Design of Authentic Learning: A Challenge in E-learning Specialist
Graduate Program
Junko Nemoto
Kumamoto University, Japan
nemoto@kumamoto-u.ac.jp
Shinichirou Kubota
Kumamoto University, Japankubota@cc.kumamoto-u.ac.jp
Masahiro Migita
Kumamoto University, Japan
migita@cc.kumamoto-u.ac.jp
Ryuichi Matsuba
Kumamoto University, Japanmatsuba@kumamoto-u.ac.jp
Shirou Kitamura
Kumamoto University, Japan
kit@kumamoto-u.ac.jp
Toshihiro Kita
Kumamoto University, Japankita@kumamoto-u.ac.jp
Katsuaki Suzuki
Kumamoto University, Japanksuzuki@kumamoto-u.ac.jp
Abstract: This paper describes the design of authentic learning by taking two courses in a graduate
program in Instructional Systems that is a full-online program to raise the professional level ofe-learning. The two courses described in this paper, i.e., E-Learning Practicum I & II, are required
paired courses that have been provided after several prerequisite courses; in these courses, to gain
work experience as an instructional designer, it is important for the students to practice and apply
their knowledge and skills they obtain in this program as they do their class activities. To enrich thecontext of learning, we employed a story and made the activities better to maintain consistency inthe activities compared to before we used a story; then, introduce the lessons we learned from thepractice.

Introduction
The Instructional Systems program at Kumamoto University, where we belong, provides an online master’sprogram; students participate from various areas in Japan (Suzuki, 2009). Most of the full-time students take courses
online to pursue a degree as well as work at a job. We focus on both training and research for learners who expect todevelop educational design knowledge by using technologies. Putting Instructional Design in the center of thecurriculum, the students learn technology and management aspects by integrating them throughout the two-year- 1237 -program. Our mission in the master’s program is to provide a practical learning environment that trains experts in the
educational design field.
E-Learning Practicum I & II are paired compulsory courses that have been provided after several
prerequisite courses; in these courses, to gain work experience as an instructional designer, it is important for thestudents to practice and apply their knowledge and skills they obtain in this program as they do their class activities.
Students form into groups and work as a group with an assigned client who is our universities’ professor; their
mission in the practicum is to design and manage the development of an e-learning course of which the professor isin charge. Most of the client professors’ courses are conventional classes for which they expect to use e-learningtechnology to conduct their class more effectively and efficiently, and, therefore, volunteer to join the E-learning
Practicum. The practicum is the collaborative work of four stakeholders: our graduate students; the client professors;
staff in a university institution who develop e-learning courses; and us, the practicum instructors. Developing several
e-learning courses in real online graduate courses is the unique aspect of the practicum, although there are several
challenges we need to overcome.

Overview of the Two Practicums
We set up the two practicums as a place within which the students can see if they have assimilated theknowledge of the course material and incorporate it into the course deliverable. This is a challenge for both thestudents and the instructors. Along with an actual client’s needs, students need to manage their learning by fulfillingthe course requirements and completing the tasks and assignments. The instructors, nevertheless, need to watch thestudents’ learning process and guide them. The procedure is for students to try by themselves, first, and then theinstructor navigates them, if they have erred or needed help. The degree to which the instructor intervenes with thestudents is a key provision of a successful learning environment, but that is also a difficult decision for the instructors
to make in these courses.
Another difficult element in the management of the two consecutive courses is the clients, who areprofessors from other departments. Some clients have used e-learning, but some have no experience and are not goodat using technology. There are various types of clients as well as various needs and constraints; therefore, organizing
and dealing with a wide variety of information and proceeding in the correct direction is very challenging for bothstudents and instructors.
E-Learning Practicum I
As a first step, students form into groups by selecting a client course that they are interested in. The goal ofthe E-Learning Practicum (Figure 1) is to develop a proposal based on the client’s Request for Proposal (RFP) that
includes the client’s needs and expectations. Students follow the steps that are provided in the practicum and collect
resources under the supervision of the course's instructors to complete their tasks such as posing questions to clients,
preparing presentation documents, creating prototype contents to give clients an image of the proposal; eventually,
the students make a proposal and submit a development plan as an assignment. Each student group also creates adevelopment plan to show the course instructors and the university’s Institute for E-Learning Development, who has
a development staff for e-learning, the feasibility and adequacy of the proposal. The students’ assessments aremeasured from various points, as in a real work place.

- 1238 -! "#$%&% '(1'), " # "#$

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Figure 1: Overview of E-Learning Practicum I
E-Learning Practicum II
E-Learning Practicum II (Figure 2) is based on the result of E-Learning Practicum I; students manage ane-learning content and deliver the product. In E-Learning practicum II, students request the development of thecourse that they proposed to the staff in the institute. In the practicum, the important mission for students is not tocreate the e-learning material by themselves, but request the staff in the institution to create and manage thedevelopment process.
Students begin the practicum by reviewing the proposal submitted and, then, modifying its development
plan created in E-Learning Practicum I; after receiving an approval from the instructors to proceed to the next step,
they request their creation of the target course to the staff in the e-learning development institute. To convey
explicitly their request to the staff and to inspect the delivery of the target course are the requirements in thepracticum.
The students experience a real process of e-learning development throughout the two courses. It is very
challenging to manage all the processes by having the students think and design freely, in the range of the course
activities, and letting them make decisions with the guidance of the instructors.

- 1239 -! " #$(-((.(1*( (23((, " # " #$36(((1/ #4('((50(+*0((((0( (+ '23(.

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Figure 2: Overview of E-Learning Practicum II

Redesign the Courses With a Story
Since we launched the program in 2006, we have been able to provide E-Learning Practicum I & II, every
year, by keeping our focus on those courses that give students the opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge thatthey learn in this program. From 2008, we have employed a Story-Centered Curriculum (SCC) approach in thismaster’s program, which is used for curriculum-level design by providing architecture for higher scalability without
losing the learning-by-doing nature of Goal-Based Scenarios (GBS) (Schank, 2007). The SCC unites multiplecourses that students usually take, concurrently, within a given semester, by introducing a story from a real-world- 1240 -situation and common to multiple courses (Suzuki, Nemoto, Oyamada & Shibata, 2009). The two practicum courses
were also embedded in the SCC, and we redesigned the courses to fit into the SCC context.
In the SCC, students take courses linked by a consistent story in which the role of the student is a company
member who is in charge of the e-learning development. This story is a continuation from the prior semester, and in
the second semester that the E-Learning Practicum I is conducted, the student is dispatched from the virtual company
to the university as an intern in a business-academia collaboration. As an intern, the student works at the Institute for
E-Learning Development the university, and designs and develops e-learning contents with a client, which is related
to E-Learning Practicum I & II, directly. The tasks in the two courses are the same as before the SCC was inserted,but the context of the courses and the mission of the students became clearer with a story with a concrete context.

Added Contents in the SCC
When we employed the SCC, we added and modified the contents to conduct it more smoothly andeffectively. Bellows are the contents we added:
The mission and role that connect the two courses, E-Learning Practicum I & II
The two courses are closely tied; E-Learning Practicum I is the design part and E-Learning Practicum II isdevelopment part in the e-learning development process. However, some students had difficulty depicting thewhole process, because this is divided into two different courses. Students tend to concentrate on tasks at handand easily forget to look at the whole process in the two courses. By providing a detailed mission and role
helped both students and instructors to get a grip on the process in the two courses.
Stakeholders information surrounding the students
Students face two types of professors in the courses: the course instructors and clients. In addition to the twostakeholders, the students work with staff in the Institute of e-Learning Development of the university. The
three types of stakeholders have a different role so that students always need to get a clear picture of therelationship of stakeholders. Not only did we add a written description, we added pictures of graphic
information about the stakeholders as a resource.
Intentions and relationships among tasks
By following a story, as interns the students are required to complete tasks and assignments at each stage,
which means that the students could do the tasks sequentially; but we want the students to connect and review
each task as one inclusive task. We added the intentions of each task and the relationships among them to help
the students understand what they are doing and why it is needed.
Relationship of the tasks to the assignments of other courses
The program set the two courses as a place for using and combing the skills and knowledge that students
acquired in their prior courses. When we redesigned the two courses, we reconfirmed the relationship of thetasks to the assignments in other courses.
Information about each task such as the outcomes requirement, with examples
The information are not related to the SCC directly, rather they are for course improvement. Students often
lose their way, and sometimes they do not understand the image in which to create the required materials sothat we added additional resources to enrich the students’ product.

- 1241 -Discussion
Throughout revising and analyzing every year we collected several findings and then applied into the course
material of the next year. The difficulties lay in the degrees how much we let student try by themselves withappropriate guidance and when and how much we need to provide helps to the students. It takes time students taketime to understand the stakeholders, in the practicum, and how to work with them and the resources. We prepare
several blank and completed templates as well as several mock examples of, for example, prototypes, final products,proposals. Also, we create prospective questions and products before the course starts and get a consensus from theinstructors. We do not use the same course provided by the clients, because those are real courses that do not need to
be developed twice; therefore, the target courses in the practicum are always new for the instructor and for thestudent. Reviewing and adjusting the degree of difficulties of the students’ tasks is very challenging. At thepresentation, we will introduce the findings with the feedback from the students as a guide for developing story-type
authentic learning.

References
Schank, R. C. (2007). The Story-Centered Curriculum. eLearn Magazine, Feature Article 47-1, Association for Computing
Machinery [Available online] http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=47-1
Suzuki, K. (2009). From Competency List to Curriculum Implementation: A Case Study of Japan’s First Online Master’s
Program for E-Learning Specialists Training. International Journal on E-Learning: 8(4), 469-478.
Suzuki, K., Nemoto, J., Oyamada, M., Miyazaki, M., & Shibata, Y. (2009) “Upgrading an online master’s degree program basedon Story-Centered Curriculum (SCC): A case study”, Proceedings of ED-MEDIA 2009, pp. 591- 1242 -598.