Bradley Broom, School of Data Communications, Queensland University of Technology,
telephone +61 7 864 2769
email: broom@fit.qut.edu.au
, Home Page: Bradley Broom [HREF 2]
Michael Middleton, School of Information Systems, Queensland University of Technology,
telephone +61 7 864 2870
email: m.middleton@qut.edu.au
, Home Page: Michael Middleton [HREF 3]
Sylvia Willie, School of Information Systems, Queensland University of Technology,
telephone +61 7 864 2641
email: s.willie@qut.edu.au
, Home Page: Sylvia Willie [HREF 4]
Queensland University of Technology [HREF 5] 2 George Street Brisbane, QLD, AUSTRALIA FAX: +61 7 864 1969
Delivery of teaching and learning materials to students is one major focus of these systems. All of the major delivery mechanisms of the Internet are used for distributing teaching and learning materials - email, ftp, WAIS, gopher and the World Wide Web (WWW).
The other major focus is the support of the administration associated with approximately 4000 students per semester in study subjects taught by FIT. Faculty administrative support systems accessible to the students include databases which maintain information about student enrolments, academic and non-academic staff members and their contact details, a sophisticated assignment tracking system as well as a means of maintaining records of results for each of these assignments. In 1995 the FIT student handbook was modified and made available in a multimedia format. Students can now use it on their home computers. Work is continuing on making it WWW compatible.
Since 1994 the WWW has become a more important presence in the Faculty. The Multimedia Research Group [HREF 7] took a leading role in trials with Web servers and clients during the first half of the year. This experience was integrated into various study subjects in Information Technology courses during the second half of the year and is being integrated more fully into Faculty information delivery in 1995. A QUT Teaching Technology Infrastructure grant currently supports much of this development.
This paper reports on the most important activities. Section 1 summarises our experiences with introducing students to markup software and its ability to link multimedia systems through cooperative endeavor. Section 2 describes a subject which introduces students who are to become information managers to the concept of customisation of network interfaces (gopher, Mosaic, Lynx, Netscape) and the tailoring of these to link to identified groups of subject resources. Section 3 discusses the use of the WWW as a vehicle for the delivery of course materials and shows how faculty administrative information can be integrated into course information for students. Section 4 describes the use of the WWW as a presentation tool in lectures. We conclude with some remarks about the lessons learnt, and the future use of WWW as a teaching and learning tool.
Using the WWW within a class-Multimedia Systems Technologies
The concepts and specific technical problems associated with hypermedia and
multimedia form an important part of the subject Multimedia Systems
Technologies. Once a year in this subject, 20-30 students undertake
substantial hands-on projects to explore aspects of the media. Students are
mainly undergraduates in their final year of the Bachelor of Information
Technology degree with a few postgraduates who take a higher level research
view of multimedia and are the 'managers' of the project teams. In 1994 the
students were introduced to the WWW and
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) [HREF 8] as
the vehicle for creating an interactive product.
The assigned task was applied to a Campus Wide Information Service, but specifically to develop materials which would be useful to current and intending FIT students both at home and abroad. Access to the results of the 1994 projects can be found here [HREF 9]. The WWW's international accessibility made the problem 'real' for the students, as approximately half of the students in this subject are from overseas and could easily relate instances of information which would have been useful to them when making their overseas study decision.
Important objectives of the information to be delivered by the system were its (a) usefulness to the students, (b) usability by the students, and (c) maintainability in the longer run by general administrative staff of the Faculty. Secondary considerations were the information's usefulness and interest to the non-QUT population.
The postgraduate group look at the project management, development, testing and evaluation issues which need to be addressed for multimedia projects and specifically how these may differ from the computer systems development methodologies they have previously encountered in their studies.
Project teams are formed at the middle of the semester with a team member from each of the key technologies and a postgraduate as team manager. The team managers hold discussions about the particular aspects of the Faculty information system which they feel are both useful and interesting to Faculty students and make the choice of project. Each project is then described to the class as a whole and the undergraduates rank the projects in order of their preference of participation.
In 1994, students were given open access to the WWW as well as URL references for support documents for HTML. Template documents were developed by the team members and inter-team discussions assured a cohesive approach to the information would be developed.
The students then gathered information from various sources. Some of this was found in written sources which the students structured as a hypertext and coded into HTML. Where video was deemed appropriate, video footage was shot and digitised. Sound was identified as a useful feature for some of the information to be presented. Students initially planned to have each of the course coordinators talk briefly about their particular course. The logistics of scheduling more than a dozen people were soon realised and a single speaker was eventually used. The sound was captured, digitised and converted for use on the various platforms. Photos were taken of the four teams and the still images were scanned. Each team used their photograph to create an 'authors' page.
Some of the learning outcomes for the students included practical and theoretical knowledge about digitised time based media, an understanding of resolution and colour depth in screens and their effects on images, the usefulness of inline images compared with launchable image viewers such as JPEG, and the techniques of structuring hypertext for readability on a screen as well as supporting user navigation within the information.
In the last weeks of semester, the weekly laboratory session was devoted to a storyboarded demonstration of each group's project. This was posted on a wall to make it easy for groups to compare notes, identify useful linkages between groups, and determine what additional work remained for full implementation. Some of this included particular technical problems which had been solved by one group and was passed on during the session.
The 'dress rehearsal' highlighted the need for scripts to ensure coordination between the presenters and the team member operating the computer for the demonstration. It also exposed a few non-linked pages and cross platform problems which had to be addressed before the public demonstration in the final week. The students presented their projects to Faculty and other visitors as a live demonstration using a networked X-terminal attached to a projected video display device which ensured the audience could see WWW pages well enough to appreciate their content.
Feedback from the students, both formal and informal, showed the usefulness of the WWW as a mechanism for integrating the theory gathered from their reading and the lectures and providing a practical application. Their demonstration was well received by those in attendance. By popular demand, an additional presentation was organised so the students could pass on the benefit of their experiences to people in the general community interested in developing material for WWW delivery.
Using the WWW within a class-Customisation of Network Interfaces
Students completing the Bachelor of Information Technology and majoring in
information management courses at QUT are expected to become competent as
information intermediaries, able to identify, evaluate, organise and make
accessible information resources for end users of various types. This means
that they have to be able to conduct effective information retrieval searching
on a variety of software available on commercial online databases and compact
disk databases.
They have access to some of these facilities via the Internet and are required to become familiar with, and adapt available navigation software, so that it provides focused pathways to particular subject interests.
When gopher software became available, students were provided with access to their own sub-levels of the QUT gopher client and required to establish structured gopher access to particular subject areas of interest. This project has been reported by Middleton and Fisher (1993).
Student exercises are subject to varying availability, but when accessible may be viewed here [HREF 14].
This work is similar to that which has been reported by the University of Michigan's Clearinghouse for Subject-Oriented Internet Resource Guides [HREF 15].
The gopher work was extended in 1994 so that students do a comparable exercise on WWW. Using Mosaic and a HTML editor they were required to produce home pages of their own, and link from their personal page to a subject page that provided multiple links to their subject area of interest. Some student examples may be viewed here [HREF 16].
Using the WWW to teach
Work is now proceeding on the development of individual subjects for online
delivery to students. This is carried out within the framework of the present
documentation being produced for courses.
Each subject taught by the Faculty of Information Technology (or unit as they are called at QUT) has provided a Study Guide which acts as a reference to material such as notes, readings, software, assignments and regulations pertaining to the subject. We are developing a model for these Study Guides to act as a WWW Unit Home Page. Then, using Web client software such as Mosaic or Netscape, students may link to those readings or requirements of the subject that are of interest to them.
A general model of the Unit Home Page structure and its links is shown in Figure 1.
FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY <LINK to the Faculty's Home page> SCHOOL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS <LINK to the School's Home page> Study guide for period [Information supplied] Unit Code and Name: [Information supplied] Credit Points: [Information supplied] Contact Hours: [Information supplied] Contents List: <SUBLINK / SUBLINK / SUBLINK / ... to subheadings within the Unit Home Page document such as 'Textbooks(s) and References' or 'Assessment Schedule'> Prerequisite(s): RELATED UNITS<LINK to other Unit Home Page> Unit coordinator: COORDINATOR'S NAME<LINK to staff member's home page> Telephone number: [Information supplied] & Room number: ROOM LOCATION<LINK to image on school plan> Online activity: [Information supplied: details of access to online consulting hours and email] Objectives: [Information supplied: here the theoretical and practical objectives for the unit are listed] SYNOPSIS <LINK to the University Handbook section which carries synopsis of unit> TEXTBOOK(S) AND REFERENCES i. <LINKS to any material that is available on the Internet and publicly available> ii. <LINKS to scanned internal material that is available only to students within the university> iii. <LINK to QUT library for location and availability of Books and Reserve materials> iv. <LINK to course notes in their entirety> ASSESSMENT SCHEDULE [Information supplied: the names of individual assessment items are listed here together with Due Dates] i. <LINKS to text of any item of assessment that is presented in textual form> (these may lead to further links to software that needs to be used to carry out the assessment, for example a database package) ii. <LINKS to the Faculty's Computer Managed Learning System for direct self-assessment by student> iii. <LINK to previous examination paper> UNIT OUTLINE [Information supplied: module by module outline of material to be covered in the unit. Typically, this a week by week set of headings for a Semester] i. <LINK from each module to the corresponding notes> ii. <LINK from any module involving a site visit to information about the organisation being visited> CONDUCT OF THE UNIT [Information supplied: a summary outline of the modules that are covered which shows a matrix of the objectives to which they relate and the corresponding assessment] i. <LINKS back to numbered assessment items> ii. <LINKS back to numbered modules> iii. <LINKS back to numbered objectives> FACULTY POLICIES [Information supplied: headings for policies relating to penalties for late submission of assignments, plagiarism, etc.] i...n. <LINKS to individual policies in Faculty Student Guide> UNIVERSITY POLICIES [Information supplied: headings concerning University by-laws etc. relating to enrollment] i. <LINKS University Handbook Home Page> PRESENTERS i....n <LINKS to stored text and graphics about guest presenters in the unit> PARTICIPANTS i. <LINK to the Faculty's Student Information System to list students enrolled in unit>We have adapted the model of subjects such as the GNA subject 'Introduction to Object Oriented Programming Using C++' [HREF 17], and Edith Cowan University's 'Introduction to Information Technology (IST1132)' [HREF 18] however, these materials are not closely linked with university administrative procedures at this point. Our own developments are trying to take more account of this by dynamic linking to information stored in the FIT databases.
An example of our present development may be navigated from here [HREF 19]. The material for this subject is still in development and in the second part of 1995 the Web as an independent delivery platform will be evaluated in parallel against the standard teaching approach.
Issues that we have had to address in preparing material for this subject include:
Using WWW to present lectures
Graphical presentation of supporting material can significantly improve the
presentation of a talk or seminar. Many presentation packages are available
for the DOS/Windows environment, Microsoft Powerpoint for instance, and these
are now regularly used to make presentations. They can also be successfully
used for presenting lectures.
A graphical WWW client, such as Mosaic or Netscape, can be used in a similar role. Since currently available WWW clients have been optimised for personal use, not making presentations, the graphical quality of the display is inferior to that of the specialised presentation packages, although it is still quite acceptable for many applications.
During second semester 1994, the lecture content of a second-year programming subject at QUT was successfully presented using the NCSA Mosaic WWW client for Windows. During semester 1 1995, the Netscape client is being used because of its support for maths.
For presenting lectures, WWW has two advantages over the presentation packages mentioned above. First, the hardware/software system used to prepare the lecture content can be quite different to that used to present it. We prepared the lecture content on a Unix workstation and delivered it using a laptop PC running DOS/Windows. Second, the lecture content can be stored online and accessed by any system running a WWW client. This could allow students to access the lecture notes online. We did not enable such student access, since students usually simply print the notes (at no cost to themselves) and tie up valuable printing facilities. It is far more sensible, and indeed cheaper, for the Faculty to bind and sell such printouts in the University Bookshop. Nevertheless, the online notes are a valuable reference for staff and tutors.
Experience with the laptop clearly showed that following hyperlinks embedded in the body of the document was not appropriate during a presentation. The simple "click a button for the next overhead" user interface is more appropriate. We used a standard format for the top of each "overhead" containing hyperlink icons to the next and previous overheads in the presentation. By positioning the cursor over the next icon, the presentation could be easily advanced. In 1994, we produced these standard formats manually, but these standard layouts are now produced automagically by a simple software tool.
In 1994, some discrepancies between the Mosaic clients for Unix and DOS/Windows were discovered, as well as several bugs in the alpha release of the Windows client. It was therefore prudent to test drive the presentation using the Windows client before actually presenting it, but in general the presentation was easily developed on a quite different platform using standard tools. In 1995, the more robust client Netscape is being used obviating the pre-lecture testing.
Although the presentation quality was quite acceptable, further improvements in the client WWW would be welcome. Of particular use would be a full-screen kiosk mode so that extraneous material, such as window borders, need not be displayed.
A major problem with the current clients is that printing, through the client, of a series of pages is not possible. For a lecture, presenting the material covered in the lecture in a paper form for students to peruse at their leisure is difficult; while the future may mean students take a copy of the HTML home to view on their personal computer, this is not possible yet. The second major difficulty encountered in the teaching of this subject is that implemented versions of HTML do not yet support extensive use of maths symbols and inline equations.
To overcome these deficiencies we have created two tools; the first converts HTML documents, with local extensions for equations, into legal HTML with inline GIFs, using LaTeXô. The second tool converts a series of legal HTM L files into a single file, processed through LaTeX and sent to the printer.
The use of WWW as the presentation tool for lecture material has been supported by the students. Using a BARCO projector, the screen is easily seen in a room seating 70. The quality of the printed material produced from the HTML is very high, and the automated process means that printed material can be uptodate with the HTML version (and, where necessary, with the lecturers original copy in, for example, Microsoft Word).
Like the Web clients, tools such as Microsoft Powerpoint have many of the physical capabilities that are required in this teaching-text, still images, sound, and animation support. However, the flexibility to present the material via many platforms, the free and open nature of the Web, and the ease of using these capabilities in the subject's presentation in the future, clearly favours the Web as the more desirable alternative.
Conclusions
Our experience with university teaching and the World Wide Web in 1994 has
shown sufficient promise to warrant bringing learning materials for additional
subjects online. Programs are in place to disseminate our experiences to our
many colleagues in the Faculty of Information Technology and to others in the
greater community.
In the future, we will continue to transfer the curricula for subjects into HTML to make it more accessible and ensure a standard format. This will influence the ability to use HTML clients to present subject material en mass. Appropriate subjects will use HTML and WWW as part of the curricula, while specific subjects, such as Unix and C, will be moved onto the WWW in a form similar to computer assisted learning packages, where the students interact directly with the system beyond simple navigation.
AusWeb95 The First Australian WorldWideWeb Conference