Teaching Learning Tips, No. 20/98

Abstract

[evdate 1998-02-15] TEACHING-LEARNINGTIPS Educational Technology Centre 1 THE HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY issue: 20/98 Case Studies of Using Web in Teaching in HKUST Issue 18/97 of the Teaching-Learning Tips titled 涆eaching on the Web{????}discussed about the possible

uses of WWW in supporting teaching and suggested guidelines on the adoption of the new technology.

A year later, in this issue, we are reporting three examples of using WWW in teaching at HKUST. There

are in fact many examples of innovative uses of Web in HKUST. The ones that are reported here are those

that have close involvement with the Instructional Development Unit (IDU) and to some extent, represent

different approaches in the adoption of the Web technology in local higher education.

The three reported teaching development projects of Dr. Irene Lo (CIVL), Dr. Jogesh Muppula (COMP)

and Dr. Albert Yu (BIOL) were sponsored by the Staff Secondment Scheme initiated by IDU. The

intention was for participants of the Scheme to be partly released from their normal duties to engage in

these teaching development projects with professional and technical support from IDU.

It is always our intention to report on in-house innovative ways to teach and invite comments and

discussions from our readers. Faculty and staff who have used Web in their teaching are always welcome

to make use of the Teaching Learning Tips as a forum for discussing their experiences.

The Editor Web-based Teaching In the past year, IDU has been working with three faculty members in assisting them to make use of the

Web for teaching purposes. On top of that, with the additional support from an Action Learning Project

grant, Dr. Jogesh Muppula (COMP), one of the three participants of the Staff Secondment Scheme

aforementioned, together with Tak S. Ha of IDU have completed their first attempt to evaluate these three

projects. What follows is an introduction to the projects, which shows the many different ways that Web

can be used in teaching, and some preliminary evaluation results, both from the Project Leaders and the

Evaluation Team. CIVL141-a Web-based Course by Dr. Irene Lo The project was started with the idea of putting the basic and relatively simple course materials on web

with built-in self-assessment that students can learn the materials independently before they come to the

class/lecture to discuss more difficult topics, particularly on the application of some important concepts.

With the assistance of IDU, Dr. Lo has re-designed her course built a course website with a number of

interesting features including multimedia elements, photos, on-line quizzes (self-assessment for students)

newsgroup, class announcement, chapter text summary and on-line teaching evaluation.

About 120 students took the course and their evaluation of the project showed that Dr. Lo掇 idea did work.

THE HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 2 Educational Technology Centre 洍 spent less time on the basic materials than before. Students did participate more actively in lectures as

the semester progressed仈hey understood the materials better and asked more meaningful questions in

class.{????}Dr. Lo disclosed. However, putting the basic materials on the Web for independent learning did not imply that she did not

have to cover them in her lecturers. 浿tudents sometimes had difficulty with the materials on Web. I have

to spend time going over them,{????}Dr. Lo said. "It did not save time and effort in teaching." Being asked about her evaluation of the overall project, Dr. Lo remarked that her effort spent in designing

the curriculum, developing the Website, maintaining and modifying the materials, interacting with her

students through the Web etc. has exceeded her expectation, though she never thought she could spend

less time on her teaching through the use of the Web. COMP 252 - a Web-based Course by Dr. Jogesh Muppala Dr. Muppala is a very experienced user of the Web for teaching purposes. It has been his third time to use the Web to teach COMP 252. In the course website, students could access to course schedules, course notes, class announcements,

assessment results, project information, sample problems, online quizzes, and useful links etc. The

course notes were in postscript format that the students could either save to disk or read them by invoking

a viewer. According to Dr. Muppala, students made a lot of use of the online quizzes, especially when

the examination is near. The 'designated hitter' effect of emails As for the communication part, students opined that email was a useful asychronous mode of communication

and over 75% of student-respondents preferred it to face-to-face discussions. They found it less threatening

and provided a permanent record. However, the more articulate students still preferred face-to-face

discussions for the convenience. Email-log showed that only a small group of students made regular use of emails and newsgroup

discussion. There were evidences that what they learnt from the newsgroup or emails, they passed them

on to other non-users, something which Dr. Muppala called the 洖esignated hitter{????}phenomenon, a term

borrowed from American baseball. Further information on the research project can be found at http

www.cs.ust.hk/~muppala/ALP9697EG05.html Dr. Albert Yu's experience with using the Web for teaching Dr. Yu made use of the Web in two of his courses (BIOL 001 & 202) he taught in the Spring Semester

97/98. He did not find it necessary to re-design his course in order to make use of the Web. With the help

of a student helper, he put his course materials on the Web. In the process, he also learnt how to edit his

course materials, convert them to a format (HTML) that can be displayed on the Web and upload them

on the website. This he found very useful because students would have access to the most updated version

of his course materials.

TEACHING-LEARNING TIPS Educational Technology Centre 3 THE HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Website as an information center He found his students attend his class more regularly (about 90 they seemed to be learning more

effectively; and followed the course more easily. 涆he website is like an information centre to which the

students can have convenient access virtually anytime for course materials, links to other sites and

announcement,{????}said Dr. Yu. He planned to include on-line quizzes, photos - something he considered most useful for teaching his

subject, and probably animation to his website in the coming year. As for advice for other instructors wanting to use the Web for their teaching, 洍t would be important to

secure adequate support, especially if you are not familiar with the web technology,{????}Dr. Yu remarked.

Lessons learnt: Dr. Muppula and his partner adopted an Action Research approach in their Web-based teaching evaluation

project, that involved 250 students in three sections of an undergraduate computer science course and

three groups of students enrolled in three courses from different departments in past two semesters, plus

three instructors including himself. Results from the study showed that five important issues have to be properly addressed in using web as

an adjunct to the traditional classroom delivery in tertiary education. The SCARE factors The five factors, with an acronym of SCARE are: Skills : students{????}level of Web and computing skills and their comfort levels with the technology

Connectivity : the networking infrastructure connecting the computers Accessibility : accessibility of students to computers Reward : pragmatic nature of students and their willingness to undertake new ventures when there

is at least a (perceived) reward Enthusiasm : appropriate self-motivation for using the technology Surveys of students showed that student-respondents were generally Web-savvy enough to make use of

the Web in their study. There was satisfactory network connectivity on campus and students{????}accessibility to computers was high. However those who lived off-campus did experience some frustrations to connect

their computers to school due to the heavy demand for the dial-in modem lines. As expected, students preferred well-organized websites that provide easy access to information and

valued those course notes, handouts, guidelines, sample problems, model answers and exam guidance

provided by the instructors.

THE HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 4 Educational Technology Centre "Most students only see grades as incentive/rewards to learning." Over 65% of student-respondents tried the on-line quizzes and found them useful. However since the

course grade did not depend upon the on-line quizzes, students tended to use them only when they had

time (a reward issue). It seemed that few students would consider learning itself or mastery of knowledge

as a reward whereas majority would see grades as reward. Students also suggested to assign some graded

coursework based on the information gathered from their exploration of some suggested hyper-links.

Web-based course cannot save paper Another interesting finding is that students always print the course materials from the Web. Until there

is a change in students{????}studying habits, putting course materials on the Web probably will not save paper.

Epilogue by the Editor Tak S. Ha and his colleagues in the Instructional Development Unit (IDU) have examined more than 30

web tools available in the market that can be adopted by instructors to develop their web-based courses.

Findings would be available soon to provide some guidelines in adoption of a particular web tool and its

possible effect in enriching/enhancing the teaching-learning process. Teaching-Learning Tips is an ETC publication which aims to provide quick and practical ideas for

lecturers and teaching assistants to enhance teaching effectiveness. It will be published four times

annually. Contributions of ideas and suggestions of topics are heartily welcomed. Please contact

Winnie Wong, editor at ext. 6809 or email 涃twinnie{????}