Design and Delivery of Tele-educational Courses |
Vincent P. Wade, Mark Riordan, Conor Power
VOl. 12, No. 1/2, 221-242
At a time when governments are eager to increase the numbers of well-qualified graduates, educational organizations are under increasing financial pressure and are experiencing a shortage of facilities to locate these increasing student numbers. Significant advancements in the capability and accessibility of computer technology have been heralded as a means of alleviating some of these pressures. Consequently, there is a movement to apply advanced information and communication technology innovatively to enhance the pedagogical aspects of teaching and relieve administration and management resources. One of the crucial determinants of whether this approach can deliver on the promises offered lies in the design of complex software systems in which many technical, cultural, pedagogical, and social factors have to be considered. This paper examines student and user requirements for the design of tele-educational course delivery and describes the experiences of applying appropriate multimedia information and groupware communication technologies to support educational services.
The outcome of our initial studies based on the execution of two trials involving over 200 university students is presented, and the implications these have for the design of future systems is discussed. The paper also examines and presents trial experience on how educational services could be expanded beyond the university setting so that small independent educational companies could service niche markets for specialized short-duration tele-educational services using similar technologies.
A un moment où les gouvernements sont soucieux d'augmenter le nombre de diplômés qualifiés, les organismes d'éducation subissent une pression financière accrue ainsi qu'une carence en locaux d'accueil pour le nombre croissant d'étudiants. Les progrès significatifs dans les capacités et l'accessibilité des technologies de l'informatique ont étant soulignés comme autant de moyens de se détacher de ces pressions. Il en résulte une tendance au développement et à l'application des techniques d'information et de communication pour améliorer les aspects pédagogiques de l'enseignement et soulager l'administration et la gestion des ressources. Une des conditions déterminantes dans le succès d'une telle approche dépend de la conception de logiciels complexes tenant compte de nombreux facteurs techniques, pédagogiques et sociaux.
Ce document examine les besoins des utilisateurs et des étudiants dans le but de concevoir des cours à distance et décrit l'utilisation de supports multimédias appropriés et de technologies de communication pour des services d'éducation.
Les résultats de notre étude basée sur deux périodes de test impliquant plus de 200 étudiants de premier cycle universitaire, sont présentés et les implications de ceux-ci sur le développement de systèmes à venir sont discutées. Cet article rend compte également des résultats obtenus par la mise à l'essai et examine la question de l'expansion « extra muros » de services éducatifs universitaires de sorte que de petites entreprises d'éducation indépendantes puissent offrir des services spécialisés de courte durée en télé-éducation à des marchés pointus en faisant usage de technologies similaires.
The provision of education via emerging telecommunication technologies is generating widespread interest and has significant momentum at this time. Research shows that such approaches can have many advantages, but significantly it also indicates that proper planning and design are crucial in order to achieve these effects. This paper looks at some of this research before discussing two main categories of design. The first is the choice of the appropriate technology to support a desired set of educational modes. The second is the design of the actual course material and the environment from which it is accessed. This paper puts forward the results that have been achieved during the design and two trials of a tele-education course at Trinity College, Dublin. These trials provide some encouragement for our work but also point out areas where further improvements can be made. Finally, we look at the broader area of education in the commercial world. Our work has included adapting the tele-education course for use in a commercial (corporate) environment, where the demands are significantly different than in the university. In particular, it is necessary to reduce the complexity involved in commissioning and delivering such courses. A business model based on an Open Market for Telecommunications services could provide significant benefits. The paper outlines the various players who may co-operate to realize such a model and describes experiences in trialling several corporate educational services. The paper ends by drawing conclusions from our work and describing the direction it will take in the future.
At the end of the 1980s, the vast majority of distance education throughout the world was still primarily print-based. By the year 2010, some predict that telecommunications-based technologies will have become the primary means of delivery in most developed economies (Bates, 1993). In 1983 the American Open University was among the first to use computer conferencing to augment its courses. The British Open University soon followed suit, using computer conferencing as part of a mass based distance education course. As reported by Harasim, Hiltz, Teles, and Turoff (1995), it gave computer accounts to 1,300 students. These students could now experience a virtual campus environment where they formed peer and collaborative groups. Many distance education and open learning programs have now adopted computer-mediated communication technologies to enhance interaction between tutors and students and open up a new era for collaborative learning projects.
Distance education has experienced significant changes as a result of the new technological era. Garrison (1989) identifies three generations of distance education practices involving technology. He points out that the generations are not mutually exclusive and that each successive generation should be regarded as having built upon the previous one. Correspondence was the first of these generations; in it, student contact was solely via asynchronous activities, such as e-mail, Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), TV, and broadcast radio. Tele-conferencing built on the first generation by incorporating synchronous mechanisms for communication using facilities such as Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and real-time audio and video conferencing. This generation required students to give up control by determining when and where they should study. The advent of the computer-based learning generation provided the student with an enclosed environment in which to study, sometimes termed a virtual classroom TM . What students lost in accessibility was gained in interactivity. Today, a complex mix of the three generations is in operation.
From the mid 1970s onwards e-mail was primarily used for information exchange, but it was soon adopted by educational institutions to supplement university courses, primarily using three approaches. The first approach was to use it as an enhancement to traditional courses: supplemental information would be exchanged via e-mail or BBS or be located on the Internet/WWW for students to access independently. From this stage, a second approach was developed where a portion of a course or an entire course was replaced with computer-based instruction, which supported student monitoring, registration, and basic administration. A third approach was to use computer-based education technologies to support extracurricular activities with forums for knowledge networking, discussion groups, or information exchange (Harasim et al., 1995). Successful attempts have facilitated student-centred learning that supports flexibility in the timing of when students take a course. In such an environment the tutor must take on new roles as a facilitator in student learning and as a mediator in student collaborative work.
Many traditionalists will argue that computers can never replace the face-to-face lecture, but as Sparkes (1993) points out:
It is never expected that students will leave a lecture with any significant internalization of the concepts described and used by the lecturer. Most of the conceptual development has to take place in the other learning activities.
These “other learning activities” may be intentional or unintentional and could be self-study or collaboration and interaction between students themselves or between students and the tutor. Properly used, computer technology can fully support these activities. Whereas the student was previously expected to develop this information into knowledge independently, the computer can now help develop the students’ cognitive models. Computer technology can now also be used to form communities of learners (Quarterman, 1993) as lectures do, by motivating and entertaining the students, providing them with a sense of belonging, and opening doors of communication between them (Sparkes, 1993).
Bates (1993) explores four hypotheses about the special roles that different media can play in learning. From them, it is possible to extract the necessary ingredients for a sound pedagogical computer learning environment. The first hypothesis identifies the need to integrate multiple media to present the same concept in a variety of ways. Only then, he claims, can full understanding occur. The second hypothesis again requires an integration of multiple media that will aid learners in developing skills to use or to work on concepts to achieve full understanding. The third hypothesis explores the availability of a wide range of media. In such an environment, the presentation can be tailored to the type of learner, for example, serialistic or holistic, and it can match the way learners need to think about subject matter. The last hypothesis illustrates the benefits of incorporating collaborative work and conferencing facilities so learners can interact with learning material, tutors, instructors, and other students.
When developing tele-educational university courses, it is necessary to support the students’ learning process by developing a sound pedagogical model. Six processes of learning have been identified (Moore, 1993) and should be integrated into the pedagogical environment. Presentation is a basic prerequisite of any learning model. The environment should be designed and concepts and principles should be presented so that they support student motivation, maintain their interest, and engage them. Methods used to present material should stimulate student analysis and criticism. The tutor should be available to advise the student either asynchronously or synchronously at prearranged times. To achieve a deeper understanding of a topic, students must be given the opportunity to create their own knowledge and understanding. They then need opportunities to practise, apply, test, and evaluate that knowledge and receive appropriate feedback.
The motivating factors for further enhancing distance education by using advanced computer and network technology can be summarized as follows:
Hiltz (1995) identifies four symptomatic weaknesses in the delivery of existing distance education courses:
There have been many examples of tele-educational course delivery in the U.S. and Europe (e.g., Paulsen & Rekkedal, 1990; Schank, 1993; Soloway, 1993). A successful attempt at providing educational courses has been initiated at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) where students are provided with multimedia course material and conferencing facilities to encourage participant discourse and interaction. The results have shown that such computer mediated communication for education can be as effective as traditional teaching practices and in some areas represent an improvement. NJIT offer an entire degree programme in Information Systems via a combination of video and a virtual classroom. The systems employed by NJIT support classroom discussions, exam activities, and other group learning tools.
A second example of delivering tele-educational courses in a university degree programme has been conducted in Queen’s University, Canada, where distributed hypermedia resources were used for collaborative learning (Skillicorn, 1996). This course involved replacing lecturers with online courseware in teaching computer architecture.
A third example is the one we have been working on, a final year Computer Science Database technology course in Trinity College, Dublin (Wade, Power & Riordan, 1997). The course was designed to be delivered using WWW technology with a mixture of animation, graphics, text, hyper-linked modules, online submission of tutorials, and feedback from tutors. An important feature of the course was the built-in access to a commercial relational database with case study material. This feature allowed students to gain “hands on” experience of the technology being presented and to develop and execute project work from within the educational environment.
This section examines “Introduction to Relational Databases,” which was developed and delivered by the Department of Computer Science, Trinity College, Dublin. First, it looks at the technological infrastructure chosen for course delivery, and then it provides some analysis of the design of the educational material and challenges built into the course.
In choosing technologies to support tele-education course delivery, many factors must be considered, for example, capability of technology to handle media-rich content; ubiquity of access to the technology; network capability and ease of integration of delivery technology and network technology; authoring tool support for tele-educational resource development; availability of existing educational resources for this technology; and ease of use by course developer, administrator, tutor, and student.
Several technologies could have been used, but the World Wide Web was chosen because it had crucial advantages. First, and most obviously, it allows access from almost anywhere in the world via the Internet so that students have a lot of flexibility. Second, the WWW is, to a large extent, platform independent, and therefore resources made available in this way will be widely accessible. Also, it provides a convenient “umbrella” under which a huge variety of Internet technologies are integrated, for example, resource discovery, video-conferencing, and so forth. Tool support for WWW development is improving greatly, and commonly used authoring tools, for example, MacroMedia Director, now provide easy integration with WWW technologies. On the negative side, it does have some disadvantages, such as management of out-of-date material, primitive search capabilities, and usability limitations. Nevertheless, it still has the best potential. In addition, Java and other Internet technologies that support executable content have enhanced its capabilities substantially, providing a far more sophisticated ability to support interactive content.
As part of our initial research work, we decided to support several modes of learning. These are listed below along with the technology used to support them:
Access to the diverse technologies must be integrated into a cohesive student environment. Initially, it was created using a WWW browser operating in kiosk mode (i.e., with all general purpose browsing buttons and menus hidden) and with a special purpose toolbar providing access to educational resources and communication services. A subsequent trial of this technology (with corporate students) used a tele-education environment developed by DELTA (Krebs, Boegh, & Wagner, 1997). This model used a spatial metaphor of a college floor-plan. By entering into various rooms, students launch appropriate applications to support the interaction required.
Having decided on the infrastructure technologies to be used, we then devised the design of the course content and educational resources. By proceeding through a series of student trials over two academic years and conducting student evaluation, the usability and pedagogical effectiveness of the course delivery were enhanced. The evaluation of the student trials was based on online form responses, face-to-face interviews with over 50% of the enrolled students, and competence testing of student ability after completing the course. The design issues involved in this course are discussed in the next section.
An important element in migrating a traditional lecture hall course to the asynchronous environment of the Internet is the organization and structure of the material. In a traditional lecture, the lecturer can guide and motivate the students where necessary. When using the WWW, however, it is important to develop a pedagogically sound organization of the course content that will give implicit guidance to the hypermedia freedom of navigation. The solution adopted was to separate the content into modules. Each module was “self-contained”; any information in the module was either explained in that module or else covered in a prerequisite module.
This organization led to an implicit ordering of some of the modules. Each module contained between three and six pages of content, each page being designed to fit on one computer screen. In practice, this design was difficult to achieve because of the different student computer screen resolutions available and the user preferences configured on those machines. Each module contained hyperlinks. However, all hyperlinks contained in a module were internal to that module, that is, direct inter-module hyperlinks were not allowed. Navigation between modules was achieved by returning to the master (or course) index and choosing the next module. This method prevented students from getting lost within the course content and also avoided the problem of information overload. Thus, the tutor controlled how much information the student would see at any one time. A dual effect was achieved: students were always aware of their progress through the course, and when they finished a module, they could always tell because they had to return to the index. Although it was not implemented for the course under discussion, students could be prevented from going on to the next module if they had not demonstrated adequate comprehension or control over the concepts of the one they had worked through.
As this course would be used by a number of students from different degree programs (business studies, mathematics, computer science), it was necessary to cater for their differing requirements. The separation of the content into modules made it possible to link the modules into different routes or roadmaps. Each roadmap corresponded to a different “focus” for the course. Thus, the roadmaps provide a means to reuse existing course content in numerous degree programs with as little redundancy as possible. Lecture notes and handbooks have always had to deal with the problem of the information they contain becoming outdated. CD-ROM or standalone applications in education have also suffered from this problem, making it necessary to spend money to upgrade the product. With the content centralized and separate from the mode of delivery, as on the WWW, it was easy to update the course content information or course indexes. Modules could be added and specific modules could be targeted for updating without any downtime for the rest of the course.
Since the content was to be delivered on top of the “client-server” architecture of the WWW, it was necessary to try to create an educational environment where the students would not feel as if they were just browsing the Web. From our experiences with other computer-based training methods, we decided that the environment should be clearly distinguishable from the usual WWW environment and should identify a clear step from the browsing mode to the educational mode. To this end, each student was assigned a separate login and password that was required at the start of each session. When the student was authenticated, the course started in kiosk mode where all general purpose browser features were removed. To end a session, students had to click on a “quit” button to return to the WWW environment.
To aid the learning process, it was necessary to remove any distractions from the content. Students require simple metaphors to navigate the course. They do not want to spend time remembering what options are available to them or how to get to a certain place. Content that is presented inconsistently or in conflicting or confusing ways distracts from the learning process. To alleviate this problem, a toolbar comprising buttons representing easy to remember metaphors is presented on screen at all times, as illustrated in Figure 1. To promote consistency in the presentation of content throughout the modules, WWW design guidelines and CBT principles were used to develop an aesthetically sound common look and feel. The modules used text, graphics, and animations in a uniform way.
Figure 1 presents a tutorial that consists of 3 tables and a question. The student types in an answer in the dialogue box immediately below the question and clicks the submit button to send it to a tutor. The margin on the left hand side of the screen is an index of the contents of this particular module. When a student clicks any of the topics in this margin, the relevant page is displayed. The toolbar at the bottom of the screen offers (from left to right) buttons for
To engage and motivate the students, tutorial questions (similar to that in Figure 1) were integrated into the modules where appropriate. Questions were to be completed and submitted online. A significant feature of the system was that it provided direct access to a real “commercial” database system. The toolbar offered an icon that allowed students to issue database queries. The idea was to deliberately blur the distinction between the educational environment and the “target” systems. This feature encouraged students to “try out” various parts of the course before attempting a larger project. The course provided several project specifications that had to be chosen and implemented by the students. Doing them via the educational interface provided better pedagogical support for the project implementation.
For analysis and evaluation of the success of the course, a number of methods were used. An evaluation form was available online for students to fill out and submit for later analysis. Students could contact the tutor with their comments and opinions, which was encouraged. It was seen as beneficial for the tutor to be able to monitor a student’s progress through he course. At any stage, the tutor could determine what point a student was at, how long they had spent on each module (online), and analyze their usage patterns. This knowledge gave the tutor (and course developer) information for evaluation and helped pinpoint specific problem areas in the content for individual students or the class as a whole. These methods, in conjunction with the interviews of students, project results, tutorial question results, and exam results, made it possible to implement specific improvements to the course and its delivery.
The result of this work has been the creation and evaluation of an integrated environment for education based on WWW technology. In addition, this work has led to the development of a methodology for efficiently adapting and migrating existing courses to the module templates and design guidelines described and thus broadening the applicability of the results.
The course has been trialled twice with a total of 200 university students. The first trial used a basic text/graphic WWW interface and was conducted in the academic year 1995/6. Having captured and evaluated feedback on the first trial, a second trial was performed in the academic year 1996/7 and employed the features described in this paper. This section provides a summary of the assessments of the students, based on the experience of having sat the course (harvested via evaluation forms and student interviews) and on their competencies as indicated via an oral exam and project submissions.
There are several different criteria under which the course design can be evaluated and discussed. Key attributes of a tele-educational course have already been identified:
Evaluation of learning experience and courseware typically is carried out for a number of reasons:
In Trinity College Dublin, the WWW courseware and virtual learning environment has been developed, executed, and evaluated over a period of three years. This course evaluation was performed based on the following:
The evaluation has focused on the improvement of teaching for subsequent years and to measure the effectiveness of the teaching. The evaluation has taken the form of student feedback, an oral exam, and an oral interview with each of the students. The interviews were held only with computer science students (total of 50 students). Interviews were held immediately prior to the Christmas holidays and were performed on the campus in the computer science building. These interviews were conducted by one staff member and lasted approximately 10 minutes. Students were asked several specific questions relating to equipment used in accessing the course (PC/UNIX/MAC environment), problems associated with taking the course, and course feature/property that they found most beneficial in the learning experience. Time was allotted for general comments and issues that students wished to raise concerning the course.
All students (100) were asked to complete a detailed questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed with 105 multiple choice questions. The response rate for the computer science students was 28 from a total of 50 students. The response rate from computer engineering students (who made up the rest of the student trial) was very poor at 8 responses. The questionnaire elicited information about student opinions concerning such issues as:
Averages and standard deviations of the responses of the computer science students were generated with a number of correlation coefficients being generated to determine relations in some variables.
Student responses indicated that the mixture of text, graphics, and animation was generally impressive. However, in the first trial, designers learned several lessons about using a uniform style throughout the course, the need to use an agreed small set of colours, and avoiding information overload within a single page or module. The use of hyperlinks between pages within a module and to the course index page allowed for non-linear traversal of the course. However, the deliberate avoidance of hyperlinks from one module to another was important. In the first trial, where such intermodule links were allowed, students complained frequently of being unsure if they had completely traversed the course or of feeling a general sense of disorientation. Also, such links tended to encourage students to “surf” the course without gaining any deep understanding of the content.
Students’ contentment with reading from computer screens were directly related to the quality of their computers. However, because the amount of text per page was substantially decreased in the second trial, the number of these complaints became far less significant. An interesting comment by over 60% of students was that even though they had read the course from their computers, they still wished to print out a hard copy of some modules.
The usage of a WWW browser to present the course was almost universally agreeable as a reasonably familiar technology. The tailoring of the environment, by specializing the features offered, was again well received and the ability to access external systems was also greatly used.
The toolbar allowed students to compose and dispatch queries and comments from within the educational environment. This feature was heavily used. Currently, replies from the tutor are directed to the students own e-mail account, and these are not currently visible from the educational environment. However, future enhancements of the course will address this issue.
An important feature of the course was the built-in tutorial and results feedback. The student responses to this feedback were quite positive. Suggestions for improvement included providing a broader range of tutorial types, for example, fill in the blanks, multiple choice, multiple response, numeric questions, selection questions, graphical based questions, and true/ false questions. However, most commented on the good speed of feedback relative to traditional tutorial submission. Also the ability to “try out” concepts presented in the course via the Relational Database Access button was considered very important because it allowed students to practise their skills and improved their confidence in tackling larger projects.
Currently e-mail and discussion groups are the only means of direct interaction between students, and these mechanisms were used quite extensively. However, the ability to share work or collaborate in the development of a joint application (via the shared database) was considered a very useful motivation for student interaction. A later section discusses how the addition of video and audio conferencing (for a corporate trial) improved collaboration and student interaction.
The educators were able to identify several objectives in trying to use information and communication technology to enhance the education process. These objectives and assessments are summarized in Table 1. The overall reaction by the students to the “Self Learning” mechanism employed by the course was very favourable. It succeeded in many of its objectives and provides a firm basis for future development.
Success in delivering tele-education to university students can lead designers to underestimate the difficulty involved in the whole process. Universities (particularly Computer Science departments) have access to expertise on the wide range of technologies. Significantly, the success of university-based projects depends on this expertise. If tele-education is to be accepted as a valid approach in the wider arena (including commercial education courses provided by small organizations), then these difficulties must be reduced. In addition, the requirements are likely to be even more acute in a commercial situation because people who pay large fees to “attend” such courses are likely to expect good quality video instead of a text-based conferencing service.
A further difference between tele-education as delivered within a university course and as delivered to the “corporate” world is that courses in the latter case tend to be shorter and more focused. In addition, corporate students wish to choose a course (based on an imminent, perceived need), subscribe to it, and take it within a short space of time. These requirements suggest that there should be a very flexible approach to course delivery where many modules are offered and can be combined as necessary and also that issues such as choosing an appropriate course, subscription, and billing should be handled online.
In order to expand our experience, the university-based educational service was extended to play a role in an European Commission funded project called Prospect (Riordan, Wade, & Krebs, 1997), which was concerned with commercial applications of tele-education in a pan-European context.
The trend in telecommunications service engineering is that rather than one organization being responsible for the delivery of a service in its entirety, a value-chain would exist where several service providers would add value to tele-services or the underlying basic network connectivity service. For instance, value could be added to a network connectivity service by providing fault management to create a more robust and easily managed service. It could then be used by a video-conferencing service provider to provide video conferencing between several sites at certain times. Additional services (e.g., hypermedia information service, information repository) could then be combined by a tele-education service provider to deliver an enhanced tele-education course. A major advantage of this approach is that a tele-educational service provider could reserve a video-conference between a set of participants and teachers for a particular time period in order to run a course. It would then be managed by the video conferencing service provider, and the tele-education service provider would not have to concern itself with the configuration and management of the underlying technologies. Once their course was finished, the tele-education service provider would be billed, for example, on the basis of usage. All services underlying the video-conferencing service would be hidden from the tele-education service provider. The corporate customer’s contract is with the tele-educational service provider, and, therefore, it is also insulated from the complexities of the underlying technologies.
The Prospect project is examining the issues involved in such an open market for telecommunications services and has trialled example educational services based on the business model depicted in Figure 2. However, the business model presented is quite sophisticated, with organizations playing the roles of corporate customer, tele-educational service provider, tele-service providers (there were four such tele-service providers in the trials), and network providers. It is reasonable to expect that some of the roles would be played by a single organization but that no one organization would offer all tele and network services.
Figure 2 identifies the various roles that are possible in a Open Market driven tele-education service. The Tele-education Service (TES) Customer represents the end-user organizations of the tele-education services. Tele-educational Service Provider is the organization that provides the tele-education services and combines various multimedia tele-services along with appropriate content to support participants on a course. The Tele-educational Content Provider is responsible for the development of the educational content. Development can be done by the TES provider or out-sourced. The business model in Figure 2 captures the requirements of both situations. The Multimedia tele-service (MMTS) Integrator/Manager is responsible for the integration and management of tele-services. Services can be offered by the TES provider or out-sourced. The Multimedia Tele-service (MMTS) Providers are the organizations that provide general purpose multimedia tele-services, such as hypermedia delivery and video conferencing. Their contractual relationship would be with the TES provider and not the end customer. The Virtual Private Network (VPN) Provider is responsible for the transparent integration of bearer (network) services. In this case, the educational service was trialled across four European countries, so the VPN provider was responsible for the seamless interconnectivity of the various national public network operators. The VPN also supports one-stop shopping and integrated billing for the network services.
Several tele-services were made available by organizations within the project consortium, including a Hypermedia Information Service, a Video-Conferencing Service, a Shared-Whiteboard Service, and an Information Retrieval repository. The educational service providers and course developers within the consortium then attempted to create courses using one or more of these underlying tele-services. Once these courses were created, they were offered to groups of students in a series of corporate student trials. The Relational Database course already described was modified for this new situation. In addition to this course, another tele-education course concerning advanced network technologies was developed (Riordan et al. 1997). The two courses were designed to illustrate the use of different modes of teaching. The Database course was primarily self-study with support for access to the tutor, teaching, and shared applications (i.e., the commercial database that was used for group projects and case studies). The network technologies course also incorporated synchronous group lectures using video, audio conferencing, a slide presentation mechanism, and group projects that additionally used a shared whiteboard.
Access to the two courses was provided from a tele-educational desktop environment. On entering the system, a student is presented with a floorplan that shows a lecture hall, a self-study room, a group exercise room, and a set of tutors’ offices. When a student enters a particular room, an appropriate set of support applications are launched to allow the desired interaction to take place. For example, entering a group exercise room starts an audio and video conference between the people in the room, and a shared whiteboard application showing the exercise to be completed is also launched. The students can then communicate in a whole set of modalities while attempting to solve the exercise. Figure 3 shows three students working together in such an environment.
The trials have been greeted very positively by both students and educators. In particular, the last trial was run using 0.5Mb network links connecting students and teachers in 4 European capitals, which enabled them to work collaboratively towards a specific learning outcome. Despite the technical complexity of such an environment, the educators were able to maximize their effort in producing course material. As a result of the trials, many requirements have been gathered to assist in supporting such a business model. These are being used to inform future trials of the technology. Overall, it is clear that there is a significant reduction in the effort required to realize a course involving access to complex technologies under a model that supports the “contracting-out” of the management of the technology and the underlying tele-services. This aspect of our work gives an important insight into future possibilities.
A major cost in the development of tele-educational courses is the effort expended in developing course content. Much of the work completed thus far has been performed with the aim of developing a methodology and structure that is easily reusable and extensible.
Structuring the course as a series of modules served two purposes: numerous paths can be made through the modules, catering for different students, and modules can be easily added or updated by using the consistent structure and guidelines without affecting the course. These strengths are especially relevant in the field of computer science in Trinity College, Dublin, because the course, “Introduction to Relational Databases,” is considered a “core” course and is taken by several different degree programs. Each of these degree programs has a different focus and depth, and the relevance would suffer if one “vanilla” style course was delivered. When developing content, it is essential to achieve cost efficiency by maximizing, where possible, the reuse of existing work. The development of the tele-educational course has led to a set of templates being developed for modules. These templates guide a course author in layout, design, and consistency between modules, and if they are followed, they are easily substituted into the educational environment.
To date, two main reasons for the under-utilization of tutoring systems have been that specialized software has been necessary to deliver the content in the majority of cases (Khuwaja, Desmarais, & Cheng, 1996) and that most attempts have been aimed at a specific domain and are not easily extensible (Srisethanil & Baker, 1996). Use of the WWW and the development of a generic environment and methodology for authoring courses reduces these problems. Other systems on the WWW (e.g., Elamart, 1997) have required specialized server modifications or enhancements. The system used in TCD minimized such modifications and instead used client side scripting as part of the module templates. In large applications, the use of client side scripting has shown significant reduction in network bandwidth use. Combined with its fast feedback rate, it is a very attractive solution for educational applications. Templates make the content extensible to any domain, and it may then be placed into the environment to form a new course.
The WWW provides an opportunity to integrate easily accessible and flexible course content with the benefits of using Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS). The majority of current educational use of the WWW is weak and restricted when compared to standalone CBT systems. Most WWW systems do not use ITS (Brusilovsky, Schwarz, & Weber, 1996). ITS aim to support the “intelligent” duties of the teacher that cannot be supported by traditional nonintelligent tutoring systems. Combining modules in a way that caters to students’ knowledge can be compared to a teacher guiding a student through a course. Weak students or students who need help can be identified by their results or the time they have spent on certain parts of the course. Intelligent techniques applied in ITS can be roughly classified as
The first two techniques have been applied in the tele-educational environment used in TCD. Work on interactive problem solving support is being actively pursued using client-side scripting and JAVA technology (i.e., executable programs downloaded at runtime and executed on the student machines rather than running on the server side of the network architecture). When these techniques are adopted in the educational environment, it will be beneficial to students seeking a replacement for the teacher in this technological era.
Our experience has shown significant benefits in using WWW technologies in a university environment. It has also demonstrated that an iterative approach to course design, feedback, and redesign/extension is very important. This approach involves significant work-hence the need for tools to support the process. Our future research will involve enhancing the existing course by including adaptivity features and developing appropriate tools. They would include tools for the automatic generation of tutorial questions and roadmaps for different applications of the material. The overall aim is to remove as much of the manual work from the educators and course developers as possible, thus freeing them to concentrate on the more important pedagogical aspects.
The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the European Commission for providing partial funding (under the ACTS research programme) for the research described in this paper. The authors would also like to thank Cliff Redmond for his work on the management system for the tele-educational service described in this paper and Alan Krebs and the researchers at Delta for their co-operation during the Prospect Project.
Vincent P. Wade
Department of Computer Science
Trinity College
Dublin 2
IRELAND
E-mail: Vincent.Wade@cs.tcd.ie
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