Taking The Web West

Richard Robertson and Alan Holzl The Tertiary Education Institute University of Queensland QLD 4072. AUSTRALIA Ph +61 7 365 1169 Fax +61 7 365 1966 Ph +61 7 365 2540 Fax +61 7 365 1799 Email:R.Robertson@mailbox.uq.oz.au Home Page:Richard Robertson [HREF 1] Email:A.Holzl@mailbox.uq.oz.au Home Page:Alan Holzl [HREF 2]
Keywords: WorldWideWeb, Health, Medical, Nursing, Rural, Education, Training

Introduction

Australia is a sparsely populated country which faces many unique challenges. Our cities and towns are geographically isolated when compared with most other western countries. Our governments have met the inequity in resources available between the cities and their rural counterparts through policies of cross subsidisation for example in telecommunications (Ralph, 1986; Blampied, 1986). It has been a role of Australian federal governments to use the revenue from cross subsidisation to develop the infrastructure necessary to facilitate growth of rural communities through the mechanisms of access and equity (Wiltshire, 1975). Distance education and training have not been neglected in this area. Higher education policy developed from the Dawkins Report in 1998 proposed the creation of a higher education system better able to achieve Australia's social and economic goals. One of the characteristics of distance education was that it was cost effective to develop courses using print based materials. Entwistle (1993) has shown that different types of coursework favour particular learning styles in students. Students who enjoy reading rather than face to face opportunities have cognitive learning styles more suited to print based course work (Entwistle, 1993). The National Board of Employment, Education and training's commissioned report (1992) found that a multimodal approach to the delivery of distance education has been more effective in measures of student learning and student acceptance. Since the early eighties computer mediated communication has opened up a wider range of distance education materials and learning opportunities. The establishment of high speed telecommunication infrastructure as outlined in the Creative Nation [HREF 3] (1994) policy document is making possible greater access for more Australians to these opportunities. The application of the innovative and interactive technologies like the WorldWideWeb are an important part of Australia's future.

The Tertiary Education institutes Computer Assisted Learning Unit received a Rural Health Support, Education and Training (RHSET) grant to investigate the feasibility of the use of Computer Based Training materials for rural health care professionals.

Participants by Occupation


Aboriginal Health Workers	 3

Allied Health Professionals	17

Health Service Executives	 7

Medical Practitioners		27

Nurses				44

Others				22

TOTAL			       120

  

(includes admin staff, open learning coordinators, family

support workers, librarians etc.)
The sample (n = 120) was selected from volunteers who responded to a survey designed to collect information on their occupation, professional interests in specific information sources available across the AARNet/Internet and their access to computer and telecommunications software and equipment. The people come from over 43 rural and urban communities, some of which are over 1000 kilometres from Brisbane, Queensland's capital city.

Goal

The project's goal was to provide remote health professionals immediate and easy access to information, training, computer assisted learning programs and to encourage competency in the use of new and emergent technologies in a cost effective manner. To assist in data collection to use to determine outcomes for the project an evaluation questionnaire and journal were designed to obtain feedback on the usage and function of the various internet client software made available to participants during the project. The following objectives were set:

Objectives

  1. To get the health professionals on to the net successfully.
  2. Provide the health professionals with an overview of the types of services available and how to use them.
  3. To encourage exploration of the net to enhance their professional development.
The following resources were developed and delivered to meet the objectives.

RHSETNet Users Guide

The guide introduces a brief background on the AARNet/Internet. It includes sections on email, gopher, newsgroups, telnet, ftp and WorldWideWeb section builds apon materials covered in earlier sections and at the end of each section, there are some exercises to encourage exploration and present opportunities to build on the principles learned. A copy was given to each participant to be used in conjunction with the unix shell login accounts.

RHSETNet Gopher

Originally, a gopher server was chosen as a front end for exploring the AARNet/Internet. At that stage, PPP access was not available to 95 percent of our participants so we used CLI based unix login accounts. The RHSETNet gopher server [HREF 4] holds an archive of the rhset-l discussion list (for the project) and consisted mainly of links to existing sources of rural health related information such as subject oriented sites, electronic mailing list databases, computer assisted learning software archives, OPACs, WAIS, other databases like medline, CancerLit and ERIC as well as clearing houses, newsgroups, veronica and archie.

RHSETNet WWW Pages

At the beginning of this year it became possible to use PPP for IBM PC Windows users from our campus. With the advent of PPP, we considered it feasible to add some dimension to the existing net resources already established so the RHSETNet WWW Pages [HREF 5] were born. The Web was chosen as it seemed best suited to the purpose of integrating the discrete components of Internet use (email, telnet, ftp, newsgroups and gopher). Inorder to design web pages it was still necessary to allow for both CLI and GUI users. All of the health professionals used modems, some of which operate at 2400BPS which precludes them from making GUI access to the Web. The server chosen was a Macintosh IIvx with 12Mb of memory with an ethernet (TCP/IP) link into the campus data network. The health professionals access the Web through a PPP connection on an annex terminal server or through unix shell logins on a mainframe host. The web server incorporates the contents of the gopher server and includes Australian and international health - medical links pages.

Feedback - journals and evaluations

Journals

Out of a possible 120 journals we received 28 journals and 22 evaluation forms after two follow up letters. The journals indicated that most people spent most (m=8; s=2.1) of their time with email. Gopher was used about half as often as email was. Several (n=17) people reported "getting lost" in gopher and a similar number for lynx/netscape. Newsgroups and FTP were the least often reported activities in the journals. A unix shell login user reports "Can't do file transfer". Later the same user comments that "..PPP extends experience" and they attempted file transfers with an FTP client and Netscape. It seems that the two step process of file transfer and email attachment presented users with some frustration as is the case reported in the next section. The journals show that some (n=5) people attempted to record their tasks on less than three occasions while one person completely filled the journal with 90 tasks. The pattern of entries are probably due to the level of intrinsic interest that participants have in the project and are more than likely a product of the level of commitment to their workload.

The evaluations

The evaluation was intended to obtain information relating to the aim of the project. The participants indicated that they were unclear in whether adequate access has been provided to information relating to training in the use of the net. However they all agree that the information provided (correspondence, guide, hotline support, training sessions) has been relevant. They also indicate that they would continue (given the opportunity) making use of the net and its resources. In response to a question asking them to describe the best and worst things encountered when using the net and its resources, most mention problems with network congestion and that "gopher menus for file searching can be misleading". Also "specific topics are not necessarily addressed on the net" and "I had lots of trouble sending email attachments". In the section on email, most agreed that it was an effective means of communicating with their colleagues (and were willing to recommend it to them as a convenient and useful means of communication). The evaluation of the lynx web browser was well received except in two areas. There was some uncertainty in using lynx or netscape for that matter with regard to searching for information on the net. The comments about this particular point included "I found searching with lynx clumsy and it was hard to find something useful". The bookmark feature in lynx was rated less useful than that of netscape. When asked to comment on impressions and insights gained from their experiences with the net and its resources, some responded with "certainly more scope for medical/paramedical use" and "using the Web has been an eye opener" and a common thread to this item was that they found that initially it was difficult "getting the hang of it" but was worth the effort.

Hotline support

The hotline proved fairly popular with 89 messages logged during the project. Most of the messages related to problems with using the clients and not obtaining the expected results. This includes forgotten passwords, bounced email and file transfer failures. The RHSETNet Gopher server was still operating at this time and obtains an average load of about 80 hits per day. The software seems to be fairly robust and usually only requires restarting about twice a month. The RHSET WWW Pages experience far less traffic as they are not linked to any other site to the best of my knowledge (We suspect that the usage rate will climb shortly after this paper is published).

Conclusion

It was expected that health professionals would have varying levels of computer skills (computer experience and competency). All of the sample had access to a personal computer yet personal computer competencies varied much more widely than anticipated. In order to facilitate effective use of the AARNet/Internet resources provided for the project, some funds were set aside to cover the cost of holding training sessions in remote areas. It was recognised that these health professionals work made it difficult to for them to obtain release time to attend centrally convened workshops. It was decided that in this case it would be cost effective to hold training sessions in the field. This was considered important as many project participants had little or no prior experience with computers and particularly telecommunications technologies. The opportunity to do field sessions allowed participants to learn using their own equipment and also permitted any technical problem solving necessary to achieve reliable telecommunications. All of the trainees indicated that they were grateful of the opportunity to have Hands on sessions and personal assistance.

Telecommunications

Reliable telecommunications remains an issue where using modems and voice grade telephone lines to link computers. Data links are prone to fluctuating line quality and transient drop outs caused by equipment failure and varying environmental conditions. Also at the time of this study a number of communities were in the process of having their exchanges updated from dicadic (pulse) to digital (tone) lines. Modem manufacturers have programmed their modems to handle a number of contingencies to do with computer compatibility and line quality. However we find that the factory default initialisation strings that control the modems behaviour do not cover common causes of failure on connection with a remote host. In 10 cases, the modems had to be reprogrammed to ignore dial tone detection before they would attempt dialling out. In 5 cases, modems had to be set to pulse dial to support the older exchanges. For reliable PPP connections, the default handshaking method had to be modified depending on the modems manufacturer.

User error

"Last access I had to change my password & now today I can't get in!! Frustrated"

Reliability is linked to user error. One of the problems facing authors of instruction manuals is to determine the bounds of probable possibilities that lead to errors in performance. In writing the RHSETNet users Guide, our aim was to allow the user to get logged into the net and using its resources as simply and quickly as possible. In designing the guide it was hoped that the projects participants had some basic knowledge about the use of personal computers. If this was not the case then the user could still proceed however their progress would most likely be retarded when dealing with user initiated computer error messages that can occur from user interaction not covered in the guide (eg. operating system messages/errors). It would be inappropriate to include a section on Introduction to personal computers by making the guide too large and cumbersome for its purpose.

User error as an indicator remains unquantified however we suspect it of being a an important factor affecting the success of achieving AARNet/Internet access. From the returned journals, the ones most likely to contain few entries describe problems that stem from incomplete understanding or misinformed preconceptions about the tasks described. Mason and Kaye (1989) suggest that computer mediated communications can work well in distance education, but it is easier for it to fail than succeed. They argue that success requires the provision of an easy to use and well supported user environment with access to a help line and comprehensive support staff which tends to support the outcomes of this project.

Implications

This project has demonstrated that a number of items have to be addressed inorder to bring about a smooth transition into use of Internet and the WorldWideWeb. In its current form, the Web is not a do it yourself turn-key product. Large groups or organisations will need a comprehensive training program to maximise effective use of the Web. We recommend that such a program can be adapted to suit individual organisations' needs however there are fundamental areas that deserve universal attention:

These measures listed are in part a reflection of the orginal proposal and a response to the feedback from the projects' participants. There has been an undeniable willingness on behalf of all the remote rural health professionals and others involved to strive to make every encounter with the net a success. This has happened and now we have a template for further applications.

References

Blampied, C.W. (1986). Telecom Australia : cross-subsidies and taxes (General paper - Impact Project ; no.G-64).Carlton, Vic. : Impact Centre, University of Melbourne

Dawkins, J.S. (1989). Higher Education: a policy statement. Circulated by The Hon. J.S. Dawkins, Minister for Employment, Education and Training.

Entwistle, N. (1993). Styles of learning and teaching : an integrated outline of educational psychology for students, teachers and lecturers.(2nd rev. ed). London : David Fulton.

Mason, R. & kaye, A. (1989). Mindweave: Communication, Computers and Distance Education. (eds). Oxford: Pergammon Press.

Ralph, E. (1986). Multiproduct natural monopoly and cross- subsidy: Telecom Economics Section. Melbourne.

Wiltshire, K.W. (1975). An introduction to Australian public administration. Melbourne: Cassell.

Hypertext References

HREF 1
http://tei-cal.tei.uq.oz.au/Staff/~Richard/ - Richard Robertson's Home page.
HREF 2
http://tei-cal.tei.uq.oz.au/Staff/~Alan/ - Alan Holzl's Home Page
HREF 3
http://www.nla.gov.au/creative.nation/contents.html - Creative Nation Dept of Communication.
HREF 4
gopher://tei-cal.tei.uq.oz.au/ - Rural Health, Support, Education and Training Gopher server.
HREF 5
http://tei-cal.tei.uq.oz.au/RHSETNET/ - Rural Health, Support, Education and Training WWW pages.

Copyright

© Southern Cross University, 1995. Permission is hereby granted to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction at educational institutions provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. Permission is also given to mirror this document on WorldWideWeb servers. Any other usage is expressly prohibited without the express permission of Southern Cross University.
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AusWeb95 The First Australian WorldWideWeb Conference