CHANGE IN EDUCATION: A PRACTICAL LOOK AT WEB INSTRUCTION
Steve Corder and John Seydel, Arkansas State University
The WorldWide Web has become an important tool for distance learning. However, developing true web-based instruction currently requires both considerable time and technical ability. Given limitations on both, it is therefore important for the instructor to determine how to be most effective given the resources he/she has available. Four approaches to web based lectures were developed and tested as alternatives to traditional lecture methods at a mid-sized regional university. This paper presents findings from this experiment. Results were mixed, but, in general, interactivity appears to be the key to making the Internet a more substantial part of the way we teach. Topics addressed include: preference of one type of presentation over another; perceived role of Internet based presentation in a traditional (rather than Internet based) class, positive and negative aspects; and suggestions for improving presentations.
While the need for and use of web based instruction is growing, practical limitations can prevent many educators from reaching desired levels of effectiveness. Developing a web site to replace part or all of the traditional classroom lecture component of a class then becomes a challenge to be met. Access to, and familiarity with, the necessary technology is often limited, thus forming a barrier to effective web based instruction. Furthermore, even if technological limitations are overcome, the time to develop effective web materials can be prohibitive. Given this, one must wonder what place web based instruction should have in college level instruction. One must also consider what approach will be most effective in providing an educational experience as close as possible to, or better than, the conventional classroom experience.
The research summarized in this paper addresses these concerns through an experiment in what might be termed constrained web based instruction. The experiment involved using the Internet -- primarily the WorldWide Web (WWW) -- as a substitute for traditional lectures/discussions. This took place only during a segment of a conventional classroom based course. The experiment was meant to compare student perceptions of web instruction when time spent by the instructor in preparation of new materials was limited to what typically would be available. The experiment will be described below, and its results and implications will also be discussed. First, however, the case for integrating the WorldWide Web into higher education is presented.
Web Based Instruction: A Form of Distance Learning
Distance learning (DL) in its various forms has been growing exponentially over the past several years. This is partly because DL provides opportunities to use educational resources more efficiently to a second wave (i.e., the children of the baby boomers) of influx into higher education. In addition, access to education is being expanded, so people who have traditionally been excluded from higher education opportunities are now able to take college courses. More importantly, however, it is also being found that aspects of these nontraditional delivery systems can also improve the effectiveness of the educational experience, both for DL and for on-campus learning.
Synchronous versus Nonsynchronous Distance Learning
Typical DL includes primarily synchronous (generally live) but also nonsynchronous approaches to reaching remote sites. (Note that the term "nonsynchronous" is used here in place of the more commonly, but often inappropriately, used term "asynchronous." The latter tends to imply something out of synchronization, while the former is meant to imply something not necessarily synchronized.) An important reason for the move toward DL is that it provides flexibility in education. Synchronous delivery, which usually involves interactive video and audio transmission of lectures and class discussions, extends the traditional campus geographically. It is, nevertheless, limited in its flexibility because relatively few remote sites can feasibly be included. Increasing the domain of sites is costly and involves substantial bureaucratic and technological lead times. Furthermore, the timing is not flexible - students must adapt their schedules to be coordinated with broadcast times just as must be done in traditional on-campus environments. Hence, geographical flexibility is the primary advantage with synchronous learning.
On the other hand, with nonsynchronous DL, students can time the educational aspects of their lives to accommodate the rest of their activities. A large and growing portion of our college students in this country can be considered nontraditional, typically working and/or supporting families while pursuing academic goals (Levine and Cureton, 1998). Such students have provided the impetus for the growth in courses delivered nonsynchronously. Currently, a tremendous expansion of nonsynchronous educational delivery through an amazing proliferation of WWW sites on the Internet is taking place. Some of these sites have been developed to assist with synchronous DL, but the majority are still being used in conjunction with on-campus classes for the sake of extending the educational experience beyond the walls of the traditional classroom. In addition, some web sites have been developed as alternatives to classroom-based learning, essentially serving as high tech correspondence courses. For example, The Internet University (Corrigan, 1997) lists over 700 courses being offered through the Internet by both traditional universities and universities catering primarily to online students.
Beyond Flexibility - Enrichment of Delivery
Not only does using the WWW facilitate temporal flexibility for students, it also provides the opportunities for tying together an entire world of resources into a set of course materials. Furthermore, this can be done in a manner that enables nonlinear learning using hyperlinks and multiple media. Educators have found that, while most of our resources deliver information in a linear fashion, many students can learn better in a nonlinear fashion (Glener, 1996). Hence, the provision of nonlinear delivery options should lead to enhanced learning. Multiple media such as sound and video can be used both to strengthen the printed word and to provide nonlinear learning options. For example, a student reading an online summary of the next day's planned class discussion can click on a link that provides a definition to a word, and then on a link that pronounces the word audibly. Another link might provide a discussion (audible and/or printed) about the word's derivation, and still another link might trigger a digital video that further adds to the understanding of the concept. Of course, these items might serve only as "bells and whistles" for some students, but those students would also have the option of bypassing the corresponding links, assuming the links were sufficiently well documented on the web page.
Factors Limiting Implementation of Web Based Instruction
Essentially, even given current technological limitations, the potential of WWW based nonsynchronous educational delivery systems is limited only to the imagination. Achieving this potential is, however, subject to the instructor's technical competence and to his/her time available for developing web sites. Concerning the latter, developing a web site with capabilities like those described in the example in the preceding paragraph requires a great deal of time up front for research and planning. True, a well-delivered course, web-supported or not, requires planning. The fact that a web site can incorporate such a large and varied quantity of resources dictates that more time (although not commensurately more) be spent in the development of a course. In a recent presentation concerning the challenges presented by DL, Patterson (1999) estimated from extensive experience that preparing the first time for a totally web-based classes involves around 45% more time than for a traditional course. Hence, what makes a web site more powerful is also what provides the greatest challenge to those who would seek to capitalize on the opportunity. Nevertheless, this need not preclude the initial use of web sites to augment, or even replace, traditional classroom education, since the use of the WWW for a course can evolve, even within a semester, as the instructor achieves better familiarity and competence with the technology.
An Experiment in Web Based Instruction
The true state of affairs is that all faculty will see increasing pressure to demonstrate usage of the Web as part of their teaching portfolios, in spite of limited time available for developing new materials. Nevertheless, much of the investment that currently exists in a traditional teaching portfolio can be migrated to the Web with little more effort than that required to save the work on one's personal computer initially. Furthermore, office hours and teaching interests can be placed on faculty pages developed from standardized templates. Syllabi and existing class notes can be placed on the Web for viewing and/or downloading. However, doing these things simply provides another channel for distribution of the materials. It ignores the question of whether placing one's notes on the Web is a desirable substitute for class lectures. Neither the goal of nonsynchronous learning to provide convenient and effective education nor the elusive siren song of web technology to provide more exciting presentation is necessarily being achieved. Are these goals even possible, given the time and technological constraints facing most faculty as they try to prepare for their classes and upgrade their technology skills?
To address this question, the experiment summarized here involved the use of four "lectures" prepared for Internet based presentation to students in an MBA core class in management information systems. More precisely, these were essentially not true lectures; rather they were delivery approaches used in this experiment in place of actual classroom lectures. The course up to the point at which the Web based lectures were introduced had been conducted using conventional classroom lectures and discussions, small group activities, and student presentations.
Each of the Web based lectures represented a different type of delivery approach for web based instruction. The intent of the experiment was to study student reactions to web based lectures that exemplified the types of lectures that could be easily developed as initial efforts to employ the Internet as a delivery mechanism. These efforts would typically be manifested either as brand new lectures or as upgrades of lecture materials already developed. (As an aside, they are also the type of materials a faculty member might instruct a departmental secretary to create from materials the faculty member had already accumulated.)
The Lectures
It was desired to provide some structure in how the students interacted with the lectures. In addition, it was necessary that the lectures reflect limitations faced by a typical instructor in an initial attempt at web based instruction. Hence, development of the lectures was guided by several criteria and constraints. First, to encourage students to study the materials on a regular basis, the lectures were available only during a given window of time, usually 24 hours. This was done because the issue of concern here is not the suitability of the lectures for self-paced study, but rather as substitutes for traditional classroom based delivery. Second, no option was given for printing all of the materials at once. In each of the cases, students had to load (and, ideally, view) individual pages, much as if they were being shown individual slides in a classroom presentation. This was to avoid in part the simple use of the Internet as an alternative to visiting the local copy center. However, since the level of technological expertise required for an instructor to prevent printing is not knowledge expected of novice developers, no attempt was made to prevent printing entirely. Neither were the students asked not to copy someone else's printouts. Third, each lecture was designed to be viewed in approximately the length of one class period, assuming the student viewed the online presentation and took notes. Fourth, the lectures were not lectures over technical material such as developing programs or calculating optimum network sizes. Instead, the lectures addressed primarily conceptual and informational topics, such as the contents and rationale for a disaster contingency plan. Fifth, each lecture required some participation by the student. In the first lecture - a scanned book - students were asked to answer one of the questions from the chapter and email their results to the instructor. In another lecture, a form that the students had to print, complete, and submit to the instructor was provided. For one lecture, an online form was provided for responding to a case study. In the remaining lecture - a chat room discussion - each student was expected to participate, even if it were simply to acknowledge her/his presence. The sixth and final constraint required that the time to prepare an online lecture not exceed what might be typically spent on preparing traditional classroom presentation materials. This was perhaps the most severe of the constraints involved, but also one of the most appropriate, given what seem to be ever increasing demands on instructor time and ever tighter budgets.
The first lecture was a complete copy of the "notes" for a lecture. The second was a sequential set of web pages, that were organized much like a typical overhead transparency progression that an instructor might use in a conventional class. The third lecture also involved typical transparency-style pages, yet they were organized in a hierarchical fashion, much like using the contents of a Help file associated with a software package. The last lecture was a scheduled discussion, where the class all met virtually in an Internet chat room.
For the first lecture, notes in voluminous and complete detail were made available through the Web. To exaggerate the completeness effect, a chapter from a book was scanned into the computer, each page a separate image. These images were embedded into an HTML document which was placed on the Web so that, in effect, the lecture was simply an online presentation of reading material from a supplementary text.
Figure 1. Overview of Sequential Lecture Structure
The second lecture was the type of presentation an instructor might develop using a software package like Microsoft PowerPoint and then print on overhead transparencies for displaying in class. Figure 1 provides an overview of the structure of a lecture similar to this one. Each slide was accessible only one at a time and was linked to the next slide in the order prescribed by the instructor. One simple multimedia addition was also included on these slides. A short voice explanation (always less than one minute) was attached to each slide and was activated when the viewer clicked on the appropriate spot. Since all that was required to incorporate this feature was a sound card that accepted voice input and a microphone attached to the computer, this did not seem to add undue complexity to the creation of the slides. Figure 2 provides an example of such a slide.
The third lecture type was also one that might have been produced using presentation software. The difference lies in their organization. The slides were organized by topic threads in a tree type fashion similar to that summarized in Figure 3. It was expected that the student would explore one topic to the end, then back up to the beginning of the next topic. More planning, but not a higher level of technical expertise, is required for this type of presentation than for a sequentially organized slide presentation.
The only lecture requiring that all students be online at the same time was the fourth one. During the scheduled class time, a private chat room was opened at the Excite web site. Prior to class, students had been emailed instructions on how to get into, as well as how to use, the chat room. During the chat session, the instructor presented a regular set of notes, and a significant amount of time was spent on interactive discussion.
Figure 2. Typical Sequential Lecture Page
Figure 3. Overview of Hierarchical Lecture Structure
Participants
Prior to this course, the majority (71%) of the students had corresponded with instructors using email and had used Web resources to complete research papers in other classes. Much smaller percentages of the students had taken classes in which lecture notes had been placed on the Web (36%), had attended a Web based lecture (14%), or had used a chat room in class (14%). None of the students reported that they had used an online bulletin board as part of class interaction. Each of the students had participated in Web related activities such as searching the Web for information associated with case studies and conducting evaluations of Web site design. The students were familiar with electronic slide show presentations, these having been used both by the instructor and by all of the students at one time or another in their own presentations. Only a small percentage (14%) could be said to have had significant prior MIS experience (work experience or undergraduate background), but all were comfortable with basic computer usage.
Results
The students provided feedback in six major areas: the type of lecture they preferred; the ways in which they used the lectures; the extent to which Internet lectures should be part of a class; major desirable characteristics; major undesirable characteristics; and suggestions for improvement. The first five of these feedback areas are discussed in this section. The last area is incorporated into the discussion on implications of the study.
Preferences among Internet Based Lectures
The participants were asked to rank the four lecture types from most preferred to least preferred. Table 1 summarizes these responses. About an equal percentage of students chose each lecture type as their first choice. Looking at first and second choices versus third and fourth choices revealed more helpful preference information. The least desired format was that of complete notes, i.e., the actual scanned pages (the first lecture). Seventy-two percent ranked this approach either the third or fourth most desirable, although 21% ranked this their first choice. The most preferred was the sequentially ordered slides (the second lecture). Approximately 79% ranked the sequential slides as either their first or second choice. The hierarchically ordered slides (the third lecture) fell in the middle, with 72% choosing this approach as their second or third choice. The reaction to the use of the chat room (the fourth lecture) as a venue for class presentation was more polarized. Thirty-one percent ranked this as their most preferred approach, yet 38% ranked this as their least preferred approach.
Table 1. Summary of Preferences for Internet Lecture Types
(Do not total to 100% due to rounding)
Note Taking and Internet Based Lectures
In the conventional classroom setting, students normally take notes as part of the learning process. This results in involvement in the process, it reinforces the concepts in the students' minds, and it provides an opportunity for students to reorganize the knowledge (Carrier, Williams, and Dalgaard, 1988). In this experiment, it appears that the students did not perceive the online lectures to be "real" lectures; instead, they used the computer as a virtual copier for class notes. Figure 4 summarizes how the students utilized the web based lectures. Almost all of the students printed the notes, even though this required loading each page and printing each page separately. Although approximately 65% indicated that they viewed the notes online as well, this does not necessarily indicate any real online learning. In fact, only 29% indicated that they took any written notes during the three lectures prior to the chat room lecture. That lecture was the exception, since the students had been not instructed on how to save a chat room session, so no notes were available to be printed. Surprisingly, however, only 43% took notes even during the chat room session
Figure 4. Student Utilization of Online Lectures
Proper Role for the Internet in Courses
The third area of feedback addressed what portion of the course the students felt should be based on web based lectures. In spite of the advantages that were identified by the students for this approach to information presentation, the majority (64%) felt that the lectures should exist only either as a minor part of the course or as a way of providing supplemental information. A very small percentage (7%) felt that the lectures in their current form should be used to replace a traditional course completely. The breakdown of responses concerning the role of web based instruction is given in Figure 5.
Figure 5. What Should Be the Role of the Internet Lectures
Likes and Dislikes about Web Based Lectures
As indicated above, one of the advantages to nonsynchronous learning is the flexibility and convenience provided. This was reflected in the students' identification of what they liked best or second best about this approach to education. Flexibility dominated the responses, expressed in phrases such as: more convenient times (indicated by 64% of the participants); geographic independence (21%); saving time (14%); flexible lecture format (7%); and the ability to proceed through the lectures at their own speed (7%). Beyond flexibility (although perhaps contributing it), the availability of a complete set of notes (i.e., not having to take notes) rated quite highly, with 36% of the students indicating that was what they liked best or second best. This is of little surprise, given how the students utilized the lectures, as indicated in Figure 5.
No similar consensus existed for disadvantages to the approach. Nevertheless, as might be expected, a number of students indicated lack of interaction as one of the things they disliked most or second most. Lack of interaction with the instructor was cited by 36%, and lack of interaction with other students was cited by 29%. Another relatively highly rated dislike (indicated by 21% of the participants) involved the insufficient motivation that resulted without there being a structured class. Other complaints included hardware problems (server down, labs unavailable, etc.), trouble learning the Internet, and limited time of accessibility to the lectures (an intentional design of the exercise).
Conclusions from Results
Although the results varied, there seemed to be a definite preference for one type of Internet lecture over another. There did not, however, seem to be any relationship between what a person preferred most and what she/he least preferred. Additionally, because of the nature of the data collected, the extent to which one lecture type was preferred over another was not apparent. Recognizing these two facts, one can postulate, based on this study, some conclusions about why one or another lecture type might be preferred.
The polarization of preferences regarding the chat room may be the easiest of the results to understand. More so than any of the other techniques, this required student typing and reading skills to be well honed. This is likely to have been especially true for first time users, since the pace at which a chat room session moves can be unnerving -- by the time a response has been crafted in one's mind, another five or ten responses may have already been displayed on the screen. Further exacerbating the situation, the thread of conversation may have moved so quickly that the issue for which the response was meant might no longer be current. Although significant interaction did occur (more so than was common in regular class sessions), the pace was furious. Certainly, for an instructor who does not type well or quickly, the chat room would definitely not be a good vehicle for presenting information. In general, as a tool for generating discussion (perhaps even quasi-anonymously), the chat room seems to be usable addition to an instructor's bag of tools.
Although a number of students mentioned having ready access to a complete set notes as an advantage, the full notes lecture (i.e., the first lecture) was the preferred type of only 21% of the students (as indicated in Table 1). In this instance, the fact that the lecture was nothing more than an online book was made obvious by the provision of actual scanned pages. (The problem was not in resolution; the pages were easily read.) Consequently, the fact that the material was not developed by the instructor was obvious, although this is often not the case with conventional instructor materials. If the same information had been provided in typed, outlined format, the results might have been different. One must also consider that the scanned images were the most demanding from a computer point of view. Although easy to create, the images took considerable time for the web browser to load and often exceeded the capacity of a single floppy disk.
The difference in preferences between the sequentially and hierarchically ordered lectures may lie in the cognitive effort required to get through the slides. More focus was required when working through the hierarchical format since the student had to remember where he/she had been to know where to go next. The sequential approach would have provided an advantage especially if a student had wished only to proceed through the presentation as quickly as possible in order to print each slide (as appears to have been the case with more than a few students). The only online effort required would have been to click NEXT, then PRINT, and then to repeat the process as often as there were pages. Another possibility for the preference toward the sequential type of presentation is the impact of the sound clips, which were included only on the sequential lecture pages. The experimenters realized too late that effort should have been made to see if students actually listened to the sound clips.
Certainly, the lectures did not provide the same learning exercise one gets by being in class. The notes were printed, hopefully to be viewed at a later time and/or date. However, the benefits of reviewing the notes as they are taken and then again in later review sessions was lost. To overcome this may require more technical savvy, and/or many more feedback mechanisms may need to be integrated with the presentations to ensure active student involvement.
In summary, the overall impression given by the students of the exercise validates intuitive conclusions about this form of nonsynchronous education. Flexibility in both time and location was provided by this approach and was identified as a leading desirable trait. The lack of interaction with others was a perceived drawback for whatever reasons -- social, clarification, or motivational. The lack of consensus on the disadvantages, coupled with the rather vague responses describing the disadvantages, is problematic. These did not provide much information to explain the reluctance on the part of the students to embrace this as a more integral part of a course. Much as with earlier implementations of technology (e.g., television classes, cassettes, filmstrips, programmed learning textbooks, etc.), there seems to be a commonly widespread desire for the traditional gathering in the classroom. This may be a cultural issue -- we do not commonly give our students material for self-study and then ask them to return at some future date for evaluation.
Implications and Concluding Remarks
The data seem to indicate the following four major implications for integrating Internet based lectures into the classroom. One, it is possible! The limited nature of these approaches does allow their creation within the time an instructor might have budgeted for preparation time. The advantage is that each can be continually improved with more technical options and integrated with other Internet resources each time the course is taught. The framework is thus provided for continuous process improvement.
Two, online books in general are hard to use. Paging is slow, reading the pages that exceed one page is not comfortable, the hardware resources required may be extensive, and copyright infringements are a definite issue. In the student's eyes, the instructor's placing her/his own complete notes online may be preferable to the student's having to buying them at the book store. However, this benefit must be balanced with any school limitations on the amount of printing that students are allowed to do on school printers.
Three, the limited formats used for the lectures in this study may not be so exciting that students would substitute this approach for the traditional approach. Nevertheless, they provide a very doable approach for enhancing current course approaches, and they can utilize the extensive investment the faculty has already made in teaching materials. Furthermore, creating slides and then converting them for publishing directly to the Web, all within a package such as PowerPoint, seems efficient and effective. If an instructor's current approach to lecturing utilizes overhead displays extensively, online slides are a natural extension to what is already being done.
Four, there may be an optimal mix of conventional classroom lectures and online lectures. For example, lectures placed online after a conventional presentation may be a good way of dealing with students who lose their way during class discussions or who failed to find their way to class at all. What that mix is and how to achieve it will remain to be revealed in later research in this area.
The students' suggestions for improvement nearly always involved adding additional capabilities to the presentations. Although it is not doubted that any one of the suggestions would provide added value, its inclusion could dramatically increase the amount of time required to prepare course materials. These suggestions included the incorporation of more examples -- something easily provided in a conventional classroom but more difficult to ascertain the need for and timing of in a pre-built lecture. Also suggested was the inclusion of a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section. This feature is one included with many online discussion groups, but often demands a full-time person to maintain. However, this is a feature that could be developed incrementally as the collection of materials for the class evolves. Even the inclusion of the most typical two questions on a particular topic and the appropriate response may be of great value. Not surprising in today's technical age was the suggestion for the inclusion of more multimedia. Even adding irrelevant displays (such as the graphic in the example slide in Figure 2) may be similar to an instructor's jokes that often may completely unrelated to some current topic of discussion. Although integrating video, pictures, graphics, and sound is becoming increasingly less difficult to do, finding or creating the appropriate resources is still a time consuming activity. A final suggestion by the students was to include links to other resources on the Web. Finding these resources is also a time-consuming activity, perhaps justifiable for a complete course, but less justifiable for any one particular lecture. Then there is also the ongoing requirement of verifying that those resources are still on the Web and still publicly available.
There is little doubt in the minds of the authors that producing Internet resources for student consumption is a question of when, not if. This study indicates that faculty, even with limited technical skills and limited time, can develop web based lectures that function. The work however is not a one time effort, because the WWW is dynamic by nature. While existing non-web based materials may be placed relatively easily on the Web, the pressure to maintain, improve, and change those materials will be greater than what currently may be the case with conventional classroom teaching materials. Although the pressure to keep materials up to date is strong, the personal reward for faculty working online can also be great, since this is an inherently creative process. Once begun, the limits are only in the imagination. Thus, each new development on the Web brings with it additional challenges, as well as increased opportunities, for developing web based instruction.
References
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Corrigan, D. (1997). The Internet University. Harwich, MA: Cape Software.
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Levine, A., and Cureton, J. (1998). Collegiate life: an obituary. (diminishing attention given by students to academic work). Change, 30, 12-18.
Patterson, J. (1999). Distance Education in Higher Education: Major Threat or Major Promise. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Association of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Las Vegas, NV.