Untangling the Web: Developing Web-enhanced Instruction for Political Science

Donald L. Goff
American University, and University of Maryland University College
dgoff@polaris.umuc.edu

Video Presentation
Conference Discussion

Overview.

Hardly anyone is unaware of the affect the Internet is having in the classroom. The proliferation of cheap access, the ease of use, and the value of global information sources make the Internet an appealing medium for instruction. Advocates have promised much for it, but little actual research has been done to determine whether its use is proving beneficial at the classroom and individual user level. Enough experience is being gained to try to benchmark these early efforts, identify some lessons learned, determine user preferences, and support the migration of successful approaches to a less technical group of users. This paper reports on a study of web-enhanced instruction in support of traditional stand up classes and its implications for courses in government, public affairs, and political science, for which information technology is a secondary learning area, the practitioner is likely a hobbyist, and the professor has little or no formal training or experience.

The pedagogical reasons for using web technologies in support of classroom teaching seem obvious. Extending the class beyond its scheduled hours, facilitating communication between and among teacher and student, making supplemental materials available, collaboration among students on projects, and better time use are some of the obvious pedagogical objectives. The specific technological features of the Internet which support these objectives include e-mail, web sites, chat rooms, collaborative computing, and file transfers. Use by faculty may take the form of posting syllabi and readings on a web page, using e-mail and list serves to communicate with students outside of class, posting assignments or tests by e-mail or on a web site. Use by students may include communication with faculty or classmates by e-mail or chat, conducting research, reading posted documents, posting completed assignments, or collaborating on group documents.

For the past year and a half, I have used a proprietary web-based instructional platform created by the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) in support of stand up instruction in the adult masters programs in information technology. My experience suggests a great deal of detail about the opportunities and risks associated with web-enhanced instruction, and more important, a few things about how to manage the medium. Currently, I am attempting to migrate the best practices from that experience to the political science and government program at American University (AU). The results of a student survey conducted in December 1998 with the UMUC students are providing the focus for specific technologies, techniques, and services for the AU government classes.

Student preferences.

UMUC’s proprietary platform, known as Webtycho, was developed over a period of years for use as a distance learning tool. Its primary use is for conducting courses taught completely on line. Such courses are often called "web-based instruction" in the instructional technology literature. Many of its features, however, work in support of traditional stand up teaching. When web-based methods are used in this support role for a traditional standup class, the term "web-enhanced instruction" is more appropriate. The two terms will be so used throughout this essay.

Webtycho’s useful tools include space to post

• the syllabus,
• the university’s writing and grading standards,
• the course outline,
• the professor’s resume,
• required readings (once appropriate copyright clearances have been obtained through library services),
• connection to the Help Desk,
• a roster of student e-mail addresses which students must post and maintain, an area for posting class announcements,
• an area for posting assignments
• an area for submitting assignments,
• a chat room, and
• an area for collaborative writing and asynchronous communication.

Stored on a Lotus domino server, the platform is password protected so only students and faculty registered for the course may see items placed on the site. Further, the faculty member may create secure workspaces for a subset of students, as, for example, in a group project, where other students may not see the filings. Students are also denied access to other students’ work posted in the assignment section. The faculty member may, however, access all parts of the site.

Early impressions from casual conversation with students suggested this platform provided a useful set of tools for students and facilitated communication and learning, was easy to use, and added significant value to the course. Students commuting a long distance to the class or stymied by evening rush hour traffic particularly seemed to like web-enhanced classes, especially when the web-enhancement was conducted in lieu of a physical meeting.

A careful survey and further evidence reveal that a significant number of students harbor a reluctance to place too great a reliance on web enhancement, do not use the available technology to its limits, and do not place a great value on its use. This was particularly surprising in light of the fact that they were in courses in computer systems and telecommunications management—the very disciplines that had spawned the Internet itself –and that most are practicing adult professionals in information technology.

Students at UMUC are generally adults in the work force, with a median age of 36, and a great deal of diversity. A large percentage of them are employed as computer systems or telecommunication systems engineers for the federal government. A larger percentage work for information technology vendors and support contractors. Overall, they use information technology on a daily basis and are facile in its use; few, if any, are technophobes or computer illiterate. Before they came to these web-enhanced classes, they had completed, on average, 27 hours of graduate work (9 or more classes) in information resource management, software development, telecommunications, web commerce, and other technical courses.

Since September 1998, all students enrolling at UMUC have been required to have Internet access. The university uses the Internet to support a variety of administrative functions, including registration, snow closing and emergency announcements, billing inquiries, and so on. Each student is responsible for maintaining current e-mail information in the university database; this process, too, is internet-accessible. In short, these students are highly technical, experienced, and facile at using the Internet.

In December 1998, survey questions were sent on line to143 students who had used the web-enhanced format. Three messages were returned as undeliverable; 78 students completed all or part of the questionnaire for a response rate of 56%, very high for survey research. Questions were designed to solicit students’ preference and availability of various software capabilities, use of the features built into Webtycho, an evaluation of specific features, and an evaluation of the platform overall. In addition, questions were asked testing the student’s experience with hypertext markup language, HTML, and web site creation for a quick test of their experience with the web itself, other than for e-mail use.

About one third of the students completed their online assignments from home; nearly two-thirds did so at both home and the office, while only 6, 8%, depended upon their employers for computer access to the world wide web. A general discussion in class had previously revealed that no student was denied access to the Internet for educational purposes under his or her employer’s acceptable use policy.

IBM compatible personal computers remain the machine of choice; only one student reported owning and using a Macintosh. (Technically, most of these "PCs" are networked workstations rather than stand alone personal computers, but for the purpose here, the distinction seemed irrelevant because of its transparency to the end user.) Five, 6%, used Windows 3.x as their operating system. All the rest used Windows 95, 98, or NT. The Macintosh owner used the variant for Macintosh. The preferred browsers for these students were Netscape, 51%, Explorer, 18%, and the balance expressing no preference of one over the other. Only 9% reported delays in downloading the page onto their screen, that is, slow transfer of the graphic files. 91% reported that Webtycho is easy to learn, while 6% had difficulty. Significant numbers of students reported the availability of Adobe Acrobat Reader (87%), Real Media (65%), and their ability to open files in Power Point (94%). While 87% can save files in HTML, using their existing software, only a minority, 41%, have ever published a web site.

Use of the site and its contents varied little, with 8% reporting little or no use, and 90% reporting usage of 1-4 times per week. Use included reading the syllabus (which in most cases included hypertext linked articles) occasionally, 64%, or frequently, 24%, while 8% used the paper version. Professors had posted reserve readings in full text upon the site which were read by nearly three quarters of the students (73%).

The Chat room feature was the least used and the least liked by students. Only 38% had used the feature at all; 41% declared it "not very useful" and 28% found it "difficult to use. Other functions had both more utility and more supporters. The "assignments" section had been used by 92% of the students, while 88% found that feature "easy to use." Three quarters used e-mail and the embedded e-mail roster to communicate with classmates or the professor. Of those, 35% reported using the feature "occasionally", while 60% used it 1-4 times per week.

The discussion group area designed for collaborative documents is the feature anticipated to be most used. Since the courses call for group projects, the ability to develop a collaborative document, or to be able to conduct an asynchronous, private collaboration seemed to me to be a highly desired feature. Collaboration would obviate the need for one student to become the document handler, merging inputs from multiple sources and collating them into a cohesive whole. Personal experience in the corporate sector with such on line "staff meetings" also had shown potential value of this feature. But the students disagreed significantly. Less than one third, 27%, used the feature frequently while a larger number did not use the feature at all or only occasionally, 32%. The rest used the feature incidentally.

Overall, students rated the web-enhanced format as a positive thing, with 63% evaluating it as "pretty good" or "great". But 14% either "didn’t like it" or it "didn’t do much for me." An additional 22% "wouldn’t miss it." Thus more than a third, 36%, were tepid in their attitude about using the web-enhanced instructional technology.

Discussion.

The primary findings in the survey are that students have distinct preferences and, overall, are willing and frequent users of web-enhanced methods. In migrating to another discipline, the values placed by the technical students suggest the need to optimize the formats for Netscape and take advantage of such software as Real Media and Adobe Acrobat to facilitate ease of use and add value to the course. If the professor takes the time and trouble to post reserve readings and syllabi to a web site, the students are likely to use them. Further, the technology will support communication between faculty and student and among students quite comfortably; there will be continuity of thought, explanation, and communication between class meetings. But synchronous "chat" is an unnecessary enhancement, at least at this point. The students accept asynchronous communication as satisfactory.

The expectation that technically trained adult commuting students, with distances to drive, tight schedules, and existing Internet skills would think this capability useful was not supported as strongly as expected. Despite overall support, there were clearly a hard nubbin of opponents who were critical of the technology or indifferent to its presence. I queried several of these students to find out why. The answers were insightful.

Several stated that they had specifically avoided online classes because they wanted human interaction with the professor and students. Others found the technology lacking in capability or robustness, compared to alternative technologies which they were using in their work and which represented something more of a cutting edge. Others reported that the software itself was too difficult to navigate, too rigidly hierarchical, or otherwise user-unfriendly.

Many said that, although training was conducted and that the system was easy to learn to use, they really didn’t know how to employ it to advantage. When trying to work on substance, they had bogged down and where spending too much time in learning how to use the system rather than learning how to do the content of the course. The technology had became a distracter rather than a learning enhancer

A few just didn't get it. One complained of the need to reload Netscape each time access to Webtycho was wanted; at the time, the program would not support Internet Explorer. When asked if the Netscape program was properly installed, the response was "Oops, I didn’t install it." This person is a computer system professional at a large government agency, but had made a very basic computing error.

These responses suggest that training or trial exercises at the beginning of the course would be useful, so the technology becomes truly an enhancer and not a detractor. When beginning to use Webtycho, the first expectation was that students would already know how to use Internet technologies easily and well; they do not. Students need specific training for the features used in the course, and organized tasks to work through the problems and frustrations of learning a new system. While the students identified Webtycho as "easy to learn to use," they nonetheless had to go through a learning process.

The professor goes through a learning process, too. The need to plan and execute in advance and to think through the process was greater than anticipated. Tasking the students to post assignments, for example, engendered a great deal of confusion until the detailed mechanics were clarified: save in html, post to the assignments section instead of the discussion group, make sure it is the way you want it the first time, because you can’t edit once posted, and so on.

The "Help Desk" remains their source for technical solutions. The professor can support them to an extent in debugging their problems, but the focus is and must remain on the substance of the course. The mechanics of the platform are technical skills students must gain, and problems associated with those mechanics must be solved elsewhere. This distinction compares with writing skills and library research; the professor can hold them accountable for those skills as graduate students, help them somewhat to enhance those skills, but send them to remedial training when the skills are inadequate.

Receiving a couple dozen take home tests or papers on line may cause home e-mail to crash. The file size of a paper may run half a megabyte, without graphics. Charts and graphics grow the file exponentially. So the loading time for each file may run several minutes or more; the cumulative affect can shut you down for hours. Of course, the university Ethernet connection is much faster, but not available at home, which depends on standard telephone wires and a modem speed of less that 33 kilobits per second. The university server contains more file storage space as well.

Viruses have become a major problem. The New York Times recently described the Class "B" virus as a global problem.(Raney, 1998) This virus is transmitted by Word documents attached to e-mail. Once in a new computer or system, it proliferates among all word files. It manifests itself with a popup screen that states "(user name) is a big, stupid jerk." Most virus detection software cannot spot and correct it, except in the latest versions. This virus came through the university like a common cold at finals. It was invisible to most anti-virus software installed on student and faculty machines, and took time to scrub.

Simple risk reduction strategies include not accepting and opening attachments and disabling macros in your word processing software under "preferences." Students should convert their papers to a text document before sending them by e-mail. This conversion also has the salutary effect of not having problems opening a document written in another program.

 Inferences.

The findings here suggest that for a less technical audience, less trained and experienced in computing and the Internet, the problems will be greater. The prevalence of relatively minor problems among students with substantial skills suggests that students with less formal training and experience are likely to wrestle with the technology even more. The need for greater preliminary training, clearer instructions on use, and practice are strongly indicated. The challenge will be to develop platforms which students will like and use.

Source

Raney, Rebecca Fairley, (1998). "New Virus Infects Microsoft Word Files." The New York Times, December 21, 1998. Also available at The New York Times on the Web at http://nytimes.com/library/tech/98/12/biztech/articles/21virus.html

Some Recent Works on Web-based and Web-enhanced Instruction

Gonzalez, J.S., (1998). The 21^st Century Intranet: Capacity-building Future Proof Technology. New York: Prentice-Hall.

Kearsley, G., (1996). "The World Wide Web: Global Access to Education" Educational Technology Review, Winter, 5, 26-30.

Khan, B.H. (ed.), (1997) Web-based Instruction. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Educational Technology Publications.

McCollum, K. (1997) "Information Technology," The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 21, 1997.

McCormack, C. & Jones, D., (1997). Building a Web-based Education System. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Minoli, D. & Minoli, E., (1998) Web Commerce Technology Handbook. New York: mcGraw-Hill.

n.a.,(1998)."Review of On-line Courses" SNOW Forum. October 1998. Available at http://snow.itoronto.ca/best/crsreview.html

Ritland, B.B., et al., (1998) "General Framework for the Development of Web-based Instruction," Journal of the International Council for Educational Media, September 1998, 77-81.

Sherry, L. & Wilson, B., (1996). "Supporting Human Performance Across Disciplines: Converging of Roles and Tools," Performance Improvement Quarterly, 9 (4), 19-36.

Woody, T., (1998). "Academics Rebel Against an On Line Future," Cable News Network. October 16, 1998. Available at http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9806/15/academics.idg/index.html