The Web as a Medium for Teaching and Learning

John S. Atkinson
School of Environmental and Information Sciences,
P.O. Box 789, Albury, NSW, 2640 Australia
Email: jatkinson@csu.edu.au

Abstract

This paper addresses key issues related to using the Web as a medium for teaching and learning. In particular, it discusses the advantages in using the Web and some of the pitfalls and design issues that need to be considered. It also makes some practical suggestions as to how to more effectively present teaching and learning materials on the Web

1 What is the hype about the Web?

The Web has been widely touted as a means for enhancing teaching and learning (Hawkridge 1996, p. 5; Sangster 1995, p. 3) and indeed there are now many examples of University courses that have been launched on the Web. At Charles Sturt University we have been using the Web as a medium for delivering subject material to our students for several years. The main reasons we use the Web for education are that it makes a large volume of valuable resources instantly available, and that it facilitates effective communications between the teacher and the student. The Web complements traditional teaching and learning methods.

This paper addresses key issues related to using the Web as a medium for teaching and learning. In particular, it discusses the advantages of using the Web and some of the pitfalls and design issues that need to be considered. It also make some practical suggestions as to how to more effectively present teaching and learning materials on the Web.

2 Why use the Web as a medium for teaching and learning?

The Web's user-friendly hypertext graphical interface has empowered many people to use it to 'publish' information. Educators have been quick to appreciate the potential opportunities of the Web as a medium for on-line teaching and learning. A huge amount of material has been developed which purports to be valuable resource material for teaching and learning. However, much debate has also arisen as to the effectiveness of presenting material to students on the Web and how it should best be utilised (Hawkridge, p. 9).

It is important that the Web is not seen as a substitute medium for the delivery of teaching and learning material to students (Slaughter, p. 2). Rather, the Web should be used as a tool to complement traditional methods of information delivery. For example, lectures could be complemented by presentation using a Web browser to access material in real-time. Tutorials can be enhanced by controlling student access to on-line resources. Discussion groups can be conducted between geographically dispersed individuals. Finally, field experiments can be conducted on-line regardless of the time of day (Whalley, p. 25). Many of the benefits of the Web will be realised by teachers and students when it is used in a familiar and spontaneous manner. Educators need to be encouraged to experiment with using the Web. In many instances, unexpected benefits can be realised by experimenting with the Web as a medium for teaching.

Another major advantage of using the Web as a medium for teaching and learning is the ease with which teaching or general information can be delivered to a wider audience (Hawkridge, p.9). If an external or remote student has access to the Internet, then this can dramatically increase their opportunities to access information. The Web is therefore a tool to improve access to teaching and learning resources (Mumford, p.56). Therefore, Australian educational institutions have the opportunity to produce high quality material that can be accessed by a wide range of people, not only in Australia but also overseas (Dyer, p. 271). However, if this is to occur, Australian educators must be both world leaders in the use of this technology and providers of excellent quality education resources.

3 Where is the information: searching the Web

The major advantage of using the Web is that it provides fast access to a large amount of information on an enormous range of topics. However, the very volume of information available raises problems with access to it. How does a person new to the Web find what they are looking for and in what format will it be? One can not assume that users of the Web are able to effectively search for information even though user-friendly search tools are available. For example, a majority of students undertaking ITC125 initially assumed that the more hits returned on a particular query indicated a good search result. Many people utilise search engines as a first option to locate resources on the Net. Therefore, any course on using the Web as a medium for teaching and learning must include a module on what search engines are available and how to best use them (Pickering, p. 11).

4 Alternative methods to searching for resources on the Web

4.1 Virtual Libraries

The organisation of material on the Web is critical for its effective use as a medium for teaching and learning. Search engines can be successful in locating information on the Web but they have many limitations (Sangster, p. 5). A Virtual Library is an alternative way to access information on the Web. A Virtual Library is an organised set of links to items on the Web including links not only to electronic books and journals but also to any kind of electronic material that has been published on the Web. More specifically, this includes text documents, software, images, audio, databases, newsgroups and other data repositories. The purpose of a Virtual Library is to enable users of a site to find relevant information, wherever it may reside on the network.

Data in a Virtual Library usually is collated in one of three ways:

If the manual approach is adopted, then the editors need to be proactive in collating material for the Virtual Library. Not only is the manual approach time-demanding for the editor but it may overlook essential resources for the Virtual Library. The passive approach relies on users of the Virtual Library populating it via electronic mail or forms. This approach is voluntary on behalf of the users and relies on them contributing the information. Typically, the passive approach can suffer from inactive or erratic participation by contributors to the Virtual Library. The active approach relies heavily on automated search engines and is more likely to be populated with duplications of commercial material which now proliferates on the Web. The quality of the Virtual Library can be questionable unless strict quality control procedures are in place.

The Education Virtual Library, maintained by Charles Sturt University, is an example of a passive virtual library. It is an ideal resource, particularly for teachers, to locate resources on the Web.

A basic problem with searching the Web is not being able to home in quickly on the required information. Both search engines and Virtual Libraries have their own advantages and disadvantages in locating information. However, both methods are only recording meta-data - that is data or links about the required information. The NSW HSC on-line project, developed in conjunction with Charles Sturt University, uses an alternative approach in the organisation of on-line information.

5 NSW HSC on-line project

The aim of the HSC project has been to create an organised structure to support a much wider range of activities compared to those of a Virtual Library. Not only does it offer links to context-specific material for HSC students, but it also incorporates communications channels and a publication forum allowing participation by all groups interested in the HSC. The communications channels can be used by students for discussion groups, to exchange ideas and for the dissemination of news items. It also can offer teachers the ability to publish resources which will be available to all HSC students. The project is geared to encourage collaboration between interested parties in developing and adopting material promoting teaching and learning (Green & Jefferies, p. 24)

Specifically, the objectives of the HSC project are:

The philosophy behind the HSC project is important. Not only is it more focused than a Virtual Library, but it also offers additional support mechanisms through communication channels and mechanisms for publishing to participants. Further, the overall structure is much more rigidly controlled than existing Virtual Libraries, ensuring that the quality and integrity of the material is guaranteed. This additional infrastructure support complements the material presented, although the effectiveness of the project still needs to be thoroughly evaluated.

In the previous section, we proposed alternatives to search engines for locating information on the Web. However, there are other issues besides searching which need to be considered in presenting material for the Web. The following sections address some of these issues.

6 Practical approaches to using the Web

6.1 Feedback

Ramsden (1992) lists feedback as one of the six key principles for effective teaching in Higher Education. The Web readily allows for both manual and automated feedback between the teacher and the student (Ramsden, p. 97).

An example of using the Web in a spontaneous and perhaps unorthodox manner can be illustrated using chat software. A good example is a program called Powwow. This software allows for two or more people to chat using the keyboard as the means of communication, in real-time. This approach allows the student and the teacher to conduct general discussion as well as conduct such things as file exchange and using a whiteboard feature to highlight issues. However, by extrapolating the principle behind the chat software, Powwow can be used in an educational setting for 'virtual tutorials'.

Virtual tutorials occurred within the subject ITC125 where, at a given time of the week, students had the opportunity to connect into what Powwow calls a 'Conference'. The lecturer could moderate or control a session where up to 50 students were able to discuss issues such as problems they were experiencing. As the semester progressed, these sessions became more formalised. With specific subject tutorials proposed, interested students could voluntarily participate. These sessions proved to be extremely popular and excellent feedback was received. The main advantage of the use of Powwow in this manner is that it can eliminate some of the disadvantages that distance education students experience in not being able to attend on-campus tutorials. In some cases, the software could eliminate the need for expensive residential schools and could bring distance education students into on-campus tutorial classes.

Records were kept for all contacts from students detailing how the contact was made and also the reason for the contact. Analysis of the results clearly showed that the main mode of contact was via electronic mail, although other contact modes were not insignificant.

7 Problems with using the Web as a medium for teaching and learning

7.1 Time to markup material

Another issue that can impact on the development of material for the Web is the actual time to prepare it. For example, the time to prepare the equivalent of a two hour face-to-face lecture can be as much as 10-15 hours. This time can be regarded as being excessive compared to the development of more traditional lecture material. The reasons for the longer development times include design issues associated with on-line material and the time required to locate the most appropriate on-line resources. It is strongly recommended that publishers on the Web have a working knowledge of the HyperText Markup Language, although many excellent WYSIWYG editors are now available.

7.2 Time for maintenance

In addition to the time for preparing on-line material, a related issue that needs to be considered are the huge overheads associated with the maintenance of the marked-up material. There are two factors that make the actual subject material so volatile. Firstly, due to the rapidly changing technology associated with a subject, like ITC125, it was necessary to constantly evaluate the material to ensure it was relevant and up-to-date. Even though this was very time-consuming, the positive factor was the Web allowed for relatively easy updates to be made to the marked-up material. Secondly, the volatile nature of URL links meant that regular checking was required to ensure that they were still valid. It is important that when educationists are considering presenting material on-line, they factor in this maintenance time - it would be irresponsible to do otherwise.

7.3 Quality of the material

One of the major concerns of using the Web as a medium for teaching and learning is the difficulty in checking the quality of the material. In theory, anyone can publish information on the Web and it is difficult to differentiate the quality of the accessed information. Therefore, it is important that users of information from the Web verify the quality of information if there is any doubt as to its authenticity. Currently, on the Web we find that there is a mixture of resources available. For example, using a search engine primarily returns 'soft' information whose its quality is questionable. On the other hand, the Web also allows access to 'hard' information through university and commercial databases, in which case it is of a high quality. The implication is that teachers and students need to be able to differentiate between the hard and the soft information.

7.4 Lack of bandwidth

The full potential of the Web as a medium for teaching and learning is yet to be realised. The software associated with the Web has outstripped the ability of the hardware to deliver the benefits. Until adequate bandwidth is a reality, at an acceptable user-pay cost, the more sophisticated features of the Web will not be available. In particular, animation, sound quality and interactive video conferencing are still in their infancy as far as the Web is concerned. We need to have sufficient bandwidth access to achieve these features, which in turn will rival current CD technology. Once this occurs, the next significant period in the Web as a medium for teaching and learning will be seen.

8 Other design issues

During the development of course material for Web-based subjects at Charles Sturt University, the following developmental issues were encountered and solved with varying degrees of success (Whalley, p. 28),
  • What is the optimum size of graphics to allow for acceptable time to load a particular file?
  • What minimum information should be included within every module? (For example, copyright, graphics, navigation assistance, electronic mail addresses, logo, date of creation, the URL of the document, acknowledgment of the URL's of material accessed).
  • How is on-line material cited?

    At Charles Sturt University, the above issues relating to the design of Web pages for teaching and learning were discussed during many hours of meetings. The biggest problem encountered between participants in the design group was the difficulty of reaching a consensus on the 'ideal Web page'. This problem arose primarily due to bad change management practices. It is recommended that if contemplating the design of Web pages, that one ensures that discussions are conducted in a collaborative, open atmosphere with an individual designated to address potential change management problems. It is also recognised that considerable research is still required to fully investigate each of the issues outlined above. In reality, each question represents a major research question.

    9 Conclusion

    The Web is a medium that can be utilised to complement traditional approaches to teaching and learning. It is a matter of how we apply the medium that will see the true benefits realised. This paper addressed issues in using the Web as a medium for teaching and learning and, in particular, the organisation of Web pages, practical advantages of using the Web and also some potential problems with using the Web.

    As the technology associated with the Web improves further, we will see more exciting advances in being able to use this medium for teaching and learning.

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