facilitated by the instructor. In the virtual version, student participation is more scrutinized for content, relevancy, correctness and a multitude of other criteria set by the instructor. Virtual discussions can aid the instructor with time management. It allows learning to take place outside the constraints of time. Virtual discussions are also appropriate for the traditional classroom because they encourage learning when the course syllabus is long on curriculum and short on time. MilBook has tools that allow me to sort student participation by person, date and subject. Additionally, I can configure milBook to email to my enterprise account discussion transcripts as soon as they take place. Within my email account I establish a rule that parses email traffic to specific folders based on class section. Probably the biggest advantage of the milBook discussion board is the ability to use it as a virtual collaboration area. In this manner, student participation is completely transparent. Students who might, in a traditional classroom, become invisible cannot hide in a milBook virtual collaboration area. In the traditional classroom, collaboration is face-to-face and immediate. The instructor can observe from a distance or up close. How does the instructor in the virtual classroom compensate for the advantage his traditional counterpart has in this area? The best solution is to create virtual collaboration areas in milBook that allow students to work together. Before milBook students depended on email, they used web conference tools like Defense Connect Online and the telephone to collaborate on group projects. The best feature of milSuite is the fact that it is the anti-email. Email has a place and a purpose in distance education—for private communication. Email is inefficient when used as a collaboration tool. Think of the volume of routine email that comes in on a daily basis and add to it email from a collaborative work group(s). If the discussions of a collaborative work group were moved to a discussion-type forum, the email problem disappears. Virtual collaboration contained in milBook allows discussion and products to remain in one place and be archived. Group members can quickly absorb and analyze the information because they do not have to chase email or wonder who in the group was left out. Almost daily I see collaborative discussions in my office email that are better suited for a discussion forum. The exception to this is the aforementioned use of email as a redundant means for the instructor to monitor milBook collaboration. Overall, the rapid fire criss-crossing of email by students on a collaborative subject is not well-suited to distance education. It is more efficient to contain a topic—of interest to a broad group—in a forum. The idea of virtual collaboration is not new. In the infancy of the Internet, electronic bulletin board services such a Genie, CompuServe and America Online became popular in the early 1990s because of the idea of virtual communities. It played to the American love of town halls, barbershop gossip and speeches made atop a soap box. Most of all, Americans crave social interaction with people of similar interests. People who liked to share ideas, information and provide help to a wide audience knew the only way to achieve success were to establish electronic bulletin boards. This took place at a time when people began to acquire personal computers and when mainstream Internet access became available. Imagine the nightmare of managing common technical topics circa 1992. It was not practical to ask, answer and then follow up on discussion topics in email, when bandwidth was limited, email clients were cumbersome and forum participants numbered in the thousands. To compensate, the questions were answered in an open 12 | MAE 8.4
forum—thereby, a revolution in learning and collaboration was created. These forums often contained the warning “due to size of the audience, all questions are answered in the forum and not through individual communication.” Let us apply this to the present situation. In 2013, a distance education student sends an email: “I’m having trouble understanding the role of logistics in the Battle of Austerlitz.” It is easy enough for the instructor to engage in a one-dimensional email dialogue with the student and simply answer the question. This is fine for the student who asked the question, but what about the other 14 classmates who have the same question? In a worst-case scenario, the question is answered in an endless stream of email “Reply All,” which resembles one of those annoying chain letters. By directing the student to ask the question in a collaborative forum, his peers are likely to engage in a discussion of logistics in the Battle of Austerlitz, facilitated by the instructor. This is the essence of student-centered learning—whether it takes place in a virtual or a physical classroom. This method of instruction when applied to distance education is not new. Genie and CompuServe discussions, which were a form of collaboration, often took place in a bulletin board, facilitated by subject matter experts and covered a wide range of interests. It’s a simple concept that uses the power and collective wisdom of the group to collaborate on a topic. This is akin to crowdsourcing, a technique popular with Internet startups of soliciting ideas from online communities. In distance education, collaboration is a time-tested concept made easier by modern, appealing graphical interfaces and software that is more user friendly than in the ’90s heyday of CompuServe and AOL. The growth of distance learning in the U.S. will continue to increase. Studies cited by the Instructional Technology Council (ITC) show distance education enrollments in higher education outpaced traditional enrollment in the 2000 to 2010 time period. The demand for distance education will continue, but challenges in online instruction will remain. For example, from the results of ITC’s 2011 Distance Education Survey Results, ITC reported a trend in which learning management systems, i.e., Blackboard et al, remain volatile. These systems are subject to change in a time when DoD needs constancy. The growth and often volatile nature of distance education is a perfect opportunity to adopt best practices that present a stabilizing influence. In DoD, the use of milSuite adds predictability to distance education programs. Learning management systems, offered by third party vendors will come and go, but DoD-operated milSuite will likely stay the course. MilSuite features such as blogging, discussion boards, student participation tracking, calendaring and wikis permit everyone to teach and learn in an environment that blends the best of the traditional classroom with the modern appeal and efficiency of technology. O Lee Lacy is an assistant professor at the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College (CGSC), Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Lacy is a graduate of the University of Arkansas and received a master’s degree from Webster University. He is an intelligence officer in the Army Reserve. In March 2013 Lacy was selected for the FCW Federal 100 award on the basis of his use of milSuite in CGSC distance education.
For more information, contact MAE Editor Laural Hobbes at lauralh@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.mae-kmi.com.
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