one must be careful of the validity of the source. Internet

resources are temporal. Plagiarism is more rampant and elec-

tronic sources must be documented. The form for documenta-

tion is different from those of hard copy sources, journals, and

books. Blog comments can be volatile and wikis can be modi-

fied inappropriately. We need to remember that there are still

some students not comfortable with technology as well.

In order to compete in today’s educational market, colleges

and universities are integrating more and more technology into

their environments. The students of this generation have grown

up with the technology and most are quite comfortable with it.

Pedagogues need to enhance their teaching with technology

without losing site of the basic long term goals of educating our

students to become global citizens of the world.

Technology tools can be and are being incorporated into both

on-site and online classes. In addition to this, the other similari-

ties between on-site and online classes are content material and

often textbooks. The goals of both venues are identical as well.

We want to prepare our students for global responsibility and

life-long learning.

Life-Long Learning

Life-long learning is the ongoing development and en-

hancement of knowledge and skills needed for continuing and

changing professional goals and personal satisfaction. The

United States Department of Labor estimates that today’s stu-

dent will have 10 - 14 jobs by the time s/he reaches the age of

38. The predication is that 1 out of 4 workers today is working

for a company s/he has been employed by for less than one year.

More that 1 out 2 people are working at their current job for

less than 5 years. The top 10 most popular jobs in 2010 did not

exist in 2004. These statistics beckon the question for educators

—How do we prepare our students for 14 different jobs, several

different careers? How do we educate our students for jobs that

do not yet exist using technologies that have not yet been in-

vented to possibly solve problems of which we are not even

aware (Davis, 2010)?

As previously mentioned, global learning is an educational

phenomenon that goes beyond national boundaries. It is con-

cerned with intercultural and international aspects of education

as well as specific content areas. Technological advances of this

millennium have allowed for students from different countries,

backgrounds, and cultures to study and learn together and en-

hance their educational experiences. Global learning is critical

for students in order to embrace world cultures and events and

develop as citizens of the world. Global learning can be con-

sidered the attainment of knowledge that surpasses national

boundaries. Connections between subject matter and future

careers and society are formed. It is progress toward the unity

of man as well as enhancement of content learning. The goals

of global learning include the generating of new knowledge

about global studies, the spurring of greater civic engagement

and social responsibility, and the cultivation of intercultural

skills. Global studies incorporate the mastery of a specific dis-

cipline or field (Ben-Jacob, 2011).

Many innovations in today’s educational environment in-

corporate technology to some degree. Indeed, technology has

created a global learning community. Technology has facili-

tated greater collaboration and dialogue among participants

who are interested in advancing global learning and learning in

general.

Other than the aforementioned similarities, our contention is

that analogies between the two venues should not be made.

Those who wonder how to compensate in a distance learning

class for lack of face-to-face contact which is evident are

“missing the mark” with regard to distance learning. Distance

learning is a viable environment for student learning and the

best pedagogical strategies need to be developed independent of

those strategies for teaching in the traditional classroom.

The accelerated growth in technology, demographics, geog-

raphy, financial considerations of institutions of higher educa-

tion, but most of all the modus operandi of the student of today

have catapulted distance education into the educational envi-

ronment. The typical college student of today is an individual

with a substantial number of commitments in addition to pur-

suing an education. This student is mature, financially self-

supporting with family responsibilities and really wants to fur-

ther his education. This prototype of students can not reside on

campus and does no event have the time to commute to cam-

pus. Without distance learning vast numbers of students will

not be able to further their education.

Maturity and motivation are essential qualities for success in

this model of learning. An integral component of higher educa-

tion today is collaborative work, not only because it supports

active learning, but also, because it is required for the work-

M. G. BEN-JACOB, T. E. BEN-JACOB

place for which we will prepare our students. The fusion be-

tween learning and work will be closer than ever before. The

ability to express oneself is so critical as the interaction will be

necessary between learners and learners, as well as between

learners and instructors.

Online learning supports the learners’ active questioning of

instructors and content experts, as well as the receiving of in-

formation from them. It encourages the learners’ active explo-

ration and manipulation of material. This aspect of the model is

not entirely new. It aligns well with problem-based learning.

Problem-based learning proceeds according to the following

algorithm: first, the students are presented with the problem.

Next, they attempt to solve it using the reasoning skills they

possess. Interactively, they identify their learning needs. Then,

they study and apply the new knowledge to the problem and

finally, they describe what they have learned. In this environ-

ment the professor becomes an advisor rather than a lecturer.

As an example, in many medical schools students are presented

with a clinical case they are to discuss amongst their peers with

a professor present to advise. There are no right or wrong an-

swers, but rather the process of investigation and the action of

discussing and finding points seemingly relevant are critical to

the development the students’ abilities. This educational milieu

of distance learning supports a collaborative process among its

participants with inquiring minds.

A further aspect of today’s learner is that he will be a lifelong

learner. As the 20th century drew to a close, nearly half of all

students enrolled in post-secondary education were adults. If

we add to this the numbers of individuals accessing post-sec-

ondary level training sponsored or funded by their employers,

well over half of today’s post-secondary students are adults.

Trends suggest that this will increase. Multiple careers and the

dependence of more jobs on rapidly changing technology mean

more adults will seek additional educational opportunities. At-

titudes will continue to change with most people placing a

greater value on continued education and perceiving themselves

as lifelong learners. With the aid of technology mediated learn-

ing, especially distance learning, not only will more adult learn-

ers have access to an ever widening array of post-secondary

programs, but institutions will transform themselves to serve

the pedagogical as well as the lifestyle needs of the lifelong

learner.

Pedagogy and Learning

There are three tenets of the traditional model of post-sec-

ondary education that have led to pedagogical strategies that are

not particularly suited to the adult learner. Learning is primarily

an individual matter. Learning, at least academic learning, is

achieved, in large part, through the transfer of knowledge from

experts to novices. Learning that can be garnered from indi-

viduals’ experiences provides little benefit toward academic

learning, in spite of the fact that academic learning can inform

and enrich individuals’ life experiences.

The view that learning is individual has lead professors and

institutions to devalue collaboration. Assessing individual con-

tribution to collaborative work raises difficulties for many. This

line of thinking, however, fails to ask whether more learning

and better learning occurs when learners work individually or

collaboratively. Working collaboratively with one’s peers ex-

poses each learner to a wider array of questions and perspec-

tives than working as a single learner. Students can learn from

their peers and learning is reinforced as they share learning and

even teach their peers. Collaborative learning is especially im-

portant for the adult learner and for the learner of the 21st cen-

tury. As a full time working person, most adult learners are

already comfortable working in teams to “get the job done.” At

work they are encouraged to question team members, share

ideas, and produce collectively. Their job performance is jud-

ged in part by the performance level of the team. Academic

programming designed for adults should take note of how

adults work best, not how academics themselves have learned.

The workplace of the 21st century will be increasingly complex

and technologically dependent. Corporations will no longer

value simply the knowledge and ability to learn of its individual

employees (individual learning). Individuals and teams will be

valued for their ability to communicate this knowledge and

learning in ways that help other employees and teams use this

knowledge and enhance the ability of the entire organization to

operate smarter and more efficiently (organizational learning).

The view of learning as information and knowledge transfer

encourages an emphasis on lectures and reading as the major

learning activities within the academy. For the student these are

passive activities. Learning, however, occurs with the active

manipulation and exploration of content materials. Learning is

a process of discovering knowledge, not merely relaying facts.

Ideally, this process of discovery is a collaborative one.

The online professor needs to supply notes and ask provoca-

tive questions to the students. The students need to collaborate

and draw information from the material and each other. Tech-

nological tools are compatible with most distance learning

platforms. The students in an online class need to be able to

formulate questions. They need to be able to be adept at critical

inquiry, reading with comprehension, and writing grammati-

cally as a beginning. Using present day technology, the achi-

evement of an education can be done more on one’s own time

than previously. A student who masters the material quickly

can move ahead and the student who needs more repetition can

do so without the embarrassment of holding the class back. The

actions are in the hands of the students; they need to have the

drive and commitment to complete the course.

As pedagogues, we want to insure that our students are pro-

vided with the best opportunities for learning. Different strate-

gies and approaches prevail today but given the integration of

technology into our lives and our global learning environment it

becomes imperative that learning be it in the traditional class-

room or online support life-long, learning and global responsi-

bility.

Having acknowledged the aforementioned changes for to-

day’s education environment, deliberation must be given to the

future as well. Agreement is widespread that technology is here

to stay but how it will be enhanced and the effect on education

in the future necessitates discussion.

Critical thinking and logical inference will be a stronger than

ever influence in future education. Among the startling statis-

tics that support these are: 1) It is estimated that 1.5 exabytes

(1.5 × 1018) of unique new information will be generated

worldwide this year, more than in the previous 5000 years, 2)

There are approximately 540,000 words in the English lan-

guage; about five times as many as during Shakespeare’s times

(Davis, 2010). With the influx of all the information that will be

broadcast via the Internet, decision making processes will be

critical. In addition, computation and analysis will be done in

parallel.

M. G. BEN-JACOB, T. E. BEN-JACOB

Multi-Valued Logic

Undergraduate students usually study propositional and

predicate logic. Most logic systems are based on a two-valued

truth system, true and false. Our contention is that today’s

world is replete with multitasking and parallelism. Parallelism,

especially in technology, encourages us to examine the mean-

ing of different logical operations being done concurrently. A

question of reasonable complexity is how one would attempt to

solve more than one quantitative problem at the same time or

attempt to make more than one logical inference concurrently.

This question extends itself to non-technological environments

as well. This is exemplified by a situation where a problem is

subdivided into components with different people working on

different components or some working on the same component.

We need to give meaning to truth systems that possess the ca-

pability of concurrency. Students who use technology, most all

students, need to understand how a computer can arrive at a

conclusion. Given that sound results can be obtained, we need

to specifically understand how logical inferences are made by

machines or operations in general that support parallelism. A

fundamental goal becomes the understanding of parallel logic.

Existing results credit a greater complexity to parallel logic

thinking than information just being distributed over a number

of sites. Parallelism, accounting for hardware and supporting

language, allows for shared memory, sometimes somewhat

restricted, sometime global, and interaction among the proces-

sors prior to the final assignment of truth values. We need a

five-valued logic. The first four truth-values are: true (t), false

(f), undefined (┴), and suspend (s). The fifth value, overdefined

(┬), is included for topological facility (Belnap, 1977).

The necessity of the first two truth values in our logic is ob-

vious. The truth value suspend reflects the fact that work has

been attempted to establish the truth value of the instantiated

predicate in question, no (exact) precise truth valued has yet

been assigned and at this point in time work must be stopped

and recorded (suspended) so as not to interfere with the validity

of the calculations of the other processors. Also, should there be

a malfunction in the hardware allowing for one instantiated

predicate to be assigned true by one processor and false by

another, we will say the predicate has the truth value suspend,

indicating that some work has been done on it. We are assume-

ing all processor are working with all clauses.

After careful consideration, it will become clear that ┴ be-

longs in the scheme. We will be determining truth value as-

signments based on the operations of several processors and our

intuition leads to the naturalness of assigning ┴ to an instanti-

ated predicate in the following cases: if a processor has not

even begun dealing with its values yet; if more “work” is

needed before assigning it a truth value and this work can pro-

ceed without interfering or contradicting the operation of the

other processors (Belnap, 1977).

More formally, along the lines of Fitting and Ben-Jacob

(1990) we get the following definition:

Five is the space of truth values {┬, t, f, suspend, ┴} with the

ordering < 5, where ┴ < 5, suspend < 5, f < 5, ┬ and ┴ < 5

suspend < 5, t < 5┬. Figure 1 illustrates the ordering pictori-

ally.

Clearly, the ordering < 5 is based on the amount of informa-

tion or knowledge available. We note the existence of an alter-

native ordering < 5 * where f < 5 * suspend < 5 * t, f < 5 * ┬ <

5 * t and f < 5 * ┴ < 5 * t. The ordering < 5 * is based on the

amount of truth available.

The extension of interpretations from atomic formulae, e.g.

A and B, to all closed formulae is governed by the truth tables,

Tables 1 and 2.

Other truth tables are logically equivalent to combinations of

Tables 1 and 2, e.g. p− > q ≈ ~p v q.

Conclusion

Today’s world of providing us so much information so

quickly compels us to rethink what is meant by the options

representing possible states of computation (Milner, 2009).

Human and computer problem solving is often done in parallel.

Figure 1.

FIVE: the pace of

true values.

Table 1.

Truth values for A v B and A ∩ B.

A B A v B A ∩ B

true false t f

true t t

suspend t suspend

┴ t ┴

false false f f

suspend suspend f

┴ ┴ f

suspend suspend suspend suspend

┴ ┴ ┴

┴ ┴ ┴ ┴

Table 2.

Truth values for ~A.

A ~A

true false

false true

suspend suspend

┴ ┴

M. G. BEN-JACOB, T. E. BEN-JACOB

Our contention is that the aforementioned multi-valued logic

addresses the concerns attached to both our present day tech-

nology and human thought. In order to insure the academic and

future professional success of our students they need to be

aware of the power of technology and its implications.

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