TEACHING LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES WITH BLACKBOARD COURSEINFO WEB SOFTWARE
Jack Child and Sarah Luckam[1]
American University
I. Introduction
This article describes how a Web-based course authoring software package (Blackboard CourseInfo) was used in the teaching of a survey course in Latin American studies.
The changing nature of the educational technology environment is first described in general terms, along with an assessment of whether this current “revolution” in educational technology is real, or simply the latest in a long line of highly-touted fundamental changes which turned out to have far less long-lasting impact than originally claimed.
The software and how it was used is then explained. The paper also describes an experiment in which a group of students was offered the option of taking the course entirely on-line. The surprising student reactions to the offer are described, as well as a research project (conducted by a School of Education MA candidate) to determine why the students reacted as they did.
Finally, some student reactions to the use of this Web-based teaching software are summarized, along with some reflections on how this trend toward greater use of computer technology in Latin American studies might play out.
II. The changing educational technology environment
There is little doubt that the computer has profoundly influenced our personal and professional lives over the past decade. Even at the minimal level of using e-mail and word processing our ability to communicate more effectively and prepare administrative and scholarly documents more efficiently has been deeply and irreversibly affected by the personal computer and the Internet.
As one indicator of the pervasive nature of these changes, we offer the results of a survey of 30 students in the Spring 2001 course considered in this paper
(American University’s course LFS-210, section 01, “Latin America: History, Art, Literature”): When asked how often they use email, 77% of the students responded “daily”, and 17% “frequently”. None indicated that they never use email. The same question regarding use of the Internet yielded these results: “daily”, 67%; “frequently”, 20%, and “never” 0%. A total of 93% said they had access to a computer outside of the University’s laboratories (some of which are open 24 hours a day). As we will describe below, Blackboard CourseInfo was used in this class, and 69% of the students said they had taken a previous course using this software. Power Point presentation software (described below) was used by both students and faculty in this course, and 55% of the students said they had personally prepared a Power Point presentation; all had seen one previously.
The author of this paper, in addition to a permanent position teaching Spanish and Latin American studies, has a temporary faculty administrative assignment as director of American University’s Teaching Center, one of whose primary missions is to help more faculty make greater and more effective use of computer-based educational technologies. Here are some of the general observations he shares with colleagues in this process:
1. It (using new educational technologies in your classes) is not hard if you have basic computer literacy.
Course authoring software such as Blackboard is very user-friendly, and does not require any programming or sophisticated computer skills beyond simple word-processing and email. In particular, the rather intimidating process of writing HTML (hyper text markup language) is obviated by simple cut-and-paste procedures known to anyone who has worked with a basic word-processing program.
2. Done right, it can make a difference as a supplement to your course.
The research literature is beginning to document a persuasive case that effective use of these technologies can improve teaching. Measures of “improved teaching” are always disputed, but numerical student evaluations of teaching are showing increases in courses which use these technologies in an effective manner.[2] Educational technologies cannot readily convert a poor teacher into a good one, but they can improve teaching (as measured by student evaluations) at all levels of competence. It is also, of course, possible to use the new technologies in ways that do not enhance teaching, and may in fact diminish its effectiveness. Students are especially alert to teachers who appear to use computer based technologies simply because they are available, without thinking through their pedagogical impact.
3. Students are ahead of most faculty.
We are now seeing the first generation of college freshmen who grew up with computers as games as well as communication devices and as portals to the world of the Internet. As higher education faculty we have been observing that each year the freshmen are more computer-competent and less impressed by faculty efforts to bring educational technology into their courses. This is understandable given that most of them have encountered this technology in primary and high school; many have prepared their own web sites and Power Point presentations. There are good reasons why the term “C-generation” has been applied to this cohort (the “C” standing for computer).
4. Increasingly, students and parents expect it; some administrators are pushing it.
The increasing student familiarity with computer-based approaches translates into their taking it for granted that higher education would also use these approaches. Our Admissions office reports that more and more students “visit” the campus virtually using the University’s Web page, and that a frequently asked question is what Internet connections are available, and how technology is used in class. Many administrators and boards of trustees (or state legislators in the case of public institutions) have inquired about the use of computers. At times these inquiries are driven by a sincere desire to be involved with the latest technological developments. But there is also the perception that somehow educational technology will save time and lower costs, a perception that is not supported by the evidence.
5. There is some understandable faculty resistance and concern regarding distance learning, as well as issues of compensation, rewards, and copyright.
The combination of increasingly computer-literate students and administrators/students/parents who are calling for more use of educational technology has made some faculty members, especially older ones and ones with limited computer literacy, rather leery of these new technologies. There is suspicion that the administrators are out to further undermine tenure, or to marginalize traditional faculty through downsizing based on the economies of scale promised by some of the promoters and sales personnel working for software firms. It is not uncommon to hear faculty express thoughts along the lines of “I don’t believe in this fad”; or “computers will never replace human contact in education”, or (less commonly), “I have been teaching my classes without computers for XX years, and I don’t intend to change now”. The term “distance” (or sometimes “distributed”) learning is especially unsettling, since to some it suggests a regression back to a correspondence course approach to education, with the computer replacing the mails as the vehicle for communication. Other faculty concerns have to do with the time involved in preparing and administering computer-based instruction; the compensation for this additional demand on time; the rewards in terms of promotion, merit pay and tenure; and the copyright question: if I prepare an on-line course, do I as faculty retain the copyright (and financial rewards), or does the institution?
6. Three types of universities: “brick”, “click”, “brick and click”[3].
One could now classify institutions of higher education in terms of three colloquial terms: “brick”, “click”, and “brick and click”. A “brick” college or university is the traditional one with a physical plant consisting of substantial buildings for classrooms, faculty offices, administration, and student residences and activities. A “click” institution would primarily offer its courses on the Internet, and in its extreme form would consist of a small number of administrators, technicians and course designers, who could work out of conventional office space. Faculty would be contracted to teach specific courses on demand, with no provisions for tenure or long-term relationships. There would be no need for a physical library since students would be geographically distant, and all the resources normally provided by a library would be made available on the Internet. Despite the existence, and indeed financial success, of “click” universities such as the University of Phoenix and the Open University, we can be reasonably confident that most institutions of higher learning in the near and mid-term will be a combination of “brick” and “click”, using traditional physical plant facilities as they supplement individual courses with computer-based course software and even place a limited number of courses, certificates, and even degrees, on the web for students who are unable or unwilling to physically come to the home campus.
7. The search for new niches.
The new educational technologies suggest the real possibility of making a university’s courses (and even certificates and degrees) available to niches of special students who might not otherwise be able to attend a traditional college or university. A few examples: physically disabled students, or those whose family obligations make it difficult if not impossible to attend. Government and corporate education is another field where certain specialized courses and training could be made available via the Web to potential students who could not take the time away from their regular jobs to attend. The military has another large group of potential distance students, and many educators are following with interest the U.S. Army’s $600,000,000 initiative to provide every interested soldier with a free laptop, Internet access, and free tuition in participating institutions willing to put their courses and degrees on the Web. And finally, there is the ultimate captive audience which can benefit from distance learning: those serving jail or prison time.
III. Is the “computer revolution in education” real?
Those who take a negative view of computer and web-based educational technology point to a number of so-called “revolutions” in educational technology which turned out to have had a limited impact. There is a tendency for advocates and zealots of new educational technologies to make overly optimistic claims of the impact of their favorite new development. To cite a few examples: radio, television, and the filmstrip. Thomas Edison, for example, argued that with radio it would be possible for a small group of experts and geniuses to present their lectures and other teaching materials on the air, thus obviating the need for students to attend a traditional campus. Similar claims were later made for television. This, of course, has not happened, for a number of reasons ranging from technological limitations to the need that students (and teachers) feel for a more intimate and two-way human contact than that achievable with radio or television.
It is important to note that teachers have probably always used some form of technology in their efforts to transmit knowledge, challenge their students to interact with it, and develop their critical thinking. Scratching a diagram or summarizing key points in the dirt using a stick was a primitive but effective precursor to the blackboard (and now the white-board). Drawings on paper, and later photography and slide projection technology (35mm and overhead transparencies) would carry this basic step further.
Faculty who fear that the latest developments in educational technology will render them obsolete might take comfort in the following scenario. Let us go back 500 years and assume we are a group of faculty at The Sorbonne, or Oxford, or Cambridge, meeting to discuss the impact of the new technology of moveable type invented by Gutenberg. Up until now a book was an expensive rarity, and the most common form of transmitting knowledge was for us as teachers to stand before an audience of students and pass our knowledge on to them orally. But Gutenberg’s technology will now permit our knowledge to be captured in low-cost books which could be placed in circulating libraries or even (subversive thought) be cheap enough for students to purchase their own books. Once our knowledge was written down, there would be no further need for us as teachers.
This scenario, of course, never came to pass. Instead, there was an explosion of knowledge as libraries became depositories of existing ideas and the starting point for generating and disseminating new knowledge. A parallel can be made to today’s technological revolution: the computer and the Internet will not make faculty obsolete, but instead can be the launching platform for a much broader dissemination of knowledge and the empowerment of a much larger body of students.
The evidence suggests that this “revolution” in educational technology is indeed different from past “revolutions” in education such as radio and television. The opening sections of this paper cited the widespread use of computer technology by students in the course analyzed in this paper. Here is additional data from Campus Computing 2000, the 11th National Survey of computing and information technology in American higher education, which collects information from over 500 two and four year colleges and universities of various types.[4]
Three-fifths (59.3%) of all college courses now use e-mail:
2000: 59.3%
1999: 54.0%
1998: 44.0%
1995: 20.1%
Two-fifths (42.7%) of all college course syllabi now cite Web sources:
2000: 42.7%
1999: 38.9%
1998: 33.1%
1995: 10.9%
One-seventh (14.6%) of the institutions surveyed use some type of course management tool. At American University this is increasingly Blackboard CourseInfo. The Fall 2000 inventory of course sections at American University with a Blackboard site shows that 261 sections have such a site. This is about 20% of the total sections at the University in Fall 2000.
One explanation for the rapid and pervasive impact of this technological “revolution” in higher education is that we are really dealing with two revolutions: one stems from the personal computer, and the second from communications technology. The channels of communications provided by satellites, microwave links and high-speed wire lines, connected to increasingly powerful personal computers, permit a rapidly growing audience to have relatively easy access to the Internet and its educational components. Prices for the minimum configurations of computers and modems required for effective use of these communications channels have been dropping steadily, even as the machines themselves become more powerful and rapid.
The impact of educational technology also can be seen in the increasing use of Web sites as sources cited in student papers. The dark side of this process is the opening up of vastly greater opportunities for plagiarism via the Internet, to include the entrepreneurial selling of term papers and other resources. Students now claim that it was the virus, not the dog, which ate their homework. The standard rationale now for an extension of an assignment is not the sick grandmother, but the printer that ran out of ink at 2 AM, or the hard drive that crashed (with no backup, of course). When a course’s Web site is down for technical reasons, students sometimes claim they could not study in preparation for class.
The new technologies have opened up some unexpcted and interesting other possibilities. The machine does not get tired or bored, and thus can be used for teaching materials which traditionally have required repetitive and routine treatment. Elementary language teaching, for example, is made easier by computer based drills which allow the instructor to concentrate on more interesting materials, or pinpoint students who are having problems with specific portions of a lesson.
Computer-based instruction materials allow a student to go over the lesson as often as they like. This is especially helpful for the learning disabled student, or the student whose first language is not English. Courses which rely heavily on visuals now can make those visuals available on their course Web sites for repeated use by students. Traditionally, a course that made heavy use of 35mm slides, for example, allowed the student one, and only one, opportunity to see the visual. If s/he slept (either in class or back at the dorm), or had a temporary attention lapse, that class opportunity was lost. With presentation software these slides can now be made available to fill those lapses, as well as for exam reviews.
Critics of computer-based instruction maintain that this approach makes meaningful human interactivity impossible or much more difficult. This may be true if we are comparing a web-based course with a seminar or a small socratic discussion class. But in a large class, espcially in a lecture format, most students probably do not feel any particualrly closeness to the teacher, and the opportunities for meaningful interaction are few. In fact, there is evidence that some students who are shy about speaking out in class are more comfortable communicating with the faculty members, or the teaching assistant, via email or the various interactive channels provided by course software.
We turn now to a consideration of the course being analyzed and the software that was used to bring it to the Internet.
IV. The course, the software, and how it was used
The nature of the course (LFS-210, “Latin America: History, Art, Literature”) is suggested by the course statement contained in the syllabus:
This undergraduate General Education course explores the history of Latin America through the words of the writer, the brush of the painter, the pen of the cartoonist, and the lens of the photographer. It includes the Latin (Spanish/Portuguese +Islamic), the African, and the Indigenous cultural heritages in Latin American history, and it will seek to show how these strands have combined to produce a unique Latin American culture. The relationship to Anglo-America, and especially the United States, is explored on a cross-cultural basis. The major objective of this course is to study Latin America as a unique culture-area using an interdisciplinary approach (history, art, and literature). History is the basic discipline used to organize the course; art and literature are used to illustrate and provide windows of insight into that history with visual and written images. The course relies heavily on educational media (slides, videos, CD-ROMs) and new technologies (daily questions and reviews on the Web Site).
The course has been evolving continuously over the decade and a half it has been offered as part of the General Education Program’s Area 3 curriculum, which focuses on international and intercultural themes. From the beginning the course made heavy use of traditional audio-visual materials, especially 35mm slides. These slides were specifically linked to a text originally written in 1992 in which relevant slides were identified in the text to illustrate (in a literally visual way) the major points made in each paragraph of the text. Traditional lectures were replaced by slide presentations in class in which the instructor would project these slides as students followed in the text. Each of the 24 Chapters in the text was geared to a single class session, and each chapter included anywhere from 30 to 50 slides. Slides were also used to present “minilectures” of approximately 15-20 minutes each on selected Latin American painters and artisans.
The first use of computer based educational technology came in the form of review programs authored on Hypercard software. This is a Macintosh program similar to the PC/Windows Toolbox program, which permits the posing of questions and interactive responses by students. A correct answer receives positive reinforcement, while an incorrect one results in additional information which helps the student make a correct choice. The review programs were used for daily class preparation as well as for the midterm and final exam. Use of the program by students increased dramatically when the instructor informed them that should there be a surprise quiz on a given day, the questions would be remarkably similar to the ones on the review program. Thus, diligent students came to class knowing what questions might be asked, and were prepared to ask their own questions if any of the material was unclear.
The next major computer-based modification was to digitize the approximately 1400 slides and make them available to students on a CD-ROM. The technical process of preparing such CD-ROMs was surprisingly easy and not particularly expensive. Copyright issues were not so easily resolved, and indeed may be the major obstacle to widespread use of this approach. The software program initially used to create these CD-ROM based slide lectures was Macromedia Director, which later was replaced by Microsoft Power Point. Both of these programs are cross-platform, meaning that they could be created and used on both Macintosh and Windows machines. Power Point was selected because of its inherent simplicity, smoother cross-platforming, greater compatibility with Web-based authoring software, and also because students are increasingly making their own presentations using Power Point.
The latest computer-based modification involved putting a number of these elements on the Web. Three different approaches were tried. The first involved creating Web pages from scratch using Pagemill and Netscape Composer software. While allowing maximum creativity and flexibility, this approach was very time-consuming and was unlikely to serve as a model for other faculty colleagues. After several semesters the Web-based component was switched to Lotus Learning Space, which is “authoring” software with pre-made templates available for faculty to fill with their specific course components. Lotus Learning Space was found to be clumsy and not particularly user-friendly, and was replaced in the Fall 1999 semester by Blackboard CourseInfo (BBCI). Apart from cost advantages, BBCI is very simple to use, and indeed a faculty member can have “shells” of all the essential elements of his/her course on the Web in a matter of minutes.
A typical “Announcements” page for a Blackboard course is shown below. After logging on, this page is the first one the student sees. Thus, it is a logical place to put late breaking news items, such as a change of assignment or a reminder that a paper is due the next class. The Announcement page can be individualized by putting up a distinctive graphic, in this case a drawing inspired by a Fernando Botero painting, which is the logo for the course (it also appears on the cover of the text).
INSERT FIGURE 1: ANNOUNCEMENTS PAGE FOR CHILD’S LAHAL COURSE
The “buttons” on the left of the screen are the main components of Blackboard. Clicking on any one takes the student to:
“Course Information”: this typically is basic unchanging information on the course, such as the catalog description and the syllabus for the current semester.
“Staff Information”: a brief bio note on the instructor and teaching assistants. This would include an email address, phone, office hours, a photo, and perhaps a link to a more detailed biographical page.
“Course Documents”: copies of lecture handouts, Power Point summaries of the class lectures, copies of articles or supplementary reading materials.
“Assignments”: In this section the author placed a series of approximately 15 questions per class session (24 in all). The questions were based on the readings for the day, and served as a set of guideposts to the material the instructor felt was important. Not wishing to waste good questions, these tended to turn up as elements of any unannounced quizzes for the day (as well as the mid-term and final exam). A serendipitous effect resulted: conscientious students would check these questions before class and would be sure they could answer them. The pedagogical value of this approach soon became apparent, and the instructor encouraged discussion and clarification (early in each class session) of any questions which might be confusing or unclear. The instructor had hoped to keep the use of these questions in a paperless digital form, but quickly found that students would download the questions onto paper, and answer them either with penciled notes or with word processing software. Surrendering to realities of paper-plus-bytes, the instructor awarded extra credit for these answers on paper at mid-term and final exam time.
“Books”: a place for leads to supplemental readings.
“Communication”: the site from which students and faculty could quickly send email to the group as a whole, or to selected subgroups. The site includes individual pages for students to post their photographs and brief biographies.
“Discussion Board”: This was the most interactive and fruitful of all the elements of Blackboard. For each class session the instructor would post, 2-3 days before class, a single open-ended discussion question designed to encourage critical thinking and debate. An example: “compare the Argentine gaucho of the 19th Century with the North American cowboy.” This question was posted for the day we discussed Argentine gaucho literature, specifically José Hernández’ “Martín Fierro”. Students would post their answers to the question, and were encouraged to discuss their peers’ responses. Two hours before class the instructor would review (and grade) the responses and take note of the more interesting ones for discussion in class. The Teaching Assistant would then respond in detail to each student’s postings.
“Groups”: this aspect of Blackboard provides for breaking up the class into smaller discussion groups for exercises involving teams or subgroups. The instructor is able to visit and participate in any group’s discussions, but members of one group cannot enter another group’s site.
“External links”: electronic links (via Web URLs) to outside sources ranging from the University’s Library, to the Library of Congress, to the CIA Factbook, to the Frente Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.
“Student Tools”: a site where students can change their password, check their grades, create and modify their personal bio page, and get online documentation on Blackboard.
V. The “click only” experiment and its shift
This section describes a “click only” experiment involving this course and Blackboard Web-based software. What made this experiment possible was that as of the Fall 99 semester all the essential elements of a totally on-line course were in place: the basic text, the 1400 slides arranged in 24 lectures on a CD-RoM, the review exercises, and the Web site.
In brief, the concept was to take the existing survey course in Latin American history, art and literature, and offer it to students as a totally on-line course in which they would not have to come to class except for an orientation session and two exams. For comparison purposes, the hope was to have one group of students take the course on line and a second one do it by traditional classroom attendance. To the surprise of those involved in the experiment, exactly zero of 42 students opted for the on-line version. Faced with this reality, the experiment shifted its emphasis to using the on-line elements as a supplement to the traditional classroom components, and to trying to find out why the students did not want to take the course totally on-line.
The instructor explained the two options to the students taking the course before the first class session. He then asked students interested in the distance option to sign a contract in which the instructor would relieve them of the obligation to come to class in exchange for their commitment to do the readings, watch the slide lectures on the CD-ROMs, and come to three classes (the first, to explain the details and get an orientation on the software; the mid-term exam; and the final exam). They would also commit to participating in a web-based discussion of key topics geared to each class session. Their normal participation (15%) and quiz (10%) grade would be replaced by a web discussion grade. They would write the same term papers and take the same exams (mid and final) as the rest of the students.
When the class met for the first time in late August 1999 the distance option was explained again, and a session in a computer lab was held to demonstrate the CD-ROM (which was distributed to all, free of charge) and the Web site. The 42 students enrolled were then asked to decide if they wanted the distance or the conventional offering of the course. As noted above, not one of the 42 students opted for the distance offering. This somewhat disconcerting situation led to hurried meetings with the School of Education graduate student who was researching the experiment, with the teaching assistant who was going to comment on student Web responses, and with the administrators of the Experimental College, which was providing funding for the teaching assistant.
Ultimately, we decided that the course would use the on-line elements as a supplement to the traditional offering of the course. The CD-ROM with the slide lectures would be available for students who missed a class or wanted a review, and the Web site would be used for review purposes as well as for a daily chat session which would form part of the students’ course participation grade. Students were also encouraged to download and answer the detailed questions on each chapter as both a review and an extra credit project. The teaching assistant would be compensated for her comments on the daily discussion answers posted by students on the Web. The research project would change to focus on why students did not chose the distance option, and would also collect data on the value of the computer-based elements as a supplement to the regular course.
Even though none of the 42 students enrolled in the course chose the on-line option, during the course one student had to leave the University for an extended period of four weeks due to mononucleosis. During this period she stayed at home and was able to participate in the course using the on-line options described above. Without this option she probably would have fallen significantly behind and might have had to drop the course or take an “Incomplete” grade. As is turned out, she completed all her assignments and received an excellent grade in the course.
VI. Some student reactions
Student responses to the computer-based elements of the course were solicited at the midterm and end of the course. Although not required to do so, many instructors ask for informal course feedback from students as the course progresses, usually around the midterm point. The purpose of this feedback is to see what is working, what is not, and to have the opportunity to make changes as needed. Among other things, this process lets the students feel their opinions are valued, and that they have a chance to influence the remainder of the course. The nature of this midterm evaluation varies considerably from instructor to instructor, and in this particular course there was an emphasis on the value of the computer-based elements. The evaluations were anonymous and optional.
Students were asked to rate the various course activities on a 1-5 scale (with 5 being the highest). In the Fall 1999 offering the three highest rated activities were computer-based:
4.8 The Midterm exam review (on the Web site)
4.6 The Blackboard CourseInfo Web site
4.5 The CD-ROM with slides illustrating chapters and painters studied
Other ratings:
4.2 In-class lectures by the professor
3.6 Role-playing simulations
3.1 Museum reaction paper
For comparative purposes, students taking the course in Spring 2001 were asked the same questions, with the following results:
4.9 The Midterm exam review (on the Web site)
4.4 The questions and discussions in class (based on Web questions)
4.3 The CD-ROM with slides illustrating chapters and painters studied
4.2 In-class Power Point lectures by the instructor
4.1 The Blackboard CourseInfo Web site
Other ratings:
3.9 The Mid-term exam
3.5 Museum reaction paper
3.3 Role-playing simulations
They were also asked how often they used the Web site and the CD-ROM, with the following results, expressed as percentages of the total number of responding students:
The Web site The CD-ROM
Each class 92.9% 24.1%
Occasionally 3.6% 62.1%
Only for the Mid-term 3.6% 13.8%
Never 0% 0%
There was also an opportunity for narrative comment, which produced the following representative responses:
• Blackboard is ok, it’s cool that is contains so much info.
• It is very helpful in my understanding. I absorb it much faster because I do the readings then go over it by answering the 15 questions, then the CD is a visual review again. It is a repetition but it helps me absorb materials easier.
• The website is a very valuable study guide as well as a good alternative or enhancement to in-class participation. The CD-ROM makes it easier to listen to the lecture without having to worry about having missed a slide or an important fact.
• Very well done, I like having assignments to do, it makes me keep up with the class.
• I think it’s useful but I don’t like computers.
• It is another way to see things; it allows more visual interaction than just a text book.
In contrast to the informal and optional midterm evaluation, the University requires a formal end-of-course evaluation which is an important element in shaping the next offering of the course as well as administrative decisions on merit pay, promotion, tenure, and rehiring of adjunct instructors. The evaluation has two parts: one is numerical, with a series of standard questions as well as optional questions an instructor can add. The second part is narrative, which gives students the opportunity to comment on the strong and weak points of the course and the instructor, as well as to suggest changes.
The required numerical portion of the evaluation of the Fall 1999 course yielded the following results:
Data from numerical portion of Student Evaluation of Teaching
Question 14, “Overall, the course is …” Maximum: 6
Spring 1997 5.43
Fall 1997 5.74
Spring 1998 5.28
Fall 1998 5.58
Spring 1999 5.63
Fall 1999 5.68
Comparisons:
American University all courses 4.69
Language Department all courses 5.00
The instructor added the following questions specific to the computer-based elements of the course, with the following results:
Question 30. The website was a valuable part of the course (average: 3.86/5)
Strongly Agree: 27.0% Agree: 43.2% Neither: 13.5% Disagree: 13.5%
Question 31: The CD-ROM is a valuable part of the course (average 4.11/5)
Strongly Agree: 35.1% Agree: 45.9% Neither: 8.1% Disagree: 8.1%
The narrative sections yielded the following representative sample of comments relevant to the computer-based elements:
THE COURSE – STRONG POINTS
•The CD-ROM and Web site (were) very helpful. I used them a lot
• Allows technology to be an aid to learning, though it is not a teacher
• The CD-ROM provided a great way to review for exams
• The online component of the course provided for a consistent level of education throughout the week as opposed to the stop/start characteristics of other classes
THE COURSE – WEAK POINTS
• The amount of work on the Web is inconvenient for those with limited access to computers
• The Website: it is often hard for students to respond twice a week to questions. Once a week is more realistic
SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS
• Computer exercises (questions on Blackboard) sometimes got to be monotonous, even though I know they served a purpose
• Website questions could be more thought provoking. All student answers were usually fairly similar because the questions were pretty cut and dry.
The analysis of student opinion conducted by the School of Education MA candidate reveals several key findings that are important for understanding why they did not choose the distance course. The following percentages are based on the survey completed by 38 students in. the course:
66% state distance learning courses do not meet their needs
81% believe distance learning courses lack interaction
98% state face-to-face interaction with their professor leads to a successful learning experience
89% state face-to-face interaction with their classmates leads to a successful learning experience
68% assert traditional students do not have geographical barriers and family or work commitments
76% believe traditional classes can be enhanced by using online tools
79% say traditional students come to college for social interaction with peers and professors
78% assert the quality of a traditional course is higher than the quality of an online course
87% want to hear explanations in class
79% do not feel the teacher can get to know them online
86% feel distance learning courses are impersonal
71% think it is more difficult to discipline themselves to get work done online
79% state it is difficult to form relationships over the computer and 71% believe online courses do not foster long-term relationships
71% state online courses can draw out shy students
79% assert online courses provide flexibility
VII. Conclusions
On a traditional campus, students do not have a compelling reason to take a totally online course. Most came to a traditional campus to have face-to-face interaction with their professors and their peers, and for the socializing process of a residential undergraduate experience. Furthermore, traditional on-campus undergraduate students do not have geographical barriers or family, time or work commitments that keep them from being able to attend class. Traditional students often have heavy social lives and many live in dorms and are surrounded by distractions. Taking an online course requires a highly motivated student, and with so many distractions, it may be difficult to discipline oneself to get the work done online.
Nevertheless, the addition of Web-based components to traditional, residential courses such as the one described here, has the potential of enriching the instructional materials and providing an important new dimension to higher education. The enhanced use of visuals, the greater ease of communications, and the opportunity for all to participate in discussion groups, are all changing the way many of us teach.
Notes
[1] This is a co-authored paper. Jack Child, the instructor for the courses described here, wrote the bulk of the article. Sarah Luckam did the research focusing on student opinions in distance learning as part of her MA degree in education at American University. The paper was delivered by Jack Child at the MACLAS XXII Washington meeting in March 2001.
[2] Jack Child, “Assessing the Impact of Computer-Assisted Instruction in Undergraduate Latin American Studies Courses”. Computers and the Humanities, v. 31, no. 5, 1998, pp. 389-407.
[3] “UMBC Plans Online Master’s Degree Program”, The Washington Post, 13 December 2000, p. B-4.
[4] The Campus Computing Project, Campus Computing 2000, Encino, California, March 2001. Available also on the Web: www.campuscomputing.net