The application of new education technologies and determining online education success (with relevance to Singapore Context)
INTRODUCTION Ideally, there is now online education that has marked the modern world and has generated excitement into the field of new media and communication through education success along with the internet’s ability to provide fast channels of communication as there is potential to provide learning to new audiences as well as transform learning delivery and such competitive landscape for instance, in Singapore academic institutions (Poehlein, 1996) with better defined reasons for embracing online education as Singapore may expand access to education in order to meet the education and training needs of state residents and companies and to educate under-served populations (Weill and Broadbent, 1998). The expansion of the Internet as good delivery platform, created significant incentive for Singapore Universities to develop online programs, technology is now available and friendly linking to globalization and technological development. Indeed, if Singapore education is to implement conventional models from classroom-based education focused on passive transmission, there can expect only marginal improvements and may be simply escalate costs. Then, global communication for Singapore can only succeed where technology communicators overcome barriers erected by new technologies as well as new audiences and new media as created by the information society of today’s generation. The information societies are successors to industrial societies as caught up in one proponent that there described certain era of discontinuity of truly informational in character. Technologies, as well as media and audiences in education situation may be in part become products of discontinuity. The new social scientists will argue the difference for years. Education communicators immediately must deal with the results that can be regardless of their origin. Online education success imperative factor is the presence of effective information society in which knowledge and information have value and can be sources of education channels as determine by internet era as online education information can have value where it is saleable and where it is applied to enhance the commercial worth of products and services. (Brody, 1990 p. 262)
DISCUSSION
ONLINE EDUCATION IN SINGAPORE
There is body of evidence suggesting that some students lack the capacity and inclination for the type of independent learning that the online learning environment demanded (Chipman 2001, Mason and Weller 2000). There is a need for awareness that specific types of visual presentations can improve learning and careful attention to the principles of learning can improve the design of Web-based lessons (Romero et al. 2000). In particular, there can be data from the literature search within Singaporean context. Aside, Chin, Bauer and Chang (2000) reported that Asian students generally found communicating online less threatening and were more willing to participate using this medium. They also reported that online education was popular amongst students regardless of cultural background. Aside, such study by Tan and Lambe (2002) reported that the low preference for Web peer to peer interaction among online learners present tough obstacles ahead for any attempts to build online learning communities in Singapore, as the communication technology resources can improve student learning outcomes and that there were productivity gains for educators as a result of effective use of Internet resources to deliver learning materials.
TECHNOLOGIES LINKING TO COMMUNICATION
Indeed, Singapore institutions were being awash with cellular telephones, facsimile machines and microcomputers, tend to believe that innovative technologies have arrived. Those that remain to be fully developed are of the more exotic sort, those that will develop through superconductivity or genetic engineering. (Brody, 1990 p. 262) The truth, for example superconductivity and genetic engineering are indeed in their infancy, but are new communication technologies. While the computer has produced radical change in communication, much of the promise of new technologies, especially in the form of true global online education network that needs to be realized. Most online education medium have been applied, but few residents of the nation have experienced the world of communication as it soon will exist. (Brody, 1990 p. 262)
There can be innovative channels are nothing more than innovative applications of older devices like the case of billboards on grocery store shopping carts or advertising signs on parking meters. Still others involve good education efforts to gain economic advantage by applying new technologies to existing bodies of information. (Romero et al. 2000) The new education channels of communication then are most easily identified through one attribute. They occupy an area between the established mass media wherein academic activities are executed with effective element of class interactivity and ways of interpersonal communication, which affords total interactivity. (Chipman 2001, Mason and Weller 2000)
The new media for education does provide greater means to use technology communication into a desirable process of using end means of technology bringing ideal output into education success such as using of machine assisted interpersonal communication from within the education success. More important from the perspective of education communicators, variation in information intensiveness is important in evaluating the communication potential of the education media being involved in the process. (Brody, 1990 p. 262) Furthermore, some online educational institutions in Singapore can be in constant pressure to demonstrate willingness and capacity to incorporate the latest developments in information and communications technology within the process of teaching. Technological sophistication creates precise marketing edge, appealing to students and their parents as well as to employers and to potential financial investors as well as education supporters. The technology implications can be daunting to all but best endowed into the institutions and pedagogical issues are complex. The shift in terminology that has occurred in recent years from “computing” through information technology to information and communications technologies has profound implications for education. (Romero et al. 2000) As the boundaries between the technologies continue to blur for instance, to access the Internet through telephones and to make telephones calls from computers, we are increasingly being encouraged undertaking basic transactions such as banking through the electronic medium rather than face to face.
Henceforth, communication and technology is at once the repository of the bulk of the information that underpins society’s major enterprises and concerns and the medium of communication through which we interact with the process and with one another. It is transforming understandings and practices in relation to information and to communication, both of which lie at the heart of learning. Moreover, technology is changing what people learn. With the burgeoning of the Internet, the control exercised in the past by some departments of education and by individual teachers over pedagogical content has diminished significantly. Through this new medium, resources will be varying quality and provenance on virtually as the education topic are immediately available to online students as possible. It can be argued that, people are in the midst of paradigm shift in regard to what is accepted as knowledge and who is regarded as knowledgeable but often can be in attenuated process.
In certain instances, there has been movement towards the more rapid electronic dissemination of findings and opinions albeit in less polished form, depending more on the judgment of the individual reader than on the processes of education academy for validation and verification. The strong implication for education is that skills in effective online searching and in discrimination should occupy far more important place in the curriculum. Indeed, it is important that educators engage seriously both personal and professional level with the potentials of these new technologies and the learning that is important to the education field that will take place into technological ways.
TECHNOLOGY EFFECTIVENESS IN ONLINE EDUCATION Technology
In particular, education networks should allow for certain synchronous and asynchronous exchange as online students should have convenient access and the network should require minimal time for document exchange. The perceived richness of the technology should also influence the effectiveness of online delivery. In medium richness theory (Daft and Lengel, 1986), rich medium is one that allows for better communication and supports variety of didactical elements, as McIntyre and Wolff (1998, p. 257) noted that “one of the powers of interactivity in web environment is the capability to engage by providing rapid, compelling interaction and feedback to students” (in, Neorman and Spohrer, 1996). Then, Leidner and Jarvenpaa (1995), suggested that students lacking the necessary basic skills and self-discipline may do better into traditionally delivered education mode. Similarly, some of most motivated students may prefer to learn in an individual competitive environment rather than sharing their knowledge with less motivated, less bright students into traditional classroom setting rather than online education.
Utilizing Web Software to develop online education in Singapore In addition, WebCT is a one tool that facilitates the creation of sophisticated World Wide Web-based educational environments. It can be used to create entire online courses, or to simply publish materials that supplement existing courses. The Internet is technological advancement reshaping not only our society but also that of universities worldwide. The Singapore universities have to capitalize on the Internet for teaching, and one progressive development of this is the use of online delivery methods. In considering the reliability of the results to the evaluation of online education it must be noted that there was no control group to detect whether the pedagogy and technology used significantly enhanced teaching effectiveness compared with more traditional methods. There is a need to replicate the online studies in order to gain further insight from different teaching disciplines across the world. It should also be noted that the course assessment was not testing the acquisition of transferable skills in communication and information technology which are often developed through the use of computer-aided learning in related courses. It is then the ability to catalyze students so they can discover their own learning that is crucial. The Internet helps in education success to process by taking over the information demands on some online lecturers and mentors (Storck and Sproull, 1995). Effectiveness
Amiably, Webster and Hackley (1997) remarked that online students’ performance as measured by good grades do represent aspect of teaching effectiveness by means of new media connection. However, several studies have shown that there is no difference in student performance between educational television (Wetzel et al., 1994) and or between video instruction and classroom based instruction (Storck and Sproull, 1995). Webster and Hackley (1997) also suggested that the several dimensions can capture the concept of technology effectiveness such as: student involvement and participation, cognitive engagement to interact with the given technology, perceived usefulness of the technology employed and the relative advantage of online education delivery.
Wherein, information technology is employed to enhance rather than substitute for the face to face classroom education, it increases the range of communication styles available to every participants. For variety of reasons, there are individuals who communicate more freely online than in face to face situations. From the perspective of the individual student, IT also incorporates enormously increased potential for representing and manipulating information in range of forms appropriate to different learning styles (Storck and Sproull, 1995). Thus, there provides far greater range of ways through which learners can express their knowledge, including the publication of multimedia presentations to the world at large through the Internet. The availability of these rich and varied modes of expression mounts in a fascinating challenge to time-honored ways of assessing learning.
Information Technology: Ground for Online Education
There is presence of information technology conveying powerful education load online as having the capacity to involve academic actors in use for ideal ways of teaching better with technology sense (Korac-Boisvert, 1992; Webster and Robins, 1986). Education base, IT provides the potential for wide range of education data and processing. IT provides information on education demand, build strong folds of shared knowledge and enables real-time, structured learning events to transcend boundaries of time and space, becoming tool for building online solutions for education setting (McAteer, 1994, p. 68). IT can also be used as tool for understanding Singapore culture and tapping into the creative synergy, rather than merely being the tool for presenting culture norms as something dismissing them as technology difference which are often equated, by dominant culture along with education literacy miss outs (Korac-Boisvert, 1992). Within sociological context, communication media influences social education system and the integration of online domains as influential on academic set ups as facilitated by the use of new technology pathways (Hammer and Champy, 1993, p. 52). Furthermore, when assisted by direct access to central formed databanks, by means of computer networks and other forms of interactive IT, education structure have potential to become equipped with the kind of planning and online information distributing technology power into the education workforce (Child, 1987). Thus, while there is potential for the decentralization of power, the new IT systems have often been used to centralize management power by tightening control over production systems and removing layers of education ways (Child, 1987). In online practice, structure depends on powerful regulatory mechanisms of education culture as the strategic control is centralized with concurrent decentralization of educational decision making wherein curriculum continue updating technology but follow innovative and less visible education shortfalls (Muetzelfeldt, 1992). It is argued that there is a high degree of symbiotic interaction between prevailing online education ideology and the effective means of new media in information technology within a pervasive culture and social influence over education practices being known (Kouzmin et al., 1997).
CONCLUSION
In conclusion therefore, there is crucial advent of online education from within success of certain new media and technology particularly the internet application from within recognition in the field of education that have provided new opportunities for teaching and learning in today’s society as such in the Singapore context, the presence of web-based online education has influenced and attracted students to enroll into online services offered by the education curriculum. However, as a new media medium for online education success, internet and computers do provide such unparalleled capacity to manage and access large amounts of academic information and present order of learning into a novel and interesting approach to give learners better cup of knowledge for everyday life use. Then, the computer-based, online education allows students to become active learners rather than passive recipients of teaching prowess (in, Candy et al., 1994) as computers are not necessarily linked into a technology driven network so, computer learning in Singapore education can possibly be achieved by greater presence of new media in communication technologies thus by executing particular ports of software technology resources.
For some desirable options and knowledge awareness, to link into the practical level, what should educators do?, Online education teachers need to become learners, exploring the potential of new technologies with as open a mind as possible. They need to constantly ask themselves three questions. Can the new technologies enable us to replicate what they can understand to be good practice in teaching and learning as the new technologies enhance what is understood to be good practice in teaching and learning through IT usage? The new technologies change educator assumptions about what they understand to be good practice in online learning, there is no doubt that, one way or another, the new communication technologies will improve learning.
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