GOING HIGH TECH IN THE CLASSROOM: DO THE BENEFITS OUTWEIGH THE COSTS?
Christopher Brown and Randall Kesselring, Arkansas State University
This article appraises the effectiveness of the instructional use of computers, LCD projectors, software applications such as PowerPoint, e-mail, and elaborate web sites. Pitfalls encountered in the transition to new techniques are identified. The advantages and disadvantages of new wave instruction in comparison with conventional styles of teaching are assessed. Advantages include more effective use of class time, improved capability to incorporate impressive-looking color charts and graphs, a higher volume of one to one communication with students, and the ability to link students to articles and other resources available on the World Wide Web. A key disadvantage: If materials are not made available to them beforehand, students expend their in-class energies in a (sometimes futile) effort to copy down intricate slides or web pages in their notes. Also, the use of these tools risks transforming a lecture from a unique, improvisational, "each time is a little different" performance into a slick but sterile sequence of slides or web pages.
Colleges and universities in the United States have been profoundly affected by the proliferation of powerful and economical personal computers. Administrators, sensitive to the fact that qualitative judgements about their institutions are partly based on the general availability and specifications of campus computer hardware and software, and displaying an almost unquestioning faith in the power of computers to improve the learning environment, have spent lavishly for PCs, software, high speed internet connections, servers, LCD projectors, and technical support staff. Professors risk being labeled as "outdated" if they fail to embrace these new technologies. At the same time, some articulate voices claim that high tech pedagogy has been over-hyped. Todd Oppenheimer writes, for example, "[t]here is no good evidence that most uses of computers improve teaching and learning" (Oppenheimer 1997, p. 45).
This article will set forth an appraisal of high tech pedagogy taken from the perspective of two professors who have experimented extensively with the instructional use of computers, LCD projectors, software applications such as PowerPoint, e-mail, and elaborate web sites. Our ultimate objective is to shed light on the following issue: Do the benefits of going high tech in the classroom outweigh the costs?
Use of Classroom Technology
We will use term "instructional technology" (or "I-T") to cover a variety of computer applications including the use of presentation software, e-mail communications with students, use of the internet, and the development of course web sites. The purpose of this section is to describe the way in which I-T is integrated in undergraduate and graduate economics courses at Arkansas State University.
Our use of I-T has three principal elements: (1) The preparation of PowerPoint slides and web pages for classroom presentation; (2) the development and maintenance of course web sites; and (3) e-mail communication with students. We were initially drawn to I-T as a possible solution to problems encountered in offering distance learning sections of economics. Specifically, we found it awkward and slow to manually draw graphs and equations as we would in the course of a normal lecture. The quality of the resulting graphs also left a lot to be desired. Consequently, we were seeking ways to prepare these materials in advance and display them on television monitors located at the various distance learning sites. We also resorted to the expedient of publishing these materials at our web sites so that students, many of whom lived 100 miles or more from our campus, could have access to them via the internet. The fact that students taking the course at remote locations could download copies of the lecture notes provided an insurance policy in the event of equipment failure during lectures. We subsequently applied the techniques used in compressed video instruction to our conventional courses. Getting ready for class now means painstaking preparation of PowerPoint slides, and in some cases, web pages.
There are several purposes for maintaining a web site for each course we teach. First, the web site serves as a class bulletin board. The course home page has a "news" section that contains announcements about forthcoming events such as quizzes, exams, or paper deadlines. In addition, there are hyperlinks to recent online articles having some bearing on the subject material of the course which are very easy to find in the field of economics. Second, the web site is a place where students can download course materials such as the syllabus, PowerPoint slides used in course lectures, exercises, and data needed to complete assigned statistics or forecasting problems. A third service provided by the course web site is that it links students to some popular and useful "economics" web sites such as Dismal Scientist and ECON Data and Links. All of these resources are available to students 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (assuming no server breakdowns), and thus the web site supports a diversity of work schedules and lifestyles among students. A sample of web pages is displayed in Appendix 2 which is available from the authors.
For better or worse, we have found that the volume of e-mail exchange with students has increase almost geometrically in the past three years. These e-mail communications serve several functions. For example, e-mail is an easy way for a student to notify the instructor that they will be absent for an examination and to arrange for a make-up. If a student is hung up on one step of a problem in the Study Guide, a quick e-mail explanation from the instructor can get the problem ironed out. E-mail is also a medium for students to voice their complaints.
The Costs and Benefits of Using Instructional Technology (I-T)
The effectiveness of instructional technology in helping students to achieve comprehension of course material (as well as in stimulating student interest) depends on several factors, such as: (1) the skill level and creativity of the instructor; (2) the computer literacy of the students; and (3) the degree of (continuous) access of students to online computing. Presuming for the moment that the use of I-T can be effective, a necessary condition for the development of such effectiveness is an instructor with strong mastery of several software applications and web site development skills. The very nature of these tools is such that if you cannot do it well, you are better off not doing it at all. Commenting on the papers presented at the "Advancing the Integration of New Technologies into Undergraduate Teaching of Economics" conference held in spring of 1998, Katz and Becker noted that "Of the many obstacles to instructional innovation discussed at the conference, perhaps no single difficulty was stressed more than the time and effort needed to keep abreast of rapidly changing technologies" (Katz and Becker 1999, pp. 197-198).
Of course it can be worthwhile for a professor to invest the time and effort required to obtain these skills. It does not follow that it would be worthwhile for every professor to do so, inasmuch as the time and energy used up in the pursuit of these abilities might be allocated to activities that have higher value to the institution--e.g., research and publication, grant writing, or administration. As economists, we have been inculcated with the principle that scarce resources (time and mental energy, in this case) should not be re-deployed from their present use unless there is a higher value use for resources elsewhere. Whether the development of software and other I-T skills constitutes a higher value use of their human resources is a judgement that each individual must make.
The preparation of PowerPoint slides, or the updating of course web sites, are very time consuming activities. We also note that students who would never ask a question during a lecture can nevertheless lose their bashfulness when it comes to e-mail. An increasing number of professors complain of the time used up in responding to student e-mail queries (for example, Parks, 1999). Hence allocating time for these tasks entails additional opportunity costs. For example, the instructor may have less time to read periodicals or other materials in their field of instruction. Similarly, there may be less time for interaction with students during office hours. Other things being equal, the use of I-T means spending more time on teaching and less on research and service. The terms of the tradeoff will differ for each individual; however, faculty and administrators need to recognize more fully that such tradeoffs exist.
We have identified three primary benefits in using PowerPoint presentations and LCD projectors in the classroom. First, the use of these tools for the first time provides an impetus to do things differently--to try something new. It also generally means a more thorough preparation for course lectures (as compared with lecture "notes"). The creation of slides forces the instructor to pay close attention to details and to think carefully about how various concepts are best presented to students. A shift to the use of presentation software is likely to be a good tonic for those who fear that they are stuck in well-worn grooves in the classroom.
Second, the use of presentation software enables the professor to use class time more effectively. Writing definitions on a blackboard, or drawing a detailed graph, can take up a lot of precious time. The use of PowerPoint makes it possible to display high quality graphics at the click of a mouse. We have found it possible to cover a greater quantity of material and view an issue from more angles using I-T. For example, "unemployment" is a standard topic in principles of macroeconomics. Presentation software enables the instructor to embellish the subject with a number of descriptive charts or tables (illustrating, for example, the time trend of labor force participation rates for various groups, unemployment rates for women, youths, Hispanics, married men, etc., quit rates, the duration of unemployment).
We should note at this point a potential pitfall you may stumble upon in making the transition to PowerPoint. If students do not have copies of the slides in their possession during lectures (or at least know they will be able to obtain them later), then many will engage in a frantic (and probably futile) effort to copy the slides in their notes. Their energies during contact hours can be totally consumed by this activity. The instructor can be besieged with requests to "slow down" or "show that slide again." This is obviously a waste of valuable classroom time. The students' energies are better expended in careful thought about the concepts conveyed by the slide presentation, as well as the instructor's explanation of them. To head off this problem, the professor needs to make the slides available to students. Students enrolled in our classes may purchase the slides at the University Bookstore, or (as we noted above) they can download them from the course web site.
The third factor militating in favor of I-T is the favorable impact on many students of the use of color graphics, sound, and motion. I-T gives the economics instructor some additional means to spice up what some students regard as a dull subject. A creative instructor can add humor using clip art or sound. The preponderance of students report that they like the slides (see survey results in the Appendix). Though we claim no expertise in this area, some writers in the education field claim the presentation software is well adapted for contemporary students, who can be classified as "visual learners." Andre Harrison, for example, writes:
Because of [PowerPoint's] visual versatility, slides can display information in a way that grabs today's highly visual learners. Designers can use color, sound, and movement to capture students' attention. . . . PowerPoint also can help address other learning styles, such as auditory, visual kinetic, and manipulative (Harrison 1998-99, pp. 7-8).
Many principles of economics textbooks now include PowerPoint slides in the package of instructor resources. This begs the question: Should you be spending valuable time creating presentations when you could just as easily use the pre-prepared slides? It depends. The pre-prepared slides tend to duplicate the graphs and tables that appear in the text--hence, they are well suited for those who prefer to teach strictly from the text. In fact, the PowerPoint slides, in terms of content, are really no different from the transparency masters that have been the staple of instructor resource packages in years past. Thus if an instructor found that the pre-prepared transparencies suited their purposes well, then they should definitely use the pre-prepared PowerPoint slides. At the same time, a skillful and creative PowerPoint user should to able to match or exceed the quality of slides that accompany the text. And by doing it yourself, you have more power to place your imprimatur on the course and adjust the presentations to better reflect your priorities or idiosyncrasies.
The pre-prepared slides can be a highly valuable resource. Oftentimes we identity slides on the instructor resource CD that we would like to incorporate into our original PowerPoint presentations. This is accomplished fairly easily by clicking the "insert slides from files" function in PowerPoint. (The mixing of original and pre-prepared slides for class PowerPoint presentations creates a potential copyright problem if the instructor makes slides available to students at the web site or elsewhere. We delete any copyrighted material prior to publishing the presentations at our web sites or making hard copies of slides available at the bookstore). The disadvantage to this approach is that students will have "missing" slides in their packet of materials.
Having identified and explicated its virtues as an instructional tool, we now turn to the disadvantages of PowerPoint. Foremost among these is that the use of presentation software risks transforming a lecture from a unique, improvisational, "each time is a little different" performance by the instructor into a slick, but sterile sequence of slides or web pages. Having invested so much time and effort in preparing it, there is tendency on the part of the instructor to rely too heavily upon the slide show once the lecture begins. A slide show being analogous to a script, there is the danger that the presenter will stick too closely to it and thus fail to do the sort of extemporaneous lecturing that can be so effective. Metaphorically speaking, it would be as though a talented jazz musician had written a solo on paper prior to a performance and did not stray from the written version once the music began.
Another major problem we have discovered with classroom slide presentations is that the slides compete with the professor for the students' attention. When an individual delivers a talk with no props whatsoever, there is no question whom (or what) the agent of communication is. The focus of the audience is on the speaker. Moreover, the speaker has an array of tools to enhance his or her effectiveness as a communicator. These include eye contact, hand gestures, and voice inflection. Alas, an impressive PowerPoint presentation can shift audience attention away from the lecturer. Professors, who typically have well-developed oral communication skills, may be struck by what appears to be a general disinterest in what they have to say. Geoffrey Nunberg, for example, writes:
What’s troubling is the way that slides have begun to take on a life of their own, as if they no longer needed talking heads to speak for them. No one asks for a memo or report anymore: now it’s just ‘Send me your slides.’ Conferences post the slides of their speaker’s talks; professors post the slides of their lectures; the clergy post slides of their sermons on the Web (Nunberg 1999, p. 330).
In defense of students, it may be difficult to simultaneously apprehend the content of a slide and make sense of the professor's commentary. In any case, slide presentations can be an unwelcome source of dissonance and can diminish the importance of oral communication in the students' learning. It is possible that the problem described in this paragraph is not a problem of presentation software per se but rather a problem of failing to use this tool properly to complement oral presentation.
Economics is not the most popular subject on campus. Students complain that they are inundated with confusing graphs. As such, professors are always searching for ways to demystify graphical techniques. Most principles textbooks on the market have an early chapter or appendix that is designed to raise students’ comfort level with graphs. Does the use of presentation software compound the problem of "graph anxiety"? We are fearful that the sudden appearance of a somewhat complicated diagram, no matter how well crafted, can be intimidating to some students. A deliberate, step-by-step development of the graph on the blackboard tends to be better received by students. As student enrolled in principles of economics at Washington University commented:
I’m having doubts about how great using the computer to put up notes is. For one thing, not a class goes by where we don’t have trouble with it. It’s also nearly impossible for me to read the graphs and tables you pull up from other places, which is the whole reason using a computer in class would be so cool. It also seems to make more sense when you physically draw the graphs on the chalkboard…rather than just have the computer plot them (quoted in Parks 1999, p. 208).
We recommend that the classroom be configured so that the instructor has the option to revert back to the "chalk and talk" method at any point during the lecture.
We teach at an open admissions university with abysmally low retention and graduation rates (at least in the estimation of University administrators). Class attendance (which we believe is positively correlated with the probability of obtaining a degree) is also a serious problem. Hence it is incumbent upon us to ask the following question: Does the students' ability to download lecture slides and other materials from the course web site weaken their incentive to attend class? We have noticed a slight fall-off in attendance in our principles of economics sections since we shifted to high tech instruction two years ago. In our judgement, the ability to easily obtain the lecture notes via the web provides a rationalization for students who are predisposed to skip class frequently. At the same time, we are inclined to think that the ready availability of these materials is rarely the decisive factor in a student's decision making process. For their part, the students claim that the prior availability of lecture slides does not cause them to skip class (To obtain information about students' attitudes about the use of I-T in economics and statistics courses, we prepared and administered a 5 question survey at the conclusion of the Fall 1999 semester. The total number of students surveyed was 117. The results of the survey are displayed in Figures A1-A3 (available from authors) and A4-A5 (shown).
The creation and maintenance of web sites for instructional purposes offers professors a potentially attractive ratio of benefits to costs. A major benefit of web sites is that it gives rise to economies in the distribution of course information and materials. If a student has lost her course syllabus, she can download a replacement at the web site. If a student had a doctor’s appointment and consequently failed to get information about when the next quiz is scheduled (or what chapter of the text it will cover), the information is a mouse click away. Similarly, if a student was absent on a day when an exercise was distributed, then the student could retrieve it at the course download area. By clicking on hyperlinks at the course download area, students could download data needed to complete take home assignments in statistics and forecasting courses.
Another advantage of course web sites is that it enables the professor to link students to valuable learning resources. For example, students were assigned a term paper on the Microsoft antitrust prosecution in a course in antitrust and regulatory economics. To help the students along, a special section was created on the course home page. This section contained links to the Department of Justice (DOJ) web site (wherein the DOJ complaint against Microsoft and all exhibits used during the trial are archived) and links to articles about the case published by The Economist and TheNation. We noted above that a basic feature of our course web sites (www.clt.astate.edu/crbrown) are hyperlinks to sites such as Dismal Scientist. (http://www.dismal.com/). This site has short articles about Federal Reserve policy, international financial instability, conditions in markets for high skilled labor, the stock market and consumer spending, and other current economic topics. It also provides students with the latest statistics about unemployment, inflation, the balance of trade, interest rates, housing starts, and many other key variables that are routinely discussed in principles courses. Finally, we think that creating and maintaining a course web site reinforces the impression (at least in the minds of some students) that the professor is "up to date."
Improvements in computer hardware and software have rendered web site development activity much simpler and quicker than in years past. However, making and publishing web pages can be a nightmare if you are working with outdated equipment (say, something less than a Pentium 200 MHz processor with 64 MB of RAM--FrontPage is also very helpful). Our experience indicates that most professors pick up the basic skills very rapidly.
Course web sites, and the use of e-mail, has an effect on student expectations. If a professor publishes slides prior to one lecture, students will expect the professor to do the same for all subsequent lectures. There have been occasions where we failed for one reason or another to publish slides before a lecture only to enter a classroom filled with truculent students.
For the most part, our experience with E-mail communication with students has been positive. E-mail messages have a one-on-one characteristic that is valued by students. If a student is confused about a particular concept, it is great advantage to be able to send off a question to the instructor with the knowledge that a response will be forthcoming soon (more about the issue of e-mail response in a moment). Moreover, e-mail forces the student to think more carefully about a problem since the question must be submitted in written form. A problem with our course web sites (such as missing pages or presentations) has been brought to our attention by a student e-mail message on more than one occasion.
On the downside, responding to e-mail takes time. It can also be mentally grueling. We discovered that some students are impatient and expect an immediate response to their e-mail queries. E-mail traffic can peak on evenings and weekends near exam time. It therefore helps to have access to e-mail at home. But some instructors will not be enthusiastic about responding to student e-mail during these hours. Finally, some students find e-mail as the best medium to make complaints. We have noted a tendency for students to be a little more brazen than they would be if the professor were standing in the same room.
Summary
The purpose of this article has been to critically assess the advantages and disadvantages of high tech instruction. We have attempted to give the reader the benefit of our two-plus years of experience in using these tools to teach economics. With respect to the question "do the benefits outweigh the costs," we argued that this issue must be resolved based on the circumstances of each individual case. We have identified some of the specific factors that instructors should weigh in making the decision to move to nouveau teaching.
There is little doubt that the professoriate will be under increasing pressure to make computers, presentation software, LCD projectors, and other high tech apparatuses standard components of their instructional program. Skepticism about the value of instructional technology will not be received favorably by many deans and administrators, who are likely to classify such opinions as "resistance to positive change." Having made a substantial personal commitment of time and effort to explore the possibilities of these innovations, we feel qualified to say that skepticism about the educational value of what we have termed I-T has a legitimate basis and should be taken seriously. This is not to deny that some instructors will resist the use of I-T due to pure force of habit, a lack of confidence in their ability to acquire the necessary skills, or other less than praiseworthy reasons. Certainly professors with superior oratorical skills should be cautious about the use of presentation software. Most everyone who uses presentation software will be have to struggle with the problem of making it a complementary aspect of their teaching, as opposed to a competitor for a scarce supply of student attention.
References
Harrison, A. (1998-99). Power up! Stimulating your students with PowerPoint. Learning and Leading with Technology, 7-9.
Katz, A. & Becker, W. (1999). Technology and the teaching of economics to undergraduates. Journal of Economic Education 30(3), 194-199.
Nunberg, G. (1999, December 20). The trouble with PowerPoint. Fortune 139(12), 330-334.
Oppenheimer, T.(1997, July). The computer delusion. The Atlantic Monthly 38(5), 45-56.
Parks, R.(1999). Macro principles, PowerPoint, and the internet: four years of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Journal of Economic Education 30(3), 200-209.