Volume 15 Summer 2004 Issue No. 4
Resource Guide: How to utilize Internet contacts to enliven online courses and STEM curricula
by Mark Trebian
This resource guide has two purposes: to showcase sources relevant to effective online content development and to provide links to potential partners who can help enhance STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) curricula.The amount of information available about online content development can be quite overwhelming. The space allowed for this guide requires focusing on resources that will hopefully serve the majority of the readers. Many readers have been, or will be, investigating online learning.
For the purposes of this guide, content development refers to resources and material to be used in an asynchronous/synchronous online learning environment. In an asynchronous online learning environment a student can start a course at any time and take as much time as necessary to complete the course. The student may or may not be required to communicate with other students and the instructor online.
In a synchronous online learning environment, more structure is involved. The student will often be required to start a course at a set time and have a set period of time to complete the course. The student can also be required to communicate regularly with other students and the instructor. In both cases, however, the student may never meet classmates or the instructor face-to-face. This resource guide can also be of use to instructors who teach traditional on-campus courses, who provide lecture notes and other supplemental materials online for their students.
Some instructors argue against developing online content by saying it lacks interactivity between students and their instructors. Interactivity is important. To have a truly effective course, students and instructors must be able to exchange ideas and work together in collaborative exercises and projects.
Good delivery should be the focus of any program's development, either in a physical classroom or online. A common problem in broadcast productions is the "talking head syndrome." The same problem can plague live lectures and online deliveries. Whether you have a talking head on the computer screen or one standing in front of a live audience, the effect is the same.
Bringing interactivity to online training is new and uncharted territory compared with techniques developed over many decades for the classroom. Merely placing reading assignments and exercise sets online does not constitute an effective web-based course.
So what can be done to infuse interactivity into an online course? There has to be an exchange between students and the instructor as well as amongst students.
Both the students' and the instructor's expectations have to change. Students have to shed the tendency to be passive receivers of information, and the instructor must look at his/her role. If that role has been simply to present knowledge, then it must change to facilitation of active learning. If the instructor already has a facilitation style, his/her techniques will have to be adapted so that online tools foster that style.
Developing Online Content
A common tendency for those new to online development is to simply place PowerPoint slides of lectures on the web. Even if a slide presentation effectively complemented a live talk, it often falls short of getting the main points of the speaker across when viewed online.Amy Gahran (amy@gahran.com) discusses this problem in an article found at http://www.marketingprofs.com/print.asp?source=%2F3%2Fgahran2%2Easp.
Putting up a presentation on the web that is "powerpointless" to begin with can compound this problem. A good discussion with examples on "powerpointlessness" can be found at www.geocities.com/couchmath/. For a good example of what NOT to post online, see the Gettysburg Address PowerPoint at this site.
One method to ensure success in an online course is to build an online community where the students in the course have a sense of ownership and engagement. In a paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association in Seattle, WA, in April 2001, researchers discussed the importance of addressing the organizational and social aspects of building an online learning environment (http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/jim-levin/LevinAERA.html).
Their paper is entitled "Social and Organizational Factors in Creating and Maintaining Effective Online Learning Environments." Sandra R. Levin (slevin@uiuc.edu), James A. Levin, and Merrill Chandler of the College of Education at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign included several themes necessary for success:
- Courses that are well organized, utilizing multiple technologies, multiple learning frameworks, and multiple instructional methods contribute to enhanced student learning.
- Successful students tend to be well organized individuals who set aside specific time for their coursework, prefer project-based group learning, and increase their knowledge through communities of learning.
- Formal and informal social activities and interactions help to build and maintain effective learning communities. Students formed informal support groups, so that they could work together on course work.
- The combination of these organizational and social factors is very important to online students and in some cases has been the deciding factor in staying in the program.
In the first article, "How to create interactivity in online training" (http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6317_11-5032032-1.html), Summers describes the role instructors must take as facilitator and how software must be chosen, or designed, to provide interactive feedback and customization to learner styles and competency levels.
In the second article, "Keep online students engaged with Web-based technology," (http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6317-5032033.html), Summers recommends using a product called Flash from Macromedia (www.macromedia.com) to build rich Internet applications and sites. Summers also recommends utilizing video and audio clips to show realistic scenes, attitudes, and behaviors as well as to reinforce the idea that there is a real person behind the online environment.
On a broader scale, there are other tools available to provide a rich interaction between online community members such as: e-mail, bulletin boards and listservs, chat rooms, and audio and video-conferencing.
However, simply using these tools does not ensure interactivity. How they are used and in what context is discussed in an "Interactivity Literature Review" (http://learn.gmcc.ab.ca/lol/staff/interactivity.cfm) presented by Dennie Hycha and Tricia Lirette (http://learn.gmcc.ab.ca/lol/staff/) at LearnOnline (http://learn.gmcc.ab.ca/lol/index.html) on the campus of Grant MacEwan College (www.gmcc.ab.ca/web/home/index.cfm). The bibliography to this article is also a rich resource.
The LearnOnline site also contains a faculty handbook on teaching online (http://learn.gmcc.ab.ca/lol/pdf/handbook.pdf). This handbook is well worth a look. The site also includes other resources that can be helpful in the quest for success online.
On a more sophisticated level, online testing and surveying tools can be used to achieve interactivity. Testing tools provide instant feedback to students. The test results can be tied to other paths of activities and assignments, where students can be sent, based on their performance.
Several are available free online or for a very nominal fee. The Hot Potatoes Home Page (http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked/) provides software for creating web-based quizzes and exercises. Contact sales@halfbakedsoftware.com, Martin Holmes, mholmes@halfbakedsoftware.com, or Stewart Arneil, sarneil@halfbakedsoftware.com.
The University of Hawaii QuizCenter (http://motted.hawaii.edu) provides quiz-making features, as well as lists and reviews of quiz software available elsewhere on the web. Contact information for this site is: Tom Wright, Maui Ed Tech R&D, wrightt@hawaii.edu.
Integrated software suites seek to bring all the aforementioned tools into one centrally controlled environment. They can be a boon to online developers who do not have the resources or time to put together a tool suite from scratch. Packages boast full integration of all the tools necessary to build an online environment. Some of the good packages are:
- WebCT (www.webct.com/),
- Blackboard (www.blackboard.com/),
- Educator (www.ucompass.com), and
- Desire2Learn (www.desire2learn.com/welcome.html).
Two projects being developed are the Sakai Project (www.sakaiproject.org/) and the Chandler Project (www.osafoundation.org/). Both projects should be available within the next year.
Partners for STEM and Online Content
Curriculum and program development is never an individual effort. The work of peers should be considered and incorporated as appropriate. Effective programs are also built around partnerships.The rest of this guide will focus on providing a few points of contact that should prove useful for faculty who are developing and enhancing STEM curricula, as well as those who are incorporating technology into effective online content development.
Roscoe Giles, http://roscoe.bu.edu/
Roscoe Giles is the team leader for the Education, Outreach, and Training Partnership for Advanced Computation Infrastructure (EOT-PACI) (www.eot.org). He is also the executive director of the Institute for African-American eCulture (www.iaaec.com). Giles is committed to demonstrating the use of National Science Foundation PACI technologies and resources among diverse audiences. He focuses on leveraging PACI thrust/team efforts; increasing the participation of underrepresented groups (including persons with disabilities) in computer science engineering and information technology; and enabling broad national impact in education, government, science, business, and society with systemic, sustainable, scalable programs.
Scott Lathrop, www.eot.org/people/scott.html
Scott Lathrop is the associate director for Education, Outreach, and Training (www.eot.org/) at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (www.ncsa.edu). Lathrop can help you connect with the right people to apply information technology or form partnerships with other educators, scientists, community leaders, and industry representatives. They can help to develop human resources to understand and solve problems through the innovative use of emerging technologies.
Bob Panoff, www.shodor.org/foundation/employees/panoff.html
Bob Panoff is the executive director of The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc. (www.shodor.org/). The Shodor Foundation is dedicated to the reform and improvement of mathematics and science education by the incorporation of appropriate computational and communication technologies. Panoff can help locate and utilize instructional resources and software ready to be used in the classroom that have been developed by the foundation and its partners.
Stephenie McLean, email: mclean@ncsa.uiuc.edu
McLean is the point of contact for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Access and Inclusion project as well as the Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) Consortium contained within the Education, Outreach and Training division of the NCSA (www.eot.org). NCSA Access and Inclusion works to promote awareness of opportunities to work with the National Computational Science Alliance (www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Projects/Alliance/) and assists in developing strategic relationships with members of the alliance. McLean's work with the MSI Consortium (www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Projects/AllProjects/Projects88.html/) provides avenues of contact with people at Hispanic-serving and historically black colleges who are also interested in pursuing the advancement and application of technology in program development. Her phone number in Arlington, VA, is (703) 248-0122.
Mary Fritsch, www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/~fritsch/
Mary Fritsch works for the Mathematics and Science Division at Argonne National Laboratories. She focuses on external collaboration activities for the Futures Laboratory (www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/fl/) and, in particular, the Access Grid Project (www.accessgrid.org). Fritsch serves as liaison for new Access Grid sites and trainer for Access Grid node operators coordinating virtual meetings.
Jennifer Teig von Hoffman, www.bu.edu/htbin/webph/query.pl
Jennifer Teig von Hoffman is the project manager for the Scientific Computing and Visualization group at Boston University. She has been involved with the Access Grid since its first few nodes were developed in 1999 and has played a leading role in AG documentation (www.accessgrid.org/agdp/), online training (http://webct.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8900/public/AGIB/), and events planning. She can help you to consider how your organization may benefit from using the Access Grid and to develop strategies for staffing, management, and organizational buy-in.
Charlene Douglas, email: dotedu@uwm.edu
Charlene Douglas is the director of dot.edu (www.uwm.edu/Dept/dotedu/), which is a unique extension of the Application Service Provider (ASP) concept into the education (E) sector. Her staff can help you with your online needs by providing experience-based expertise in eLearning infrastructure, consultation, and application services to any educational system, consortium, or organization, whether public or private, pre-kindergarten through lifelong learning.
Craig Campbell, email: ccampbell4@unl.edu
Craig Campbell is project coordinator for tribal colleges and Indian affairs at the American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC). He helps coordinate tribal college initiatives centered on distance education and the 1994 land grant institutions. Currently, ADEC's main project is the Advanced Internet Satellite Extension Project (AISEP) funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Under a portion of this grant, 15 tribal colleges and reservation-based education centers are utilizing satellite connectivity in a variety of unique ways in rural and remote areas. Located at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, his phone is (402) 472-0819.
Dana Gretz, email: dgretz@aihec.org, Phone: (715) 634-9979
Finally, who better to collaborate with than your own peers? Half the battle in forming effective partnerships is finding a way to efficiently connect with the right people. The member institutions of AIHEC (www.aihec.org) contain talent and expertise that should not be ignored. Getting in touch with the appropriate people would be a difficult task except for the presence of a particularly effect point person. Dana Gretz is an associate for AIHEC Technology Development & Operations who is in daily contact with technicians and STEM faculty at AIHEC institutions across the nation.
Mark Trebian (Tlingit) currently serves Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College as an Information Technology instructor and director of Online Information Services. He has also served as a program officer with the National Science Foundation for the Tribal Colleges and Universities Program. He has a Master of Science in Management Technology, a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics.