DOCUMENT RESUME ED 419 489 IR 018 899 AUTHOR McCarty, Steve Voluntaristic Online Education and the Future with Japan. TITLE PUB DATE 1998-00-00 13p.; Keynote address of the Teaching in the Community NOTE Colleges Online Conference (3rd, Honolulu, HI, April 1998). Evaluative (142) PUB TYPE Reports EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. Computer Mediated Communication; Computer Oriented Programs; DESCRIPTORS Computer Uses in Education; Computers; Cultural Differences; Educational Technology; Foreign Countries; *Futures (of Society); Inservice Education; International Communication; *Internet; Nontraditional Education; *Online Systems; World Wide Web Computer Use; *Japan; Search Engines IDENTIFIERS ABSTRACT This keynote address discusses the need for a new worldwide association for online education or, a congress of existing associations concerned with the Internet and education. The linguistic and cultural distance between Japan and Western countries is so great that mutual understanding can only be a matter of degree. Japanese language search engines and directories quickly yield many Web sites concerned with online education, but apparently in mainstream colleges and schools the Internet is no more than a supplement to courses for credit, not the means of delivery. Yasuhiko Hirao of the Kagawa Prefectural Education Center, an inservice training facility, endeavors to theoretically justify using the Internet in public schools while presenting experimental findings in published articles and at his Web site. There are two countervailing trends related to online education that can be projected statistically into the future. According to a vernacular economic daily, the number of computers in Japan connected to the Internet will rise from 12 million in 1998 to 32 million in the year 2001. This paper concludes by posing a question for online discussion: "What can be done to give those educated worldwide a brighter future online?" (AEF) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** r $ Ai 0 AM r Or, GREETINGS & KEYNOTES Aloha from Hawai' i! WELCOME ADDRESSES JIM SHIMABUKURO & BERT KIMURA Conference Coordinators Kapi'olani Community College DR. JOHN MORTON Provost Kapi'olani Community College DR. DAVID LASSNER Director, Information Technology Services University of Hawai'i, Honolulu, HI USA KEYNOTE ADDRESSES STEVE McCARTY Video Hello (12 megabyte MPEG file) Voluntaristic Online Education and the Future with Japan Professor, Kagawa Junior College Kagawa, Japan U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION "PERMISSION TO CENTER (ERIC) REPRODUCE THIS c This document has been reproduced as cr MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY received from the person or organization originating it. Steve McCarty Minor changes have been made to oo improve reproduction quality. oo AVAILABLE. aEST COPY Points of view or opinions stated in this 0 document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." 2 VOLUNTARISTIC ONLINE EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE WITH JAPAN A Keynote Address for the 1998 Teaching in the Community Colleges Online Conference by Steve McCarty Professor, Kagawa Junior College, Japan E-mail: [email protected] ONLINE EDUCATION AS A NEW PROFESSIONAL DISCIPLINE As Academia is reconstituted in cyberspace, online teaching could be developed into a professional discipline that upholds academic and ethical standards in the new Internet media. Online teaching would become a peer-regulated profession or pan-disciplinary global guild. For this to happen, academic freedom will still be necessary to ensure that disinterested decisions are made with respect to education in the new media. A profession is based on the cumulative knowledge of full-time professionals, therefore many educators will need to make online teaching their living for there to be professionalism. A discipline cannot develop if online teaching is adjunct to the main professional duties of most practitioners, much less if they are adjuncts themselves to colleges or other organizations. That is to say, realistically, that online teaching needs to be valued the same as face-to-face teaching in the language of commerce. Yet even so, online educators will be needed to supply online libraries and other sources of knowledge shared with others. Hence the inevitable province of voluntaristic online education. Practitioners' institutions also need to formally recognize the homework, preparation, networking and voluntarism that accompany 3 the development of a new discipline with rapidly changing technological requirements. Unless people wish to experiment with technologically or economically led education, a vision must be set forth with clear objectives in cyberspace no less than in previous media. For unethical practices can be automated much more easily than ethical ones. Some of the crimes of the Century have resulted from the obedient misuse of the most advanced technological skills. A recent case was the Aum cult in Japan, where scientists, technicians and even a doctor practiced mass murder. Hence the indispensibility of tenured faculty members who can be disinterested with regard to the uses of this specialized knowledge. To steer any high technology to the benefit of humanity calls for equally high ethics, which have been upheld highest historically by those who took to heart a core education in the humanities. This is not to suggest an unrealistic separation of education and economics, but rather to advocate checks and balances between colleges and businesses, faculty and administration, so that, rather than one pillar subverting the other, education and prosperity can be mutually reinforcing. Where credentials are conferred, the role of all teachers sooner or later will be contingent upon the evaluation by educators in each specialization of the reliability of sources of knowledge available online. With the vast array of sources to select from in each field already, again the time demands on conscientious educators will be increasingly great. The institutions and societies that benefit from these efforts should therefore reward them correspondingly. To work for professionalism in a new discipline, among the domains that need to be addressed are teacher training, in-service educator development, accreditation of online educational programs, and systematic communication among practitioners as well as with their surrounding societies. This communication needs to be coordinated 4 to be effective, and by an independent scholarly organization. A framework for consensus is needed to apply academic rigor to online information and programs while promoting the collaboration and professional development of online educators. This TCC-L online conference provides a forum to discuss such issues, and other venues are also grappling with similar issues, but the networks need to be brought together. This keynote address aims not to set out a mandate but rather to spark a dialogue among participants as to what can be done by whom. Therefore please join in the prioritizing of objectives and help build a consensus on how to develop this 21st Century discipline. The above considerations point to the need for either a new worldwide association for online education or else a congress of existing associations concerned with the Internet and education. However, many organizations founded before the worldwide turn to cyberspace are hampered by their very substantiality. Costly print publications, in-person conferences and executive meetings require substantial membership dues. The geographical limits of such academic organizations are often reflected in names starting with "American" or "National," which are problematical internationally. Whereas freed of the encumbrances of physical products and travel, a world association for online education can now be conceived, one that recognizes the intelligence and aspirations of all humanity. Discussion Points Rather than this presenter naming organizations at this stage, or proposing new organizations without knowing who in the world would get involved, a clearer picture might emerge from extensive briefly discussions of the pertinent issues. Therefore please describe professional organizations having to do with the Internet and education. How well are they equipped for the rapid changes of the 21st Century? What can educators do, 5 for example, if they cannot join more than two or three organizations with annual dues? Yet how can online teaching become better organized and peer-regulated to merit credibility global educational circles? Please contribute to in the conference forum discussions during and after the online conference or via e-mail anytime to [email protected]. GLOBAL AND MULTICULTURAL ONLINE EDUCATION A new global paradigm for education in the coming Century is only beginning to emerge. It could scarcely have been predicted until the advent of the Internet that the world would be brought together by non-governmental ambassadors. This globalism is not just a concept to revalorize taken-for-granted geographical, cultural or linguistic defaults. Instead cyberspace provides an unprecedented meeting place for people from nearly every country, plus information about those not yet represented. Rather than non-Westerners serving as just an audience, the voice that they always had will now be raised on the world stage. The future will thus be a co-creation of Westerners and non-Westerners. How will various cultures be reflected in computer-mediated communications? Furthermore, how can each culture be represented so that cyberspace becomes a level playing field for multilateral justice and world reconciliation? Certain leading non-Western nations such as Singapore have already developed a Net infrastructure along with public policies and educational critiques (Tan, 1997). While this presentation will have to be confined to Japan, e-mail contributions to the conference forums or to [email protected] concerning the Internet and education various non-Western countries in would be most welcome. Discussions could tie in this keynote or other 1996-98 presentations for comparison and theory-building. 6 THE FUTURE WITH JAPAN The linguistic and cultural distance between Japan and Western countries is so great that mutual understanding can only be a matter of degree. Unknown areas need to be filled not with projections and unverified generalities but rather with tolerance and goodwill. The cultural traditions of Japan and the U.S. in particular developed without mutual influence and happen to be nearly poles apart in common sense assumptions on many issues. Yet although Japan is enigmatic to Westerners and Asians alike, it has a self-consistent way of life, albeit conveyed in mostly unspoken ways. Often struck by sudden natural calamities, Japanese people have tended to value security, not surprises, therefore their projections about the future in their relatively stable system can be quite accurate. This applies not so much to what is expressed strategically to the outside world in English as to what is directed to Japanese people in Japanese, therefore original sources will be translated here. History also repeats itself, cycles of inflation or hubris followed by disilllusionment or implosion, but never forced systemic change from without. Over millenia the surrounding seas allowed cultural transmission, but were rough enough so that Japan was never colonized. Twice Mongol invasions were thwarted by typhoons called "kamikaze," which reinforced the ideology that Japan was special. The very name of Japan in Chinese characters, Nihon or Nippon, can be interpreted as origin of the sun. While Japan was pre-literate, the name first appeared in the 3rd Century Record of Wei, so perhaps the Chinese invented the name. Japan was to the east where the sun rises, and there might have been an almost Rousseauvian view of Japan by lettered Mandarins. But then early rulers of Japan, who had close advisors from the Mainland if not originating there themselves, possibly adopted the flattering name from China to legitimize their authority. 7 This is mentioned because again in the 70s and 80s, the literature abroad that portrayed Japan flatteringly as the top nation was adopted at a time of identity politics to reinforce domestic notions of unique excellence in the Japanese way of life. The myth was renewed that Japan could pick and choose from the outside world and prosper without having to fundamentally change. One manifestation is the attitude that foreign languages like English are not needed except for university entrance exams. But how could there be nothing unique about "the Japanese" among East Asians, yet the nation is the world's second wealthiest? Many ancient traditions and artifacts have been snuffed out in other Asian countries, whereas Japan has been able to build on the legacy of Chinese aesthetics. Another accident of history was Japan's choice of the U.S. as an opponent in WWII. Immediately after the surrender, U.S. forces rushed in to save the public from starvation, and the most enlightened occupation in world history may be the reason Japan became number two. It may not be entirely a secret even today: fight the U.S. and profit. Yet the whole post-War generation worked so singlemindedly for material goods for the sake of their children that the nation is imploding culturally if not economically from the complacency of young people. A demographic implosion threatens educational institutions most of all. The birthrate of about 1.55 means that Japan's population will begin to decline, from the world's 7th now to the 20th most populous by the year 2050. Thus Japan is likely to join the middle ranks among nations. Japan's Internet and Education Plans The Website of the Economic Planning Agency of Japan reports on policies adopted at a Cabinet ministerial-level Council meeting on 18 November 1.997. The English version does not mention anything about education, only the Japanese version (Economic Planning Agency, 1997), so here is my translation of the section on the digitization of 8 education: For the next adjustment of educational guidelines, during general study period at elementary schools, students will contact a foreign language, lifestyle and culture. With the globalization of communications, English can activate digital means such as the Internet. The networking of schools will be planned so that in the near future all schools will be connected to the Internet. By early in the year 2000 the goal is 22 computers per elementary school or one per two students [when it is the turn of a given class to use the computer lab], and 42 for every junior and senior high school or one per student, plus sufficient educational software. Fundamental information education will be required in junior high schools and as a curricular subject in senior high schools. Higher educational institutions will be able to confer credits for distance education courses utilizing multimedia, while university correspondence courses will be able to open graduate schools. Japanese language search engines and directories quickly yield many Websites concerned with online education, but apparently in mainstream colleges and schools the Internet is no more than a supplement to courses for credit, not the means of delivery. Private vendors can take the next step after CAI cram schools and capitalize on the trendiness of the net, while Websites by educators have to first justify the formal introduction of online education by researching its purported benefits. Private colleges are flexible as to in-class content, while national educational and research institutions are regulated by law. Public elementary and secondary schools follow a national standard curriculum to which private schools tend to conform because of standardized university examinations. Thus Yasuhiko Hirao of the Kagawa Prefectural Education Center, an 9 in-service training facility, endeavors to theoretically justify using the Internet in public schools while presenting his experimental findings in published articles and at his Website (Hirao, 1998). His and most other Websites of this nature tend to use private providers because of the unofficial status of these experiments. The Japanese language tends to get awkward in the attempt to literally translate newly imported concepts such as cooperative learning, project work, active learning that is autonomous and self-aware, and the teacher as a facilitator empowering learners. From a distance through the Internet, furthermore, Mr. Hirao team taught a class of seventh graders at his former school. Although they were in their first year of learning English formally, the students were motivated by contacting the real world abroad and getting even perfunctory e-mail responses from Webmasters for Peanuts or the LA Dodgers. Mr. Hirao's thesis starts from government statements closest to justifying this work, then he boldly experiments with good results. So this trend can be expected to continue, particularly because the Internet revitalizes the English reading and writing skills in which Japanese schools have greater confidence. Isamu Shimazaki (1998) works with elementary school children as young as ten through the Kid link Society, which offers mailing lists and Websites in 13 languages including Japanese. The Website of Akira Taniguchi et al. (1998) centers on the high schools around Osaka that are experimenting with the Internet in their classes, while their active mailing list on English education attracts leaders in higher education who have English Websites, such as Kojiro Asao (1998) and Kenji Kitao (1997). Whether it is the news media or any other sector of society, people agree that this is just the beginning. The Net infrastructure is getting up to speed before anyone knows how it will ultimately be used or how it will affect the staid and hitherto venerable institutions regulating Japanese society. 10