Improving the Effectiveness of Tools for Internet-based Education
Martin Dougiamas
(and Peter C. Taylor)
Curtin University of Technology
This report presents results of a study of a class of high-school teachers
learning about the Internet in an internet-based course called "Internet
Overview".
The course was implemented using a prototype of a new web course development
tool called Moodle that uses constructionist referents to model engagement
of the participants with course content and each other. The intention of the
research was to identify areas to improve Moodle as a tool to build and run
effective internet-based courses.
The action research focused on the factors affecting the level and quality
of participation in the course, as well as the quality of reflective thinking,
interactivity and cognitive support. An online survey of the students, combined
with voluminous texts and records created by all participants of the course,
led to interviews with students selected for their interesting responses.
These texts provided the data with which I attempted to understand how various
factors affected the experiences of learning and teaching in this internet-based
course.
The results suggest that Moodle as it stands is relatively successful as
a tool to produce structured content with workbook-like responses. Two areas
needing the most improvement are internet knowledge and student interaction.
This encourages me to continue development on two fronts: firstly the Internet
Overview course as a tool for students to learn about the Internet; and secondly,
functions within Moodle to encourage and manage educational discourse among
a class of students within its content-based framework.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 Background
1.2 Objectives
1.3 Overview
of this report
2. Teaching before the course started
2.1 Developing
the course
2.2 Moodle
2.2.1
Student Perspective
2.2.1.1
Navigation
2.2.1.2
Page design
2.2.1.3
Interactivity
2.2.2
Teachers Role
2.2.2.1
Teacher learns more about the content and can modify it
2.2.2.2
Teacher learns more about each student
2.2.2.3
Teacher learns more about the class
2.2.3
Construction of Moodle
2.3 Internet
Overview
3. Methodology
3.1 The
Teacher-Researcher
3.2 Ethical
Issues
3.3 An
Account of Events
4. Summative Analysis
4.1 Case
Studies
4.2 Factors
of the learning environment
4.2.1
Factors that participants like
4.2.2
Factors needing most improvement
4.2.3
Factors that may have hindered the research
4.2.4
Factors that may have helped the research
4.3 Summary
of results
5. Conclusions
References
Appendix A - Sample screens from the course
Appendix B - The end-of-course survey
In my work as an Internet Consultant at Curtin
University of Technology, I have spent five years developing courses and
helping academics develop their own online courses. As a student I've also
participated in some. I've noticed a tendency for newcomers to teaching online
to use frameworks limited by metaphors such as textbooks or lectures. As a
result the full potential of using the Internet to cross-communicate and develop
knowledge does not seem to be reached, and general satisfaction with the results
appears anecdotally low. This is problematic to me, as the oft-cited advantages
of the Internet (decreased dependence on time and space, and cost-effectiveness)
should help make education available to more people than it is today. This
has encouraged me to look for ways to improve online courses in terms of the
satisfaction of both teachers and students, by improving the interaction between
technology and people. There are two main approaches to this: helping people
learn how to use the technology; and improving the technology to make it more
effective as a tool. Naturally these depend on each other and need to be developed
in tandem.
For many teachers, creating an effective online course site using general-purpose
tools such as web page editors, discussion groups, mailing lists and commercial
office software can be a complex and expensive task. Becoming proficient in
the use of these tools is beyond most teachers, who have limited time and
resources. As a result, most online courses are very simple, consisting basically
of static 'lecture notes' (text and graphics) and, less often, a generic 'threaded
discussion area'. Even when funding is obtained to create a more ambitious
site using hired labour, the cost of maintenance may still be too high for
the teacher to support, and these web sites easily stagnate as the course,
and the teacher, changes from year to year. This situation has occurred at
my university even when using commercially-supported online course-building
environments such as WebCT (www.webct.com).
The difficulty of creating and maintaining web site resources often makes
it appear to be the main part of creating an online course. Improvements to
the course are very often seen in terms of rewriting the content, or adding
more media to the web site, such as audio and video. A major issue of concern
in these cases is often that of protecting intellectual property, so that
courses aren't "stolen" and downloaded by students who haven't paid.
Pedagogically, this approach perpetuates a traditional metaphor of teaching
as delivering packages of knowledge, rather than as a purposeful collaborative
activity promoting active construction of meaning (Wilson, 1995). Although
recognition of the importance of discussion may mean a bulletin board is added
to the course, focussing on the quality and type of discussion in there is
often not a priority. When it is, it can be limited by the software used to
implement the discussions. Resource-heavy web courses are best suited to capable
self-learners, who are able to contact a largely passive teacher when they
need to, or seek out alternative Internet resources or textbooks and teach
themselves. They are not well-suited to students who do not respond well to
this style of learning such as those harbouring deep misconceptions, or who
skim the material lightly. The teacher may not find out that problems exist
until they see the first (and sometimes only) large assessable essay or test
- by this time it is too late to help students. This style of teaching does
not cater for diverse styles of learning.
Newer ideas in learning theory, especially constructivism, has been successfully
applied as a referent to improve the efficacy of online courses (LeFoe, 1998).
Constructivism in its most trivial form states that "Knowledge is actively
constructed by the learner, not passively received from the environment."
(von Glasersfeld, 1990). Constructionism asserts that constructivism occurs
especially well when the learner is engaged in constructing something for
others to see:
"Constructionism shares constructivism's connotation of learning
as `building knowledge structures' irrespective of the circumstances of
the learning. It then adds that this happens especially felicitously in
a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public
entity, whether it's a sandcastle on the beach or a theory of the universe...
If one eschews pipeline models of transmitting knowledge in talking among
ourselves as well as in theorizing about classrooms, then one must expect
that I will not be able to tell you about my idea of constructionism.
Doing so is bound to trivialize it. Instead, I must confine myself to
engage you in experiences (including verbal ones) liable to encourage
your own personal construction of something in some sense like it. Only
in this way will there be something rich enough in your mind to be worth
talking about." (Papert, 1990)
Social constructionism is a closely related set of ideas that focus on the
individual development of meaning through communicative action and the construction
and sharing of social artifacts, including texts (Gergen, 1995). When applied
to the study of students who are interacting within a mostly text-based environment,
these referents keep the focus on the importance and quality of dialogue between
participants as a tool to construct knowledge.
A dialogue is an exchange affecting two parties, either directly via a semiotic
medium such as language and other signs, or indirectly via tools such as computer
interfaces , drawn from the socio-cultural context (Duffy and Cunningham,
1996, cited in LeFoe, 1998). Computer software, such as web sites, can be
both a tool and a language - as a medium for dialogue it can be very powerful.
Learning dialogue in online learning situations can be divided into four types:
- dialogue of the content development process, by which a teacher's designs
and learns while creating content for students.
- dialogue of each student with content, by reading content, then acting
and writing in response to it
- dialogue of students with teacher, the negotiation and clarification of
ideas
- dialogue of students with other students, in which ideas are tested, and
students learn by teaching
Many teacher/researchers using the Internet for education are aware in some
way of these issues, but can be restrained by inadequate tools to participate
in the many dialogues possible within a single class in a manageable way.
Taylor et al (1999), for example, describe the "astonishing intensity
of discussion room activity" that resulted from making discourse an assessable
activity, forcing the researchers to delay their research analysis until after
the completion of their teaching. They conclude that their challenge lies
in redesigning their web-based pedagogy to engage students in better-focussed
and more manageable online discourse. In another sense, the metaphors of current
tools contain their own pedagogies, and can constrain how a teacher thinks
of an online environment and what is possible. The common metaphor of a "discussion
room" or "bulletin board" masks some of the differences that
such an environment has when compared with discussions in a physical room.
Current tools, being among the first generation of Internet tools for computer-mediated
communication are based on real-world metaphors, but opportunity exists to
create new tools unconstrained by these conventions.
The tool of the interactive web site itself is only part of an "online
class". From each student's perspective, the factors that make up the
total learning environment of such an online class can be divided into nine
parts:
- the quality of the student's own knowledge of the internet
- the quality of the physical space they study in
- the quality of the hardware they are using
- the quality of bandwidth to the web site
- the quality of the web site as a tool for navigating the course
- the quality of the web site content and resources
- the quality of the thinking required to produce evidence for assessment
- the quality of the teacher's cognitive support
- the quality of participation among class members
Each of these may vary dramatically in quality, and they are all affected
by the availability of tools and each other. In particular, though, a web
site can affect all but number 2 in this list.
The broad objective of this research is to contribute towards improving the
quality of learning over the Internet so that it can be widely accepted as
a valid or perhaps even preferred alternative to traditional learning environments.
If this can be achieved, then the inherent flexibility and cost-effectiveness
of the medium could allow education to be available to those disadvantaged
by distance, disability, culture, lack of wealth or numerous other restrictions.
More specifically, the objective of this research was to examine the educational
performance of an existing internet-based course and the tools used to make
it, in order to identify areas of relative success and failure. This knowledge
is intended to be applied to the next iteration of both the course and the
course-building tools. Through action research, answers were discovered for
the following research questions:
In this course, which of the nine aspects of this learning environment compared
the most favourably to other learning experiences that the students and teacher
have been involved in? In this course, which of the nine aspects of this learning
environment needed the most improvement? Why do they need improving, and how
can they be improved?
Section 1 - provides background to this study of
internet-based learning and my motivations as a researcher.
Section 2 - explains the design and development of
the internet-based course used for this study.
Section 3 - discusses the theoretical and practical
methodology of my actions as a teacher-researcher for the duration of the
course.
Section 4 - discusses the processes and results of
of my summative evaluation of events after the course.
Section 5 - presents conclusions and directions for
further work.
My intention with the Internet Overview course was to introduce the Internet
to beginners, with the major goal of improving their "internet literacy".
I started with the assumptions that participating students would be adults
who know enough to get to the course web site, and have basic skills with
moving a mouse and manipulating windows. From this, the course helps students
to: read about and apply basic concepts and terms; explore current issues
such as censorship and ownership; develop skills for using and searching the
web; sample communications of all kinds; and learn about the basics of publishing
their own web pages.
I started developing the web site in 1995, as a tool to use in conjunction
with my regular 2-hour "Internet Overview" seminars. The web pages
were designed to be projected behind me for demonstration and illustration,
so that I could navigate through them while speaking. The first iterations
of the web site were a simple set of heirarchically-organised descriptions
with diagrams. Over the following years, the site was refined further in response
to the types of questions I received in the seminars, by reorganising, adding
and rewriting explanations. Each page attempted to anticipate the questions
I was being asked in my seminars. However, the web site on its own was not
as successful as it was when used with the seminars.
In 1998, I started exploring educational theory to find directions for improvement.
Constructivism, and particularly constructionism, was immediately attractive
to me as a tool to help understand learning and the nature of knowledge (Dougiamas,
1998) as were theories of how reading and writing could be used in learning
(Dougiamas, 1999). This is because the Internet as a medium is well-suited
to interactive constructive activites, especially using text and signs.
It was from this point that I approached this study, and the teaching it
involved, with a new set of referents promoting interactivity between teacher,
learner and course content. Technically, a dynamic web site that implements
customised changeable pages can be a lot more difficult to create than a traditional
static web site - it requires ways to store and recover texts from a number
of people in a database, as well as keep track of access, ownership and quality.
This can be an extremely time consuming process, requiring skills in programming
and system design. This is one reason why such sites are not yet common. Existing
tools such as WebCT attempt to simplify this process, but, being commercial
software embodying particular pedagogies, can be restrictive in the types
of dynamic web sites that are possible, making it difficult to experiment
with new learning theories. In addition, as Salomon et al (1991) describe,
a flexible tool can evolve in partnership with the people using it, each affecting
each other.
As a result, I was inspired to create a new web-based tool I could use to
implement, modify and experiment with an interactive internet-based course
as easily and as flexibly as possible. I called this tool Moodle (Modular
Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) and set up a server called moodle.com
on the internet to provide an easy-to-remember location for it. As a researcher
using constructionism as a referent, I needed to develop Moodle to a usable
state, then use Moodle itself to develop Internet Overview from a teacher's
perspective. Through interaction with students and the course, I intended
to develop new insights as a researcher and perhaps the nature of constructionism.
See Fig 1.
Fig 1 - diagram of affective relationships between my roles as
teacher and researcher, course software, the course and students.
My starting point for Moodle was the old
Internet Overview. Through iterative redevelopment, Internet Overview
had already evolved to the point of being a resource consisting a large number
of short pages (concepts) organised hierarchically (as topics and sub-topics)
and linked together. To define Moodle I examined Internet Overview from the
dual perspective of a student and a teacher, and started with the features
that already seemed to work well. Finding an optimal design was not an issue,
as this was just a first prototype, but I tried to concentrate on a limited
number of important features.
Drawing from experience and literature, I identified the three most important
features of Moodle from the student point of view as follows:
To facilitate the varied learning styles of students, the structure of
concepts within the course must be easy to see and navigate. This includes
the strategies listed by Oliver et al (1996): placement cues that
indicate the location of the learner within the material; heirarchies
and indices to provide access to pages within the system together with
an overall structure that is reinforced through use; and semantic nets,
where connections and associations between related information are recognised
and made specific using links within the content. From any page within the
content, there are links to the next concept, the previous concept, the
current topic and the overview. The hierarchical structure of these concept
pages form a concept map (Novak, 1996). Links to related information outside
of the course should also be included as much as possible.
Web pages in Moodle are restricted in length, with good spacing and clear
fonts. For speed of download, pages have a simple layout and a minimum of
graphics. Pages work predictably and consistently throughout a course to
help students focus more on the content and less on how it is presented.
Each concept can require a response from the learner - an activity or exercise
that involves the learner in dialogue to promote construction of the knowledge
related to the concept (Jonassen, 1994). These responses are stored in the
course database and can be recalled later for a variety of uses. After some
thought I isolated the following types of responses as suitable for the first
prototype, because they seemed useful and varied:
1. Writing an answer to a question
The student writes directly onto the web page, into a form text field.
For the student, this text will stay there for the duration of the course,
but will not be editable again. Each student will see their own text embedded
on the page, and not that of other students. This activity is similar to
a test, or a survey and can be used to capture an answer or an opinion.
The exact activity in each case is directed by the teacher. It might require
a summary of a text, restricted to a limited number of words, which promotes
development of idea relation and revision (Glynn and Muth, 1994). It might
require an answer to an open-ended question such as "From this, I learned..."
(LeGere, 1991). In this case, the student is required to confront their
own learning and organise their thoughts (Johnson 1983, cited in LeGere,
1991). The text remains as part of that page for that student, like an annotation,
and can be useful to the student when reading it later to compare the change
of their own understanding over time (Borasi and Rose, 1989). To help this,
a function is provided for a student to extract all such entries in the
course and display them on a single page, providing a record of thoughts
throughout the course. These texts remain private between the individual
and the teacher, to encourage educative authenticity (Glynn and Muth, 1994)
that might not be present in comments that are visible to peers.
Teachers, when looking at the same page, don't see the text field. Instead,
they see a button that displays the texts from all students, on one page.
In this way they can easily read the responses from the whole class and
by reflecting on them, learn of misunderstandings, problems, or trends in
the class (Tobin, 1993). If required, they can be assessed, by checking
off boxes next to each entry. By clicking on a name in the list, the teacher
can also view all entries by that student from the whole course, in order,
to reflect on that student's progression through the course.
2. Writing a reflective response into a journal
This is similar to the previous activity, except the text remains editable
throughout the duration of the course. When prompted by the content, the
student has a space on the page to reflectively write about their reaction
to the content. Doing so can help them to form their understanding of the
topic (LeGere, 1991), and to give feedback to the teacher. Later, the student
may update the text to reflect changing opinions.
As before, the teacher can view all responses to this page on one page to
gain a cross-section of the class.
3. Answering multiple choice questions
In this case, the student answers a multiple choice question by clicking
a button. If the teacher has specified a "right" answer, then
this functions as a self-test, and the system provides immediate feedback
(right or wrong) - otherwise it simply stores the response.
For the teacher, a bar graph is automatically produced, listing names
of students next to each answer, providing a cross-sectional view of the
class in relation to the current concept.
4. Constructing and discussing an opinion
In response to a question within the content, the student is asked to construct
a statement of their opinion on a topic, to be read by their peers. The
text is sent to a focus bulletin board (discussion area) where it forms
the basis of threaded discussion on that topic among the class. Only at
that time can the student read other posts - they must post before reading.
In each thread, students may alternate in the roles of actively teaching
and learning with their peers, promoting active engagement with the concepts
(Glynn and Muth, 1994). Everything is recorded and labelled, and it is possible
for participation to be assessed either informally in a glance, or formally
by assigning marks to each posting. The teacher can provide instructions
or participate to help guide the nature of the discourse (Moore, 1994, p291).
For example, they may promote certain values such as students being oriented
towards others in an empathic and mutually supportive manner which invites
disclosure of their experiential worlds and encourages their active interest
in others' lived experiences.
When a student knows they are writing for a peer audience in an authentic
task, responsibility may be felt by each student to write their initial
statement as well as they can (Glynn and Muth, 1994). This may involve some
redrafting (Connor et al, 1994), some research (Glynn and Muth, 1994) and
a consideration of the audience (Glynn and Muth, 1994). The discussion can
be used to stimulate a number of different styles of debate or information
sharing which can facilitate learning. For example, discussions may centre
on comparing different opinions of texts to help the participants refine
their own opinions (Glynn and Muth, 1994). Participants also have an opportunity
to "test" statements or frame questions. This active social engagement
with a topic encourages more effective learning, as the discussion texts
are co-constructed (Gergen, 1995).
5. Other options can be added
As other types of response arise, they can easily be added to the system
in a modular way, allowing the software to adapt to the needs of the courses
it implements and the development of the teacher. In this way the construction
of the system itself is revisable and promotes constructivist ideals (Tobin,
1993).
On the surface this overall model may appear similar to the traditional model
of textbooks with exercises or worksheets at the end of each chapter, however
there are several major differences. Firstly, the granularity of content and
responses is very fine, so that each concept/response pair can be highly focussed.
Secondly, the types of activities is broader, allowing different types of
interaction with other participants in the course than is possible in a distance
education setting without the Internet. Thirdly, and most importantly, the
individual texts and signs are stored in a database, allowing the teacher
instant access to them in a variety of ways that promote quicker analysis
and understanding of the students in that class. This in turn could help the
teacher maintain a higher quality of dialogue with the students throughout
the course.
One of the most important goals of Moodle is to minimise the work a teacher
needs to do to free up time for teaching and reflecting on their teaching.
From my experience in teaching as well as literature, I identified three desirable
features of Moodle from the teacher's point of view, listed below.
Navigating the course and adding or changing texts throughout the course
is done directly and easily, using buttons embedded in the web pages. The
content is typed in a simple built-in word processor. As the teacher works
within the course environment, small changes are very easy to make on the
spot. This ease, when combined with constant interaction with the class
through writing, provides a dynamic set of written evidence upon which the
teacher can reflect and make sense of the curriculum, then adjust or reconstruct
the course as necessary. Tobin (1993) talks about this as an important part
of a constructivist perspective:
What emerges as having important implications for teacher
education is the range of objects for reflection. [...] Reflecting in this
manner enables teachers to modify their visions of what the curriculum would
be like and compare what is happening in their classes to the vision of
what they would like to happen. (Tobin, 1993, p 225)
There are four main ways Moodle helps teachers monitor and modify content:
1. Page content editing
The content of each page consists of page (concept) consists of standard
HTML text, which allows graphics, text styles, links like any other web
page. This HTML can be edited directly on the web itself using the Edit
button on every page, much like a word processor. This capability is restricted
to the teacher (students cannot modify this primary content).
2. Response design
For each page, the teacher can choose to set one of the four types of responses
listed in 2.2.1.3, by selecting from a menu. This automatically sets up
the system to collect, tag and store student responses. For responses such
as multiple choice, a text box allows all the options to be specified and
the right one to be marked.
3. Automatic structure and navigation
The creation of new pages within the hierarchy is achieved using two small
buttons next to every page represented in the hierarchical index listing.
The first button creates a new sibling page to the one currently selected.
The second opens a new sub-branch (topic). Once created, each page in the
index listing can be moved up or down in the sequence, as well as up or
down in the hierarchy.
Moodle keeps track of the structure, and when displaying full pages, is
responsible for creating internal navigational links on the fly to relevant
pages such as next, previous, and current topic. This frees up the teacher
to concentrate more on the content.
4. Collation of responses
The response feedback from students can be collated in a number of ways.
Firstly, each concept page has a button that displays the whole class response
to that page. For journal entries, this will show a long page with all the
bits of text that have been entered in reponse to that page, which for multiple
choice, a bar graph is displayed showing the distribution (and names) of
students across the choices. The discussion appears as it does for students,
with the addition of a table showing numbers of posts per person.
Another form of collation is by student. For each student, a collation
of all the entries made throughout the course can be generated, as a record
of their activity in the course. This is available to each student, as well
as the teacher. The display can be sorted by time, or by the order of the
concepts in the course material.
Finally, a display can be generated of all students currently studying
in the course, along with the time spent using it, number of pages read,
and number of responses made.
Through the use of the capabilities listed in the last section, a teacher
can actively sift through the feedback and learn more about the personality
of each student, particularly when a course encourages open and honest discourse.
As well as deepening the teacher-student relationship which will affect later
communications, this process can identify students who may have problems on
social, academic or technical levels. The teacher may choose to contact these
students directly in order to try to help.
By examining the whole-class response, as well as combining knowledge about
individual students, the reflective teacher may identify evidence of misconceptions,
or patterns in the response. These may prompt the teacher to alter the content,
start a new discussion, or search for other ways to engage the students in
their learning of that part of the course.
The building of the first prototype of Moodle took me approximately one month
of full-time work to complete, using free open-source software tools. These
included: Linux (www.linux.com), for the
operating system; Zope (www.zope.org),
as the application server; Python (www.python.org),
as a lower-level programming environment; Apache (www.apache.org),
as the web server gateway; and a number of Unix shell scripts to control the
system.
In order to finish the prototype on time, I had to simplify down to the bare
essentials the discussion forum in the prototype used in the research project,
removing most of the management interfaces.
Once Moodle had been constructed, I started work on using it to build the
course content, basing it heavily on my previous version. Immediately it was
apparent that it would be much easier to create this version of the course
than the last had been. Editing pages in-place was very quick, so that each
page passed through more versions as I moved around the course, reorganising
concepts and refining the language. It was a very liberating feeling to be
using my own tools to do this and I can say it was a thoroughly enjoyable
experience to be able to concentrate more closely on the content, and less
on technical details. Occasionally I ran into difficulties adding content,
but I was always able to resolve it by modifying Moodle in some way.
By the end of my editing, it consisted of 85 "concept" pages, organised
as 4 main topics with 16 subtopics. For each page I tried write as clearly
as possible, avoiding ambiguous grammar and jargon, and using simple language
with a friendly tone. Most pages contain a diagram, screenshot or at least
a small cartoon to either illustrate the concept or simply make the page more
memorable. Despite this, attention was paid to keeping overall page sizes
small.
The four main topics build on each other in a logical progression. The introduction
starts with a broad view of the Internet, examines current issues and explains
basic terms such as 'server' and 'email'. The next major topic covers 'web
surfing', or how to use the web to find things. The third section covers all
of the many possibilities for communicating with other people on the Internet.
The last major section introduces basic web publishing concepts and techniques.
About half of the pages required some sort of response, including three discussion
forums for discussing the more contentious issues of censorship, ownership
and privacy. The process of designing the responses for each concept was particularly
challenging, forcing me to focus on the learning outcomes rather more closely
than I had before, a highly reflective exercise. In addition, I was also anticipating
some of the research outcomes, and trying to plan activities that would yield
interesting information about the students. Due to a lack of time before the
course started, some short cuts had to be made: there was a lot less discussion
than I had originally intended, and I was not able to design a response for
every page.
Eventually, the course reached a useable state, and I was ready to study
how it was used in a real educational setting.
This study was guided by the metaphor of 'research as bricolage' which allows
the interpretative inquirer to employ a range of research methods to pursue
issues as they unfold (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994). My main method was to inhabit
the dual roles of a teacher and an action researcher reflecting critically
on my own practice as a teacher, both during and after the course. There was
also some statistical analysis and case study research.
During a two-month period, students were guided to interact textually with
the course content, each other, and the teacher in a variety of types of discourse.
From this, a large amount of textual data was collected. These field texts
included:
- Logs of all activity performed within the web site, including who looked
at what content; when they did it, and from what location. This information
is tabular and could be manipulated within a spreadsheet to identify relationships.
- Records of all discourse during the course, including public discussions
among students, private communications with the teacher, and student journals
and other feedback produced in direct response to the content.
- Student responses to a survey given after the two-week course to help
draw out their impressions of their recent experience in the course and
to compare their experience of nine environmental factors in this course
against other learning experiences.
After this time the collected data was analysed to determine trends and anomalous
behaviour. From this analysis, three students were selected as interesting
case studies. Holt et al (1996) discuss the way in which case studies relate
to research, and they quote Kemmis:
Despite its ambiguities, its imperfections and its simplifying interpretations,
a case study can create conceptual stabilities which are platforms for
understanding and for action. The authority of case-study work, like the
authority for all science, does not derive from theoretical or logical
elegance. It derives from the purchase it gives us on the real world of
action and experience (Kemmis, 1980, p 131).
A short narrative of each student was developed for each case study, based
on synthesising collected texts. For credibility (Guba and Lincoln, 1989)
each narrative was checked with the student via email, which led to further
clarification and rewriting.
Throughout these processes of interpretive action research, an awareness
of the five authenticity criteria of Guba and Lincoln (1989) was maintained,
in order to help assess the process and any results that were obtained. These
criteria are:
Fairness: the extent that each stakeholder's constructions and values
are honoured within the study.
Ontological authenticity: the extent that the researcher's own knowledge
is improved by the ongoing process of research.
Educative authenticity: the extent that an individual's understanding
of the constructions of others is enhanced.
Catalytic authenticity: the extent to which action is stimulated
and facilitated by the evaluation processes.
Tactical authenticity: the extent to which stakeholders are empowered
to act on new knowledge.
It is important that educational research be guided by ethical principles,
as it has potential to affect the lives of participants in adverse ways.
Cohen and Manion (1994) provide useful guidelines that I used to try and
shape my role as teacher/researcher in the context of this study.
Most important is the principle of informed consent, which promotes an
implicit contractual relationship between the researcher and the researched.
An information page and consent form was part of the course web site, and
included a summary of the research and how it might affect them, a statement
of ethical guarantees, a link to this paper for more detail, and a small
form to signal consent. The guarantees are of confidentiality, optional
anonymity, and constant opportunities to verify or keep in touch with my
findings as the research proceeds. See Appendix A.
In the case of any ethical decisions that needed to be made during the
course of the research, I tried to use Strike's two guiding principles of
benefit maximisation and equal respect (cited in Cohen and Manion, 1994).
Benefit maximisation holds that the best decision is that which results
in the greatest benefit for the most people. Equal respect demands that
we respect the equal worth of all people, requiring us to treat people as
ends rather than means, and to regard them as free, rational, and entitled
to the same basic rights as anyone. As well as the participants of the class,
this applies equally to any other stakeholders involved in the research.
The Internet Overview course was conducted as a module within a larger course
called Learning Technologies, Technology for Teachers (HREF A) . This larger
course was for the professional development of around 100 high school teachers
interested in learning how to apply technology to their teaching and was funded
as a project by the Education Department of Western Australia (EDWA). EDWA
purchased new laptops for each of the high-school teachers involved in the
scheme, and assisted their connections to the Internet if they weren't already
connected. One reason they were selected for this study was the fact that
these students were also teachers with an interest in using the Internet as
part of their own teaching. This suggested that they would be a particularly
responsive and reflective group to study as they used Internet Overview.
Another major feature of this class was the extreme physical isolation of
the students. Their locations were diverse, including such places as Christmas
Island, Wingellina, Port Hedland, Queensland, Carnarvon and Perth. Physical
meetings were unlikely, forcing the class to interact solely through the Internet,
via the main Learning Technologies web site as well as the Internet Overview
web site. In addition, the remote nature of many of these locations meant
that their connections were via satellite or poor quality phone lines, and
thus relatively slow and/or expensive.
Students entered Internet Overview via a link within the Learning Technologies
web site. The first page required them to create their own username and password
as well as provide some contact details (name and email address). After that
they had access to the full Internet Overview site, and their activity was
tracked and managed by their username. Once inside the course, one of the
first links there was to a page that explains this research and allowed each
student to give their consent to be involved. Of the total 83 students that
used the course during the study, 54 gave their consent to be studied, 6 refused
and 23 students didn't respond. Most of the students visited Internet Overview
between June and September of 1999, with most activity around August. Of the
consenting students, each spent an average of about two hours using Internet
Overview, viewing an average of about 200 dynamic web pages. Use tended to
concentrate around the mornings and evenings, but rarely was there more than
one person in the course at a time.
The Moodle server on which the Internet Overview course ran was on my desk
where I work during the day. In order to stay closer to what was happening
in the Moodle site, I set up a monitoring program to watch the server activity
logs and trigger sounds and displays according to events in progress. The
steady stream of sounds in the background kept me informed of people who were,
reading pages, using the chat room, or watching my web camera. I could monitor
the sounds for most of the day, and turn to the displays for more information
when required. The displays gave me more detailed information such as the
name of the student and which pages they were currently using, as well where
they were coming from and what sort of computer they were using. This helped
me "be there" if they tuned in to watch my web camera, or be ready
to talk with them if they entered the chat room.
Despite this, my own direct involvement with students was fairly minimal,
compared to a face-to-face course. During the course I had only four chat
sessions and about ten email exchanges, mostly helping students with minor
technical problems and directing them to other resources that might be helpful.
Indirectly, I was involved in the course by reading the collated responses
to various concepts, looking for trends and students having problems. In the
main this was useful, and led to some email exchanges with students as well
as changes to the content, but because the students weren't very synchronised
in study time (being spread over three or four months) it was difficult to
identify changes in the student population over time. For example, when I
looked at a collated response in July, and then later at the same page in
September, there was an increase in number of responses, but no way to identify
recent additions, or to rank the responses according to any criteria. As I
had updated the content in August (as a response to a problem found by looking
at the feedback) it was impossible to tell which version of the content each
entry had responded to. I could clearly see the need for an improved management
interface to solve such problems by flexibly sorting, categorising and marking
student responses. My experience in using the tool from a teaching perspective
was directly contributing to some new insights into its operation from a research
perspective.
At the end of September an accident with the server rendered the entire database
unusable and the course was "off-air". It took me nearly two weeks
to recover the data successfully and continue. Fortunately, as most students
had already finished, this did not impact the operation of the course very
much.
Towards the end of the course I developed an online survey to collect information
about student perceptions of the learning experience of using Internet Overview.
The survey was largely based on the Constructivist On-Line Learning Environment
Survey - Preferred (COLLES-P) survey by Maor and Taylor (1999). The COLLES-P
survey asks the students to rate 30 statements about practices which could
take place within an online unit using two scales - what they actually experienced
and what they would prefer. The COLLES-P statements are grouped into six sections:
relevance of learning, reflective thinking, interactivity, cognitive support,
affective support, and interpretation of meaning. For my survey I removed
the last two sections, as they dealt with issues less relevant to this study,
and added two new sections: one that asked about the nine factors of the learning
environment listed in Section 1.1; and an open-ended field for comments. The
COLLES-P sections support my factors section by probing for more detailed,
but related information. (See the form in Appendix B).
I then wrote a script to mail each of the 54 students who agreed to participate
in the research with a customised invitation to fill out the survey. Of these,
20 students returned to the course and successfully filled out the survey.
While there, some of the students took the opportunity to revisit much of
the course to refresh their memories and check on the progress in the discussion
areas. The data was collected and collated in the Moodle database.
After two weeks, when the submissions had stopped, I transferred the data
to a spreadsheet and analysed it (using a combination of simple statistics
and visual inspection of colour-coded data), looking for trends as well as
anomalous responses. It was particularly useful to look for large differences
between actual and preferred scores, as they indicated what students felt
were the greatest shortcomings in their experienced.
From these results, I chose four of the most interesting cases to develop
into case studies. Two students were chosen for their similarity to the general
trends, and two were chosen because their answers ran contrary to the trends
in some way. I interviewed these students via email, sending them a narrative
of my impressions gained from studying the information I had so far, and asking
for feedback, clarifications and corrections. From this emerged several email
conversations that allowed me to get a better picture of their personal motivations
as well as confirm some of the broader conclusions I had reached.
The results of this summative analysis are described in the next section.
This section analyses the reponses received from students during the course.
All names have been changed to protect anonymity.
Here are short case studies of four of the participants. Barbara and
Florence were chosen for their closeness to the majority of opinions
in the survey, while Mary and Kim were chosen for somewhat anomalous
statements. These case studies were developed after analysing all twenty survey
respondents, but they are presented here first as they will help to frame
the analysis in the next section.
Barbara
Barbara liked to study in the afternoon. In August, she checked for the first
time on a Sunday afternoon, and spent an hour and a half browsing the course.
The next day she connected again and filled in more of the blanks. Then
she had a holiday and some time off, and it wasn't until October later that
she came back and went through it all again. To her pleasure, she found
it a lot easier to understand the second time around. Overall she was happy
with the experience, but as well as more interactivity with other students,
she would have liked a more direct connection to her professional practice.
Florence
Florence was quite experienced with computers, and considered herself a fairly
critical user. She skimmed through the course quite quickly but still found
it interesting, as she could see it being applied in her high school to
help other staff learn about the Internet. The "issue" forums
were most interesting, especially the post-before-read idea, and she would
have liked to see more use of discussion in the course, as well as a little
more participation from the teacher. One major problem she had with the
course was that the forums were buried too deep in the course structure
which made them hard to find, another was that they were cumbersome to use.
Kim
Kim had been using the Internet for about two years, mostly to find
resources for her own students to use in the classroom. Primarily, she was
more interested to learn at her own pace how to create her own web pages
than to spend time chatting in discussion forums, so she was happy with
the limited amount of discussion that she took part in. She covered most
of the course in a single stretch of three hours. When she does communicate
online, she would prefer more meaningful and useful communication with people
she knows. She felt that was still some room for improvement in the course
itself, but the main obstacle for her was a bad connection to the Internet
from her remote town, forcing her to use it in the morning when the lines
were less congested.
Mary
Mary had already been using the Internet for 6 years, though mostly just
email. She was the Indonesian teacher at her school, and was looking to
contact Indonesia in particular. She didn't see much need to interact with
the teacher or other students, but would have liked an asynchronous forum
for quick question-answer technical support. Overall she found Moodle more
productive than other sites, because it was clearly written and fast to
download. However it could have benefitted by offering a lot more of the
exercises in order to consolidate her learning.
My analysis of the data involved counting numbers of students that indicated
they desired a reasonable improvement for each of the factors mentioned in
the survey. The factors most liked are defined as the ones with the
highest mean 'actual' scores and the fewest numbers of students wanting improvement.
The factors that needed most improvement are defined as those with
largest numbers of students wanting improvement and lowest mean 'actual' scores.
Each is listed below, illustrated with unsolicited quotes from the survey
comments and interviews that support each result. I will conclude this section
with a discussion of some external factors that may have helped or
impeded the research process that produced these results.
1. The quality of the web site, resources and navigation.
The factor with which students were most happy overall (expressing the
least desire for change) was the quality of the web site itself, in terms
of speed, navigation and features such as post-before-participate and the
exercises throughout. I have combined the two factors of "web site
and resources" with "web site navigation" into one factor
because their scores were similar, and they appeared to be understood by
students as being the same thing.
Pat posted this comment on the Learning Technologies discussion area:
I have just completed the tutorials on the Internet in Moodle. Just
wanted to make a quick comment about how easy the site was to use. The
explanations were terrific and after sitting on the computer for [three
hours] I don't feel like I've been working at all. Thanks to Martin
for making learning so easy. - Pat, July 12.
Helen compared her experiences with a commercial provider of similar
courses:
I have enjoyed the tutorials I have done on Moodle much more satisfying
than ZDU
A) the language was clearer in the tuts
B) the site worked more efficiently, time waits were shorter
C) the site was better organised easier to navigate
D) I felt I was learning lots in the right sized chunks to remember
and be able to use. - Helen, survey.
Jenny found the explanations helped her teach the subject to her own students:
Found the site easy to navigate and learnt many worthwhile tips
on how to explain the internet to my class of year sevens. For me further
study is to better my knowledge and skills to pass onto our future generation,
not for necessarily bettering my personal self. My aim is to engage
my students and knowledge of technology is a way to do this. I successfully
introduced the Internet to my year 7 class and they are learning to
use the net more purposefully. This unit helped me to do this. - Jenny,
survey.
Maria liked the style and the fact there was a real teacher available:
I found that the language used in the units was simple, clear without
being patronizing. There was an opportunity to ask questions (through
email) with the writer. - Maria, survey.
In general, it seems the "exercises" were welcome, though some
would have liked to have seen more:
Some of the readings that did require exercises were good and the
ones which didn't require exercises sometimes left me unsure if I understood
it all. - Mary, survey.
Perhaps more interaction (practice) might have made some of the
things I've forgotten stick better? - Mary, interview.
...more hands on examples could be included in the Moodle course.
- Kim, interview.
I loved the fact that you could not read other posts before you
made your post about an issue - it made you be very careful about your
position on something. - Florence, interview.
Some students mentioned they preferred the self-paced asynchronous nature
of the course:
I love the opportunity this gives me to work at my own pace and
think about what I learn and do. - Rosemary, survey.
I found it easy to use and basically skipped through the questions
and readings quickly. One advantage of Moodle is that self-regulated
learners can pace themselves as appropriate. [...] I like the ability
to access effective PD cheaply from isolated locations, the flexibility
that Moodle provided in terms of locating the information and progressing
through the areas it covered quickly based on background knowledge.
- Florence, interview.
I can't think quickly enough to take part in another [realtime] reality
online!!!! Call me a scaredy-cat or stick in the mud, I even have trouble
keeping up with the Nintendo and Sony Playstation game characters when
I'm controlling them! - Kim, interview.
One negative comment was that the discussion forums were hard to find and
use, being buried amongst the content:
... links to the comments page would have made it easier to re-visit
regularly. - Florence, survey.
It disappointed me that I could not provoke more of a response -
I wonder if that was because it was time consuming to expand threads?
- Florence, interview.
2. The speed of student computers
Not surprisingly all students indicated that they were fairly happy with
the speed of their computers, since they had just received modern laptop
computers from EDWA for taking part in the course.
3. The quality of the thinking the course helped students achieve
Overall the students seemed to find the experience a very rewarding one.
This is supported by quotes such as:
Topics have forced me to think more critically and form my own opinions.
- Colleen, survey.
I have learnt so much. As you are probably aware, I began this course
then had several weeks break, and then came back to it. In the time
I had "off", I continued with the other elements of the course,
via WWW and CD ROM. When I came back to your course, I found I had to
go back and re-do/re-read all the modules to refresh my memory. When
I came to do this, I found that I had a much greater understanding and
appreciation of what I was reading. It helped me to do lots of reading
and other course stuff. - Susan, survey.
4. Cognitive support from the teacher
The average score for actual cognitive support from the teacher was quite
high (between 'good' and 'excellent'), despite my own impressions that I
had hardly participated in the course. It seems the content prepared before
the course was all the cognitive support they needed from the teacher.
If so, then this factor may be closely tied to the quality of the web site.
1. Their own knowledge about the internet
Almost unanimously the class still wanted to learn more about the Internet
after the course, rating their current knowledge on average as 'lacking'
and 'good', but preferring 'excellent'. This is not surprising as it was
the reason why they enrolled in the course, and the course was only a short
introduction designed to start developing concepts. However, from my experience
in education I do believe it reflects a general desire to know more about
the new technologies, to take advantage of them and to avoid "getting
left behind". An interesting comment from Mary reflects the dilemma
of saving time in a busy world while also knowing that deep knowledge comes
from experience:
What could be useful (for beginners like me) would be a less public
forum where you could ask dumb technical questions...and get answers straight
away. Help NEVER seems to cover my problems....and I sometimes spend hours
working out something that is so easy if you know. (you don't forget THOSE
bits, once you know!) - Mary, interview
Stacey (1997) mentions the effects of previous knowledge of computer-mediated
communication as a critical factor in the success of online learning.
2. Participation with other students
Oddly, this did not rate highly as a deficiency in the list of environmental
factors, but did rate very highly in the COLLES-P questions that broke this
down into specific activities: being asked to explain by other students,
asking other students to explain, explaining to other students, and other
students explaining. Most students said the current level of participation
was between 'seldom' and 'sometimes', but that they would prefer discourse
occurred 'often'.
This is supported by research such as Stacey (1997), who concluded that
collaborative learning and behaviour made the most effective use of an online
environment for education.
However, some students were happy with the level of participation as it
was:
I've found that I am the type of person who studies to fulfill my
own needs. I'd rather talk to the people I know than get too involved
in discussion with other students. Besides online courses allow me to
leave the situation and mull over what I've learnt before coming back
to reply. - Kim, survey.
I believe that if I take the time to "converse" with people
in a particular setting then it is the beginnings of developing an online
community. - Kim, interview.
And some felt shy of participating in a public forum:
It forced me to express my opinions in writing, which made me a little
uncomfortable. I was not embarassed about my opinions, but rather the
way I express myself in writing. I feel more articulate when speaking
face to face. Maria, survey.
I don't know what kind of online participation would be beneficial,
but I do know that I feel very inadequate when reading the EDWA course
BB and am not inclined to contribute and make a fool of myself. Mary,
interview.
3. A better quality connection (speed and uptime)
Despite the aid from EDWA in getting the Internet connected, bandwidth
(speed) is still generally poor in regional areas, even with a fast modem.
Depending on the area, though, these complaints can apply even in urban
centres:
Technical problems like slow connections, ZDU and filtering at work
are frustrating. Rosemary, survey.
It would be wonderful to have 100% connectivity. Christine, survey.
I have found that the main obstacles to my online learning have been
interruptions to my connection and bottlenecks at peak times when everyone
else is online. Thus I try to use my connection very early in the morning
whenever possible. Kim, interview.
4. A better quality physical location
Some students would have preferred better physical surrounds to study in.
In some cases this may have meant they dislike working for long periods
on a small screen, but in the more extreme cases it was difficult to study
at home among family and work commitments:
Finding time in between work, family and sickness is sometimes an
issue. Rosemary, survey.
The best PD I have ever done but very very time consuming. I think
it would be very beneficial for some time off of class to be built into
the course in order to complete it. Karen, survey.
It can all get a bit frustrating when you are studying in snatches
of time after a long day at school. Mary, interview.
While monitoring the course, and while analysing the activity later, I
uncovered a number of factors related to this particular study that may
have confused some of the students and caused some inaccuracies in their
answers to the survey.
Firstly, there was some confusion about the difference between the larger
Learning Technologies course and the Internet Overview. It was apparent
that some students treated them all as a single web site, not realising
that the smaller web site was completely separate entity linked to the main
course by a single hyperlink. For some students this misconception appears
to have extended to other linked web sites as well. It is unclear what their
perceptions of the course boundaries are - this could be an interesting
avenue for further research. Secondly, there was widespread confusion between
Internet Overview (the course) and Moodle (the system used to implement
the course). Explanations were provided, but would be difficult to understand
without a much deeper understanding of the internet than most participants
had when they started the course. Most people called the whole course Moodle.
One factor in the success of this research is that the students were teachers
themselves, interested in using the Internet for teaching, and so probably
more reflective, mature and helpful than an average class.
A second important factor is that because they had all been given a laptop
by EDWA with which to do the course, there was a guaranteed baseline across
the class of a quite high-quality computer. This allowed a more even experience
of the course, as well as better support. When one person had a problem with
their computer it was often the case that they all had the same problem -
so that help was more readily available.
Factors that participants liked
- The quality of the web site, resources and navigation.
- The speed of student computers
- The quality of the thinking the course helped students achieve
- Cogitive support from the teacher
Factors needing most improvement
- Their own knowledge about the internet
- Participation with other students
- A better quality connection (speed and uptime)
- A better quality physical location
Drawing on the student results in Section 4 as well as my
own experiences and research in Section 2 and 3,
I feel confident that the basic idea of Moodle as a tool to manage a content-based
framework supporting embedded educational discourse is an acceptable and useful
idea.
As a broad generalisation the students indicated that they liked the web
site and the content. They were also happy with the medium to high level support
they received from the teacher, even though it was via the pre-written web
content rather than direct participation on my part. This suggests that the
processes that produced Internet Overview as an extension of my teaching (see
Section 2.3) were as successful from the students' point
of view as it was from mine.
An important result was the students' strong desire to learn more about the
Internet. This suggests that Internet Overview itself can be useful tool for
learning about the Internet, particularly if it addresses the major shortcoming
of the current version: student interactivity. It is clear that the current
discussion areas of Moodle are too clumsy to be really useful. The major work
to be done now is to define and implement the next generation of tools for
students to interact discursively in a focussed, non-threatening, asynchronous
environment that promotes learning.
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The main page of the course displays the course structure.
A "topic" page introduces the topic and a number of "concepts"
that comprise it. Note the navigational links at the top and bottom of each
page that are automatically inserted by Moodle.
Each concept page contains "content" written by the teacher, and
a required response for the student.
At any time, the teacher can see all the student responses to this concept
on one page. Here is an extract:
This questionnaire is to ask about your experiences and preferences in using
this Moodle version of "Internet Overview".
Each statement has two responses:
-
your actual experience of this aspect of the online course.
-
how you would prefer to experience this aspect.
There are no right or wrong answers - your opinion is what is wanted.
This survey is based on COLLES - the Student Experience/Preferred
Form - Maor & Taylor, Curtin University, 6/1999
dougiamas.com