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Dale Burnett, Faculty of Education, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1K 3M4. dale.burnett@uleth.ca
This paper briefly describes the emerging field of on-line course development, contrasts large-scale and small scale approaches, identifies some important characteristics of successful on-line courses and supplements this with examples taken from courses developed by the author.
The last few years has seen the emergence and development of a new form of technology-supported instruction: web-based instruction. Universities and colleges around the world are beginning to develop and evaluate web-based materials for use in their programs. There has been an explosion of professional conferences and organizations that focus on the web. Many of these conferences have an educational dimension to them, and many are devoted exclusively to the web and education.
Within the institutions there are parts of courses, complete courses, and entire programs that can be completed via web-based instruction. There are even new institutions being created that call themselves virtual universities, which have no physical campus, but which operate totally over the Internet.
The topic of web-based instruction is clearly an important one for all tertiary institutions. Their very existence may depend on how they react and adjust to the new possibilities and opportunities that are presenting themselves. Geography has always played an important role in the plans of institutions of higher learning. In many cases universities could depend on a relatively stable enrollment pattern fed by students living nearby. Many universities were created with this point as one of the primary reasons for their existence. However geography is likely to play less of a role in the future, as students may obtain part, and in some cases, all, of their education in an Internet supported manner.
We all have stories to tell. Here is one of mine. In the late 1960's my wife was teaching Social Studies in a Junior High school (Grades 7-9) in Edmonton, Alberta. One year the Mathematics Department introduced a new pedagogical approach called IPI (Individualized Prescribed Instruction). In essence it required each student to complete a set of worksheets. After each worksheet the students would receive the next one and in such a manner progress through the year's materials. It was very popular with everyone. The students liked the clear set of expectations and the fact that they could progress at their own pace. The teachers also liked the clarity and ease of record keeping. The following year the Science Department adopted the idea, and again it was quite successful. The third year the English and Social Studies Departments began using it. Total disaster: "Oh no, not another worksheet!". It is now 1999 and we are in danger of repeating the cycle.
There appear to be two main approaches to the design of instructional software, which I will classify as "inanimate" and "alive". The terms are not frivolous but reflect a critical aspect of the design process. Sowell (1996) uses the terms "technical" and "nontechnical" to make a similar point.
The first approach has a technical bias and might be typified as an engineering perspective. I am not using the term pejoratively but in the best sense of the words. The approach is very thorough and systematic (Allessi & Trollip, 1991) and has much to recommend it.
Ideally it would include some form of formal needs assessment but even if this is tacit the next step is a clarification of the goals and objectives of the proposed materials. This naturally leads to a consideration of how one can determine whether these goals have been attained, and often leads to a review of different measurement and evaluation techniques. Terms such as standards and quality control are often heard at this stage in the process. Having established the beginning and end points, all that remains is the middle. Once again, this usually begins with a careful analysis of the content and the determination of the "scope-and-sequence" of the material. Exactly what should be included, and where. The materials are then created and assembled. They are thoroughly tested for "bugs" such as dead-ends and loops as well as for simple clerical errors such as spelling or even errors in content. Ideally there is a pilot phase where the materials are test ed with a prototypical group of learners and further refinements and adjustments are made. Then the product is released into the marketplace. This overall perspective is well suited to a team approach, with different members bringing different skills to the task. For example, there may be a content specialist, a measurement expert, a psychologist and a small team of programmers and technical people to actually get it working. It usually represents a large-scale effort and is quite expensive, both in terms of dollars and in terms of time. But the results are often viewed as worth it. The final product is a set of instructional materials that is well designed and tested and that meets most traditional criteria for success. Fair enough.
The second approach is virtually the antithesis of the first. Restricting myself to discussing the development of on-line course materials, I would characterize a typical situation as that of a single instructor, with perhaps a few friends on the side, attempting to make a manageable adjustment to an existing course in order to incorporate some of the new possibilities inherent in the Internet. The basic approach is to try something fairly small and do-able, with very limited resources. The basic intent is not to produce a final product, but to make a change to a course and to then observe the effect. Depending upon feedback of various kinds, one then makes further changes during the next iteration. The process never actually ends. Each semester has new characteristics (particularly the personalities and backgrounds of the students) and new environmental considerations such as a rapidly changing technological landscape.
While preparing this paper, I read an email message that had the following quotation, attributed to William James: "I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of human pride." This timely message reflects and reinforces the different values and perspectives of the second approach.
The overall process does not have a start, a middle, and an end. The course has already been in existence for some time. The instructor has many years of practical classroom experience. These factors are taken into account, albeit tacitly, at every stage in the process. Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, something fails to work as intended. This is usually not a critical situation since most of the course is basically sound. Rather it is a small difficulty that is overcome at the time and hopefully not repeated in exactly the same manner on the next iteration. This is very much like the process of course development before the advent of the Internet.
Furthermore, the experience of the previous iteration is now part of the instructional background of the instructor. The overall process is much closer to a biological model of adaptation and survival and is deserving of the label "alive". In most on-line courses, there is still an instructor who is actually alive and who is taking an intimate interest in what is happening. The technology is more like a prosthesis, permitting some new possibilities, but always under the control of the instructor, who can quickly and easily make some fine tuning adjustments. The instructor¹s personality is still in evidence. It is still possible to be a caring individual even in an on-line situation. But the manner in which the caring is exhibited will be different. The same is true for humor. And it is also true for precise, detailed feedback to the learner about a possible misunderstanding or an opportunity for a new perspective or approach.
Turkle and Papert (1992) describe different approaches to programming, which they characterize as "hard" and "soft". The hard approach is abstract, formal and logical, whereas the soft approach is a flexible and non-hierarchical style "open to the experience of a close connection with the object of study (p. 9)." They then extend this difference to argue for epistemological pluralism or for different ways of knowing. I would like to suggest that this idea applies not only to learning, but also to teaching, and that the idea of epistemological pluralism encompasses instructional design.
Web authoring software is also evolving at a rapid rate, opening up new options and making some alternatives very easy to implement whereas only a short time ago they required strong technical assistance.
Comparing these two approaches it is easy to think of David and Goliath. Our mistake is to view the issue of instructional design as a battle with only one winner. Rather I would like to make a case for co-existence. Each has a place, depending upon circumstances. Where resources are plentiful, or where the task is large, and particularly when the goals have a "skills" orientation, then the team approach has much to comment it. However when resources are scarce, when the task is not too daunting, and when the goals have a more nebulous character, then the single instructor approach should be carefully considered. Kurokawa (1996) advocates an equilibration of toãdown and bottom-up approaches which is consistent with his overall philosophy of symbiosis which "transcends the limits of dualism (p. 103)".
One of the defining characteristics of intelligence is the ability to learn from experience. Ideal instructional systems would appear to need this as much as the ideal learner appears to need it. There are two ways this might occur. One is that we learn to design such forms of automated instruction (or the software itself learns how to do this to itself). The other way is to adopt a symbiotic relationship between an "intelligent instructor" and the on-line displays, where the strengths of each are utilized to advantage in the overall interaction with the learner. For the present, the latter course of action would appear to be the more prudent choice.
"Can machines think" is another way of asking "Can machines teach?". This begs the question of the characteristics of an on-line course. At present, based on our experience with regular classrooms, I would suggest that two such components be: (1) a strong level of interaction with a human instructor, and (2) a manageable class size. Both points mitigate against the notion that on-line course can effect tremendous cost-savings by having the "system" handle large numbers of students.
Finally, Dyson (1997) ends his book with the following sentence. "Not in wilderness, but 'in Wildness,' wrote an often misquoted Henry David Thoreau, 'is the preservation of the world.'" We must ensure that our instructional systems have such a spark of wildness.
The following sections will emphasize the three main stages that were followed in the development, offering and evaluation of four web-based courses at the University of Lethbridge. I would like to basically follow a temporal sequence, beginning with the first course to be developed and then discussing the latter three courses in the order they were created. First I would like to identify some of the ideas that went into the planning process. Second, I would like to describe the actual courses that I am now offering at the University of Lethbridge. Finally I would like to include a few comments on the effectiveness of such courses. I would like to begin with the first course that was offered for credit in the fall of 1995. I will conclude with a major recommendation for all tertiary institutions that are beginning to provide web-based courses.
The ideas and assumptions that go into the planning of a course are critical to the eventual form that the course is likely to take. The original idea in the summer of 1995 was to attempt to provide a web site that contained the content for a new course on the Internet. At this time there was no thought given to extending the notion to the point where remote students could take the course from home. However once the original course materials were established, often just a week before the actual class was to take place, then it was a relatively natural extension to consider the possibility of students accessing the materials without attending the class sessions. Nonetheless, the seminal idea was simply to provide course content on a web site
Two other considerations were paramount from the outset. One was that I did not want to "put the book on the screen". There were already a number of valuable books on how to use the Internet and I could see little value in simply repeating what other authors had already done. Thus there has always been a recommendation that students use additional resources while taking the course.
The second consideration was to attempt to maintain a high instructor profile in the course. I decided to accomplish this be having a special Comments section each week, where I would add a series of personal comments appropriate for the week at hand.
Here is an extract from the first week's Comments:
There are many paradoxes in the mere existence of this course. Deep learning of a topic requires a combination of concentrated self-study combined with serious debate and discussion with others about the mean-ing and relevance of the material. The social dimension is important. A review of the literature on the use of computers in education suggests that the most valuable approaches are those that utilize the powerful informa-tion processing capabilities of the technology to provide a highly interac-tive interface with the learner. Computer-based simulations come to mind. So does Logo. A course provided via the Internet appears to have neither of these components: there is no social interaction and the com-puter is basically being used as an electronic page-turner. It's not to late to drop the course!
Yet I believe that the course will be worthwhile, for all of us. Why? First, I want the social dimension to be high in this course. I am placing much of the responsibility for this with you. You must adopt a pro-active approach to the topics in this course. I am hoping that you will approach the course aggressively. You should try to learn as much as you possibly can about the Internet in the next 3 months. Let's talk about aggression for a moment. It means that you will do everything you can to find out as much as you can about the Internet. You will buy as many books on the topic as you can realistically afford. You will visit local libraries and bookstores on a regular basis to see what is there. You will deliberately browse newspapers and magazines looking for articles on the Internet. You will spend in inordinate amount of time on the computer, playing with the software, trying out options, seeing what happens if .... You will engage in conversations with your friends about the Internet and educa-tion. You will share stories, both excitement and frustration. There should be plenty of both in this course. "You should go beyond the in-formation given" - another of my favorite phrases - this one from Jerome Bruner. There should be no ceiling on what you learn. You are not learning to please me, you are learning to satisfy yourself. Not all of what you read may have the word Internet in it, nor even the word computer. But it should have the word education, at least much of the time.
Second is the issue of interactivity. I have tried to set this course up in such a manner that the relatively static nature of the screen displays can be compensated for by the relatively high level of communicability that is inherent in the Internet. Thus it is not always necessary to engage in a conversation in "real-time", nor in "real-space". The use of email to ex-change comments, and even attachments such as computer files, pho-tographs, audio messages and movies are all possible. Thus I am looking for a high level of interactivity among everyone taking the course. I will set up public forums where we can engage in debates, students will be able to share information with - and without - my knowledge. The "look-and-feel" of such interaction is an open issue, both for you as well as for me.
A final, critical, consideration was the overall structure of the course content and the sequencing of the material. This is primarily a pedagogical issue rather than a technical issue.
Each web page had a set of links (sometimes called "buttons") that gave the student explicit access to the various components of the course at any moment. A mouse-click on any of these links would transfer the student to a different section of the course. For the course as a whole, there were links at both the top and bottom of each web page to other web pages that gave additional information on the assignments for the course as well as a bibliography and a glossary. At this level, there were also two links to web sites outside of the course. One was the Faculty of Education home page and the other was to the University of Lethbridge home page.
Buttons for branching back to Main Course information
[HOME] [ASSIGNMENTS] [REFERENCES] [GLOSSARY] [FACULTY] [U of L]
There was a similar set of links to pages within each week's material.
Buttons for branching within week 1 materials:
[Home] [Goals] [Comments] [Content] [Glossary] [References] [Activities]
This format was repeated for each week's material, and the students were soon quite familiar with it. Each week was designed as a self-contained module. All thirteen modules were outlined at the beginning of the course:
Always use this location as the starting point for accessing the materials for each week. Each week a new link will be established (i.e. highlighted in blue) that provides access to the new week's material.
1. Week 1: Sep. 9 - 15: The World Wide Web
2. Week 2: Sep. 16 - 22: Email
3. Week 3: Sep. 23 - 29: Usenet
4. Week 4: Sep. 30- Oct. 6: Mailing Lists
5. Week 5: Oct. 7- 13: Downloading Files
6. Week 6: Oct. 14 - 20: Time on the Internet
7. Week 7: Oct. 21 - Oct. 27: Web Authoring
8. Week 8: Oct. 28 - Nov. 3: Web Authoring - Part 2
9. Week 9: Nov. 4- 10: Web Authoring - Part 3
Nov. 11 - 17: Remembrance Day class cancelled
10. Week 10: Nov. 18 - 24: Web Authoring - Part 4
11. Week 11: Nov. 25 - Dec. 1: Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
12. Week 12: Dec. 2- 4: Issues, What Next?
The links for each week were made active at the beginning of the week. The materials were designed so they could not be accessed ahead of time. This was another instructional decision. While many Internet based courses permit each student to proceed at their own pace, it was felt that this would be too chaotic to monitor. The rationale for this decision was further reinforced by the desire to maintain a regular email discussion. In order to help keep the class discussion focused, it was felt that all students should be covering the same material at approximately the same time.
During an earlier visit to Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia I had seen a system in use where all email messages were archived and then made accessible to all users. A quick check confirmed that they would be able to provide a similar service for the University of Lethbridge course. This is also noteworthy. We now have a situation where the computer resources of two different universities on opposite sides of the globe are utilized in the offering of a single course. Indeed, there has been a continuing and regular exchange of views and information between myself and professors Allan Ellis and Gordon MacLeod of Southern Cross University during the development and evolution of this course. The collegial sharing of ideas and resources reaffirms my faith in the university ideal of pursuing the development of new knowledge and forms of understanding. Joint development of courses need not be restricted to the people and resources of just one institution.
Finally, it was decided that all assignments would be submitted in an electronic form: email plus attachments. If the Internet was capable of exchanging files, then why not use that fact to gain experience with it by having the students send their files to the instructor. It was only later, when offering the course for the second time, that it was realized that this feature made it possible for students to take the course from remote locations.
A few points deserve mention in summarizing this course:
1. Originally, the primary source of content was a specified book
about the Internet, but this has recently been modified to simply
require that each student purchase additional Internet references as
they see fit.
2. As an alternative to a book, the students could utilize the web
itself as their primary source of information about the Internet.
3. The web-based materials for each week were organized and
presented as a self-contained module.
4.Each week¹s material contained substantial personal
commentary from the instructor.
5. All assignments were made via email and attachments.
6. Extensive use was made of an archived mailing list.
7. One section of this course met each week to use the facilities
in one of the university computer labs. A second section was created
that consisted totally of "remote" students, some from over a
thousand kilometres away, who used their home computers and personal
internet accounts.
8. The course was rated very highly by the students. The level of
interaction each week on the archived mailing list was also high.
9. Because of the nature of the topic (the Internet), there has
been a high level of revision to the content each semester.
The purpose of this section is to highlight a totally different pedagogical approach to the offering of a web-based course. The genesis of this idea came from some discussions between Allan Ellis and myself during one of my visits to Southern Cross University.
The essential pedagogical idea is one that would not be possible without the internet. Each week each student is responsible for reading, summarizing and commenting on an assigned reading. This in itself is not a novel idea. What makes it so is that each student must submit their work to a computer database. Once this is done, they receive a password and are then able to view the responses of the other students, and to provide additional comments on the other submissions.
Each week the students were required to access the web site for that week¹s material. This included a section where they used the forms feature of the web to directly type their replies in four sections:
1. Their name. This provided the necessary identifying information so ev-eryone would know who had said what.
2. A one sentence summary. This required that each student provide one sentence that best summarized the main idea of the required reading.
3. A more general summary. This asked that each student provide about a page that summarized the main ideas of the required reading. This activity would demonstrate both how well they understood the material and how well they could rephrase it into their own words.
4. A critical commentary. This section was also about a page in length and asked the students to reflect on what they had read and to indicate areas where they either agreed or disagreed with the author together with their reasons for such views.
This approach provides a new setting for class discussions. Normally, with everyone in the classroom, the students who begin a discussion are at a disadvantage since the topic has just begun to be explored. Students contributing later in the period can build on what has been said earlier. Under this new approach, let¹s call it a virtual discussion, everyone must make their initial submission without any knowledge of what others have contributed. Everyone begins from the same starting point, or to use another popular metaphor, it is a level playing field.
This idea of a virtual discussion then made it possible to alter another time-honored parameter of the course structure. The first three weeks of the course were primarily used to ensure that everyone was familiar with the notion of a virtual discussion. Following this period the class only met every third week. The other two weeks were handled in a totally virtual fashion. Thus the course provided a blend of conventional face-to-face meetings and discussion as well as the virtual discussion mode where each student made their contribution over the internet. This feature has interesting institutional implications, since it may now be possible to utilize less classroom space for the offering of some courses.
A few points deserve mention in summarizing this course:
1. The primary source of content was a book, in this case "Life on the Screen" by Sherry Turkle.
2. The web-based materials for each week were organized and presented as a self-contained module.
3. The actual course contained both "real" classes and "virtual" classes, resulting in a reduction of actually scheduled classroom time.
4. The web materials for each week contained two main parts: one part contained information related directly to the week's topic, and the other part contained a more social section where the instructor added commentary of a timely nature to the course as a whole.
5. The web materials made extensive use of the forms feature of the web.
6. All assignments were made via email and attachments.
7. A number of remote students took the entire course via the internet.
8. The course was rated very highly by the students. The level of interaction each week was also high. There have been a number of requests for more such courses (that is, different topics, but a similar pedagogy) within our graduate program.
A third web-supported course was created and offered in the Fall of 1997. Many of the general comments and descriptions of the previous two courses apply as well to this course. I would to like to briefly highlight a few of the differences.
1. This course was designed for use by students attending class each week. The possibility of someone taking the course from a remote location was there, but this did not transpire during this semester.
2. The content was provided via a well-known statistics textbook. The intent of the web-based material was to supplement this material with worked out examples of computer-based analyses using SPSS.
3. Each week's module included a schematic map of the overall course content, as well as an indication of where the current week's material was located. Here is one such example:
At the time this site was created, it was still a cumbersome matter to create an image map. Today it is a relatively easy process. However I believe the real issue is the presence of a schematic diagram rather than whether or not it is interactive.
The approach taken, and the appearance of the web site, is again different from the preceding courses.
This time each student was basically taking an Independent Study with only a minimal amount of sharing, since most students were reading different books.
Pedagogically, two ideas deserve mention. First, each student was expected to provide fairly regular reports on the reading to date. Based on the experiences of the last four years, I consider this to be a significant feature. For students who do not have a regular class to attend each week, the issue of time management and self-discipline become important parts of the course. It is very easy to let the normal demands of regular life occupy all of one's time and let a course "slip" until too late. Good instructional design should take this into account. Second, each student was expected to supplement their regular reading of the book with extensive use of web-based resources, including the possibility of email interaction with the author of the book. For all students this was a new perspective and one that required the development of a new set of expectations and skills.
The overriding conclusion is that all four courses were quite successful. This was not a foregone conclusion since it was heavily dependent upon the technology successfully working throughout the semester and upon both the instructor and the students learning to use a relatively new and unfamiliar set of procedures.
Second, the creation of web-based courses introduces a new aspect to pedagogy. We now have the option of living in a glass house, where others can view exactly what we do and how we organize our materials. Dyson (1998) makes this point very succinctly when talking about business markets, "A market is not just the interaction of buyers and sellers; it involves competition between sellers. Rather than compete only on price, sellers compete on differentiation - the equivalent of the forces that produce new species in nature. Differentiation is a lot easier when you know what your competition is doing, which is why disclosure is good for markets as a whole as well as for investors and customers. (p. 30)." Are we about to enter an era of instructional competition, or will institutions try to protect themselves by restricting public access to their instructional materials (already quite common) and thus inhibiting the effects of an open marketplace?
Finally, this paper demonstrates the use of four different pedagogical approaches, with four quite different web appearances, all created by a single web-author. This reinforces the point that utilizing the web for instructional purposes does not imply one method of instruction. While at one level the medium is the Internet, at another level the medium is the pedagogy. Much as with face-to-face instruction, web-based pedagogy is also multi-faceted and is open to innovation and exploration. This is in contrast with some institutions that are advocating that all courses offered by all instructors have the same "look and feel".
I have yet to hear, "Oh no, not another worksheet!".
I have often begun my papers with a carefully chosen quotation, usually from something I had just recently read. This time let me end with a quotation from my daily calendar pad (February 1, 1999):
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
Alessi, S. M. & Trollip, S. R. (1991). Computer-Based Instruction: Methods and Development. Second edition. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Dyson, E. (1998). Release 2.1. New York: Broadway Books.
Dyson, G. B. (1997). Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence. Reading, Mass.: Helix Books.
Kurokawa, K. (1996). Each One a Hero: The Philosophy of Symbiosis. Tokyo: Kodansha International.
Sowell, E. J. (1996). Curriculum: An Integrative Approach. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Turkle, S. (1996). Life on the Screen. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Turkle, S. & Papert, S. (1992). Epistemological pluralism and the revaluation of the concrete. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 11, 3-33.
Dale Burnett, © 1999. The author assigns 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 author also grants 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.