Knowledge Management System for Web 2.0 Technology-Supported Electronic Television Program Guide

Wenchao He      Michael Jefferies Shankai Zhang Han Qin

School of Information System and Technology

Faculty of Informatics, University of Wollongong, Australia

Executive Summary

1    Introduction

1.1    Background

Program guides are designed to provide the users a categorical view of the content that can be viewed within a given day, week, or month. With the expansion of the internet capabilities such as Web 2.0, Electronic Program Guides have been an integral part of TV and Cable broadcasting, providing online and TV set feedback to the user directly.

1.2    Problem Statement

The rapid expansion of television content and channels has made theinformation on TV program guides overloaded. Users are not informed relevantprograms at the right time and they find it difficult to choose between thevast amount of content and channels. The problem is Cable providers andBroadcasters have no Program guide that is expandable in the near future.  Users often have their viewable content limited too a number of large content providers often overlooking some relevantprograms from small content providers.

1.3    Method

The approach that will be taken will be firstly to develop an organisation modelling methodology to contextualise the organisation and problem. This will be done in the CommonKADs framework (Schreiber et al.2000) starting with the OM-1 identifying the problems and opportunities that have arisen, then secondly the OM-2 which analyses variant aspects of the organisation in context. The next step is to break down the business processes in the OM-3 to identify details of critical tasks, while the final OM-4 is to classify knowledge assets in the organisation.

The social analysis will be an integrated approach involving the conclusions drawn from each organisation model of CommonKADs. This section will focus directly on providing social theory to link problem with potentialanswers. Finally, a business feasibility analysis will be conducted using the results from the CommonKADs analysis and social analysis of the TV program guide information overloaded problem.

1.4    Thesis Statement

This report has proposed the solution to be a user profile oriented program guide supported by Web 2.0 technology. The solution has been analysed and derived by the CommonKADs framework and social analysis. The businessfeasibility analysis has demonstrated that the proposed solution is practicable for Cable providers and broadcasting providers, although minor risks have been identified with the proposed solution.

1.5    Outline of the Report

The report will initially discuss the background of the problem where the problems and opportunities of Cable providers and broadcasting provider sand their organisational contexts will be analysed using OM-1 to propose a potential solution.

The second section will include the Organisational Analysis which identifies the organisation structure, processes, people and resources. This will also include the knowledge resources within the organisation and particular cultural and power issues surrounding the organisational environment.

The third part of this report will focus on the task breakdown and knowledge assets. The process or task breakdown will identify critical knowledge components.

The fourth major component of this report is the Business feasibility which will draw together conclusions from the CommonKADs methodology and the social analysis of the issue at hand. This will discuss the proposed changes to organisation structure, including expected organisational benefits and potential risks.

The final component will make recommendations in the form of a proposed solution to the problem defined by the CommonKADs framework. This will recommend the user profile oriented electronic program guides to solve this problem.

2.1.2    Opportunities

The first opportunity is that Cable providers and Broadcasters could receive significantly more users and subscribers by providing more content and programs (such as to equal that of the Internet).

The second perceived opportunity will be that from a users point of view, in which viewers will have significantly more content and programs to choose from without being limited to Cable sponsored channels.

2.2    Organisational Contexts

The purpose of Cable providers and Broadcasting providers is to provide the link between content and viewers so that TV programs can be accessed and viewed on their Television sets. Cable providers refer to organisations that provide availability to several hundreds of channels by either satellite or cable. They do not necessarily produce the content, which is generally done by the content providers.

The key players involved in the Cable providers are the employees, management and technicians.  On an external level are organisations that provide the content which produce the programs and actual content and the broadcast organisations which provide the link between content organisations and the end user (the viewer).

Cable providers or Digital television providers provide numerous channels and links to different content providers in order to receive subscribers – the main source of their revenue and livelihood. Clearly the only strategy is to increase the number of subscribers to their network by increasing their content spread and availability. To do this they must be able to cope with expanding technologies and competition such as that from the Internet. They must also be able to provide content from the smaller productions by advertising their programs to viewers, rather than focusing on the largerorganisations.

2.3    Social Analysis

The TV medium has been predominately a monopolistic industry regardless of country with a small number of large content providers dominating the primetime space. For example, in Australiathe two major cable providers are Foxtel and Optus. They provide a link between content providers and the viewer. Their services are often highly competitive with the duopoly often creating an extremely competitive environment each trying to outdo each other in terms of content, availability and quality.

2.4    Proposed Solution

The proposed solution is to utilise Web 2.0 technology to increase the range of content available to users by removing or eliminating the traditional limited project selection in order to create user oriented profiles for personalised television viewing. This will provide access to a larger number of content providers and channels regardless of their organisational size in order to reduce the hold larger content providers have on cable, satellite and digital services.

2.5    Problem Statement

The clear problem is the fact that the range of viewable and accessible content is rapidly growing to point where digital, cable and satellite providers have to considered options to expand methods to allow their subscribers to access this information especially if it is relevant to their needs and desires. The need for equal advertisement and air time for all providers will also need to be addressed by these providers in order to satisfy the subscribers of their services. Cable, Satellite and digital providers should be capable of delivering content that is suitable and relevant from arange of different services in order to meet these requirements.

3    Organisational Analysis


3.1    Organisation Structure

3.2  Business Processe

The current traditional process of conducting business in cable, satellite and digital television providers are to gather resources from content providers, mostly large and known providers. These programs are transmitted to the user by either cable or satellite facilities at which the local house or place has a receiver (digital set top box or cable receiver)which allows users to access all the channels and content provided by the cable TV provider. At this time, the user chooses between different programs and depending on the relevance to his/her desire and needs to choose the most appropriate to view.

OM-2:  Business Processes

3.3    People Involved

There are several key actors/people involved within this organisation. Since we established that the Cable Providers are the organisation in focus we have actors such as technical staff, support andoperation staff, middle line management and strategic management. Theseinternal actors can be seen in the organisational structure chart in 3.1. There are also external organisations and actors associated with this organisation. Although they are not directly related with the services provided by the cableprovider/s, they do have some interaction. These include competitors, content providers, broadcast providers, media authorities and customers.

OM-2:  People Involved

3.4    Resources Involved

There are several different resources involved in this organisation from gathering content to communicating it with the end user (the viewer). These include video or TV program archives, the methods of transmitting to the user via cable connection, satellite or digital devices andend user devices such as Digital television, set top boxes, satellite dishes orcable receivers. Technical staff requires a detailed amount of knowledge inthese respective areas including installation, operation and maintenance. Operation staff also requires accounting/billing systems and accounts to maintenance the users current status, payments and other details. This could typically be a database.

3.5  Knowledge Resources Involved

Some of the knowledge resources include Program databases, such as program running times, classifications, genre, channels, program descriptions and actors. Another knowledge item would be the user interests which refers to the preferences of the users in terms of the TV programs. This knowledge aspect would often be categorised and easy to assimilate into understandable means. In the same sense we could also understand knowledge such as program dislikes which refers to programs that have never been viewed or accessed by a specific user. This could help to identify the programs that the user may not be interested in. The final knowledge component is the content type which may represent several different mediums or programs. The idea is to understand the many forms of media and content.

3.6  Culture and Power Issues

There are several issues with the organisation that are important to discuss. Cable, Satellite and Digital TV providers are notorious for providing TV programs produced by the ‘big guys’. Most cable organisations have strategic alliances with large production or content providers. Another issue revolves around the censorship of particular content and the moderation of such information. Media authorities play a key role in this aspect, and organisations such as Cable providers must abide by these rules and regulations otherwise serious consequences can arise. Communications in organisations likeCable providers often are rigid and sensitive; as such programs are often linked to broadcasting rights.

3.7    Social Analysis

The frameworks of every organisation are unique and often have different business practices and processes to get tasks done. Cable providers for example are no different. The OM-2 Model identified the variable aspects of the cable provider’s generic model showing the business processes andorganisational structure.

Perhaps traditional organisational focus on business-orientation has been phased out or has no room in the new technological age of the semantic Web2.0. The focus should shift towards a customer oriented style of business, such as gathering feedback and meeting the customer’s needs. The solution to the problem should enable Cable providers to step into the future of business, focusing on meeting the needs of customers and clients by implementing a technological solution to expand their viewing portfolio and choosing to take important information from their most valued asset – the customer.

4    Task and Knowledge Analysis

4.1  Task Break-Down

The worksheet OM-3 depicts the task break-down in the previous present of main business process. The whole business process is generally divided into three parts: Gathering resources, Transmitting process and Users choosing. To finish the whole business process, the tasks must be finished in a sequential order beginning from the providers’ side, going through the middleman transmitters, and finally ending at the users’ side.

Each part differentiates at its knowledge assets involved. Each part differentiates at its knowledge assets involved as they are different role players in the entire business chain without many activities sharing happening. In the initiator’s side, as the origin of the whole supply process which is really decided the meaning and quality of whole TV industry, the speciality evaluation knowledge and the insight of whole market and customer’s demands are more needed to be special in. The second task, from the transmitter’ side, knowledge of technical aspects is given more consideration including devices manipulation and maintain. Last part to provide a product which in here is not completely and well design for every consumer to be use is the aim of the whole process. Users play the key role in the using process, so they are assumed they armed with knowledge of recognizing information and device manipulation.

The high significances are given to tasks of gathering resources and transmitting process considering the important role initiators play and the ensuring of product safety and availability transmitter need to undertake. The choose of TV programs is really upon individual preference and users choosing is the end point of the whole business process also means this part will not influence in others. So the significance of the knowledge assets in the user side is put in a low level.

4.2      Knowledge Components

The OM-4 table gives a description of main knowledge assets involved in the whole TV business process. Due to different department functions and the role department play in the whole business process, different knowledge from a number of different areas is assessed. Knowledge of TV content evaluation and Marketing is so important because they are the preparation of whole business activity and the origin of information overload in TV channels. During the assess process, interaction with consumers was found is the key area those two knowledge assets overlook. In the aspect of user, it is hard to identify all information the providers provide as information is overloaded and the form of presenting information is ineffective.

4.3    Social Analysis

Secondly, the utilising of the Web 2.0 notion emphasizes the change from the form of tacit knowledge personal feeling to explicit knowledge TV programs preference. Two dimensions are indicated for tacit knowledge. One is the technical dimension which often referred to as “know-how” encompassing the kind of informal personal skills or crafts and one is the cognitive dimension which is made of beliefs, ideals, values, schemata, and mental models that are deeply ingrained in us (Nonaka and Konno 1998). On the other side, explicit knowledge point at the way of expressing in words and numbers which are shared in the form of data, scientific formulate specifications, manuals and the like (Nonaka and Konno 1998). In the situation of TV users, most of their tacit knowledge is the cognitive dimension type. The change from personal feeling to TV programs preference benefits in users locating programs and not to cost another time to find something uncertain.

5    Business Feasibility

5.1    New Organisation Structure

The Web 2.0 technology-supported solution has taken users’ perspective into account when providing TV program guide. This will have an impact on the organisational structure. While rethinking and redesigning TV cable providers’ operating processes, we should focus on the organisation’s core competencies in order to achieve dramatic improvements in organisational performance (Lowenthal 1994). With applying the proposed solution, TV cable providers are to enhance their core competencies in the user management area. This includes a technical part as well as non-technical support. In the new organisation structure, two new departments will be created to support the new business processes. One is the Information System Department, in which there are several function units such as user interface design and maintenance, database management, information system administrators, IT infrastructure management, etc. Internally, this department will be technically in charge of the new system to collect, store, and make use of the information about users’ preference and viewing behavior.

The other new department is Customer Relationship Management Department. In the Web 2.0 technology solution context, such department should have three new sub-units, which will be online community moderation, program guide editing and user feedback management. This department will be in charge of initiating online interaction amongst users and between users and the organisation. The interaction can be supported by social networking service based on users’ common interests, discussion board, program rating and commenting. To make use of the information and knowledge generated by the users, it is necessary to reorganise the data for the program guide editing (e.g., an introduction to a show includes a digest of users’ discussion on the actors/actresses who will appear in that show). Furthermore, if users provide the organisation with suggestion or complaints, such information should also be organised and sent to relevant departments within the organisation.

New Organisational Structure

5.2      Expected Benefits for the Organisation

5.2.1 Increase of Revenue

As the digital TV cable providers apply the Web 2.0 technology-supported solution into practice, users’ satisfaction may be increased because they will have a better experience of using the digital TV broadcasting service with personalised guidance. This will lead to the increase of the organisations’ revenue as potential users are more likely to subscribe to the service. The root of the increase of revenue is that the new solution can enhance the intellectual capital of the organisations. Intellectual capital is the intellectual material – knowledge, information, intellectual property, experience – that can be put to create wealth (Stewart 1997). The activities and the behaviours of the users within the Web 2.0 framework keep generating such intellectual material and convey it to the organisations.

An organisation’s intellectual property is indicated by various factors, which include finance, customer, human, process, renewal and development (Kaplan and Norton 1992). Figure 1 is the balanced scorecard by Kaplan and Norton (1992), in which customer perspective is recognised as one of the important components of measuring an organisation’s intellectual capital. If we focus on “entities” instead of “perspectives”, the core value of intellectual capital is from human capital, organisational capital and customer capital (see Figure 2) (Petrash 1996). Thus, it is obvious that digital TV users’ satisfaction and feedback are forming a critical part of the cable providers’ intellectual property. The new solution will be facilitating the transition from customers’ experience into the organisations’ managed knowledge asset. This asset will be ultimately part of the organisations’ intellectual capital which is expected to create tangible benefit from sales.

· Figure 1 The Balanced Scorecard by Kaplan and Noron (1992)

· Figure 2 Intellectual Capital Framework by Petrash (1996)

5.2.2 Improvement of the Organisation’s Image

By applying the Web 2.0 technology-supported solution, the organisations’ public images will be managed and improved. Traditionally, much research into corporate image concluded that corporate image is determined mostly by the organisation per se (e.g., logos, advertisement, business management, etc.) (Dowling 1986; Wreford 1987). However, more and more researchers have found that image is also determined by both environmental and personal factors of the audience member. The combination of all these factors becomes a part of the impression-formation process and produces an overall perceptually-based audience image (Haedrich 1993; Moffitt 1994; Williams and Moffitt 1997).

Social networking activities amongst current and potential customers of the organisations are personal factors that influence the organisations’ image. In the traditional one way communication mode between digital TV program guide and current customers, it is difficult for the organisations to perceive, manage and response to such personal factors. To a large extent, the organisations’ image is at risk as long as the external factors are not controllable. This difficulty is determined by the nature of the knowledge generated during people’s socialisation. Such knowledge is usually about people’s ideas, feelings and experience and it is considered as tacit knowledge (Nonaka and Konno 1998).

However, if the organisations adopt the Web 2.0 technology-supported solution, such communication will be made explicit because customers are encouraged to use specific figures, words and/or choices to convey their preferences, feelings, ideas, and experiences on the mediums managed by the organisations. The organisations then combine the information from the customers into their service and response quickly once they receive negative feedback from the customers (e.g., low rating of a program, complaint on the online forum, etc.) so that the organisations’ image will be protected and improved as the customers will perceive the organisations’ respecting their feedback.

5.3  Risks of the Change

5.3.1   Immaturity of the New Solution

Although Web2.0 is used for EPG, it is still not mature enough for matching exactly the needs to the customer. Due to the high development of the current Internet technology, the organisation and the people can be connected much easier than ever before by network. Even by using the most advanced technology, some information can still not match the customer’s needs. So there must be some balance between richness and reach (Evans and Wurster 1997). In our situation, although the Web 2.0 will be merged with the EPG, no one knows whether this combination can work well or not. In other words, whether the new technology can customize the needs to the customers is still a question. Probably, when a customer search for a particular program, although most relevant information will be listed, some programs still may not appear on the screen. Consequently, the customer may potentially miss some really important programs which relates to his/her demand, but he/she has assumed that the “machine” is correct and does not manually browse the traditional view of TV program guide.

5.3.2   Small Content Providers May Be Still at Risk in the New Solution

Due to the similarities of the program, the small companies’ channels are usually ranking behind the big ones. According to Macdonald (1998), if the piece of information is scarce, the value of that information is just like gold (Macdonald 1998). On the other hand, if the information is very common and nearly every body knows, the value of that information will become poorer and poorer. In our situation, once both the big content provider and the small one provide the same or the similar programs, the EPG must list the big company’s content in front of the small company due to the strength of the big corporation. For most customers, they usually look at the first couple of programs and neglect the rest ones which may still affect the small company’s advertisement revenue. Thus, in order to survive in the competitive market, the small company has to do more brainstorming and try to be innovative and create some unique programs that the big company doesn’t have so that their programs can be the top one. As a result, they can attract more advertisements and their revenue can be guaranteed.

5.3.3   Fake Message Attack

Since small broadcasters can utilize the web to develop the online community, it is possible for the rival to post the fake message to criticize the company’s reputation.  According to Green (2000), in order to survive in today’s competitive world, a company has to find a good competition way to survive. The competition includes the normal competition and abnormal competition which most companies will take advantage in the market (Green 2000). In our situation, some companies may use the abnormal competition approach. As all the comments posted via the online portal could be anonymous and could be with fake identities attached, it is easy for a competitor to text any fake and bad information on the notice board without worrying about being sued by the law. When an audience reads the message, he/she may probably believe it and even transfer it into other forums. Consequently, the company’s reputation will be affected negatively and face the potential threat of losing customers.

6    Recommendations

6.1    Construction of a Two-Way Communication Channel

The existing one-way communication channel between the organisations and the customers stops the organisations from learning the customers’ program view preference, interests, feelings, etc. Such learning need is increasing as the information about programs seems to be overloaded because the digital TV cable providers have to provide the viewers with more relevant information. A two-way communication channel can facilitate the information flow from the viewers to the broadcasters. The interaction between the organisations and the customers helps increase the quality of the service as the presentation of the program guides can be modified according to viewers’ feedback.

6.2    Construction of the Profiles for Users and Programs and the Matching Mechanism

6.3    Business Process Reengineering and Enterprise Architecture Redesign

6.4    Reviewing the Solution

7    Conclusion

This report has used the CommonKADS method and social analysis approaches to identify the problems and opportunities of the electronic TV program guides which have emerged because TV channels and programs keep growing dramatically. The main problems are that the information from the increasing TV channels and programs seems to be overloaded and in the traditional one-way communication mode, it is difficult for TV cable providers to provide the users with the right programs at the right time. On the users’ side, because there are too many choices and they are not familiar with most of the channels and programs, so they only rely on several major channels which leads to smaller content providers’ being left out.

Thus, it is believed that if cable providers solve these problems, they will attract more subscribers. A Web 2.0 technology-supported solution has been proposed to solve the problems. In the proposed solution, profiles of users and programs are used to create personalised TV program guides within an automatic matching mechanism. However, the current organisational structure and business processes do not support the new solution because the responsibilities of the people involved in the current structure and process have nothing to do with the new knowledge management system. Thus, it is necessary for the organisations to redesign the enterprise architecture and reengineer the business process. New departments such as information system management department and customer relationship management department need to be created. Relevant IT infrastructure should be set up. As the new solution being implemented, users’ tacit knowledge will be transferred to explicit knowledge on managed mediums and made available to the organisations. Such explicit knowledge will be used for TV program guide personalisation. As a result, the organisations’ revenue will be increased because the new solution helps them increase their “customer capital”.  On the other hand, the organisations’ image will be improved because the new solution helps them better manage and monitor their users’ social activities where their image is carried. Some risks of the solution have also been addressed. To implement the solution, the organisations should be concerned about the immaturity of the new practice, the at-risk smaller content providers and fake message attack.

Finally, based on the comprehensive analysis, it is recommended that the organisations should construct the two-way communication channels between the organisations and the users,  set up the profile matching mechanism,  complete the business process reengineering and enterprise architecture redesign in time, and review the new solution as it is being implemented.

8   References

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Applying Learning Science Research to the
Design and Use of Educational Technology for
Promoting Learning about Complex Systems

He, Wenchao

CoCo Research Centre

Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Australia

25 May, 2008

Introduction

A complex system is a system composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one or more properties (behavior among the possible properties) not obvious from the properties of the individual parts (Weaver, 1948). Complex systems exist in various subjects (e.g. biology, physics and society) within education settings and they are believed to be difficult for learners to learn. Many learning scientists have been studying the difficulties involved in understanding concepts within complex systems as emergence and decentralized control and in helping learners grow their understandings of these difficult concepts (Kolodner, 2006). Journal of the Learning Sciences, one of the official journals of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS), published a strand of articles on promoting learning about complex systems in the first volume in 2006. This paper will study the guidelines that three articles from the strand provide for the design and use of educational technology in relation to complex systems, and then identify, discuss, compare, and critically evaluate their methodological approaches, quality and applicability.

Guidelines from the Learning Sciences Community

Jacobson & Wilensky (2006) argue that the field of the learning sciences now has a major opportunity to help address the widening gap between current best understandings and analytical tools in the physical and social sciences and the working knowledge of professionals, policymakers, and citizens. They asserted that the learning sciences have been well positioned to contribute in this area and then they proposed five principles for creating environments and tools to help students learn scientific ideas about complex physical and social systems, which are (pp. 20-24):

(1) Experiencing complex systems phenomena

(2)    Making the complex systems conceptual framework explicit

(3)    Encouraging collaboration, discussion, and reflection

(4)    Constructing theories, models, and experiments

(5)    Learning trajectories for deep understandings and explorations

Different from Jacobson & Wilensky (2006), Lesh (2006) does not view current learning science theories as being sufficient to provide answers to most questions about the nature of the conceptual systems. In contrast, he believes that the most exciting point about learning science investigations of complex systems is precisely that such research is likely to require a variety of significant paradigm shifts beyond current ways of thinking. Furthermore, he believes that these paradigm shifts should have implications for learning and problem solving related to a wide range of constructs and situations where relationships to systemic understandings are far less obvious than in the case of complex systems. To support these claims, he suggests distinguishing among three kinds of complex systems (p. 46):

(1)    “Real life” systems (or simulations of such systems) that occur (or are created) in everyday situations

(2)    Conceptual systems that humans develop to design, model, or make sense of the preceding “real life” systems

(3)    Models that researchers develop to describe and explain students’ modeling abilities

In other words, layers of complexity of complex systems are different. Systems such as double pendulum can be referred to as being “simply complex” to contrast them with the kind of “deeply complex” systems that abound in “real life” systems where the “agents” within the system are often living organisms or ecosystems that are not characterized by simple, linearly combined, or concatenated hardware- or software-based rules. Therefore, to have adequate explanatory power, the design of models of complex systems should be based on at least three assumptions and principles (p. 49):

(1)    Useful models of complex systems’ most important properties cannot be derived from a list of simple functional rules.

(2)    Knowledge about useful models of complex systems tends to be both situated and distributed.

(3)    Useful models of complex systems meaningfully capture and illuminate some properties of the world.

Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo (2006) point out that one of the major issues affecting students’ ability to learn about complex systems is their cognitive, metacognitive, and self-regulatory processes. Understanding and reasoning about complex systems places a huge burden on working memory resources and is often counterintuitive. So they believe that studying the use of metacognitive processes in understanding complex systems is critical to understanding how we can facilitate learning about complex systems, as learners must engage in monitoring multiple activities during such learning—their emerging understanding, the aspects of their learning context and also their conceptual growth.

In addition, though agree with Jacobson and Wilensky’s (2006) claim about the importance of experience with complex systems, Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo (2006) argue that discovery alone is not sufficient and computer-based learning environment should provide students with embedded scaffolds to guide their exploration and experience, but should not provide all students with all students the same scaffolding from embedded scaffolds.

In terms of the use of educational technology, they notice that, although educators have become inundated with computer-based learning environments that may have the potential to facilitate students’ learning about complex systems, unfortunately teachers are not being trained how to support students’ learning with such technology-based environments. It is especially important for teachers to have the skills needed to support learning of complex systems from simulation and modeling software.

Methodological Approaches

Among the three articles, Jacobson & Wilensky (2006) and Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo (2006) discussed issues of methodological approaches regarding the research on the guidelines and principles that they proposed. Both the discussions aim to bridge the gap between the studies on complex systems in multiple disciplines and the learning sciences research through the use of data from complex systems in real world for educational purposes. However, they focused on different aspects of the use and the data.

Jacobson & Wilensky (2006) emphasize the way that we use the data and the validity of the data, and claim that the gap can be bridged by research on the use of conceptual and methodological disciplinary toolkit such as computational modeling of systems of learning and education where validated data from real world have been embedded. Such computational modeling approach allows dramatically enhanced capabilities to investigate complex and dynamical systems and has been widely implemented in scientific practice. Once researchers have demonstrated a valid model for a particular system compared to available data, it is then possible to run “computational experiments” in which what-if scenarios about the behavior of the system may be explored to understand a system under different conditions. And such model can be developed for educational purposes under the design guidelines and principles of educational technology.

Differently, Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo (2006) emphasize the theoretical and empirical base synthesized by studying the data collected as well as the variety of the types and sources of data. They argue that we need to amalgamate diverging theoretical frameworks from multidisciplinary-approach-based research in complex systems and also need to collect multiple data source, such as those from laboratory and classroom experimentation, and use mixed methods to triangulate between qualitative data and quantitative data. They believe that the amalgamated framework and the different types of data are necessary for us to analyze and understand the complexities in learning about complex systems, which may be beneficial for corresponding design and use of educational technology.

It is evident that the two articles are promoting different directions for bridging the gap. While Jacobson & Wilensky (2006) base their exploration on complex systems perspectives and consider how to introduce computation modeling into learning sciences research, Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo (2006) start the research from the complexity of learning per se and promote educational-setting-based studies in relation to the field of complex systems. As Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo (2006) have noticed that the learning sciences is at an early stage of understanding how people think and learn about complex systems, Jacobson & Wilensky’s (2006) methodological approach—from complex systems perspectives to learning sciences—seems relatively more easy and efficient because computational modeling has been somewhat more mature in science practice and it can be immediately applied in educational settings once related guidelines from learning sciences research have been integrated into the process of its design and use.

Quality and Applicability

Though all of the three articles provide educational technology designers and users with the guidelines from different perspectives, they are still conveying the same information from the learning sciences community—it is not easy to design and use educational technology for promoting learning about complex systems, and they acknowledge that further research is needed as many current problems have not been solved. These problems can be sorted into three catalogues—cognition, computational tools, and teachers’ instruction.

For cognition, the three articles have addressed how difficult for students to change the way that they have been used to think, but only they have gone through the process of conceptual change can they better understand complex systems. Jacobson & Wilensky (2006) encourage further research about how to provide students with opportunities to experience complex systems and how to make complex systems conceptual framework explicit, which indicates that they intend to solve the problem out of the learners. Lesh (2006) criticizes the mechanistic information processing metaphors and claims that educational technology design should not reduce complex systems into a list of simple functional rules but does not claim what should be done to solve the problem. Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo (2006), focusing the cognitive challenge per se, suggest studying the use of metacognitive processes in understanding complex systems, which is critical to understand how to facilitate learning about complex systems.

As for computational tools, all of the three articles agree that we should use it to assist the learning about complex systems, but what the authors are worrying about is that computational tools may not provide students with the true representation of complex systems in real world and this may lead to misunderstanding and/or difficulty of understanding of real complex systems. Jacobson & Wilensky (2006), on the one hand, suggest introducing computational modeling approach from science practice domain to educational settings, and on the other hand turn the research focus to explore students’ learning during constructing and revising their own models. These two approaches can avoid the embarrassment in pursuing “real complex systems” in the educational technology context and are also much applicable. Lesh (2006) suggests that we differentiate three kinds of models of different degrees of complexity. Knowledge about the “simply complex” ones may be well distributed by computational tools while the “deeply complex” ones may not. However, the assumptions and principles that he proposes about useful models of complex systems tend to be hardly in relation to the solution of the “reality” issue of computational modeling. Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo’s (2006) solution is similar to Jacobson & Wilensky’s (2006) avoiding the embarrassment. But their focus is on the design of computational tools’ content and functions. They argue that computational tools should provide students with different kinds of embedded scaffolds to support their various learning needs. Nevertheless, they are still not sure how to realize the claim and then they argue that more research is necessary to understand when, how, and why to scaffold learning about complex systems in the context of computer-based learning environment.

As for teachers’ instruction, all of the three articles have discussed the challenge for teachers to teach about complex systems, especially to teach those “non-everyday” or impossible-to-directly-experience phenomena. Jacobson & Wilensky (2006) claim that teachers should organise collaboration, discussion and reflection in learning environments in which students come to experience and to construct their understandings about complex systems context. In addition, Jacobson & Wilensky (2006) also encourage investigating whether the complex-systems-knowledge-and-methodologies integrated curriculum fosters learning trajectories for deep understanding and explorations that students can apply not only in the domain of that curriculum but also other areas. But they have not provided implementation details though such claim may be still applicable but difficult for many teachers. Both Lesh (2006) and Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo (2006) focus on teachers’ preparation before class rather than the instructional activities in class and the investigation after class. While Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo (2006) still emphasize preparing teachers to be skillful of supporting learning about complex systems in class, Lesh (2006) identifies the importance for teachers to model students’ modeling abilities which may result in teachers’ deep understanding of how students’ learn about complex systems. And he also argues that researchers should help develop useful models to describe and explain students’ modeling abilities under three assumptions and principles that he proposed. Among the three articles, Lesh’s (2006) solution tends to be the most radical. Once the work of modeling students’ modeling abilities has been done by further research, it would be much easier for teachers to process their teaching about complex systems. Therefore, though three articles’ claims about the teachers’ instruction issue have not been followed by detailed guidelines for the application, those proposed by Lesh (2006) are relatively more reasonable comparing to the others.

There are strengths and weaknesses in the three articles regarding to solving the problems in relation to cognition, computational tools and teachers’ instruction. While Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo’s (2006) and Jacobson & Wilensky’s (2006) solutions are respectively the most applicable and of highest quality in terms of dealing with the issues about cognition and computational tools, the applicability of Lesh’s (2006) suggestion for teachers’ instruction issue still need to be examined in the future, but it is probably the best way to prepare teachers for the teaching about complex systems.

Conclusion

This paper has summarized the guidelines that three articles from the Complex Systems Strand of Journal of the Learning Sciences provide for the design and use of educational technologies for promoting learning about complex systems, and discuss, compare and evaluate their methodological issues, quality and applicability. All of three articles provide us with valuable discussion about technology-based learning about complex systems, but their emphases and scopes of the applicability are different. Therefore, we should apply the most appropriate guidelines for the corresponding issues—bridging the gap between complex systems research and learning sciences research, students’ cognition, computational tools and teachers’ instruction when we design and use educational technology for promoting learning about complex system.

References

Hmelo-Silver, C. E., & Azevedo, R. (2006). Understanding Complex Systems: Some Core Challenges. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 15(1), 53-61.

Jacobson, M. J., & Wilensky, U. (2006). Complex Systems in Education: Scientific and Educational Importance and Implications for the Learning Sciences. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 15(1), 11-34.

Kolodner, J. L. (2006). A Note From the Editor. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 15(1), 1-2.

Lesh, R. (2006). Modeling Students Modeling Abilities: The Teaching and Learning of Complex Systems in Education. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 15(1), 45-52.

Weaver, W. (1948). Science and Complexity. American Scientist, 36, 536.

Ernst & Young’s Practice of Designing

Global E-Learning Program:

a Review from the ISD Perspectives   

He, Wenchao

CoCo Research Centre

Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Australia

16 June 2008 

Introduction

Ernst & Young is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services, with about 130,000 staff helping clients retain confidence of investors, manage risk, strengthen controls and achieve potential in more than 130 countries in the world (Ernst & Young, n.d.-a, n.d.-b). To standardise or customise their services and make the staff members rely on explicit and tacit knowledge to solve problems, they have used the codification strategy since they frequently reuse their knowledge to achieve long-term advantage and economies of scale (Smith, 2004). To support this, they needed a flexible learning system to provide a global curriculum that all the staff from different offices in the world can participate in (Werner, 2002). On the other hand, using a blend of Web-based and classroom instruction, Ernst & Young reduced training costs by 35 percent while improving consistency and scalability (Bih, 2007). This paper, focusing on Ernst & Young’s Audit Methodology Learning Program, looks deep into the design process of their global e-learning program from the ISD perspectives, and provides suggestions for improvement of the e-learning solution.

Design Process

The Ernst & Young Assurance & Advisory Business Services (AABS) practice consists of financial statement audit, core assurance service, and six specialty assurance and advisory services. To support its AABS strategy, Ernst & Young created a global audit methodology that is organised in three layers: (1) overview of the methodology, (2) detailed guidance for applying the procedures and (3) examples and leading practices. The staff’s learning about this audit methodology would be critical to its successful deployment and application. So Ernst & Young used six months to design and develop the first 300 hours of the core curriculum of the global e-learning program to initiate and support such learning, which included six main stages (Werner, 2002):

(1)   Global Learning Committee Construction. The Committee Members were the learning leaders of Ernst & Young’s main geographic areas, who were responsible for defining the learning strategy and the development process, and approving all finished learning modules.

(2)   Content Creation. Ernst & Young used a modular approach to create the initial content which was divided into web-based and instructor-led learning modules based on the global audit methodology activities. Ernst & Young also assigned countries to develop the content for the modules related to a particular activity which would be bundled into logical groups later. All the modules were rated beginner, intermediate, advanced and expert.

(3)   Streamlined Development and Pilot Process. Once the relevant documents of the learning content had been ready, they used a streamlined development process to accelerate the actual learning module development and the build phase of the program. The Committee allocated the modules to different development teams and provided them with guidance including the detailed development process map, initial design documents, expanded design documents, leader guides, business English guide and roles description for team members (e.g. subject matter specialists, local project managers, etc.). A showcase was leveraged to test the content and gather feedback, in which approximately 80 hours of learning were delivered to the learning leaders and senior managers. The program manager and methodology team analyzed issues identified during showcase testing, and critical issues and suggestions for resolution were sent to the development teams.

(4)   Central Communication Point Creation. A central communication point was created to allow every developing team member from multiple countries to access the learning modules under development and make comments. Thus everyone could see what everyone else was developing.

(5)   Peer Review. When a learning module was developed in one country, it was systematically reviewed by a subject matter specialist from another country. Countries were asked to submit learning material related to all methodology activities, regardless of the activities their countries were assigned to develop.

(6)   Classroom-based Case Study Exercises Development. A separated case study team was created with a member from every country, which was responsible for creating all the information for a fictitious business. The case study was used in many of the classroom modules to create exercises to reinforce learning.

The six stages are more or less overlapped as there were different teams fulfilling responsibilities within each stage. However, the overlapped parts basically only appeared in the latter half of the whole project as the design process is actually a top-down approach (see Figure 1). The lower the levels of the teams were, the more overlapped the phases of their work were.

Figure 1:  The Organisation Structure of Ernst & Young’s AABS Global Learning Development Project (Werner, 2002)

Design Methodology

The method used for the instructional design of Ernst & Young’s e-learning program is a systems approach. This approach has been described in literature as instructional systems development (ISD) which provides a practical, step-by-step system for evaluating student needs, developing the program content and determining the effectiveness of the instructional design (Hannum & Hansen, 1989). The widely used models for ISD are ADDIE Model which includes analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation (Branson, 1975), and the Dick and Carey Model which describes nine phases of an iterative process that starts by identifying instructional goals and ends with summative evaluation (Dick & Carey, 1978). Though systems approaches for instructional design have been criticized by some as being too rigid, too cumbersome, too linear, too inflexible, too constraining, and even too time-consuming to implement (Clark, 2004; Kruse, 2006), Ernst & Young still had to develop their e-learning program in this way because they had become a complex system which has so many locations through out the world (O’Leary, 1998; Seng, Zannes, & Pace, 2002). Such context is much different from a single teacher or lecturer designing instruction for the classes. This section of the present paper adopts the latest edition of Dick & Carey Model (see Figure 2) to describe and discuss the design methodologies of Ernst & Young’s e-learning program development project.

Figure 2:   The Dick & Carey Model (6^th Edition) (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2004)

The Dick and Carey model does not emphasize the first phase—analysis of ADDIE as Dick et al. (2004) believe that, before instruction is created, it is necessary to determine the need for that instruction in terms of what problem within the organization will be solved through the use of new skills, or what opportunity can be seized because of new skills in the organization. This step is critically important to the success of the design process. Ernst & Young’ e-learning program design decision was consistent with this assertion. In the very beginning, rather than analyzing the skills to be developed, the learners’ entry behaviour or the learning context, Ernst & Young clearly defined their instructional goal which was to promote their global audit methodologies that their staff was required to use consistently while providing clients with assurance and advisory business services. They valued and emphasised this goal to a considerable extent. To ensure the whole design process continually on the right track, they used a high-level committee to support and control the project, which has reinforced the importance of the project to all participants and made the project strongly goal-oriented.

However, Dick et al.’s (2004) not putting analysis phase as the first phase does not indicate that the analysis can be ignored. Rather, they recognise the constructivist points of view that learning is always a unique product "constructed" as each individual learner combines new information with existing knowledge and experiences, so the Dick and Carey Model’s second phase includes analysing the performance of the instructional goal as well as the learners’ entry behaviours, prior knowledge, learning and application context, etc., but this was much difficult for Ernst & Young to implement and actually they have not done much in this phase because the target learners and their contexts varied from places to place.

To make up the lack of analysis of learners and their contexts, Ernst & Young wrote the learning objectives according to the learners of different levels from beginners to experts and the learning content followed was designed based on these assumptions. The other compensation reported by Werner (2002) was to tie the learning content “to the learners’ previous experiences through open-ended questions (in the Web-based modules) and opportunities to share experiences through storytelling (in the instructor-led modules)” (p. 69). Anyhow, Ernst & Young tried their best to minimize the need for localization of the modules.

Without developing any assessment instrument, Ernst & Young directly proceeded to the fifth and six phases to develop instructional strategies (e.g. modular approach, blended approach, etc.) and materials (e.g. web pages, case study exercises, etc.). Once the pilot modules were completed, the formative evaluation was conducted by project managers and methodology team. Also, each completed module was sent to subject matter specialist from a different country for systematic review. However, the objective of this kind of reviews “was to use as much existing material developed by the different countries as possible” (Werner, 2002, p. 72). Therefore, the “real formative evaluation” only existed in the pilot process. And the feedback from the pilot process formed the basis for the revision of the instructional strategy and material. According to Dick et al. (2004), the data from a formative evaluation should not be simply used to revise the instruction itself, but should be used to reexamine the validity of the instructional analysis and the assumptions about the entry behaviors and characteristics of learners. However, because there were no actual learners participating in the formative evaluation, Ernst & Young could not identify the difficulties experienced by the learners in achieving the objectives and relate these difficulties to specific deficiencies in the instruction. Eventually, there were no data for the revision of the analysis phase. In addition, they even had no chance to validate the assumption for the four-level learners’ competencies.

To sum up, Ernst & Young’s e-learning design process basically went through most phases of the Dick & Carey Model but some components and links of the model were “missing” as labeled in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Ernst & Young’s E-learning Design Process Model

Critical Analysis and Problem Solving

The main decisions within Ernst & Young’s e-learning program design process were basically made by high-level staff (e.g. learning leaders, project managers, subject matter specialists, etc.) without much consulting the target learners. The learners were considered in the design and develop phases, but not involved in the actual design process. As learners are the important factors in the analysis, assessment and evaluation phases (Dick et al., 2004) and Ernst & Young’s design process had no learners involved, these three phases tended to be missing and this would lead the design process to be a vicious circle because of lack of effective revision of instruction supported by the data from learners. Such situation would also lead to learner readiness issues, such as lack of time, low interest in subject matter, low motivation for learning, poor self-study skills, poor time management skills, disrupting life interruptions, lack of necessary e-skills, psychological resistance to losing face to face learning perks, etc. (Phillips, 2002; Romiszowski, 2004). Furthermore, because of such situation, the leaders in the organisation would have not enough understanding on the learners’ needs in terms of the learning context, which would lead to poor internal marketing of courses and events, lack of clear reward structure, failure to provide quality learning environment, failure to provide quality learning equipment, failure to provide managerial feedback and support of learning, failure to provide time on-the-job to train, corporate-wide lack of dedication to a learning culture, blanket mandate of e-learning as the new-new thing (ibid).

Ernst & Young’s current instructional design approach is exactly what Carr-Chellman & Savoy (2004) described about traditional instructional design—“the designer analyzes, creates, and negotiates, and the leaders initiate, approve and decide”, and “the users are left to accept or reject the innovation” (p. 702). If users are truly empowered to participating in designing products or processes, the products or processes will tend to create a significantly different adoption process. Therefore, a user-design approach, which indicates that actions such as initiation, approval, rejection, design, and decision making are negotiated among the users , designers and leaders, would be beneficial for Ernst & Young to avoid the disadvantages of the current design process and the potential risks on the organizational level (ibid).

Since user-design is very time-consuming and resource hungry (Carr-Chellman, Cuyar, & Breman, 1998), the suggestion about user-design approach may not be adopted if its disadvantages significantly constrain the e-learning solution to meet the business goal of Ernst & Young, and the possibility of this supposition tends to be large because saving learning and administrative time, training budgets and other resources is still one of the main reasons why corporations use e-learning (Oakes, 2003; Tai, 2008). An eclectic approach would be revising the traditional ISD models so that it can adapt to the context of e-learning that has special needs and constrains (e.g. lower cost, learners’ locations vary, etc.). Carliner (2002) revised the Dick and Carey Model and then proposed a four-phase model to describe the ISD process for e-learning (see Figure 4).

In the Carliner Model, there are no standalone instructional analysis (distinguishing from the analysis of goals and needs of organisations), assessment and evaluation phases and basically learners are not involved in the design process. Some of the components of each phase of the Carliner Model indicate the differences between designing e-learning and designing traditional classroom courses, and these components generally have existed in Ernst & Young’s e-learning design process. For example, in the Definition Phase, Carliner (2002) suggests collecting demographic data about the learners and preparing prose descriptions of them because within an organisation, learners with different backgrounds and of different levels have different appetites for content and use the content in different ways. Similarly, Ernst & Young prepared their e-learning content for four-different-level learners. We can notice that both the Carliner Model and Ernst & Young’s practice tend to construct the learning content that covers most of the learners and the term “learner” that they used actually refers to the abstract, assumptive or even imaginary concept of “learner”, rather than the learners known as actual people. Such situation is much different from traditional classroom where actual learners are known and reachable, and the learning content will be only prepared directly for them.

Figure 4:  ISD Process for e-learning (Carliner, 2002)

In the Design Phase, Carliner (2002) emphases using of style guides and templates to ensure the consistency of similar content (screens, text, number, language, formats of headings, etc.). And in Development Phase, effective communication, technical and editorial reviews, and running tests are also required in the context of designing e-learning. Ernst & Young’s design process included the provision of guidance for streamlined development and the review process. Such “additional” work should be done within the ISD for e-learning, which is not emphasised in traditional ISD because the most of the information from the course will be delivered through teachers’ speech which does not need the style guides, templates, review process, etc.

Assessment and evaluation are the two main missing phases for Ernst & Young’s design process as well as the Carliner Model. However, Carliner (2002) still mentioned assessment and evaluation in the Design Phase but disappointingly he only used limited words to address the importance of them and did not clarify whether the actual learners should be involved or not and whether the assessment and evaluation should be implemented in the Definition Phase to obtain the data for the definition of goals. So regarding to the assessment and evaluation phases in ISD, we probably can adopt some thoughts from Borich’s (1979) systematic evaluation model (see Figure 5) to the e-learning design context.

Figure 5: (a) Traditional view and (b) nontraditional view of the evaluator during planning, development, and evaluation (Borich, 1979)

Borich (1979) noticed that, traditionally, planners, designers, developers and evaluators each often begin their work in different phases in the instructional design process and then proposed a new approach involving evaluators to keep contributing through out the whole process. Here the evaluator, rather than entering the scenario late in the development process, plays an integral role in program planning and development alongside planners and developers. This model and Carr-Chellman & Savoy’s (2004) User-Design approach may meet a compromise and be integrated. While one representation of User-Design approach is design team members acting as users (Carr-Chellman & Savoy, 2004), this kind of “users” can keep contributing to the evaluation process within Borich’s (1979) framework. So if Ernst & Young used this systematic evaluation approach in the design process (e.g. using the special “users” to conduct a formative evaluation while senior leaders were reviewing the pilot modules), this would help make up the disadvantages caused by lacking actual learners involved.

To sum up, lack of actual learners involved in Ernst & Young’s e-learning program design process would lead to various problems and a user-design approach is recommended to the e-learning project. However, a user-design approach requires too much time and resources to support, so a revised ISD model was introduced specifically for e-learning design process. Finally, the evaluation issue was resolved by integrating a user-design approach and a systematic evaluation approach so that the drawbacks of lacking actual learner’s involvement would be overcome.

Reflection and Conclusion

Although there are places that could be further improved, Ernst & Young’s practice of global e-learning program development has given us a very good case to help us better understand Instructional Systems Development’s (ISD) application in the real world. ISD has been used for more than three decades. It experienced the change of contexts—from pure face to face instructional design to e-learning program development. In the middle of this change, there has been a need for us to study how bridge the gap between using it in traditional way and in nontraditional way. If new issues emerge, we need to identify opportunities to use other exist approach to resolve them, or to create new approaches to update ISD’s usage in the new context.

In this paper, we have summarised Ernst & Young’s e-learning design process, used a system approach (e.g. the Dick and Carey Model), and critically analyse the issues identified in this paper and finally provided the conceptual solutions for the issues.

References 

Bih, J. (2007). When it comes to e-learning. ACM Ubiquity, 8(43), 1-11.

Borich, G. D. (1979). A system approach to the evaluation of training. In J. H. F. O’Neil (Ed.), Procedures for instructional systems development (pp. 205-231). New York: Academic Press.

Branson, R. K. (1975). Interservice procedures for instructional systems development: Executive summary and model. Tallahassee, FL: Center for Educational Technology, Florida State University.

Carliner, S. (2002). Designing e-learning. Alexandria, VA: ASTD.

Carr-Chellman, A., Cuyar, C., & Breman, J. (1998). User-design: A case application in health care training. Educational Technology Research and Development, 46(4), 97-114.

Carr-Chellman, A., & Savoy, M. (2004). User-design research. In D. H. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Educational Communication and Technology (2nd ed., pp. 701-716). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Clark, D. (2004). The Dick and Carey Model – 1978.   Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://www.nwlink.com/~Donclark/history_isd/carey.html

Dick, W., & Carey, L. (1978). The systematic design of instruction. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.

Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2004). The systematic design of instruction (6th ed.). Boston & London: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Ernst, & Young. (n.d.-a). Creating the right climate for your business success.   Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://www.ey.com/global/content.nsf/International/Services

Ernst, & Young. (n.d.-b). How we make a difference.   Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://www.ey.com/global/content.nsf/International/About_EY

Hannum, W. H., & Hansen, C. D. (1989). Instructional systems development in large organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.

Kruse, K. (2006). Introduction to Instructional Design and the ADDIE Model.   Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art2_1.htm

O’Leary, D. E. (1998). Using AI in knowledge management: knowledge bases and ontologies. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 13(3), 34-39.

Oakes, K. (2003). E-learning. Training & Development, 57(7), 17-20.

Phillips, V. (2002). Why does corporate e-learning fail? Virtual University Gazette   Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://www.geteducated.com/vug/june02/vug0602c.htm

Romiszowski, A. J. (2004). How’s the e-learning baby? Factors leading to success or failure of an educational technology innovation. Educational Technology, 44(1), 5-27.

Seng, C. V., Zannes, E., & Pace, R. W. (2002). The contributions of knowledge management to workplace learning. Journal of Workplace Learning, 14(4), 138 – 147.

Smith, A. D. (2004). Knowledge management strategies: a multi-case study. Journal of knowledge management, 8(3), 6-16.

Tai, L. (2008). Corporate e-learning: an inside view of IBM’s solutions. New York: Oxford University Press.

Werner, T. (2002). Best practices for e-learning: top entries in the best practices category Sunnyvale, CA Brandon-Hall. 

Englishtown.com’s Efekta^™ System : Could Be Further Improved

He, Wenchao

CoCo Research Centre

Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Australia 

October 30, 2007
 

1.  Introduction

This paper reports on aspects of the possibilities and potentials for Englishtown.com’s further improvement from the perspective of user experience. It could help online language teaching program developers, both from Englishtown.com or other institutes consider the ways that they could make progress.

Englishtown.com is an online English learning website operated by Englishtown Inc, a division of Education First Group (EF) which is said to be the world’s largest private educational organization, with 26,000 staff, 300 schools, and 75 offices in 50 countries. Englishtown asserts that they have combined EF’s 40 years experience in language training with over $40 million in research and development to their Efekta™ System  for learning English (Englishtown, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c).

There are four main components in Efekta™ System (Englishtown, 2007b):

l        Teachers:  live, online teaching, 24 hours a day 

l        iLab:  interactive tutorials and study tools 

l        Coaching:  constant feedback and guidance 

l        Community:  classmates from 120 countries 

Teachers in Englishtown.com give 45-minute-long conversation classes every hour for the different levels of students based on different topics. Averagely, eight students of the same level will participate in one class. Students can make their own plans for conversation class and self-study in iLab but it is not compulsory for them to keep strict with the plans. In iLab, students will take their lessons by participating in different interactive activities. The lessons are divided into 15 levels and every level has 8 units. Based one topic, every unit has 13 parts: Introduction, Movie, Simulation, Map, Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Review, Conversation Class, Writing Class, Net Tour and Test. While studying the lessons, students will use study tools if needed, such as translator, pronunciation lab, grammar lab, podcast, etc. In Writing Class, students will be requested to write an article with a given topic in relation to what is taught in the previous parts. A writing teacher will review the writing assignment, compose the coaching note and send a feedback email to the student. Besides learning the lessons, students can also make friends in a virtual community and have voice chat with their classmate. Generally, Englishtown can meet most of the needs of English learning from the students with different language and social backgrounds.

Though Englishtown has achieved some success and been recognized by many personal and corporate clients, it still need to be improved. As the rapid development of  learning technologies and theories has increased the affordance for online learning (Conole & Dyke, 2004), only those education providers keep adapting themselves to emerging technologies and to the dynamic needs of students and clients, can maintain and increase their predominance in the more and more competitive global education market.

Hence, this paper will focus on the shortcomings and outdated components of Englishtown.com and provide suggestions for its further development. The developers of Englishtown could consider this paper as a reference for their future work, while other distance education providers, including Englishtown’s competitors, would consider surpassing Englishtown or doing better in their own fields by employing some idea from this paper.

2.  Placement Test and Study Plan

Before enrolling in any course of Englishtown, users will be asked to take a placement test to determine which level of course they are advised to take. Placement is “a process of matching students and courses to achieve the best fit between what students know and what they need to know…[It helps make] the best possible match between a student’s current achievement status and the prerequisites of various alternate course sequences” (Frisbie, 1982). Englishtown’s placement test is significant for their realizing the slogan of “customized for each student” and they say they will “evaluate your [users’] weaknesses, interests, schedule and personality”. Based on that data, they create a customized study plan for users (Englishtown, 2007c).

Englishtown does provide a placement test concerning grammar, listening and reading to determine a user’s level according to the score he or she gets. However, they do not really “evaluate” users’ interest, schedule and personality and create a plan really based on that result. In stead, the only thing that the users will experience concerning the “evaluation” is being asked to answer the following multiple choice questions:

l        What is your main reason for wanting to learn English? Professional? Academic? Social? Travel? Other?

l        Which area of English would you like to focus on? Speaking? Pronunciation? Listening? Reading? Writing? Grammar? Vocabulary?

l        How many hours per week do you intend to study? Light – 1 to 2 hours a week?  Normal – 3 to 4 hours a week? Intensive – 5 or more hours a week?

l        How many conversation classes do you plan to attend each week? One per week?  Two per week? Three or more per week?

l        For how long do you want to keep your study plan active? 3 months? 6 months? 12 months? 18 months?

l        When do you prefer to study? Morning? Daytime? Evening? Weekend? Weekdays?

It seems that the developers for this part misunderstood the word “evaluation”. Actually, rather than directly asking for the result, “evaluation is an applied inquiry process for collecting and synthesizing evidence that culminates in conclusions about the state of affairs, value, merit, worth, significance…” (Mabry, 2005). If Englishtown was really evaluating users’ interest, schedule and personality, the users should be asked to provide some personal information to let the system make conclusions and suggestions for their own study plans. However, by asking the questions above, Englishtown virtually let users directly make the final conclusions. Even though the users do submit their answers, the significance of the data deserves suspicion. Since the user have not known much about what exactly is in the system, it is difficult for them to imagine the teaching style and the most useful component in the system, the outcomes of the courses and the time they should spend on it. When is asked “what is your main reason for wanting to learn English”, the users would be confused with the meaning of “English” in the question—the English courses in Englishtown or the English spoken by native English speakers? When is asked “which area of English would you like to focus on”, the users would consider whether they are being asked the weakness and whether this information determines the structure of their courses…

When the “customized study plan” is created, the users will receive a changeable calendar with random located course names according to the answers to the third, fourth and sixth questions in the “evaluation” (See Figure 1). Then the system will provide some pieces of study advice based on the answers to the first two questions. The disappointing content of the advice is basically the repeat of the introduction of some components of the system. For example, if users answered “writing” to the second question, the advice would be “The Englishtown Writing class is a great way to develop your Writing skills. Submit your essay to a teacher and get detailed feedback within 48 hours.”

Englishtown tries to let the potential users imagine how they could convey learner-centred curriculum, especially when the users are asked to process the study planning with the “evaluation”. However, no curriculum can claim to be truly learner-centred unless the learner’s subjective needs relating to the process of learning are taken into account (Nunan, 1988). Englishtown has not linked users’ subjective needs, such as their will to overcome the personal weakness in English, to the content, structure, procedure, objectives, learning style and assessment method of the courses. Every user actually does receive a personalized suggestion for the appropriate level and weekly study plan. Virtually they are still provided the same courses because there is not any change of the courses according to the result of the pre-evaluation.

Figure 1  Weekly Study Plan Calendar

Back to the placement test, without a timer, different users spend different time on the test, which could lead to the fallibility of the result of grammar and reading test. Furthermore, in the listening test, the audio clips can be played unlimitedly and some of the questions even use the same audio clips.

One of Englishtown’s Competitors—GlobalEnglish.com, has a better placement test with a timer in every session and a limitation of times (twice) for listening to the same audio clips in listening test, which is worthwhile for Englishtown to refer.

The fatal objection to Englishtown’s goal—“customized for each student” is not only the suspect placement test and the poor designed questionnaire, but the lack of a cyclical needs assessment and summative evaluation plans during the whole period of the courses. (Smith & Ragan) (1999) created a figure (see Figure 2) to interpret that the conclusions of a needs assessment should provide the reasons for developing or providing the appropriate instruction (p. 32).  So the really customized study plan is not a calendar or some advice, but specific instruction that meets the users’ exact needs. Different from traditional face-to-face learning environment, e-learning system can prepare different solutions for predicted result from needs assessment and provide the most suitable one to the right user. A further evaluation for the study plan after implementation would provide the basis for modification of the solutions.

Figure 2  Relationship Between Needs Assessment and Evaluation

According to “discrepancy” model of needs assessment (Kaufman & English, 1979; Rossett, 1988), the placement test and the questionnaire should help find out the gap between “what is” (what learners are currently able to do) and “what ought to be” (what learners should able to do) and determine which of these gaps should be addressed within the instruction—the customized solution. Without a pedagogical context, new users with different social backgrounds usually don’t know much about these two statuses and the gaps between them. So in order to create a customized study plan and provide the most appropriate solution, it would be better for Englishtown to analyze other more concrete information from users and make up the determination, rather than to let the users input their preference based on speculation. And the instruction, including the suggested study plan, should be scientifically in relation to the analysis of the data collected.

3.  Conversation Class

The benefits of conversational interaction between native and nonnative speakers or between nonnative speakers in their acquisition of second language have been investigated, claimed and proven (Gass, 1997; Long, 1996; Mackey, Perdue, & McDonough, 2000; Pica, 1994). Englishtown highlights its conversation class in many occasions and does give great effort to maintain and promote it by employing lots of certified, native-speaking English teachers to teach online 24 hours a days and encouraging users to participate more in it. However, conversation class in Englishtown still has two main weaknesses, detailed in the following subsections:

3.1  Lack of Preparative Materials

Englishtown’s conversation classes are separated from the topic within a study unit. There are different conversation class topics for every day and students can choose their favorite topics by taking the conversation classes on specific days during the week. Before entering the virtual classroom, students are encouraged to do some preparation by listening to a dialog and studying the new vocabulary. We do know that it is impracticable to arrange teachers to give the conversation class based on a specific unit because there are too many units and there may be not enough students available for the class at the same time and in the same unit, which leads to extreme increase of the cost. As a result, the preparation session for conversation class becomes important. However, currently this session is quite simple and doesn’t have much pedagogical significance. For the one hand, only if the class has been started can the students know the structure of the lesson. While looking through the content presented on slides, they are asked to answer questions. This leads to students’ high cognitive load and a higher cognitive load should result in more errors (Ayres & Sweller, 1990). Since our working memory is limited (Miller, 1956), if we read, listened and spoke at the same time, our brain would be overloaded. According to Sweller (2007), conversation class teachers’ PowerPoint-based instruction “can backfire if the information on the screen is the same as that which is verbalized, because the audience’s attention will be split between the two.” Furthermore, language classrooms which require oral communication are more anxiety-provoking (Horwitz, 2001; Kim, 1998). This emotional factor further increases students’ cognitive load. To overcome this problem, the conversation class teachers could utilize students’ schemas^* by providing more preparative materials to them, such as the details of the subtopics, activities and tasks in class. Teachers could even ask students to do some preparation for specific questions and provide some websites for them to find useful information. These activities before class would help activate students’ schemas which help them answer questions and solve problems “automatically” without much consideration in working memory while they are in class. So they could focus on improving their spoken English skills, rather than the content of the topics. To realize this, Englishtown should create a path for conversation class teachers to provide preparative materials to students.

3.2  Cursory Feedback from Teachers

Conversation class teachers will grade and feedback on students’ performance in class. The problem is that there is insufficient quantitative standard to support the grading and feedback. As a result, students don’t know their progress and exact weakness. See some samples below:

Sample 1: I hoped you enjoyed talking about France in today’s lesson and learnt some interesting information about the country as well as some English vocabulary. You participated well throughout the class and used appropriate intonation in the reading. Good work! Grade: 90%

Sample 2: You have developed some really good skills. You simply need to fine tune these to improve your English; practice makes perfect! See you again soon in class. Grade: 83%

Sample 3: Your vocabulary is very good! Thank you for your enthusiastic participation in class today. Keep practising the vocabulary you have learnt in class today so that you continue improving. Keep reading books and listening to television so that you improve your grammar. Hope to see you soon. Grade: 80%

Sample 4: You did a great job! Thanks for your excellent contributions to today’s lesson. I enjoyed hearing your ideas and opinions about parties. You demonstrated a solid understanding of the topic and showed that your skills in English are strong. Keep up the good work and see you in class again soon! Grade: 88%

Sample 5: Excellent! You are speaking very well in class. You have great skills and you have a sound understanding of the topic areas. I hope that my corrections during class have helped. Keep up the good work! See you again soon in class. Grade: 86%

        In the feedback samples, those words underlined and in red have focused on specific points in relation to language learning, such as intonation, tune, vocabulary and understanding. It helps students recall what they said and heard during the class and be aware of their zones of proximal development (ZPD) ^† by thinking of what has been actually developed and what could be developed potentially. Though after class the teacher could not provide further help, the students could know their updated goals and then give more effort on them. But it seems that the teachers focused more on what students had achieved while seldom described the potential development levels for students.

        The comment in blue in the samples seem either too simple or irrelevant to the students’ personal situation known from class. In Sample 2, 4 and 5, teachers gave much positive feedback without details. Students will want to know what exact aspects they have done well. Though general positive feedback may motivate the students at first, they would ignore it if they received too much without satisfying reasons. On the other hand, the first sentence in Sample 1 and the fourth sentence in Sample 3 are just repeating what have been said in class and the audiences are the whole class.

Because different students have different preference for feedback in second language learning (Brandl, 1995), it would be better for Englishtown to let the students choose the  kind of feedback they would receive before class and let teachers know their options. If the teachers even could see the portfolio of every student, they would provide more relevant and useful feedback. Furthermore, though the system provides flexible learning environment, students should be still encouraged to take the conversation class given by the same teacher according to the teacher’s personal time table, rather then encouraged to try classes from different teachers through out the whole learning duration to demonstrate how “flexible” the system is. The more the teachers know about their students, the more effective and relevant the feedback could be.

To raise the quality of feedback, Englishtown could also create a criteria system to assist teachers’ evaluation work and let students know how the grading comes out. Hyland (Hyland, 2001) pointed out that over a half of online second language learners wanted to know about their strengths and weaknesses, which, from their perspectives, was considered to be the main purpose of teachers’ written feedback (p. 241). While most teachers prefer not to interrupt the communication by correcting students’ errors in class (Engwall & Bälter, 2007) and students’ performance is more likely to improve if they are encouraged to correct errors by themselves (Hendrickson, 1978; Lyster, 1997), it would be better to assign students some small oral practice tasks in relation to their personal errors and weaknesses perceived by the teachers in class when giving feedback according to the criteria system. Thanks to the student-only voice chat room in Englishtown, students have the opportunity to do the tasks with their peers after the conversation class.

4.  Online Community

Englishtown builds an online community for English learners by promoting their friendship. Actually it is like a SNS (Social Networking Service) website, where users are asked to create a profile that includes personal information such as gender, age, nationality, introduction, interest, etc, and can upload their photos and write articles and comment. Based on that the profiles, users can search for their pen pals according to some conditions they input, and then use English to communicate with each other by sending text message. There are also some chat rooms with different topics, where users can practice English instantly, but only subscription members are allowed to use voice chat rooms. The voice chat rooms are labeled with levels of English—Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced.

        While the era of Web 2.0 has arrived, many SNS websites become popular and have much influence on people’s life on line. The educational potentials of SNS websites are worthwhile for us to explore and realize. Online learning website can also integrate the functions of typical SNS website to analyze learners, to help instruction and to enrich users’ learning experience (He, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c). Englishtown’s SNS product—Englishtown Friends, is still in its Beta. It has not been integrated into the main instruction system.

Englishtown could begin to promote this integration in “Student writing”. It is a place in the system for users to post their own writing. Users can also comment on other’s articles. Actually this is like a discussion board. Users can post whatever they like. Some users post their written assignments finished in a unit’s learning but most of the messages are like casual writing. The so-called 9 million users seem seldom participate in such a section shown in the column of “Student Center”. Since 2003, there have been only 13,018 messages in it, which is quite a small number. This may be because:

        (a) the users are not required to participate in it while they are learning in the system;

        (b) teachers don’t give feedback for the writing in it;

        (c) since the writings are not linked to the authors’ profile, it is difficult to develop and maintain a friendship in it.

        To encourage learners to participate more and to realize the instructional functions, Englishtown could integrate three things: (a) written assignments from every unit, (b) teachers’ coaching notes for written assignments and (c) Englishtown Friends (users’ profiles). This means that the section of “Student writing” could directly display every user’s written assignments submitted from Writing Class in unit study and teachers review them and write coaching note there. Every user could read and comment on others’ assignment and relative coaching note. Teachers could answer users’ further questions referring to a specific assignment. When an author’s name is clicked, the page could turn to his or her profile page in Englishtown Friend. Users’ profile pages could also display all the written assignments. Considering users’ privacy, the system could let the users decide whether the system publishes their writing and relative coaching note.

        This integration could not only promote peer learning but also enlarge the significance of teachers’ coaching—it becomes open to everyone! Furthermore, from peers’ writings, users could find more favorable friends because they know more about a user’s background, interest, goals and other information. Typical friend finder will not help find the right person like this.

Besides written assignment, users would have more to discuss about what they have learned in a unit. The discussion board could also build separated folders for each unit’s topic. While learning in a unit, users could click a link to turn to the relative folder in discussion board and post a message. They could reflect what they think about the topic, ask or answer questions and provide further materials such as some pictures and video clips. As usual, they could find their favorable friends during the discussion. Besides text version, voice chat room could be another good place to discuss and share something about a unit’s topic. Then every unit could have its own voice chat room.

        Furthermore, during conversation class, participants more or less disclose some personal information such as their interests, goals, locations, occupation, etc, some of which may become the base for further communication and even friendship. Hence, a tracking record of classmates with links to their profiles would be benefit for those who would like to process further interaction.

        Last but important, assessment for users’ participation in the activities above should be taken into account. The system could report how much the user has participated in the community during a unit’s learning through commenting on others’ written assignments, posting message or chatting in voice chat room about the topic, making new friends, and maintaining friendship by sending private message or chatting in text or voice chat room.

5.  Some Bugs

While evaluating different aspects of Englishtown.com, the author experienced some bugs:

l   Inappropriate Suggested Learning Time—the suggested time for every session is not like the real situation. If you finished a task much quicker than expected, it would indicate that you haven’t completed the session and you are not allowed to continue to next session, especially for the Writing Class—you could actually finish the written assignment within 30 minutes while the system expect you to spend 120 minute. To avoid this error, the suggested time could be designed to be displayed dynamically according to learners’ previous completion time for a specific session. That is, the current "predicted time" for completing a session is based on previous average time spent on the same kind of session.

l   Unchangeable Input—it seems that once writing class teachers submit their grading and comments on students’ writing assignments, they can not make any change by themselves until an administrator with higher privilege help. The author has experienced that a teacher provide much positive feedback for the writing assignment but gave a very low grade—9%. The author received three same feedback emails from the teacher. It seems that the teacher wanted to change the grade by further submitting or something, but failed. Then the author requested the administrator to help let the teacher reexamine the assignment. Several days later, the author received an email indicating that the grade has been changed to 90%. Hence, it would better to develop an error avoidance mechanism for teachers.

l   Inconsistent Statistic Data—it is said that Englishtown.com has millions of users all over the world. But in terms of the exact number, they have different versions in different web pages. From the “about us” page, they have 2 million users; from the message sent by the moderator of “Englishtown Friends”, they have 7 million users; and from most other pages, such as the register page, they have 9 million users. The numbers of active users, former users and total users may be changing every moment. So the places that show the numbers could be replaced as some variables defined and controlled by administrators. Then once a variable is changed, all pages including the variable will be changed automatically.

6.  Conclusion

There are always a gap between advertisement and real situation, a gap between clients’ expectation based on advertisement and the real experience and a gap between technologies’ potentials and the current status of a product. Englishtown.com has successfully set up a good example for e-learning by providing proven English courses. However, since learning science and technologies keeps developing, previous success of Englishtown does not guarantee forever success unless it also keep being improved based on updated technologies, feedbacks and researches.

        In this paper, we have discussed the weaknesses of Englishtown mainly from the aspects of placement test and study plan, conversation class and online community, and provided solutions. We can conclude that currently Englishtown provides poor placement test and study planning tools and does not really customize students’ learning; Conversation class provides insufficient preparative materials and cursory feedback; online community’s instructional potentials have not been fulfilled; and there are some bugs influence users’ experience. However, these weaknesses could be eliminated by better design, such as creating a better learner analysis system, a path for conversation class teachers provide preparative materials, a better feedback system with more explicit criteria, an SNS-integrated learning system, etc. All in all, Englishtown should keep being improved if they want to keep the dominant status in online English learning industry.

7. References

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从Web 2.0到Edu 2.0

——2.0文化催生教育培训的草根革命

何文超

北京师范大学珠海分校教育学院

2007

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摘要

自从“Web 2.0”的概念在2004年首次提出后，Web 2.0技术及其应用在国际风险资本的帮助下，得到迅速的发展。目前，Web 2.0已经深深渗透到各种互联网应用当中，并且掀起了一股互联网草根革命之风。与此同时，我国教育培训业也得到了飞速的发展，其潜在的市场规模将在未来五到十年内达到3000亿元。这两个领域都受到社会各界的高度关注。

本研究在分析Web 2.0及其衍生文化的基础上，首次界定了“2.0文化”的概念，并且认为2.0文化将对教育培训业产生深远的影响，从而催生教育培训业的草根革命，最终导致整个教育界的全面升级。那么，教育培训业的经营者们能否及时调整经营战略与策略，决定了其能否在这个文化变迁过程中，更好地抓住机遇，更好地迎接挑战，为机构的发展赢得新的制高点。因此，探索Web 2.0和2.0文化的教育学意义、其对教育培训业的影响、相应的对策，成为了教育培训界在互联网草根革命时代里的重要任务。

本研究一共分为六章。第一章是导言，交代了本研究所涉及的选题的缘由、研究的现状、目的、意义、方法和框架等问题。第二章对Web 2.0进行了概述，介绍了Web 2.0的来源和定义，总结归纳其主要表现形式和主要理论基础，并提出Web 2.0将对社会发展产生深远的影响；第三章阐述了何为2.0文化，并且分析了其四大教育学意义；第四章分析目前教育培训业经营状况的现实问题；第五章分析Web 2.0和2.0文化对教育培训业的影响，从产品视角、师资视角和学生视角三方面展开，认为Web 2.0和2.0文化将促使教育培训长尾市场彰显优势，其替代品增多，课程时效性增强，“权威”不如“实用”，师资品牌价值的焦点转向研发力与学习力，“冷门”师资获得新的发展机会，学生资助发布培训需求，期望更多的售前试用与体验，培训目的多样化和课程反馈主动化；第六章在前五章的论述的基础上，进一步提出教育培训业草根革命的到来，对其概念进行了界定，并提供了九条相应的经营策略，最后补充说明教育培训业草根革命可能遇到的问题与本研究的不足之处。

目录

1  导言… 1

1.1 选题缘由… 1

1.2 文献综述… 2

1.2.1 Web 2.0… 2

1.2.2 Edu 2.0… 4

1.2.3 教育培训的产品及其经营… 5

1.2.4 教育培训产品（服务）的消费心理与行为… 6

1.2.5 小结… 7

1.3 研究目的… 7

1.4 研究价值… 7

1.5 研究方法… 8

1.6 研究框架… 8

2  Web 2.0概述… 9

2.1 Web 2.0概念的提出… 9

2.2 Web 2.0的定义… 9

2.3 Web 2.0的主要表现形式… 10

2.3.1 博客（Blog）… 10

2.3.2 播客（Podcast）… 10

2.3.3 标签（Tag）… 11

2.3.4 新闻聚合（RSS）… 11

2.3.5 对等互联网（P2P）… 11

2.3.6 维基（Wiki）… 11

2.3.7 社交网络服务（SNS）… 12

2.3.8 C2C商务… 12

2.4 Web 2.0的主要理论基础… 13

2.4.1 长尾理论… 13

2.4.2 并行生产理论… 14

2.4.3 六度分隔里理论… 15

2.4.4 弱连带优势理论… 15

2.5 Web 2.0的社会影响… 16

3  2.0文化及其教育学意义… 17

3.1 2.0文化的形成与定义… 17

3.2 2.0文化的教育学意义… 18

3.2.1 促使筛选理论的失效… 18

3.2.2 焕发人力资本理论的生机… 19

3.2.3 强化终身教育的理念… 20

3.2.4 呼唤教育回归生活… 21

3.3 小结…  21

4  教育培训业经营状况的现实问题… 22

4.1 难以掌握风险投资参与下的新的市场生存法则… 22

4.2 难以把握模仿与创新的比例问题… 23

4.3 难以建立师资与生源的稳定体系… 23

4.4 难以取舍产品研发方向与思路… 24

4.5 难以在擦边球时代中循规蹈矩… 25

5  Web 2.0与2.0文化对教育培训业的影响… 27

5.1 产品视角… 27

5.1.1 长尾市场彰显优势… 27

5.1.2 替代品增多… 29

5.1.3 课程时效性增强… 31

5.2 师资视角… 31

5.2.1 “权威”不如“实用”… 31

5.2.2 师资品牌价值的焦点转向研发力与学习力… 31

5.2.3 “冷门”师资获得新的发展机会… 32

5.3 学生视角… 32

5.3.1 自主发布培训需求… 32

5.3.2 期望更多的售前试用与体验… 33

5.3.3 培训目的的多样化… 33

5.3.4 课程反馈的主动化… 33

6  教育培训业的草根革命… 34

6.1 2.0文化催生教育培训业的草根革命… 34

6.2 草根革命中的经营策略… 36

6.2.1 推动课程价值的有效传播… 36

6.2.2 加强同行信息的共享与挖掘工作… 37

6.2.3 建立学生数据库，打造免费体验、训后跟进、更新重温、相关补充等服务… 38

6.2.4 建设个性化团体培训服务新模式，调动团体中的个体积极性… 38

6.2.5 投身资本市场… 40

6.2.6 在模仿中创新… 41

6.2.7 强化研发队伍，突出整体感，淡化“名师工程”… 41

6.2.8 给学生带来真正的全面的价值… 42

6.2.9 严于律己，宽以待人… 43

6.3 教育培训业草根革命可能遇到的问题及本研究的不足… 43

6.3.1 2.0文化的形成及其与教育培训业草根革命的必然关系问题… 43

6.3.2 Edu 2.0概念的界定问题及其影响… 44

结论… 45

参考文献… 46

致谢… 49

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