The Duck Pond!

Providing, maintaining and nurturing an effective online teaching and learning environment- the UNB experience

Rik Hall, Manager - Instructional Technology - Integrated Technology Services - University of New Brunswick- Email: hall@unb.ca

Abstract

This poster describes the history or usage and support of web-based teaching and learning at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada. Starting in 1995 to the present we have developed our own LMS and then switched to a commercial product, WebCT.

Introduction

The University of New Brunswick offered it's first on-line courses in the 1995/1996 school year. These were both credit and non-credit courses and were delivered via listservs and a non-secure university web site. Today we have more than 600 courses with an on-line component and more than ten thousand student equivalents enrolled. Overseeing this undertaking is much like overseeing a Duck Pond.

The Puddle

The pond was small, the ducks were few and we were all learning together. Most of us shared, most of us "played well with others" and most of us had fun because it was a new experience. Murray W. Goldberg presented a paper at NAWeb 96, the North America Web-Based Learning Conference Student Participation and Progress Tracking for Web-Based Courses Using WebCT  HREF1 and at that paper he offered the WebCT tool he had developed for people to beta test. Two of us at the University of New Brunswick decided to take him up on his offer and used the fledgling WebCT to deliver courses in the fall of 1996.

At the same time a number of professors were using a secure area on our computer system to put materials for their courses and were asking for a Learning Management System (LMS) of their own - although they were not calling it that in those days. Our Computer Service Department (CSD) gave the task to a brilliant programmer, Mr. Brian Lesser. He produced the Presentation System for Courses (PSyCo) which was used until the spring of 2001. This system provided a single "window" for instructors and the learners to access their web course. The system:

During this time usage slowly grew. A few individuals worked on using systems of their own and PSyCo matured. We helped each other and had a user's support listserv. We were few in numbers and the pond was still pretty small. But as more users came online, there was a need for some coordination and for an individual to give support and do training.

The Pond Gets Bigger

In November of 1998, I was hired by the Computing Services Department  as the Manager of the Instructional Technology Unit and one of my major tasks was to interface between the academics who were using PSyCo and the designer, builder, Mr. Lesser. Web sites were establish for "PSyCo Help" and training sessions were offered on how to use the various aspects of PSyCo. I made "house calls" handled phone calls and emails and generally tried to solve challenges that came up. Because I was currently using PSyCo myself to deliver a 5000 level Education course, I was in a good position to understand the requests and to pass them on to the programmer. As it was, if I could describe it, Mr. Lesser could create it and make it work!

There were still who wanted to swim in a different pond and those who wanted to buy or build their own ponds, but we got along quite well and eLearning at the University of New Brunswick was developing. PSyCo was being used across the spectrum of possibilities, from a handful of fully on-line courses to those standard face-to-face offerings with the professor putting notes and quizzes on-line.

With the sudden passing of Mr. Lesser in February 2000, we found ourselves in need of a new LMS. Mr. Lesser was as brilliant as was his software, but we had only compiled code and no documentation. Committees were struck and meetings were held.  Suggestions were made and WebCT was purchased for UNB the summer of 2000. To Mr. Lesser's  credit - his program continued to work, automatically until we decommissioned it almost a year after his passing.

A Crazy Pond with Lots of Ducks

We were getting to the point where most of those who wished to use a LMS were using WebCT - there were a few who for their own reasons put their material on either an open web site accessible to any and all or put it on the old "secure" UNB website. The secure website was just that - a web site on one of UNB's servers but one on which UNB authentication was required for access. Before we purchased WebCT we manually would set up course specific areas on this server. That is, for a requested given course - only those students enrolled in that course could access that specific course directory on that server. The set up and maintenance of that was very labour intensive. With the purchase of WebCT, we quit setting up course specific secure areas. This was partially a way to free up resources and partially a way to encourage use of WebCT.

For the fall 2000 semester we wanted to try a small pilot to see how we effective we would be in linking the students from our Datatel system to WebCT and to see how we could handle support, maintenance and training. We had less than one full time equivalent (FTE)  working on this project at that time. Calls came in from new faculty members asking to use the World Wide Web for their courses and we gave them two choices: to learn to use PSyCo (which would be gone in a year) or to "test' the new LMS, WebCT - all chose to be a tester of WebCT. I wished for four or five professors who would be willing to test WebCT for me - I ended up with more than fifty courses.

Year
Month
LMS
Courses with a WWW component
      Courses Student Enrollments
1998 April PSyCo 110 not available
1999 April PSyCo 105 not available
2000 September WebCT 1 0
2001 April WebCT 150 3000
2001 September WebCT 181 5415
2002 April WebCT 277 6046
2002 September WebCT 329 7142
2002 December WebCT 528 10100
2003 April WebCT 621 10787

With the purchase of WebCT and the closing of PSyCo  we determined that more formal training was needed. Also, WebCT had advanced from its humble beginnings to a much more mature product with features that we had not yet learned. So, training started in earnest. Training for me and training for the university community. I embarked on almost any training I could find to bring me to a level that I could answer most questions that came my way. I also purchased some pre-packaged WebCT training as well as took excellent training and purchased additional packages from New Mexico State University.

The Pond is now a Lake

We have been using WebCT 13 semesters and are about to make our next large leap!  We will be moving from WebCT Standard Edition 3.6 to WebCT Campus Edition 4.0. Two big leaps in one semester. We train formally, informally, via the web and by phone and email. We hold two hour lab sessions for various activities in WebCT. We answer emails, and we make "house calls". Sometimes, what the professor needs most is a friendly person sitting beside them letting them fix the "problem" themselves. We very seldom do it for them, but give as much guidance as they need.

Every once in a while I get really excited because a professor says "I would like you to help me to use WebCT more effectively." Because, that is a much different question than, "Can you show me how to get my course up in WebCT?"

Hypertext References

HREF1
http://naweb.unb.ca/proceedings/1996/zgoldberg.html
 

Copyright

Andrew Treloar, © 2000. The authors assign to Southern Cross University and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive licence to Southern Cross University to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web.