Liddy Nevile, CTIE, Monash University, Clayton Campus, Victoria, Australia. Liddy.Nevile@eng.monash.edu.au
In this paper, a model use of new web technologies is considered and the model's ability to represent a new generalisable form of educational practice is examined. The model involves the use of materials in web format and a presentation in a range of forms including live lectures or classes, on stand-alone computers with CD/ROM and via networked computers with access to the (world wide) web.
The hyperlecture is so-called in recognition of its hypertextual nature, including the mix of media types or multimedia as linked objects. It is also to be thought of as more than a lecture. There is a lecture as part of the hyperlecture. It is presented as a summary of the hyperlecture or as an introduction to it, to be followed by more in-depth lectures also based on the hyperlecture. There may also be self-paced instructional activities and tutorial exercises.
The OZeWAI universal web accessibility hyperlecture is considered as a case study of an implementation of the new model.
The hyperlecture is introduced as a model of digitally-based lecture. It is a combination of resources and performance: the typical one hour lecture or class lesson is presented either live or by video, and those participating in the lecture or class are expected to work on the material which supports the lecture for up to ten hours. Follow-up work generally starts by students working on materials stored on a CD/ROM, the physical form of the hyperlecture, but then moving off to the web for more resources and interactions with others involved in the field.
The aim of the hyperlecture is to combine the best elements of teaching with new forms of resources available in web format and via the web or on CD/ROMs with holes(1) to the web. Having been developed by one teacher or group of teachers, the hyperlecture does not displace other teaching staff by being offered as a stand-alone product. Instead, it should be used by others to significantly assist them in their preparation of lectures. The hyperlecture model thus values the idiosyncratic and context specific nature of good teaching while working to minimise the workload of good teachers.
The hyperlecture could be thought of as a well-organised folder of material which a teacher draws upon to teach some topic. The difference is that the folder is given to the students in an orderly form and other teachers are also able to use the well-organised material without having to assemble all of it themselves. like a folder, the hyperlecture is in a form which makes it easy to add additional material or replace some. this is achieved by making the hyperlecture as a small website.
The use of a CD/ROM to store all the material needed by the teaching staff and students for the lecture makes it a convenient and inexpensive resource. CD/ROMs of the kind proposed are made almost as easily as files are saved to floppy disks and can be produced cheaply(2) by the average computer-literate teacher. The CD/ROM contains links to the (world wide) web which need to be accessed directly for copyright or other reasons (such as currency). Discovery of these resources, usually very time consuming for teaching staff and students, can be minimised by the provision of a starting set (ideally with annotations and/or good metadata).
The proposed process of preparation of the hyperlecture does not require specialised skills on the part of the developers, making it a sensible option for teaching staff to work with. This is not usually true of multimedia productions. The real work is in the development of a written presentation of the topic, any research which needs to be done, including gathering of data and its analysis, and other common teacher preparation practices. Such work is not new to teaching staff and can be undertaken with confidence in the proposed new environment by the average computer literate teacher. They will require a PC, good web-editing and browsing software, access to the web and a CD/ROM burner. It should be noted that the move from word processing to web-development skill is very easy given good(3) software.
A number of hyperlectures could be produced separately but it is recommended that institutions proposing to adopt the model make good database facilities available for staff so that hyperlectures can easily be catalogued, indexed and updated in the future. (This topic is not to be pursued here but involves a simple database infrastructure with well-planned metadata and discovery and search facilities. Such a system can be used easily by teaching staff and makes the overall management of hyperlectures much more efficient and effective.)
In the case study (below), the author estimates that the equivalent of four weeks' work wa involved. Not all the work was done by the author, and some was exploratory and time wasting. A great deal of time was involved in gathering the data and making it useful. A fair amount of time was used to make the website work perfectly but the author was not using good editing software.which would have done most of the work far faster.
If it takes four weeks to make a rich hyperlecture, it is of concern that this compares favourably with the two or three days that would be required in conventional circumstances. The argument in favour of the hyperlecture is that it does justify this ue of time, particularly if as few as five other people can use the hyperlecture for teaching. It is pointed out that the quality of lecture and supporting activities will be far in excess of the standard situation and that with the hyperlecture, students will find it much easier to effectively following up their lectures. There is, of course, no reason why the hyperlecture could not replace a small number of lectures, say two to four, making the staff student contact time available for working on the material of the lecture rather than just the giving of the lecture.
Web-style CD/ROMs can be used over a local network within teaching institutions, in stand-alone computer mode at the institution, in staff and students' homes, or across the Intranet or Internet. The use of web-style composition makes it easy for relevant sections only of the total CD/ROM to be down-loaded and saved to floppy disk
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Figure 1: Using the Hyperlecture CD/ROM
Figure 2: The teacher, student, and materials triad.
In the case of the educational use of computers and now the web, little has happened in 20 years which distinguishes what is done by those who teach from what was done before the electronic medium was available. The hyperlecture model digs into these practices to provide new model practices which exploit what is good from both worlds.
One view of teaching and learning ties student, teacher and resources closely together in a simple triad. In this model, the teacher works on the material to be learned in ways that make it more accessible to the student, and then presents the material to the students for them to actively do their learning.This does not imply that the teacher simplifies the material but it can include working on the material and producing new, different material which will perform a necessary function in the learning process.
In the example given below, the author was trying to present a concept which is frequently misunderstood. The (student) audience was to be web builders and those who commission websites. Web hackers believe they know what is involved in accessibility and close quickly on their own understanding rather than opening to embrace the new, broadened meaning of universal access(4). By identifying and talking about four distinct aspects to the 'universality' involved, the author was able to present students with a scenario which showed them that their initial understanding was inadequate and in need of reconstruction. The four phase explanation supported their reconceptualisation process.
Looking closely at the 'materials' in such a model, one finds that the materials for the student are not limited to those offered by the teacher on the occasion of teaching but include these along with a broader range derived from the materials of the topic or discipline of concern. Such materials will involve facts, ways of thinking and working, literature and people and events. These are the materials with which the teacher works and from which the traditional lesson is derived. The trick with the hyperlecture is that they can now be included within the hyperlecture, embedded as deeply as is convenient to the teacher or brought to the surface for immediate interaction. This is easily achieved as the hyperlecture sits on top of web pages which can provide links to all sorts of resources including people, providing for interaction with them by email or synchronously, even live.
In developing the materials for the students, the teacher will do research in order to help the students interpret the generic domain materials. Normally, only the derived output from this research is made available to the students; they rarely work with the same materials or data as the teacher. In the case of the hyperlecture, links to and copies(5) of the materials the teacher used can be given to the students.
In the case study example, the research data were available to the students, saving them the difficulty of gathering and organising the data while allowing them to interpret afresh what had initially been interpreted for them by the teacher. As well as the data, in this case, the computer tools used to interpret it were pointed to from within the teaching materials. Additionally, some tools were made available on the CD/ROM.
The hyperlecture model starts with a teacher(6) preparing materials for their students. Later, other teachers may use the CD/ROM without having done this work. In their case, the CD/ROM can be used in a similar way to that anticipated for the students, with the user/teacher perhaps researching the lower depth materials on the CD/ROM and then working their way up to a set of materials which they will use as the basis of their own presentation. Teachers using the CD/ROM in this way are encouraged and equipped to make their own interpretations of the data as well, and can their students with a new interpretation or perspective in preference to that already available on the CD/ROM.
The components of the hyperlecture typically include:
All of this material, if available in universal access design format (see http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL), will be easily accessed by teachers and students using whatever device they happen to have, including adaptive technologies and smart devices such as mobile data phones. The particular content will, of course, depend upon the domain involved, the audience, and the style of teaching proposed.
In the case study described below, material was made available for a number of reasons. Materials were included on the CD/ROM that:
The kind of one-off value-adding that was possible when the case-study hyperlecture was made included:
In the event of the author's presentation of the material from the CD/ROM, a video of the presentation was made on request for some who could not attend the lecture. This has been used by others not confident enough of their expertise to make a presentation themselves. An audio file of the lecture being presented in one additional item that would have been useful on the CD/ROM.
The hardware and software required for the hyperlecture are important: a PC with a web browser/editor, CD/ROM drive, and Internet connection are the minimum required. The use of a browser which allows for immediate web editing, although not common, makes it much easier for teachers and students to work directly on material , where necessary saving new material or annotated and edited material to their own workspace. This material can be developed for use with the CD/ROM material, linking in to it as the original material on the CD/ROM is linked.
Ideally, teachers and students will have their own workspaces already developed web-style and in web format so the new material can be seamlessly linked to existing work. The practice of reading and annotating material, common among those using paper-based materials, can be even more efficient and effective when it involves web-style material although this does demand a well-designed website acting as the user's workspace.
In the case study, a set of overheads were part of the CD/ROM materials. Teachers who want to change them, equipped with a good web editor/browser, can simply open the original, make the relevant changes, save the new version to disk, adjust the links, resave it, and then use the new version in preference to the old. Unfortunately, neither of the most popular web browsers(7) offer the browse/edit facilities in an integrated form.
Historically, the adoption of a new medium has been accompanied by a transformation of the new medium backwards towards the older medium which it is expected to replace. In fact, in time the transformation loses momentum as humans stretch the earlier paradigms towards a new form of expression which becomes the dominant form for the newer medium. Often the new medium ends up operating in parallel to the older one instead of replacing it.
The need for a collaborative distributed authoring environment prompted the development of what is now known as the web. Strangely, this aspect of the web's potential has not been valued by the vast majority of web users until recently. Initially, all attention was on the powerful publish/access paradigm, often with no more reason than overcoming the scarcity of material or its cost to users. Currently, what can be done with this material is gaining attention as users find that they cannot use the web in a variety of productive ways that at last seem obvious to them. It is almost as if smart web functionality has to be rediscovered. Good browsing/editing software is not yet in high demand and most websites are not set up so users can edit them. Expressed another way, so far not many websites are used as the basis for collaborative work. Thus there is not a great demand for software that supports the practices being proposed for the teachers and students of the hyperlecture. This means that it is necessary to carefully design the hyperlecture to make it as open as possible and to make it as easy as possible for users to blend into their other web materials and to edit for customisation purposes. It may, for instance, be helpful to link to the computer's desktop from the CD/ROM, anticipating a folder of additional material being developed there.
The prototype hyperlecture is the 1998 Australian Web Accessibility Information (OZeWAI) Internet/CD. This hyperlecture was prepared for those who need to know about or tell others about universal access design of websites. The base material was the technical specifications of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which are too dense and complicated for those who were not yet aware of the problem to which they attempt to be the answer.
In preparing the hyperlecture, the author worked concurrently on a number of aspects of the lecture, starting at top level on the 'overheads', at a lower level on what needs to be said, at still lower levels on what provides justification or evidence for what is said, and even lower on what might be pursued if there is a deep concern with the matter of the lecture.
Having been involved in the making of other CD/ROMs, the author was able to use prepared files and files structures(8) which saved a lot of work. A simple hierarchic file structure can be established in advance for this. In addition, a set of functional files of a fairly generic nature can be prepared for the teacher. Such files could include neat 'front' ends' for the CD/ROM, such as a stylesheet, linked template pages for sitemaps, or splash pages.
In preparing the hyperlecture, the author was conscious of working at a variety of levels of her own knowing, at times covering material with which she was familiar and sometimes merely pointing to other material upon which she should and wanted to do more work. It was fairly easy to flag the appropriate places for further investigation, revealing to herself, as indeed to others, just what are understood to be the boundaries of the topic of the lecture, what is valued with respect to the theme, and so on.
As presenter analysing the experience of producing such a hyperlecture, the author found herself coming to terms with her own knowledge of the topic of the lecture in ways which are not generally experienced in the preparation of a traditional lecture. The latter experience usually involves a strong sense of filtration of information and such activities as the development of a particular frame through which to view the material for the purposes of making a one hour lecture which is cohesive and concise.
Preparing a hyperlecture allows the presenter the luxury of taking a perspective for the purposes of the presentation, especially at the highest 'overheads' level, but also giving a more open entree to what is available through the longer text version of the lecture and particularly through its hypertextual form. The research, including the data upon which any interpretation is based, is included for re-examination by the student.
The author developed the hyperlecture considered in this case study to explore the notion of the electronic lecture as a 'plug-in' for the main stream lecturer who may not have substantial expertise in the particular field covered by the hyperlecture. Considering the hyperlecture from the appropriating teacher's perspective, respecting the expertise of that second teacher, helped the author keep the material open and accessible. The audience presence was, it seemed, more strongly felt and less easily dismissed when it would include associates of significant expertise.
Guiding principles for development of environments for others to use have been described succinctly by diSessa as demanding of utility, agency and understandability. Applied to the OZeWAI hyperlecture, these mean that the material should be:
It is contended that good teachers should not be replaced by electronic products. (As has been said often, if teachers can be replaced by computers, they should be.) The author recognises the value of the interaction between good teachers and students. But it is also the case that good teachers often point to resources which are richer and deeper in their offering than the immediate knowledge they have at hand. Such teachers, for instance, do not hesitate to photocopy excerpts from articles that express ideas in useful ways for their students. They do not consider themselves compromised by the addition of material of value from other sources. This does not mean