WEB PLAYS DIFFERENT ROLES
Three M.I.T. Courses: Teaching Assistant Reveals All
by Stephen A. Gilbert
Jacksonville, April 17 — As the former teaching assistant in the three M.I.T. undergraduate
courses described below, I analyze our efforts to incorporate the web into the classes. Page 2
notes the different roles that the web can play in a course, and page 3 describes some lessons
we learned from the experience.
Story: Representation & Process
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Professors Ken Haase and Glorianna Davenport, MIT Media Lab
Students analyzed narrative structure in different media, e.g. the web, film, TV, and
images, and learned the basics of creating with each medium.
16 students
project-based assignments, 2 lectures per week and weekly recitation
students designed web pages as parts of projects
web used largely as platform for student projects/portfolios
web also used for administrative purposes
Tools for Thought
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Professors Mitch Resnick, Justine Cassell, and Matt Brand, MIT Media Lab
Students learned to appreciate the assumptions and knowledge that are built into designed
objects, e.g. what did the designer of a given tool assume that you have to know?
14 students
project-based, emphasis on group work, 2 lectures per week
students kept design-journals in web form, submitted papers on web
papers were graded and comments were given in web pages
web used also for administrative purposes
Introduction to Psychology
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Professor Steve Pinker, Dept. of Brain & Cognitive Sciences
Students received an introductory survey of research psychology and cognitive science.
300 students, traditional lectures, papers, & exams
web used mainly for administrative purposes
mailing lists used for sections
FCCJ Conference on Teaching & Learning, 1997
Handout for Panelist Stephen A. Gilbert, p. 1
Different Roles the Web Can Play
Administrative
A web page is a great place for administrative information such as the class syllabus,
assignments, downloadable class handouts, and notices about upcoming classes. In Tools for
Thoughtwe had a "What's New" link on the class homepage. We updated it weekly to note
the current syllabus information and describing upcoming assignments.
Class Reference Collection
This role arises when students place much of their work online. The class web site becomes a
source of writings that can be referenced in synthesis papers. The “Associative Trail”
assignment in Tools for Thought
, for example, required students to choose a theme from the
course and analyze its treatment in other students’ writings.
Podium
In this role, the web offers content just as a lecturing teacher would, and students must use the
web to learn this content. For example, we offered some class readings online only. We also
provided an online HTML tutorial. The web is still lacking as a medium for this role,
however; online video is too computationally difficult, and few users have monitors with
enough resolution to make on-screen reading a pleasure.
Poster
This role is analogous to the role that a poster of the solar system plays in a science classroom.
Although it contains some information that students must learn, much of the poster’s role is to
pique students’ curiosity and garner enthusiasm for a topic. The web is ideal for this role,
since one can easily provide a variety of relevant “cool links”. The Intro Psychhomepage
offered several such links, e.g. one to a web site of classic psychology demonstrations.
Report
This role includes the various presentations that students make, such as homework, term
papers, or spoken project reports. Like the Podium information, these can be put on the web
with varying degrees of ease. Note that on the web, however, all presentations can be
examined by all the class participants for the long-term, allowing students to develop online
portfolios, as was done in Story.
Showcase Exhibit
This form of presentation often can be seen on the walls of a classroom when parents visit.
Teachers and students may both participate in displaying examples of past work in a context
that can be understood by outsiders. A similar process takes place if a teacher creates any sort
of archive of the class, either for his or her own future reference, or for the use of future
teachers. The web provided a good platform in Tools for Thoughtfor completing an “online
museum exhibit,” part of the students’ final projects.
Teacher Critiques
This web role is comparable to a teacher’s writing comments in the margin of a student
paper. When students’ papers are online, as in Tools for Thought
, the teachers could write
their own commentary web pages. They would sum up themes of the course and link
directly to relevant examples in the students’ writing, e.g. “John’s third point was particularly
intriguing” (where the underlined text was a link to the intriguing text).
FCCJ Conference on Teaching & Learning, 1997
Handout for Panelist Stephen A. Gilbert, p. 2
Lessons Learned
about using the web in a college course
Faculty need technical awareness
When students are producing web pages (or using any sort of technology with a significant
learning curve), it’s important that the faculty understand the amount of technical work the
students put into their online projects. Only then can students be fairly evaluated in terms of
the both their content and their technological savvy.
Students must be coaxed
Despite general web hype, students will usually only use the web if they have to. Even when
other students’ work is online, few students will read it thoroughly unless it is assigned. They
typically have too much else to do in school.
The cutting-edge motivates
In the courses that involved creating web pages, students were most excited when they were
taught to do something “cutting-edge.” During Story (Fall 1994), the web was just catching
on, and any web page was a cool web page. During the next semester, however, in Tools for
Thought, Netscape arrived on the scene and the idea of a simple homepage became boring.
Wild background images and unusual text formats became the exciting goals.
Make sure the web is necessary, and make it easy
Although students were motivated to spend time on web pages a creative assignment, they
protested using HTML to do what a word processor could do more easily off-line, e.g. on
their online reports. This drudgery could have been significantly reduced if web authoring
software such as PageMill or FrontPage had existed. Students were ambivalent about
whether the advantages of having their reports online (e.g. allowing teachers to critiques
online, shared class knowledge, etc.) outweighed the hassle of HTML formatting.
Anticipate the workload for the teacher
Maintaining a class web site in which students create their own pages requires a surprisingly
significant amount of work. We had to administer accounts, set up standards for the site, and
explain various details about the web server to the students so that they can use its latest
features. Even if the TA is the only editor of the site, e.g. with Intro Psych, in which we only
provided administrative information, it is still a sizable amount of work that should not be
underestimated in planning a course. This burden will decrease, however, as more schools
or departments provide a standard web server infrastructure for its students and teachers.
Students prefer human interaction to online community
We made various attempts to foster “online communities” by offering a USENET style
discussion interface within the web site (Tools for Thought
) and by maintaining class email
lists (especially in Intro Psych). Nevertheless, the discussion interface was rarely used and the
email lists served mainly as a medium for administrative announcements. We concluded that
because many students saw each other routinely in class, the online media were not
appealing.
Collaboration shortens technical learning curve
When students could work on their project-based assignments in the same physical space,
they often learned a significant amount from each other and enjoyed the experience much
more than otherwise. Certain assignments in Story, for example, required students to use
computers that sat in different locations around the building. Students reported frustration at
the isolation in comparison to working in a computer cluster.
FCCJ Conference on Teaching & Learning, 1997
Handout for Panelist Stephen A. Gilbert, p. 3
For More Information
The web site for Tools for Thoughtmay be still available at
http://mas123.www.media.mit.edu/courses/mas123. It is no longer maintained, however.
The web site for Introduction to Psychology
can be found at
http://www-bcs.mit.edu/courses/900.
For more information about these issues, see the paper from ED-MEDIA 96, at
http://www-bcs.mit.edu/~stephen/em96. It covers some of this material in more depth.
For more information about the Eighth National Conference on College Teaching and
Learning, see http://www.fccj.cc.fl.us/~conf/final.html.
To contact the author:
Stephen A. Gilbert, Ph.D.
MIT, E10-120
Cambridge, MA 02139
stephen@psyche.mit.edu
617 253-8337
617 253-8335 (fax)
http://www-bcs.mit.edu/people/stephen
FCCJ Conference on Teaching & Learning, 1997
Handout for Panelist Stephen A. Gilbert, p. 4