JTAP
JISC Technology
Applications
JISC Technology
Applications
Programme
P
On-Line Teaching: Tools and
Projects
Stuart Lee
Paul Groves
Chris Stephens
Susan Armitage
Oxford University
Report: 28
JISC Technology
Applications Programme
Joint Information Systems Committee
May 1999
On-Line Teaching: Tools and
Projects
Stuart Lee
Paul Groves
Chris Stephens
Susan Armitage
Oxford University
The JISC Technology Applications Programme is an initiative of the Joint
Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Councils.
For more information contact:
Tom Franklin
JTAP Programme Manager
Computer Building
University of Manchester
Manchester
M13 9PL
email: t.franklin@manchester.ac.uk
URL: http://www.jtap.ac.uk/
Contents
FOREWORD ............................................................................................................................. 1
BACKGROUND ISSUES .......................................................................................................... 3
A. The Dearing Report and After ................................................................................................................................. 3
B. The Initial Backlash.................................................................................................................................................. 7
C. Cometh the Internet, Cometh the Solution? .......................................................................................................... 9
D. Why Do Teachers Use the Internet?..................................................................................................................... 11
E. Is the Internet Effective?........................................................................................................................................ 12
F. Resource-Based Learning (RBL) .......................................................................................................................... 13
G. What Should One Use? ......................................................................................................................................... 14
H. Is It Easy To Be Successful?................................................................................................................................. 14
EMAIL LISTS - VIRTUAL LITE............................................................................................... 17
A. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 17
B. Using Mailing Lists: Some Case Studies ............................................................................................................. 17
C. Creating A List........................................................................................................................................................ 22
D. Tips for a Successful List...................................................................................................................................... 22
COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION (CMC) ............................................................ 24
A. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 24
B. Potentials ................................................................................................................................................................ 24
C. Limitations .............................................................................................................................................................. 25
D. Models of Use ......................................................................................................................................................... 26
E. Examples of use ..................................................................................................................................................... 28
F. Critical Success Factors ........................................................................................................................................ 32
G. Tutor and Learner Roles........................................................................................................................................ 34
H. Computer Managed Learning Environments ...................................................................................................... 35
I. CMC Links ................................................................................................................................................................ 36
THE WORLD-WIDE WEB: ITS USES AS A TEACHING TOOL ........................................... 38
A. Why Use the Web? ................................................................................................................................................. 38
B. Resource-Based Learning..................................................................................................................................... 38
C. Navigating the Web ................................................................................................................................................ 41
D. Some Ideas for Web Pages ................................................................................................................................... 42
E. Creating Web Pages............................................................................................................................................... 43
F. Further Reading and Sites of Interest: ................................................................................................................. 46
MUDS, MOOS, WOOS AND IRC............................................................................................ 48
A. What Are These 'TLAs'? ........................................................................................................................................ 48
B. What Is A MUD/MOO? ............................................................................................................................................ 48
C. Basic MUD/MOO Concepts.................................................................................................................................... 48
D. The Textual Model .................................................................................................................................................. 49
E. Technology Requirements .................................................................................................................................... 52
F. WOOs'Webbified' MOO Environments ................................................................................................................. 53
G. Communication, Social Interaction and Sense of Space ................................................................................... 56
H. Building Objects..................................................................................................................................................... 57
I. Diversity University: An Example Educational MOO ........................................................................................... 58
J. Some Comments About Teaching in MOOs ........................................................................................................ 59
K. MOO & MUD Client Software................................................................................................................................. 60
L. Setting-up Your Own Educational MOO\WOO ..................................................................................................... 61
M. Quick Set-up Guide................................................................................................................................................ 62
N. Useful Documents.................................................................................................................................................. 66
O. Useful Mailing Lists ............................................................................................................................................... 67
P. MOO Server Software............................................................................................................................................. 68
Q. Some Educational-Related MOOs ........................................................................................................................ 69
INSTRUCTIONAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (IMS)............................................................ 73
A. What is IMS? .......................................................................................................................................................... 73
B. The Potential of IMS ............................................................................................................................................... 74
C. IMS: Some Reservations ....................................................................................................................................... 74
COMPUTER-AIDED ASSESSMENT (CAA) .......................................................................... 76
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................................................................................... 78
Foreword
'Technology has revolutionised the way we work and is now set to transform education.
Children cannot be effective in tomorrow's world if they are trained in yesterday's skills.
Nor should teachers be denied the tools that other professionals take for granted.
The Grid [National Grid for Learning] will be a way of finding and using on-line learning
and teaching materials. It will help users to find their way around the wealth of content
available over the Internet.
By 2002, all schools will be connected to the superhighway, free of charge; half a million
teachers will be trained; and our children will be leaving school IT-literate, having been
able to exploit the best that technology can offer. '
Tony Blair, 7 October 1997
'Tools as powerful as networked computers are going to transform human
communication. This transformation will bring with it both loss and gain. Every
revolution in communication has both added to the power and range of what is
communicated, and taken away some of the intimacy.
Higher Education is challenged as it has not been in a generation to prove its value and
cost-effectiveness. It's a blessedly lucky time for this new toolbox to show up, and I
would feel like an idiot if I didn't do everything in my power to use it to its best
advantage'.
Prof. J. J. O'Donnell (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu:80/jod/)
The aim of this report is simple. In an age where the use of Computers and Information Technology is
almost regarded as essential to every daily activity, academics are coming under increasing pressure
(e.g. the opening declaration from the Prime Minister) to adapt their teaching to accommodate the new
technologies. This report focuses on a single, but arguably the most important area - the Internet. We
will look at the various ways the Internet is being used for teaching, and at projects under development
at the moment.
1
The report is an update of the previous title Existing Tools and Projects for On-Line Teaching (eds.
Groves, Lee, and Stephens, 1997) and supersedes that publication. Through a generous grant by the
JISC Technologies Applications Programme we have been able to extend the scope of the report to
look at issues arising post-Dearing, computer-based communication, and IMS (to name but a few). All
references and links have been checked and updated in order to be accurate at the date of publication.
In addition, this report should be read in conjunction with On-Line Tutorials and Digital Archives (Lee
and Groves, 1998; http://www.jtap.ac.uk/reports/index.htm) which points to other practical issues. We
hope this guide proves to be a useful introduction to academics who wish to use the Internet for their
teaching. However, the editors would be very interested to hear from colleagues in other subjects who
might wish to contribute similar examples from the Sciences and Social Sciences.
Stuart Lee
Project Manager, JTAP ‘Virtual Seminars for Teaching Literature’ (http://info.ox.ac.uk/jtap/)
Dr Stuart Lee is Head of the Centre for Humanities Computing, part of the Humanities Computing Unit
at Oxford University Computing Services (Oxford University Computing Services, or OUCS). He was
the Manager for the J-TAP project 'Virtual Seminars for Teaching Literature'. Contact:
Stuart.Lee@oucs.ox.ac.uk; see: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~stuart/.
Mr Paul Groves is working on the Humanities Computing Development Team (based at OUCS). He
was the Project Officer for 'Virtual Seminars for Teaching Literature'. Contact:
Paul.Groves@oucs.ox.ac.uk; see: http://info.ox.ac.uk/oucs/humanities/staff/paul.html.
Mr Chris Stephens is Humanities IT Support Officer at the Centre for Humanities Computing (OUCS).
Contact: Christopher.Stephens@oucs.ox.ac.uk; see:
http://info.ox.ac.uk/oucs/humanities/staff/chris.html.
Ms Susan Armitage (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/cpasea) works for Information Systems
Services(http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/ISS/) at Lancaster University (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/).
2
Background Issues
A. The Dearing Report and After
The most important report to focus on Higher Education for some years, commonly known as the
Dearing Report, was published in 1997. More correctly entitled the ‘National Committee of Inquiry
into Higher Education’ by Sir Ron Dearing (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ncihe/) it formulated 93
recommendations, of which 15 related to 'Computers and Information Technology' (or C&IT). The
official Government response to Dearing appeared initially in the form of 'Higher Education for the
21st Century' (July, 1997; http://www.open.gov.uk/dfee/highed/index.htm) and then, in a second
revised version which included full responses after a consultation period (February, 1998;
http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/dearing/index.htm). In the original 1997 reply David Blunkett, the
Secretary of State for Education and Employment, remarked in his foreword:
'Our people hold the key to our future. We have already set out an ambitious
agenda to raise standards in our schools.
But that is not enough. We need to ensure that everybodywhatever their age or
backgroundhas access to lifelong learning, with education and training throughout
their life. '
This was the start of a series of initiatives to promote lifelong learning, and resource based learning. As
Jackson and Parker note:
'Following the publication of the Dearing Report (1997) it is clear that the
continued expansion of student numbers and the increase in part-time students and
students from non-traditional backgrounds is likely to lead to further development
of student-centred and resource based learning. i '
In general the suggestions put forward by the Dearing Report were accepted (although there was often
no indication as to any additional funding which might be found to help implement them). With
relation to this report the most pertinent recommendations were as follows:
That…
[Recommendation 9] students and staff should receive adequate training in C⁢
3
[Recommendation 14] an Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education should be
established (this will help accredit university teachers but will also tackle the use of IT in
teaching);
[Recommendation 15] a system of kite-marking computer-based teaching material should be
brought in;
[Recommendation 42] senior managers in HE should have a deep understanding of C⁢
[Recommendation 49] all students will have access to a networked PC by 2000/2001 and all
students will own their own PC by 2005/2006.
Dearing, in many ways, heralded the start of a quite breathtaking series of reports and initiatives
looking at education (at all levels), which embraced in various ways the possibilities of C&IT. The
Government set up the National Advisory Group for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning,
which produced its first report in November 1997 entitled 'Learning for the 21st Century' (commonly
known as the Fryer report, after the chair of NAGCELL Professor R. H. Fryer;
http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/nagcell/index.htm). Following this there was 'The Learning Age' a
Green paper on Lifelong learning published on the 25 February 1998
(http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/greenpaper/index.htm) which in its summary noted the possibilities
of:
'….new opportunities for people in further and higher education. They will help
people to gain technician and higher level skills, including postgraduate
development…one of the best ways to overcome some of the barriers to learning
will be to use new broadcasting and other technologies. We expect their role in
learning more generally to increase significantly'
UK Department for Education & Employment’s Lifelong Learning Page
(http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/, Chapter 1, Section 5).
Early 1998 also saw Baroness Kennedy’s report 'Learning Works' on Further Education for England
(summary at http://www.niace.org.uk/Organisation/advocacy/kennedybriefing.htm) and the
Government's reply (http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/kennedy/index.htm) was published in February
1998. This continued the process of assembling the jigsaw of what can only be described as one of the
most concerted attempts to investigate education on all levels since the end of the Second World War ii .
As already noted at the beginning of this report the National Grid for Learning
(http://www.open.gov.uk/dfee/grid/) seems to be the focal point for many sweeping observations. It
aimed to:
4
‘focus initially on teacher development and the school sector and extend to lifelong
learning...National and local museums, galleries and other content providers will
have an important part to play. We intend that libraries with their vast stores of
information and accessibility to the public, will be an integral part of the Grid. In
this way the Grid will make available to all learners the riches of the world's
intellectual, cultural and scientific heritage.’
It went on to state that:
'Learning through ICT not only offers the chance to become proficient in the skills
needed in the world of work. It enhances and enriches the curriculum, raising
standards and making learning more attractive. The best educational software is
not an alternative to books or class teachers - it is a new chapter of opportunity.
The Grid will mean that:
* teachers will be able to share and discuss best practice with each other and
with experts while remaining in their schools;
* materials and advice will be available on-line - when learners want them - to
help develop their literacy and numeracy skills, including in their own time;
* children in isolated schools will be able to link up with their counterparts'
curriculum, to help them to work together and gain the stimulus they need;
* language learners will be able to communicate directly with speakers of the
target language;
* learners at home or in libraries will be able to access a wider range of quality
learning programmes, materials and software.
All learning on the Grid will be able to be tailored to the interests and abilities of
the individual. '
(See the National Grid For Learning Page at
http://www.open.gov.uk/dfee/grid/offer.htm)
Once again one can see the focus on lifelong and resource based learning. To summarise, educational
opportunities need to expand to bring in a greater number of members from all areas of society. This in
turn means a ‘release’ of educational resources to a wider market. Technology, it is stated, can assist in
5
this by creating a digital infrastructure, e.g. network or grid, to increase access. In particular, with
lifelong learning, the advantages are spelt out as opening up:
'new horizons for people at home whose curiosity had been aroused by a television
programme and could instantly follow up aspects of it through interactive services.'
Connecting the Learning Society (http://www.open.gov.uk/dfee/
grid/content.htm) iii .
The effects of these initiatives are already being felt by academics around the country as pressure
mounts to become part of this digital world. A small but illuminating example can be found in the
CVCP’s responses to the moves for accreditation of lecturers (as proposed by Dearing with the ILTH).
2.6 Candidates for Associate membership of the Institute might be expected to
demonstrate how, in their work as a teacher, they have a knowledge
and understanding of:
the subject material which they will teach to their student groups
how their subject is learned and taught
how students learn, both generically and in their subject
teaching approaches
the use of learning technologies
techniques for monitoring and evaluating their own teaching
their institution's mission and how it affects teaching and learning strategies
implications of quality assurance for practice
regulations, policies and practices affecting their own work
(iii) They might be expected to maintain a current understanding of teaching styles
for individuals and groups.
This might include methods which, for example:
support a deep approach to learning;
encourage the development of knowledge and skill in adult learners;
promote active learning;
develop students as life-long learners;
encourage the development of appropriate relationships between theory and
practice, such as problem-based and work-based learning;
make appropriate use of learning technologies
6
Booth, C., Accreditation and Teaching in Higher Education: Final Report to The
Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United
Kingdom (May 1998, http://www.cvcp.ac.uk/boothfin.html)
That the major funding bodies see the new technologies as both exciting and possibly the only way to
solve some of the problems besetting Higher Education at the moment is without doubt. In its report
Exploiting Information Systems in Higher Education (1995) (http://info.mcc.ac.uk/NTI/JISC/JISCIssues.html) JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) saw its key objectives as including 'the
educational environment and quality of teaching and learning', identifying the need for developing 'a
plurality of network provision to meet the diverse needs of the community' and 'access to a
comprehensive and co-ordinated collection of electronic information'. At the same time 'an expanded
'reach' of networking is vital if teaching material and on-line tutorials are to be delivered to students'
(M. Read 'The JISC Five-Year Strategy: 1996-2001', TLTP Newsletter 8 (Autumn, 1996) p.20).
To help in this JISC have established such support groups as JISC-ASSIST which aims to: ‘close the
gap between the availability of Communications and Information Technology products and services
and the Higher Education’. JISC has funded numerous projects through its Technologies Applications
Programme (JTAP), to implement C&IT in various ways, and is focusing also on increasing the access
to digital resources through the Distributed National Electronic Resource (administered by JISC’s
Committee on Electronic Information).
Yet caution is called for. Change, invariably, implies new costs (financial and time), and at the moment
this is something most higher education institutions can ill afford to take on board. As Diana Laurillard
suggests:
'We know we have to expand IT. We know that costs cannot continue to rise with
increasing student numbers. We know we have to use IT and that IT is very costly.
How do we square that circle?' 'Recommendations of the National Committee'
Laurillard, D. in IT & Dearing: The Implications for HE (ed.) H. Beetham (CTISS,
1997), pp. 6-16.
B. The Initial Backlash
In 1994 at the opening of the publication Higher Education 1998 Transformed by Learning Technology
(eds.) Darby and Kjöllerström, the two editors of the report, presented a fictional account of how they
perceived a 'typical' student might study in 4 years time (from then). The fictional student, Carlos,
emerges from his sleep, eats breakfast, and accesses a computer:
7
'His workstation, which he uses for most of his studying, connects to the academic
network using the facilities of his cable TV company'. Carlos is studying Company
Ethics, and is watching some streamed video when at one point he 'has difficulty
with the presentation and repeats a section of it. It is still not clear so he highlights
the notes that he is not following and selects Explain from Guidance menu. Carlos
is asked a few questions and is then offered a choice of three items of background
material. 5 minutes with the first of them is enough to explain the concept he had
not previously encountered and he is able to proceed with the unit' (Darby and
Kjöllerström , p.5).
We are told how Carlos is working full-time for two thirds of the week, his degree is
entirely modularised, and most of his studies are with the fictional 'Open Network
University'. The authors explain that:
'Carlos is enthusiastic about his mode of studying. He finds it hard to conceive
how his parents sat through several hours of lectures a day when they were
students. He has the freedom to study what he wants, when he wants, where he
wants. He also enjoys excellent interaction with his tutors and fellow students
even though he only knows most of them through electronic mail and
teleconferencing links.' (Darby and Kjöllerström, p.6)
To many academics (and one would suggest students also), this is a dystopian rather than utopian
vision. The reduction of staff/student contact to the point of almost non-existence seems far from
attractive to either lecturers or students. The former fear that the skills they have as educators are being
overlooked and that the students may drift harmfully without any guidance and tuition. The latter, the
students, note the financial investment they are being asked to outlay on their education, and do not
equate less contact time with staff as value for money.
In the US recently, the American Association of University Professors circulated a letter after concerns
were raised concerning a US Government white paper which stated that instructional software could
easily substitute for campus-based instruction. It calculated that only 25 on-line courses were needed to
serve about 80% of undergraduate courses. The American Professors, happy to embrace the Internet
and on-line teaching, and recognising that technology has helped 'streamline academic life', were still
concerned enough to state 'high quality teaching, whether done on a distance-learning basis or on a
campus basis, requires contact' (Prof. L. Goodlad) and that 'when they basically want to replace people
with computers, that's where we draw the line...we objected to the extreme views, like beaming an
image of professors to students and thinking that would be a satisfactory way of replacing a face-toface education' (Prof. G. Diment iv ).
8
This report does not celebrate the scenario painted by Darby and Kjöllerström, and perhaps reflects
more the stance adopted by the US lecturers. We intend to show the potential of using the Internet for
teaching, illustrated by good case studies, but at the same time observing the three rules of using
technology for teaching:
1) Technology should not be used to replace teachers or teaching. It should be
used as a supplement to teaching, or as a replacement for the absence of teaching,
i.e. by making material available if a course is not currently being run, or to
remote/life-long learners who do not enjoy the privileges of being linked to an
Education institution.
2) In a similar vein to the theory of Second Best in Welfare Economics, technology
should only be used where a noticeable gain to the teaching quality is evident.
Bearing in mind the considerable costs (both in terms of finances and time) it is not
enough to simply employ IT on the basis that it will not do any harm.
3) Technology should be applied in appropriate stages. It is not essential to use
every bit of new technology at your disposable. Sometimes the most noticeable
effects can be derived from very easy-to-use methods, most noticeably in the area
of computer-mediated communication.'
(Lee, S. D., Forging Links: The Virtual Seminars for Teaching Literature Project
(http://www.info.ox.ac.uk/jtap/reports/eurolit.html))
This report seeks to simply provide basic knowledge and training in the light of the external pressures
(noted above) for academics, librarians, etc., to embrace the growing area of C&IT. It is not within the
scope of this report to attempt to influence policy on a national level. Instead this document should be
regarded as a guide or handbook for academics that wish to bring in C&IT into their teaching.
C. Cometh the Internet, Cometh the Solution?
The Internet is seemingly all pervasive, and has reached a level of acceptancy in the public’s eyes that
means it is almost impossible to escape. Nearly every kind of institution or company has a web site of
some form or another, and a growing amount of academic business is performed through electronic
mail. One can not even go to the cinema nowadays without the trailer for future releases advertising a
URL more prominently than some of the actors. Immersed in this environment also, are of course the
students. Since the compulsory introduction of IT into the national curriculum, they will have been
exposed to computers in some form or another by the time they reach higher education. Indeed,
students coming to University in 1999 could well have been as young as 12 or 13 when they first began
9
to access the Web via the popular (but now almost forgotten) browser Mosaic issued by the National
Centre for Super-Computing Applications (NCSA). Faced with pressures from without (i.e. via
Government initiatives, TQAs) and from within (i.e. Vice Chancellors at one extreme and students at
the other) the challenge noted by Professor O’Donnell at the opening of this report becomes all the
more important. Partly this comes from social pressures of wishing to appear up-to-date, and partly it
comes from students themselves who want to feel that they are getting value for money and access to
the latest resources.
After the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957, the US established the Advanced Research
Projects Agency to investigate ways of increasing the military's use of digital communications .
Although this was a Defence department agency it soon saw the need to bring in the major US research
Universities. In 1969, a four node network (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara, and
the University of Utah) was established running under a 50kbps circuit. In Gromov v there are details of
one of the first Internet communications. Maintaining communication via the telephone the message
LOGWIN was typed in on one terminal in the hope that it would appear on the screen at the remote
node. The following conversation is recorded:
'We typed an L into our computer and we asked on the phone 'Do you see the L?'
'Yes we see the L' came the response'
'We typed the O' and we asked 'Do you see the O?'
'Yes we see the O'
'Then we typed a G, and the system crashed.'
The network soon expanded to 15 nodes and in 1973 there was the first cross-Atlantic links to England
and Norway. 1981 saw the advent of BITNET ('Because It's Time Network') organised by the City
University of New York with an initial connection to Yale. This network provided accessible electronic
mail and listserv servers. In 1984 JANET (the UK's Joint Academic Network) was established, linking
Higher Education institutions throughout the country, and allowing access to the global Internet.
1992 saw the beginning of the World-Wide Web (although in truth it had been developed at CERN
some years previous, after an initial proposal by Tim Berners-Lee ). The success of the Web was
assured with NCSA's release of its free browser Mosaic in 1993, allowing a user-friendly way of
graphically accessing the many Internet resources that were available. To give some idea of the growth
of the Internet the 4-node network of 1967 grew to 28,174 nodes in 1987 and reached 3,212,000 in
1994. It is now measured at approaching 600 million.
What exactly is the Internet? The Internet stands for 'internetworking', i.e. when two or more computers
are internetworked allowing for communication between them. It is now taken to relate to the global
network that allows you to send a message to a machine elsewhere on the network, in this case a global
one, or to look at information on a remote machine. There is no Internet as such. It is made up a series
10
of Wider Area Networks (e.g. JANET) talking to each other, which in turn are made up of Local Area
Networks (e.g. the network for an individual University), i.e. networks within networks.
D. Why Do Teachers Use the Internet?
The simple and obvious answer to this question is because they are being told to. However, the need to
keep in step with the funding agencies is not reason enough to adopt such a dramatic shift in
pedagogical methods. The Internet provides academics with an opportunity to make their teaching
better, to allow them to teach in different ways to the standard one-to-many lecture, and to reach more
students. Simply put, it allows for the 'maximisation' of learning, which Somekh vi described as:
'There are...two ways in which 'maximization' [of learning] can be measured: either in terms
of the increase in the amount of learning, or in terms of the increase in the quality of learning.'
In other words the Internet allows for a more efficient and interesting way of 'imparting knowledge'
(which is Laurillard's basic definition of teaching as listed in her seminal work from 1993 vii ).
To add to this, the Internet (and most notably the Web) can display the following advantages. In most
cases it is:
* cheap
* easy to use (as both an author and a learner)
* fashionable
* attractive to students
* cross-platform
* suitable for accessing resources of various media
* ideally suited for remote learning, i.e. 'remote' from the classroom either by
location or time
* interlinking providing access to resources held in other subject areas and
institutions
* suited to increasing collaborative work and cross-institution communication
Bill Tait (1997 viii ) notes that traditionally the Internet seemingly provides two options. The first 'is a
form of distance learning in which a tutor places courseware on a Web server where it can be accessed
by remote students' (p.3) identifying the disadvantages of such a system as being expensive if one is to
insure 'enough software to meet the demands of a complete syllabus'. Alternatively there is the
'independent study in which learners search the Internet for materials that are relevant to their interests'.
Again this has disadvantages most notably because the suitability of the material students access cannot
be guaranteed. His solution, which is in keeping with this report, is a combination of the two modes
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into Internet Based Learning (IBL) 'in which a learner is provided with access to courseware stored on
the campus or the Internet from either location'. A successful teaching model could involve then
'orientating, motivating, presenting, clarifying, elaborating, consolidating, and confirming' (p.4). This
can be married with the pedagogical aims of such Internet-based projects as JTAP's COSE which
outlines:
A largely constructivist view is taken in that learning is seen as an active process in
which learners construct new ideas or concepts based on their existing knowledge
and skills, but it is considered that for true learner autonomy to be achieved a
structured development of essential learning skills is also required. These learning
skills include:
procedural skills
knowledge/memory skills
mental agility
problem solving skills
time management
learning management
organisational skills
(Creation of Study Environments, http://www.staffs.ac.uk/COSE/)
E. Is the Internet Effective?
Oliver and Conole (1998) state that:
'Even a superficial review of methodologies shows that no one approach to
evaluating the use of C&IT is best suited to all the needs or situations which arise.
Instead, each has its own strengths and weaknesses, and has been designed with
specific evaluation needs in mind.' (p.4 ix )
Diana Laurillard writing earlier on the evaluation of the new technologies for educational purposes
implies that the Internet does work as an effective teaching tool but only if certain rules have been
observed. As well as obeying the standard guidelines for computer-aided learning (e.g. a good user
interface, effective navigational tools, etc.) it is imperative that academics consider the following:
* is it clear to the students why they are using this new way of learning?
* is any prerequisite knowledge needed to use the material (e.g. training on e-mail,/web
browsers)?
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* is there sufficient support (e.g. hardware and software; training; access to experts)?
* has the assessment for the course been redesigned in the light of the introduction of
Internet-based materials?
* have the students been made fully aware of the importance of the course: e.g. is it
essential, important, or simply optional?
Laurillard produced four now much-used models for learning looking at the teacher/student roles. She
has argued that the traditional model of teaching, 'learning through acquisition', is suited to the lecture,
video, broadcast, and publication of lecture notes on the Web. The second model, 'learning through
discussion', is usually face to face but computer-mediated communication can replicate this to a certain
degree. The third, 'learning through discovery', is via the lab, field trip, or computer-aided simulation.
However the fourth model, 'learning through guided discovery' can bring all of the benefits of
computer-aided teaching to the fore x . It is arguable that this model, whereby the teacher acts as the
guide, is hardly revolutionary and has been employed by good pedagogues for centuries, but
nevertheless it ties in with the concept of resource-based learning (see below).
One thing which is clear from observation of the ways students learn is that they strongly object to any
idea that they are being used as guinea-pigs to simply test teaching methods for future generations. If
they can see no benefit for themselves they will react unfavourably. To avoid this it is imperative that
the students are motivated. A lot of the knowledge conveyed in classes is only of use to them for future
activities, and therefore one can not rely on simple 'natural curiosity' to move them along. Motivation
(or 'wanting' as it is sometime described) can be achieved when using computer-aided learning by
impressing on the students how the course is increasing their learning, what it is adding to their
intellectual armoury, and how the course ties together. Furthermore it can be achieved by making the
course enjoyable. Multimedia elements can be included in Web pages, discussions can be opened up by
the Internet to bring in global audiences ( thus allowing students to share experiences with colleagues
elsewhere), and so on.
F. Resource-Based Learning (RBL)
Along with life-long learning, one of the most over-used expressions at the moment is that of
‘resource-based learning’ or ‘RBL’. Simply put, this focuses on the concept of giving the learner
greater access to resources (and thus more control of their learning experience). Because of the
multimedia and easy to access advantages of the Internet, the use of on-line teaching (especially with
the widespread popularity of the Web) has led many to advocate the policy of marrying the two
together. According to Gibbs et al (1994 xi ) RBL can be described as:
Enhancements to conventional courses
Lecture substitutes
13
Distance learning on campus; self-contained 'tutorials in print'
Self-pacing; alternatives to the lecture programme which allow the student to
progress at his or her own pace
Substitutes for specific learning activities e.g. computer simulations of experiments
Support for learning activities, e.g. study guides, field guides etc.
Hybrids. i.e. systems which emphasise class contact and learning resources in
varying degrees
In a sense, this report will look at nearly all of these as possible candidates for Internet delivery.
G. What Should One Use?
There is no simple answer to this, as it depends entirely on the teaching goals of the course, and the
technological capability of the host institution. As a guide, however, it can be looked on as a straight
forward trade-off: increased virtuality (i.e. more technically advanced uses of the Internet) means more
work required for setting up the course and insuring its success. For example, it is very easy and quick
to set up an e-mail list, but it is far more complicated to run a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon).
In summary, one could categorise as follows:
Virtual lite: Use of e-mail and discussion lists
Virtual medium: Discussion lists and on-line lecture notes delivered via the Web, and the use of
Computer-mediated Communication (CMC)
Virtual heavy: Above plus interactive Web tutorials designed specifically for the course and student
interaction (e.g. production of their own Web pages)
Virtual expert: Above plus virtual environments (e.g. MUDs and MOOs)
H. Is It Easy To Be Successful?
Again, the success of the course rests on several factors: motivation of the students; the use of scholarly
sound material; support, and so on. Motivation has already been discussed, and it is impossible to
advise on which material one should use as this requires subject-specific expertise (although good
advice on this can be found at the various Computers in Teaching Initiative [CTI] Centres). However,
when it comes to support, a category that is often disastrously overlooked, success rests on all of the
following:
* academic support
* administrative support
* technical support
14
* training
* equipment provision
* facilities provision (e.g. space)
* adequate delivery
* maintenance/security
Individual institutions will supply some of this, but in most cases the academic attempting to create online material has to rely on support from outside. Such bodies as the NetSkills project
(http://www.netskills.ac.uk/), with their on-line courses and regional workshops attempt to fulfil this
need but obviously they can only be of partial success (see also NetLearn directory of courses to teach
Internet skills at http://www.rgu.ac.uk/~sim/research/netlearn/callist.htm). In cases where any of the
above categories have been overlooked the success of the course could be greatly diminished.
Stuart Lee
i
Jackson, M., and Parker, S. 'Resource Based Learning and the Impact on Library and Information
Services' as part of the IMPEL2 project (http://ilm.unn.ac.uk/impel/rblrng.htm). For more information
see the excellent on-line forum at the DeLiberations Site (DeLiberations on Teaching and Learning in
Higher Education - http://www.lgu.ac.uk/deliberations/home.html). See also See Fraser, M. 'Dearing
and IT: Some Reflections' Computers & Texts 15
(http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/publish/comtxt/ct15/fraser.html).
ii
See University of Central Lancashire's list of links related to the Dearing and Kennedy reports (and
subsequent responses) at http://www.uclan.ac.uk/other/uso/plan/dearing.htm or UCISA's page at
http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/docs/ll.htm.
iii
The Arts and Humanities Data Service response to ‘Connecting the Learning Society’ is available on
the AHDS web pages at http://ahds.ac.uk/public/grid6.html.
iv
The article appeared as 'Virtual-Classes Trend Alarms Professors', Chronicle of Higher Education
(June 19, 1998).
v
Gromov, G. The Roads and Crossroads of the Internet’s History
(http://www.internetvalley.com/intval.html), see also the Internet Society’s pages
(http://www.isoc.org/).
vi
Somekh, B. ‘Designing Software to Maximise Learning’, ALT-J 4.3 (1996), pp. 4-16.
vii
Laurillard, D. Rethinking University Teaching (London, 1993).
viii
Tait, B. 'Constructive Internet Based Learning' Active Learning 7 (December, 1997) pp. 3-8.
ix
Oliver, M. and Conole, G. 'Evaluating Communication and Information Technologies: A Tookit for
Practitioners', Active Learning 8 (July, 1998), pp. 3-8. Part of a special issue on ‘C&IT: Learning
Outcomes Evaluated’. See also Oliver, M. 'A Framework for Evaluating the Use of Educational
Technology' (http://www.unl.ac.uk/latid/elt/report1.htm) part of the BP Evaluating Learning
Technologies Project.
x
See Laurillard D, (1994) ‘Multimedia and the Changing Experience of the Learner’ in Proceedings of
APITITE 94 Conference, pp. 19-24 (and a list of Laurillard’s presentations at
http://watt.open.ac.uk/OTD/diana.htm).
xi
Gibbs, G., Pollard, N., Farrell, J. Institutional Support for Resource Based Learning (Oxford Centre
15
for Staff Development, 1994). See also Jackson, M. and Parker, S. ' Resource Based Learning and the
Impact on Library and Information Services' (http://ilm.unn.ac.uk/impel/rblrng.htm).
16
Email Lists - Virtual Lite
A. Introduction
The sending and receiving of electronic mail, or e-mail, has become one of the most frequent
applications of the Internet. It has given its users a new way of communicating which partakes
somewhat of both the immediacy of a phone call and the opportunity for considered reflection possible
in a letter. E-mail makes it possible for students to stay in touch with their peers and with the teaching
staff where a loaded schedule may make this otherwise difficult. The figure of the lonely scholar, who
can become isolated through increasing specialization, or for more prosaic reasons of inadequate social
or language skills, is one to whom e-mail presents some interesting possibilities i . The next chapter will
explore the full range of computer-mediated communication tools available (CMC), but this chapter
will restrict itself to the pedagogical uses of e-mail.
B. Using Mailing Lists: Some Case Studies
Mailing lists are a form of email which allow the subscriber to communicate with all the other
subscribers in one go. Instead of posting a message to a person, a message is posted to the list address
and is distributed to all the members of the list. A couple of examples of how lists have been used in a
teaching environment can be used to demonstrate some of the issues. The two lists in question were set
up for quite different reasons and were administered in different ways. Both lists, however, show that
once any initial difficulties in using e-mail systems in general have been overcome, the list participants
can become fired with a great enthusiasm for the medium. Stokes and Stokes (1996), in their article
‘Pedagogy, Politics, Power ii ’ regard this enthusiasm as symptomatic of the way in which such means
of communication hold the potential to challenge traditional pedagogic relationships:
‘The genuinely transformative nature of cyberspace lies not with access but with the
potential for the production of knowledge and for new modes of collaboration and
communication that can subvert and invert established author-ity relations, allowing the
emergence of a democratising literacy’
The first example of this ‘democratising literacy’ is the list set up by Ruth Dickstein, a social sciences
subject librarian, and Kari Boyd McBride, a lecturer in women's studies at the university of Arizona.
Dickstein and McBride set up their list as part of a class in critical theory. The idea was to integrate the
use of the list closely with activities in the classroom and with the material covered by the set texts.
With this they not only hoped to encourage an on-going exchange between the class members, but
could steer this exchange through their own participation in the list. They would also be imparting
some of the transferable skills which their students would find useful to their future employment or
further studies. The list was a closed list, i.e. no-one from outside the class could subscribe. They
17
constrained the class to contribute to the discussion by making it a compulsory and graded part of the
programme that each student must submit at least one substantial posting to the list each week.
After some initial difficulties of a largely technical nature the list started to blossom, rapidly going well
beyond the required one contribution per week. In fact the sheer volume of traffic on the list meant that
students without easy access to their e-mail accounts felt daunted, when logging on, by the numbers of
unread messages which awaited them.
Using a list meant that, effectively, the class could continue outside of its allotted classroom hours.
‘Another student said that she liked the idea of the 'on-going' class that happened even at
weekends. While some might think that this would be oppressive, she said, it was
interesting because the listserv was an on-going conversation, not an ongoing lecture.’
(McBride and Dickstein, 1996 iii )
Exchanges on the list developed an identity for the participants which had a curious detachment from
their real persona
‘...enthusiasm about on-line conversations created some frustration about classroom
interaction. Students knew each other by name on the listserv, but had no idea who that person
was they'd had an exiting exchange with on-line the previous evening. They introduced
themselves in class ('Hi, I'm so-and-so and I wrote about such-and-such'), but once wasn't
enough-we needed to repeat the introductions many times during the semester.’
(McBride and Dickstein, 1996)
In some ways McBride and Dickstein's contributions to the list were subject to a similar effacement.
The whole class took responsibility for encouraging each other's efforts and guiding lines of thought
with suggestions taken from their individual areas of interest. The traditional authority of the lecturer
became dispersed as the class began to author it's own discourse: ‘one student said ‘We have developed
class consciousness’’. All the students felt, by the end of the semester, that they had participated in an
intense and powerful learning experience.
‘…the mechanics of internet response do not require turn taking. From the oral side, it is as if
everyone who is interested in talking can all jump in at once, but still their individual voices
can be clearly heard. From the written side, it is as if someone had started writing a piece, but,
before he/she gets too far, people are there magically in print to add to, correct, challenge, or
extend the piece.’
(Shank, 1996 iv )
18
A somewhat different example is the list set up by Stokes and Brannigan, as mentioned in the article by
Peter and William Stokes (noted above). The list grew out of an informal e-mail exchange and was set
up as a collaborative writing project. The list membership rapidly grew from he original three to some
seventeen. As in the McBride and Dickstein case, Stokes notes the democratising effect of mailing
lists:
‘Even those who might be reluctant to claim a turn to speak in an oral conversation, were
free to construct and send their messages. All of the expectations of prompt, spontaneous
response in oral conversation are transformed. The participant, as writer, has the privilege
of choosing the time, length and deliberateness...of a message.’
(Stokes and Stokes, 1996)
It was an open list and contributions were entirely voluntary. Stokes notes that, again, the nature of the
medium was effectively altering the traditional teacher-student relationship in which
‘...teachers speak and students listen, books by authors are assigned and students read.
When students do speak or write, their actions are subject to immediate evaluation for their
correctness, accuracy, cogency and thoroughness in relation to some criteria established by
the teachers.’
(Stokes and Stokes, 1996)
On the list, students became actively involved in ‘the production of knowledge’ rather than just being
its passive recipients. Dickstein and McBride note the same effect and see the email list as going
towards ‘realizing postmodern epistemologies which assume that knowledge is not static or preexistent
but, rather, is always situated, always partial, always dynamic’.
The use of an open list can have drawbacks as well as advantages. A voluntary list in a classroom
situation can lead to a less than universal uptake in the use of the list by the students who are intended
to be its primary targets. In his article ‘Enoch in Cyberspace’ James R. Davila says of the open list set
up by him for the teaching of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha that:
‘an open international discussion group is a far better introduction to cyberspace … than a
closed list restricted to the class, even though the experience can be a baptism of fire for
some of them. Each student posted a summary of his or her class essay onto the list, but
otherwise the registered students were fairly quiet.’ v
The reason for this reserve may be, as noted by Bill Downey in a message to the Deliberations email
list that:
19
‘mailing lists are not perceived as a conversational medium. You are writing for a critical
audience and cannot write as freely as you can speak. People are reticent about contributing
anything not sufficiently ‘worthy’ and fearful of having their contributions
attacked.’(Downey vi )
Following on from their initial use of the Listserv Dickstein and McBride repeated the exercise the
following year. They expanded on the original small class and tried to run similar lists for three groups
of forty to fifty students each. This brought to light another potential problem where the list owners
intend to use the list actively to guide students: ‘the volume of email quickly became overwhelming for
all involved. The librarian, who also was on two other class lists, had to sign off periodically just to
survive.’ (Dickstein and McBride, 1998 vii ) Such a volume of messages meant that, instead of the close
supervision of postings which had taken place the previous year, the two were forced to be a little more
superficial in their monitoring of the student’s mail. This led to what the authors called ‘a pedagogical
disaster’ where one student misinterpreted an assignment and, the instructor and librarian having
missed the error, led some of the other students into the same mistake:
‘Within a day, most of the other students in that section had followed the lead lemming
over the cliff into academic suicide…The day of the lemmings proved a significant lesson
about the importance of staying engaged with the list discussions. When the phenomenon
began to emerge a second time…the librarian and the instructor were prepared… [and able
to] use the student’s misunderstanding as an opportunity to restate and elaborate on the
assignment for the rest of the class.’ (Dickstein and McBride, 1998)
Stokes (1996) noted the asynchronous nature of list exchanges and highlights it as a possible problem
as multiple subjects of conversation lead to an ever more complex list structure. The benefits of a clear
subject line in postings is obvious here.
‘we were compelled to read 'fractally'. The reader and responding writer needed to
recognize the order within the seeming disorder of the temporally contiguous but noncontingent messages. Yet, the months long exchange succeeded in remaining a complexly
coherent conversation with multiple participants.’
One way of mitigating this confusion, to some extent, is the use of threading within the list. Some
systems, such as Hypermail viii , allow the messages in a list to be organized by subject line. The
hierarchical arrangement of messages into related threads makes following multiple conversations
within a list a more intuitive process.
‘…discussion lists operating under listserv or listproc software provide the capability of
accessing discussion material as selected by date, person, subject matter, or any of the
above. As a consequence, this multiform availability of information within the overall
20
multilogue form facilitates the hybridisation of information, since we are capable of
operating within a series of simultaneous and parallel sets of discussion in the typical
multilogues setting as a matter of course.’
(Shank et al, 1996)
Such threading can also be seen extensively in newsgroups, where the paradigm is more of a noticeboard where people post messages rather than an asynchronous conversation. Newsgroups work by
having you go and fetch the messages or threads you are interested in rather than sending them to you.
Many public newsgroups have an established ‘community’ of posters. Often a list of Frequently Asked
Questions, or FAQ, is maintained to discourage repeated postings of the same low level queries.
Fig 1. An Example of threading in action (taken from the Virtual Seminars project)
The demand for e-mail in HE institutions is growing rapidly as a new generation of computer literate
students come up through the secondary education system. At Oxford Brookes University, at the
beginning of the 95/96 academic year, 20% of newly enrolled students made enquiries about e-mail
accounts. By the start of 96/97 the figure had risen to over 90% and there have been further, if less
dramatic, rises in 97/98. There is no doubt, as the JISC Assist report Collaborative Working notes:
‘Computer mediated collaboration is increasing. At Loughborough University, for
example, email communication exceeds paper communication by 2:1’
21
(Wallace ix )
C. Creating A List
Institutions without a mail server can take advantage of one of the new, free, web based email services
such as Hotmail (www.hotmail.com). Students can register for an account and perform all the
functions of conventional email, such as dealing with attachments, subscribing to lists and so on,
through a web interface. The increasing use of e-mail means that mailing lists in a classroom situation
fast becoming an accessible form of teaching.
There are several ways to get a list set up. The Mailbase group x will set lists up with no charge for
academic purposes, subject to the approval of short description of the list's purpose submitted to them.
Another way is to have the systems people at the institution set up a Majordomo suite of list handling
programs on the local mail server xi . The Majordomo programs are freeware and mean that unlimited
numbers of lists can be set up within the institution. These lists will not be restricted in their
membership to just that institution, unless they are deliberately set up to be so, but can be accessed by
anyone having the relevant address.
D. Tips for a Successful List
Apart from these purely technical points, there are some things which should be considered when
setting up a list to ensure that it is effective in achieving its purpose:
Identify your community
Is the list to be open or restricted? Is the list open ended or does it have definite goals? If the latter,
what constitutes the list fulfilling its goals? What happens then? Establish guidelines for postings
perhaps including Conventions for subject lines (such as the date of posting) What constitutes on or off
topic?
Publicize your list
Unless the list is set up for a discrete group (as in the McBride/Dickstein cases), you will want to
attract a membership for the list. Publicity, such as posting to related lists or newsgroups, inclusion of
the list address in a business card or letterhead, and word of mouth, should be done at every
opportunity both when the list is set up and at regular intervals once the list is up and running. If you
are using a Mailbase list there is also the Mailbase list of new lists to which you can submit
information about your list.
Stimulate discussion
Unless you are making contributions to the list a compulsory part of a programme of study, you should
take some trouble over encouraging contributions from your members. Plant seed messages and
encourage the active members by making relevant responses to their posting wherever possible. You
22
may want to make it a list policy that new members introduce themselves and give a brief description
of their areas of interest and their reasons for joining the list.
The weight of anecdotal evidence suggests that a substantial percentage of list members will not be
active in the list discussions. The 'lurker' who subscribes to the list and perhaps reads all the postings,
but never makes a contribution, will be a familiar figure to anyone who manages a list of any size.
Even the lurker, however, will derive benefit from their membership of the list. They will learn, if only
in the more traditional sense of a passive and unidirectional acquisition of knowledge rather than being
actively engaged in the production of knowledge. Those who take the trouble to contribute to the list
will find themselves involved in what Stokes (1996) termed ‘the pedagogies of possibility’.
Chris Stephens
i
The best list of discussion lists available is the one maintained by Diane Kovacs at
http://www.n2h2.com/KOVACS/
ii
Stokes, P. and Stokes, W. ‘Pedagogy, Politics, Power.’ Computers and Texts 13 (1996), pp. 4-7.
iii
McBride, K. Dickstein, R. ‘Making Connections with a Listserv.’ Computers and Texts 12 (1996),
pp. 7 - 11. See also Dickstein and McBride (1998) and Ruth Dickstein’s page http://dizzy.library.arizona.edu/users/dickstei/homepg.htm.
iv
Shank, G and Cunningham, D. ‘Mediated Phosphor Dots: Towards a Post-Cartesian Model of
Computer-Mediated Communication via the Semiotic Superhighway.’ in Philosophical Perspectives
on Computer-Mediated Communication (ed.) Charles Ess. Vol. 1. (New York, 1996) pp. 27-45.
v
Davila, J. R. ‘Enoch in Cyberspace: The Internet meets the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha’
Computers and Texts 15 (1997), pp. 8-10.
vi
Deliberations list is an Elib project, available: http://www.lgu.ac.uk/deliberations/. Downey’s
message was posted on 10th October 1998.
vii
Dickstein, R and McBride, K.B. ‘Listserv Lemmings and Fly-brarians on the Wall: A librarianInstructor Team Taming the Cyberbeast in the Large Classroom’ College and Research Libraries 59
(1998), pp. 10-17.
viii
Hypermail information -http://tecfasun1.unige.ch/guides/hypermail.html.
ix
Wallace, D. Collaborative Working JISC Assist Report (1998, available at:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub98/assist2.html).
x
See http://www.mailbase.ac.uk.
xi
Majordomo information -http://www.public.iastate.edu/~majordomo/faq.html.
23
Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)
A. Introduction
The focus within this section of the guide is on the use of asynchronous CMC systems for supporting
group learning. That is, systems that allow groups to interact over time as well as over geographical
location. This is a different type of interaction to that supported by videoconference systems, which
allow people to be geographically dispersed, but require them to be present at the same time. E-mail,
for example, is a simple form of CMC and its use to support learning has been covered in the previous
chapter. Other examples of asynchronous computer conferencing systems are Lotus Notes/Domino,
FirstClass, TopClass and WebBoard. The University of Bangor has produced a comprehensive list of
CMC systems, including links to demonstrations and downloads of trial software.
Computer Managed Learning environments go a step further bringing support for other educational
processes into play such as assessment, student tracking and so on e.g. TopClass/WebCT, Lotus’
Learning Space.
The main difference between e-mail and a CMC system is that the structure of a discussion is
maintained in a coherent model without the user needing to do anything, making it suited to groupbased interactions. With e-mail, messages arrive chronologically and are only grouped if the user takes
to time to put related messages into folders. Even where threading is supported by an e-mail system,
discussion threads are often broken if the subject line is changed.
The main thing is not so much the specific system used, but that, given the potentials and limitations of
this type of internet application, how do lecturers ensure that they use it in a pedagogically effective
way. The following sections highlight the potentials and limitations of CMC; introduce some models
for using CMC; describe examples of use of CMC at Undergraduate and Postgraduate level; present
guidelines for effective implementation/integration of CMC to support teaching and learning; and
finish with mention of broader computer managed learning environments that have CMC as one
element.
The final Bibliography section contains links to a number of CMC systems as well as other web sites
and readings relevant to CMC and the associated pedagogical issues.
B. Potentials
CMC systems allow learners to interact with one another over time. This time independence allows
students to fit their on-line discussions around their other commitments and responsibilities. Different
work patterns can be supported whilst still maintaining a feeling of community amongst the students
and staff participating in the course. This is particularly pertinent where students are distributed around
the world and potentially in different time-zones.
24
These systems retain a textual, permanent record of interactions, indicating to a user as they rejoin a
discussion which comments have been added since the last time they were there. This is particularly
useful if participants have not been able to join in due to, for example, working away, other
commitments, or illness. It has been found that CMC environments are particularly useful for students
for whom English is not their first language. They can take the time to check their understanding
without ‘missing’ any comments as they may do in a face to face situation. They can also take their
time to compose their replies without being under pressure as in a face to face situation.
Learning in a CMC environment can lead to deeper processing of material because time for reflection
is allowed. Due to the textual record that is kept, people can refer back to things that were discussed
earlier, and take their time to respond, perhaps researching their answer before putting it on-line.
CMC systems provide opportunities for groupwork that would not otherwise exist e.g. for distance
learning students on programmes where all support is done remotely via mail, e-mail or phone/FAX.
Where in a more traditional model of support learners may only be able to communicate with their
tutor about the subject material and their assignments, use of CMC can allow peer discussion to take
place also.
The use of CMC systems to support distance learners has clear advantages of flexibility over the time
and place of study (McConnell, 1994; Laurillard, 1994; and O’Malley, 1989 i ). Thus far it has received
little attention from researchers and teachers in terms of its use for on-campus students. The flexibility
over time offered by CMC can be extremely useful for on-campus students, particularly when they are
engaged in groupwork. Getting groups to meet is notoriously difficult for staff as well as student
groups. This is compounded all the more if these groups then have to meet with other groups, as is the
case in the illustration used later.
C. Limitations
CMC is of course not a panacea. Since it is largely a text-based medium (although increasingly new
systems support multimedia), there is a lack of expressive richness since no non-verbal cues exist to
enhance what is being said, and in particular the way that something is being said. Comments can
often appear more critical than intended and great care is needed when this medium is used to give
feedback about students work.
The flexibility over time, whilst it has great benefit, can also be a problem for participants. It may be
days, depending on the level of activity within a conference, before someone replies to a question.
Decision making can be difficult on-line, again due to flexibility over time and the notion that everyone
can have their say in this environment. Strong chairing is needed to come to a conclusion in an on-line
environment, although some systems support decision making with features such as voting.
25
Using CMC systems requires access to a computer and the internet, and arguably participants require a
certain level of technical competence to overcome any difficulties that arise from accessing the CMC
environment.
The style of on-line communication has to be developed by the group. Different groups develop
different norms and styles as they would in a face to face situation, but on-line communication is
different in that it is not formal letter writing and neither is it a postcard. Also the level of discourse
may be different for different areas of a CMC system. For example, you would not expect students to
communicate in a ‘virtual café’ in the same way that they would in an on-line tutorial. Sometimes
these levels of discourse can be at odds as people continue in an informal way in a more formal area.
One way to address this need to learn on-line behaviour is to use familiar face-to-face equivalents to
give strong clues to participants about what is expected of them and the tutor in the on-line
environment.
D. Models of Use
A number of models have been used at Lancaster University to clarify the purpose and participants role
in the on-line environment. The model below gives an overview of these models in increasing order of
participant interaction.
Models of Participation
Notice Board
Question & Answer
Levels of
learner
engagement
Electronic Debate
CSCL
Electronic Seminars
Global Links
Collaborative
Learning
Fig 1: Models of Participation (Steeples, 1998 ii )
Noticeboard
This is the most simple use of CMC, where participants only have read access to the area and tutor’s
can post up messages. It has the advantage that participants can get used to moving around the CMC
26
environment using a subset of the systems functionality. It can be seen as a gentle introduction for
both staff and students to a system, since the roles and responsibilities of each is clear.
Question and Answer
This model is similar to that of a FAQ. This can be introduced to students as a route by which they can
ask for help from the tutor and/or from each other. Typically this is a problem oriented dialogue, and
has the benefit that tutors can see this from the questions that are asked what students real problems are
with the course. These issues can then be addressed in class or tutorial time if a general
misunderstanding has occurred. They may also form a useful resource for future cohorts of students,
perhaps with the tutor pulling out the main points to be carried forward. It also provides a useful tool
to tutors when redesigning the following year’s course.
Electronic Debate
This takes the metaphor of the formal debate with a proposer for and against a motion to set the scene,
followed by a general debate where all students are encouraged to participate. This model was used in
a debate about Environment or Development for India at Lancaster University involving staff and
students from the departments of Economics and Geography
(http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/edres/research/NetAcad/home.html).
Electronic Seminar
This discursive model can be used in a variety of ways and lends itself well to situations where students
are all working through course material at a similar pace, for example, a typical on-campus
undergraduate course. It is not so well suited to situations, e.g. as with some distance learning
programmes, where students can be at a wide range of different points in the study material and so
focussed discussion is problematic.
Different roles can be adopted here either by design or left to emerge. So, for example a tutor may
decide that participants must each take a turn to initiate a seminar session (be the Leader), or it may be
left to whoever is on-line first to initiate discussion about a particular reading. One documented
example where this approach has been used successfully in the Department of Music at Glasgow.
Collaborative Learning (or learning to collaborate)
CMC allows participants to work in ways that may otherwise be impossible due to constraints of time
or location. It is difficult to imagine a student body from different continents, collaborating on the
design of a web page for example, in a non-CMC supported distance learning course. Use of CMC
allows design discussions and decisions to be made as a group, over time.
Role play is another metaphor that can be supported in a CMC environment and the Undergraduate
second year Law example given below details such an approach.
27
It is also possible to encourage students to use the CMC environment to coordinate tasks - breaking
down a project into discrete tasks and using the CMC environment as a project management tool.
Students can also be encouraged to collaborate on tasks - actually using the medium to achieve a shared
goal. The second Undergraduate example provides an example of this approach.
Global Links
CMC offers the potential for 'visiting speakers' without the need to have the person physically present.
For example it can be a way of Involving authors of papers who may be based in other countries and
unlikely in a traditional course, to be able to attend and debate their writing with students. Since CMC
alleviates the need for them to travel and allows them to participate at a time and a place convenient to
them, students can be exposed to global resources and people that would otherwise be unavailable. For
example, in the debate model mentioned earlier, participants from India could be invited to join the
debate and offer their views.
E. Examples of use
Undergraduate
Using CMC to support team-based negotiations
In the Law department at Lancaster University, a second year course, Common Law of Obligations,
has harnessed CMC to develop independent student learning. The essential feature of the learning
environment of the course is that students should develop the ability to learn independently, rather than
through (over) reliance on lectures or textbooks. However, such independent student learning is not an
isolated individual activity. On the contrary, one of the key characteristics of the course is collaborative
learning.
Student Teams are responsible for organising the preparation of work for the seminars and the
presentation of the completed work. Teams are supported by regular consultation sessions with the
course tutors (one of whom takes primary responsibility for each seminar group and the component
teams). The Teams support four elements of the course design. Firstly, the development of teamworking skills (with both written guidance and tutor support). Secondly, the creation of a framework
for facilitating greater social integration of students from diverse backgrounds in the year cohort.
Thirdly, the creation of a basic learning support structure through peer discussion. Fourthly, the
creation of a motivational factorstudents are less willing to let down their team-mates than to let down
the lecturers or a standard seminar group by failing to attend or to prepare work.
Second year undergraduates are formed into teams of 5-6 participants. These teams are then grouped
into sets of four, with each team representing a different claimant or defendant in a legal case. Each set
28
Fig 2. Common Law Site (Lancaster)
of four teams is then expected to negotiate an out of court settlement for their client within a period of
2 weeks, using the on-line CMC environment to conduct negotiations. In previous years this particular
role play had been run in face-to-face sessions, with a final plenary used to try and agree a settlement.
This had been fairly chaotic, with tutors not having the benefit of being present at the negotiations
leading up to the final plenary. Students also complained that it was difficult to get meetings arranged
between the various teams due to other pressures on their time. As with all features of this course, the
design is backed by the assessment design. 50% of the overall assessment is based on coursework
assessment (CWA). 50% of the CWA (25% of overall assessment) is based on team submissions, the
other 50% being based on individual submissions. The remaining 50% of the overall assessment is a
standard 3 hour examination. Individual marks for team submissions are varied by peer evaluation of
contributions, subject to tutor moderation. Students were provided with printed guidelines for the
conferencing facilities and one introductory “training” session was provided at a lecture. Students had
already been required to use the conferencing pages to post outline arguments for the Debate and Moot
presentations at earlier seminars, so they were (or should have been) familiar with the medium. Each
team was provided with its own private conferencing page as well as access to inter-team conferencing
pages within its seminar group. The facts for the negotiation problem were provided only on the
electronic ‘noticeboard’ (read-only access to students). Student reaction to using the system has, on the
whole, been enthusiastic. Using the CMC system has provided a number of advantages:
29
•
staff have noticed an increase in the quality of interactions over the ‘face to face’ sessions
previously used;
•
the extent of independent student research conducted in arguing settlements among a
proportion of the students was formidable;
•
staff have been able to follow negotiations and step in when things are in danger of getting out
of hand or going off track – impossible to do when groups were meeting away from the tutor;
•
students have not been bound by time or location in order to conduct their negotiations. This
has been particularly beneficial to students living off-campus. If they had their own PC, they
could gain remote access to the University server and were able to participate from home
using a standard web browser.
A corollary to this last point is that although groups have a designated group only area, this was rarely
used, since the small team groups found it easy enough to meet. It was the inter-team interactions that
the system was particularly helpful in supporting iii .
Using CMC to support Collaborative Learning
The overall aim of The Internet as a Tool for Collaborative Learning project was to establish an
international student-based learning project around resources found on the Internet. Three volunteer
teams of undergraduate students at Lancaster University (UK), at University College, Galway (Eire)
and at Florida State University, Tallahassee (USA) together investigated a common problem by
identifying resources available on the Internet and collaborating in their appraisal of those resources.
A support and discussion network was established using computer-mediated communications (CMC).
This network allowed the four teams to engage in electronic discussions and share on-line multimedia
resources. The network was a good medium for students to share things which they found of value and
to comment upon such materials. The international collaboration was intended to promote the
articulation and sharing of different viewpoints and contexts/cultural values that can aid ‘deeper
processing’ of information, concept refinement and active engagement in the learning task. In
addition, the acquisition of computer literacy, information seeking, communication and collaborative
working skills were objectives supported in this project.
The project has been judged by its participants to be a success, finding it ‘good fun’ to take part,
because it was ‘interesting and different’. They have learned about communication online and about
sharing information online while engaged in a real task. These tools have therefore been the medium
for communication, not the message. They did begin to help each other with the task, and were
beginning to gain confidence to ask questions of each other about the contributions each person
made iv .
30
Postgraduate
MA in Management Learning (MAML) - http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/manschool/depts/ml.htm
One postgraduate professional development programme where CMC supports the central principle of
the development of a learning community, is the 2-year part-time MA in Management Learning at
Lancaster University. Participants meet as a large group at regular intervals for face-to-face workshops
over the 2-year period. In between, whilst back at their own place of work, participants work in small
groups called sets, typically of four to six participants. The purpose of the set is similar to that of an
action learning set (Revans,19??), where each person can bring ideas or problems to a set of peers to
discuss and receive feedback and advice. In the case of MAML, participants are discussing their
coursework, the topic or focus of which is identified by each individual student on the course i.e. there
is no one 'essay title' which all students must address.
Participants can choose whether to meet face-to-face or use the CMC environment and there is usually
about 50% of the course suing the CMC environment at any one time. The CMC environment allows
the group to continue to share ideas, challenge preconceptions and support each others work throughout
the periods of study away from the face-to-face sessions. The system is also used to support the
collaborative assessment process that involves feedback from all set members about the work
submitted.
Advanced Learning Technology (ALT) Programme http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/edres/altprog/altprog.html
The structure is modular, designed for part-time study, blending home or work-based independent
study with short residential periods. Tutorial support is provided through computer-mediated
communication using Lotus Notes. This environement is also used to encourage learner collaboration,
since the programme participants are professional people working with computer-based learning
technologies.
Participation in the ALT Programme extends beyond study on the ALT modules. The CMC system that
is made available to ALT participants is intended to become part of their everyday working
environment an expanding source of professionally-relevant information as well as a forum for debate.
Alumni participation is actively encouraged after participants have finished the module or series of
modules that they are studying.
Henley Management College (http://www.henleymc.ac.uk/) also provide support for their distance
learning MBA students, who are distributed world-wide, through use of the CMC system Lotus Notes.
More information can be found in the case study on Lotus' home site at http://www.lotus.com (search
for Henley).
31
F. Critical Success Factors
Discussions with current users of various conference systems at Lancaster reveal a number of generic
guidelines that can improve the experience of using conferencing for both lecturers and students and
are summarised below:
Educational Purpose
The educational purpose for which the system will be used should be simple in the first instance while
tutors and students get used to the system (e.g. posting notices, clarification of concepts covered in a
lecture, discussion on readings etc.). The educational purpose should be clearly articulated by the
lecturer so that participants know what is expected of them and what to expect of their tutor, during the
life of the conference.
Need
People need to see a real purpose for computer-based discussions (i.e. one important to them and their
learning) before they will use the system in meaningful ways. Although some learners are fascinated
by the technology in its own right, tutors should state clearly the benefits that conferencing can offer to
learners and to tutors.
Training
Initial training in the use of a system; the practicalities of reading items, responding to them and
navigating around them, is seen as critical for getting use of the CMC system off to a flying start.
Guidance in good practice, about how to contribute, can also be useful (e.g. don't put in a 10 page essay
since it is highly unlikely that people will read it all). Naidu et al (1995 v ), also sees this initial training
as important, but adds ‘it is also certain that training up-front in the use of CMC will be insufficient.’
He suggests that technical support and help should be available continuously throughout the duration of
a course involving CMC.
Information Overload
Participants should not be faced with a huge amount of information in the conference the first time that
they join it. The temptation can be to provide a significant number of items and responses so that it
looks as though the conference is thriving. However, participants experience information overload
fairly quickly and will be put off. It is better to have just one or two items (e.g. one for people to
introduce themselves and a first discussion topic) that people see on joining the conference. More
items can easily be added later, once new participants feel confident moving around the system.
In addition, although previous courses may have used a conference and left the material available to
new cohorts, it is best to provide this in a different, probably read only, conference. Alternatively,
tutors may decide to draw out the most interesting elements of a discussion, to make them available for
32
future students. Although this is clearly applying a tutor's interpretation upon the discussion it is a
useful way of repurposing discussions amongst peers, to make materials available for future students.
Headings
The topic or item headings are the first indication of the purpose of an item. They should be used to
give a clear message about this purpose. For example, ‘Discussion of ReadingsWeeks 1 & 2’ is better
than just ‘Readings’, since it gives an idea of the purpose of the item (discussion) and the topic
(readings weeks 1 & 2). It also provides a sense of the cadence of the item - that it will probably last 2
or 3 weeks, since different readings for further weeks will be discussed in another item. Another
example is to have a Coffee Bar item - giving strong clues that this is a space intended for the more
social aspects of the course. Incidentally, creating a Cafe item also acknowledges to learners that the
tutors who have organised the conference do value the social dimensions of learning.
Initial Items
The initial item placed under a topic or item heading should give participants guidance on how
contributions are expected to be made to that item. In the first example above (Discussion of
ReadingsWeeks 1 & 2), the first item could suggest that people ask for clarification of any aspects of
the paper about which they are unclear, or if they disagree with the points made and want to see what
others think and so on.
In the second example (Coffee Bar), the initial item should make it clear that this item is intended for
non-academic discussion, for example, arranging social events.
Activity
Most conferences exhibit the phenomenon of having many people registered, but only a few people
actively contributing to the discussion. Research at the Open University (Mason, 1995 vi ), suggests that
there are three kinds of participant in a conference:
•
those who post and read messages
•
those who read messages but rarely post
•
those who join once, never to return again
The research also suggests that roughly one-third of a student group falls into each category. The
phenomenon would appear to be independent of the particular conference software chosen, although it
seems likely that the more user friendly a system is, the more likely people are to make contributions.
Research by Riel and Levin (Riel & Levin, 1997 vii ), analysed seven electronic networks and drew
some conclusions about the factors that are likely to give rise to a successful network. They conclude
that successful networks (ones that report a high level of use coupled with good user reports of
efficacy) are more likely to result when the answers to the following questions are 'yes':
33
Does the group already exist?
Does this group have a need for telecommunications?
Is there a shared goal or task with a specified outcome?
Will the access to the technology be easy and effective?
Will all participants have regular patterns of mail access?
Is there a person who will facilitate group planning and work?
Riel and Levin found that, of the seven networks they reviewed, those that failed lacked between two
and four of the above features, whereas those that succeeded lacked only one feature. They conclude
that it is possible to create a thriving network community even if one or two of these factors is not
present, but that this puts more emphasis on the other factors.
Riel and Levin offer the following advice:
1
Network communities can be organised either by well-established relationships among people
who seek new ways to co-ordinate their collective work or a shared commitment among relative
strangers to a specific task. A network of strangers seeking to find common interests is likely to fail.
2
The response opportunity or access to the network should be very easy and reliable.
3
There should be some form of leadership for the group. The group needs one or more people
who take on the responsibility of monitoring and facilitating the group interactions.
G. Tutor and Learner Roles
It is critical for the success of a CMC system supporting teaching and learning that both tutors and
students commit themselves to spending time on-line and that they do so visibly, even if it is only
leaving a brief message to say that they have read something and will return to it with more comment
later. Another critical factor is clarity about the roles that tutors and students are adopting when
engaging in this environment. A number of different roles may be adopted over the length of the
course, depending on the educational aims. However what follows are some thoughts about the roles
that could be adopted.
Tutor roles
It is essential to be proactive initially to encourage learner participation, making it worth the effort of
logging into the system. It may also require contacting those who do not appear on-line to ensure that
there is no technical difficulty being experienced. A tutor could then decide to take a more monitoring
and steering role, only intervening if learners are getting wildly off-track and leave much of the
interaction to the learners themselves, having briefed them appropriately. Or a more proactive role
could be adopted, seeding discussions, assigning tasks to learners, linking ideas from several messages
to make a point, or summarising a discussion to signal the end of that topic perhaps.
34
Learner roles
A CMC environment can allow students to take more control over their learning, initially perhaps just
over the time and place of learning. However, it allows all students to have a voice without the need to
fight for airtime as in a face to face situation. This can allow different students to take the lead at
different times, perhaps in a formal way e.g. taking responsibility for starting a particular discussion
topic. Depending on the particular educational implementation adopted, it can provide an environment
for small group working allowing students to develop valuable group working, collaboration and
coordination skills. They can also develop reflexivity as the on-line environment retains a copy of all
interactions and students can be encouraged to revisit material and reflect upon it. There is also an
opportunity for peer assessment since all interactions are held on-line.
H. Computer Managed Learning Environments
The main difference between a CMC environment and a Computer Managed Learning (CML)
environment is the amount of the administration and coordination of a learning event that the system
supports. Typically CMC is one part of a complex delivery system that supports a particular learning
event. CML environments on the other hand support a wider range of the processes that go into
making an educational experience e.g. schedules, assessments, resources as well as discursive CMCtype elements.
Examples of these systems are:
WebCT
Lotus’ Learning Space
WebCT
This tool facilitates the creation of sophisticated World Wide Web-based educational environments by
non-technical users. It can be used to create entire on-line courses, or to simply publish materials that
supplement existing courses.
It uses WWW browsers as the interface for the course-building environment. Aside from facilitating
the organization of course material on the web, WebCT also provides a wide variety of tools and
features that can be added to a course. Examples of tools include a conferencing system, on-line chat,
student progress tracking, group project organization, student self-evaluation, grade maintenance and
distribution, access control, navigation tools, auto-marked quizzes, electronic mail, automatic index
generation, course calendar, student homepages, course content searches. More information is available
at: http://homebrew.cs.ubc.ca/webct/
Lotus’ Learning Space
There are four participant modules that can be accessed using a Netscape or Internet Explorer
browser or a Notes client. They are:
• Schedule
35
• MediaCenter
• CourseRoom
• Profiles
LearningSpace also comes with two instructor tools for course management:
• Assessment Manager
• LearningSpace Central
Learning Space allows different resources to be brought together in a single course support
environment that is accessible via the WWW. This includes access to multimedia resources in the
MediaCenter which can be video clips, sound etc. or entire courseware modules. More information is
available from Lotus’ web site (www.lotus.com) or the CHEST dealer Phoenix Software Ltd. at
http://www.phoenixs.co.uk/
I. CMC Links
There are extensive links related to CMC which the reader of this report may wish to follow. These
include:
BSCW - Basic Support for Cooperative Work - http://bscw.gmd.de/
BT CMC in HE project pages - http://www.lancs.ac.uk/
CMC list at Bangor University - http://www.bangor.ac.uk/cal/hotlist/cmc/cmcindex.htm
CoMentor Project - http://comentor.hud.ac.uk/
Conferencing on the Web - http://thecity.sfsu.edu/COW2/
First Class - http://www.softarc.com/
Knowledge Tree - http://ibis.nott.ac.uk/software/kt.html
Lotus Development Corp. - http://www.lotus.com/
Maillists - cmc-in-he@mailbase.ac.uk; flexible-learning@mailbase.ac.uk; cm-collablearning@mailbase.ac.uk; tlt-officers@mailbase.ac.uk;
ITFORUM@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU; e-conf@chatsubo.com;
Phoenix Software - http://www.phoenixs.co.uk
The SHARP project - SHAreable Representations of Practice: pedagogy for asynchronous multimedia
conferencing. - http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/edres/research/sharp/index.htm
Telefinder - http://www.spiderisland.com/bbs.spml
TopClass - http://demo.wbtsystems.com/
Ultralab Project - http://www.ultralab.anglia.ac.uk/pages/ultralab/
Usenet News - http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/usenet/what-is/top.html
Web4groups European Project - http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/DSV-CMC-Home-page.html
WebBoard - http://webboard.ora.com/
36
i
McConnell, D Implementing Computer Supported Cooperative Learning (London, 1994); Laurillard,
D Rethinking University Teaching (London, 1994); O'Malley, C. (ed.) Computer Supported
Collaborative Learning (Berlin, 1994, NATO ASI series. Series F: Computer and System Science,
128). Proceedings originating from the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Computer Supported
Collaborative Learning, held in Acquafredda di Maratea, Italy, September, 1989.
ii
Steeples, C, Effective Strategies for On-line Tutoring SEDA publication (1998).
iii
For more information about contact the tutor involved Sefton Bloxham at Lancaster University
(s.bloxham@lancaster.ac.uk)
iv
For more information about this project contact c.steeples@lancaster.ac.uk or see
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/edres/research/iheproject.html.
v
Naidu, S., Barrett, J. and Olsen, P. (1995) ‘Improving Instructional Effectiveness with Computermediated Communication’ ALT-J 3.2, pp. 63-75.
vi
Mason, R. ‘Scalability of On-line Courses’ Conference paper delivered at ALT-C, 1995, 11-13th
September, The Open University.
vii
Riel, M. M. & Levin, J. A. ‘Building Electronic Communities: Success and Failure in Computer
Networking’ Instructional Science 19 (1997), pp. 145–169.
37
The World-Wide Web: Its Uses as a Teaching Tool i
A. Why Use the Web?
'The World-Wide Web represents a new concept in technology, the library on your
desktop, the dictionary at your fingertips, the sound at your ear. There is nothing
that we hear or see that will not be available through WWW'.
Sangster (1995 ii )
In the original version of this report we opened with this quotation, and it is still relevant today. In
1997, it was possible that there were still some sceptics arguing that the Web was a transitory medium,
enjoying over-hyped success. Indeed, many people wondered whether they should still be developing
material using standard multimedia authoring packages such as ToolBook or SuperCard. In the space
of two years, it is clear that these doubts have disappeared. The whole explosion of the web into
popular culture (and popular acceptance) is unquestioned iii . The power of the Web in terms of reaching
the general populace (certainly of the developed world) has been shown repeatedly, ranging from the
educational (satellite pictures of the landings on Mars) and the political (the recent publication of the
Starr Report), to the sinister (the rise of right-wing factions, the increase in pornographic traffic, and
such traps as the web site hosted by the Heaven's Gate religious cult).
The World-Wide Web (or the Web) is one of the most accessible tools available for academics to use.
It allows an easy means of publishing material, it has a low learning-curve, the majority of its browsers
are graphical and user-friendly, and above all it is free to most people in Higher Education.
The Web works on a client-server principle. The user launches their browser (e.g. Netscape or Internet
Explorer) on their machine which in turn interrogates a server retrieving files. Files are located via their
Uniform Resource Locator (URL)—a unique address detailing the protocol for transferring the data,
the domain name of the Web server, and the pathname/filename of the actual document.
B. Resource-Based Learning
In the Introduction to this report we already discussed the advent of student-centred resource-based
learning. The premise being that students need access to greater resources to draw upon for their
learning, or research, and that technology can achieve this goal. The Web can be viewed as one
enormous resource that is interlinked, but ever expanding. The problem then is not so much the lack of
resources, but more that of locating them, the needle in the pile of needles. Two approaches to solving
this problem have developed over the years. The first is the use of gateways, the second the use of
search engines.
38
Internet Gateways
The United Kingdom hosts several gateways, i.e. selected lists of links categorised (and often
annotated) by subject categories. Furthermore, at the time of writing, JISC are in the processes of
providing funding to these on a more structured premises (circular at
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub98/c10_98.html with a deadline of 2 Nov 1998). The main gateways are:
ADAM — Art, Design, Architecture & Media Information Gateway (http://adam.ac.uk/index.shtml)
EEVL — Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/)
HUMBUL — Humanities Bulletin Board (http://users.ox.ac.uk/~humbul/)
IHR-Info — Institute for Historical Research Information (http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/)
OMNI — Organising Medical Networked Information (http://omni.ac.uk/)
SOSIG — Social Science Information Gateway (http://sosig.ac.uk/)
All of these were funded under JISC's Electronic Libraries Programme
(http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/) the exception being HUMBUL which was funded by internal
money within Oxford University. Some of them employ the ROADS system (Resource Organisation
and Discovery in Subject-based services, see http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/roads/), which is aimed at
facilitating the development of gateways, but undoubtedly all of them attempt to provide the main
functions of a gateway as listed above. As a starting point for students to look to, these are excellent
collections of good scholarly-based links to relevant web sites. In addition, the proliferation of Web
Indexes (e.g. Yahoo! at http://www.yahoo.com/ or Magellan at http://www.mckinley.com) provide
another entrance point to these virtual libraries. However, students may find the latter somewhat
daunting as their subject coverage is extensive, but their selection criteria is not always made clear. The
advantage of the gateway noted above lies in the discrimination used in the selection of resources. An
enthusiast, a subject expert, or, increasingly, a librarian, bring their judgement to bear on the sites they
link to. It is impossible to be exhaustive given the size of the task, but gateways can serve as an
invaluable jumping off point for further exploration.
Internet Search Engines
Gateways are not the only way of locating existing web pages, but they do provide the advantage of
being subject specific and selective. However, it is possible that the Gateways in existence do not cover
your subject area in any great detail. Furthermore, the topic you are interested in may be
interdisciplinary and thus primary research and teaching resources may be located elsewhere. Either
way, at some point you will want to look at (or direct your students to) an Internet Search Engine.
Internet Search engines have existed since the early days of the Web. They employ programs called
39
Robots or Web Crawlers to search for and index new web pages (see also above for Web Indexes). The
index database can be subsequently queried via a Web form. Many search engines support a
sophisticated query language based on Boolean algebra which allow users to narrow their searches
down to a fine degree. The main search engines in existence are:
AltaVista (http://www.altavista.digital.com/)
HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com/)
InfoSeek (http://www.infoseek.com/)
Excite (http://www.excite.com/)
Lycos (http://www-uk.lycos.com/)
All of these are powerful tools, but at the same time vary in their usability and coverage. The
predominant problem with search engines are the misuse of them by users, i.e. search requests are often
vague or too open bringing back thousands of hits. For this reason alone it is essential that students who
are directed to search engines as a means of locating resources are educated in search syntax.
An example search on Alta Vista is illustrative. In the following step-by-step path one can see how the
refining of a search (from the initial 'illustration') using operators and more specific information can
yield better results.
search term
results
illustration
hits = 979090
illustrator
hits = 720280
+illustrator +”quentin blake”
hits = 232
+illustrator +”quentin blake” –“roald dahl”
hits = 57
+illustrator +”quentin blake” –“roald dahl” +poetry
hits = 18
+illustrator +”quentin blake” –“roald dahl” +”children’s poetry”
hits = 4
Many users clearly do not know how to use the query language inherent in most search engines. They
become discouraged when the first few pages of search results yield little of any interest. Things are
made somewhat easier by Meta search engines which send a user’s query to a number of different
search engines, collate the results, and remove the redundancy (e.g. Debriefing at
http://www.debriefing.com/, Inference Find at http://www.inference.com/infind/, or SavvySearch at
40
http://guaraldi.cs.colostate.edu:2000/form). Nevertheless the process of finding useful information can
account for a significant proportion of the user’s online time iv .
C. Navigating the Web
Before moving on to looking at the types of things academics are using the Web for in teaching, it is
useful to confront some of the common problems users of the Web (and in particular novice users)
encounter. The Web works under a hypertext metaphor, i.e. it operates via a series of nodes and links.
A user can be browsing a piece of information (or node) and when they see a link they can simply
activate it (by clicking on it) and some other node of information (e.g. a document) will be retrieved.
Hypertext, as a teaching tool, has long been viewed as potentially useful:
'A book, being essentially serial, does not help provide cross pathway (or indeed, cross
curriculum) movement. If a lecturer tries this in class there is a tendency that all but the
brightest student will come confused. The Web provides a way which can be both student
motivated (following pathways at whim, like browsing an encyclopaedia) or teacher directed
(by indicating pathways), or indeed both'.
Whalley (1995 v )
Yet there are problems with this:
'By browsing through the multimedia, incidental learning is potentially greater than if the
learner were just reading a text or listening to a tape. However, there is the danger that the
very richness and variety of the choice may lead to cognitive overload.'
(King and Honeybone, 1996) vi
Nielsen, in his comprehensive study of multimedia and hypertext theories remarked:
'When users move around a large information space as much as they do in hypertext, there is a
real risk that they may become disorientated or have trouble finding the information they
need...Even in [a] small document, which could be read in one hour, users experienced the
'lost in hyperspace' phenomenon as exemplified by the following user comment: 'I soon
realized that if I did not read something when I stumbled across it, then I would not be able to
find it later'.
(Nielsen, 1995 vii )
Therefore, when using the Web for instructive purposes the academic has to focus the student on the
specific area of learning. It is not a simple matter of presenting the student with AltaVista and telling
them to get on with it. Serendipity is wonderful, but confusion is damaging. Nevertheless the Web, or
41
more accurately Web browsers, do come complete with good navigational aids. There are standard
navigational buttons, History lists, Backtrack facilities, and Bookmarks.
D. Some Ideas for Web Pages
The Web offers various opportunities for the academic who wishes to mount pedagogical material via
the Internet. The following lists the type of things that have been done but should in no way be seen as
a definitive list.
1) Create a personal home page — This will act as a focal point for students to come to, detailing
course times and changes, reading lists, and so on. An example of this is Jim O'Donnell's home page at
the University of Pennsylvania (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu:80/jod/) which details the classics courses he
runs there.
2) Publish lecture notes and handouts — These can be simply outputted from word-processors, e.g.
Word 97 upwards and PowerPoint save directly to HTML. It should be noted, however, that although
this is a very quick and easy way of creating web pages the HTML produced automatically by
Microsoft products do not conform to normal HTML standards thus making it difficult to re-edit these
files in other HTML applications. Alternatively one could convert material using standard HTML
conversion tools (e.g. RTF2HTML). The question arises as to the most appropriate timing for
publishing, e.g. putting up handouts before the lecture increases the risk of students not attending your
class. A good example of such publications is the international collaboration behind ORBThe On-line
Resource Book for Medievalists. Here, as well as collecting together essays and links to other Web
sites, academics from around the world have been contributing their lecture notes and syllabi to create a
global resource for historians and literature students (see http://orb.rhodes.edu/syllabi.html).
3) Design courseware unique to web (involving interaction/feedback) - In many ways this presents the
most exciting use of the Web as it includes often advanced utilisation of HTML. The Universities and
Colleges Information Systems Association has collected together a series of such web tutorials as part
of their annual awards (http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/docs/webawa.htm). These are divided into two
categories: the Teaching and Learning Award, and the Information Dissemination Award. The tutorials
cover a variety of subject-areas and provide excellent examples of the types of models academics are
adopting.
It is of course possible to create Web pages that provide some form of feedback and assessment
procedure, although to do so with any sophistication requires some knowledge of CGI scripting, Java,
and/or JavaScript. However, assessment, due to the computer's inability to cope efficiently with natural
languages, usually takes the form of assessing how well students recognise and recall information (for
more information on this see the separate section on Computer-Aided Assessment).
42
The winner of UCISA's 1998 award for the best Teaching and Learning Web Site, Project SALMON,
demonstrates all of the above (see http://salmon.psy.plym.ac.uk/year1/bbb.htm viii ). SALMONStudies
and Learning Materials On-Lineis based at the University of Plymouth and is centred on the teaching
of Biological Behaviour and Physiological Psychology. The site structures itself around the course
already in place, instantly tying in the web-based material with the learning experience. Links are to
lecture support material, which use graphics, animations, and links to other resources, but most
importantly define the learning objectives of each 'node' of the course. This useful design feature of
fully explaining the learning goals of each module is also recommended by the Association of Webbased Learning (http://www.awbl.com/) pages.
E. Creating Web Pages
When creating Web pages it is useful to obey the following rules:
Do Some Preliminary Research
As always evaluate other web sites to find out what works and what does not (a good starting point is
the UCISA site above, The World Lecture Hall at
http://wwwhost.cc.utexas.edu:80/world/instruction/index.html), or the links from the CTI Centres' Web
Pages (see http://www.cti.ac.uk/).
Identify Your Teaching Goals
A simple way of doing this would be to write down the various courses you presently teach and the
methods you use (e.g. lecture, tutorial, seminar, workshop); then focus on what you are trying to teach
in each class, e.g. the subject matter, the particular skill, and so on. Once you have done this you can
look at which sections you are unhappy with, and/or which sections you think could be improved.
These are your Target Teaching Areas (TTAs). Other factors may influence your selection of TTAs but
once you have identified them you can move on to the next stage. An example of this can be found in
Lee and Groves (1998).
Plan a Site Overview on Paper
In Lee and Groves (1998) this process is described as:
'The first stages of web design are very similar to designing any hypertext system. Start
with the first 'node' of information (e.g. in the Web think of this as your opening page)
43
and then consider what that should link to. If you are designing a site to teach a skill so
that the student enters with an assumed knowledge base and exits having completed all
of the tasks and having reached the teaching goal, you may favour a more linear design.
If instead you wish to encourage exploration and research, you may wish to develop a
much more complicated hypertext system. In any event, draw your site out on paper,
with some indication of the linking, assemble your source material in electronic form,
and then begin to sit down and encode the HTML.'
At this stage you will also have to decide on how much interaction and assessment there will be in the
site and at what point it is presented to the user (see separate section, but also the JTAP CASTLE
Project at http://www.le.ac.uk/cc/ltg/castle/).
Acquire Resources
Assemble the data you will be using in the course and establish from the beginning which parts will
need copyright clearance (see Groves and Lee (1998) on copyright).
Create The Web Pages
Most people will use dedicated HTML authoring packages for this. There are, of course, many of these
around including the very popular HotMetal Pro (developed by SoftQuad), Microsoft's FrontPage,
Macromedia's DreamWeaver, and so on. An excellent site devoted to reviewing all of these is the
'Software Tools for the Web' page at the University of Newcastle (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/wwwtools/).
However, in short, use whatever package is supported by your own institution and be prepared to
devote time to this process.
Evaluate The Web Site
Initially you should collect together a series of beta-testers who can concentrate on looking at such
things as navigation, content, etc. Eventually, however, you will wish to go public and monitor the use
and feedback of your site. The site listed above at the University of Newcastle provides links to
software for monitoring web usage but a good (free) utility is that of eXTReMe Tracking
(http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking/) which provides daily summaries of accesses to the site
(amongst many other features).
To monitor feedback on your site you could include on-line evaluation forms. The JTAP 'Virtual
Seminars' site (http://info.ox.ac.uk/jtap/) included the following form for lecturers to complete:
I. Personal Details
44
1) Name:
2) Contact Address:
3) Title of Course:
4) Institution: (e.g. College, University, School)
II. Course Details
1) Lecturer(s): (Names of lecturers/teachers on the course)
2) Location: (e.g. Was the course taught in a classroom? Computing lab? Was it part of a
distance learning course?)
3) Time/Duration: (e.g. How long did the whole course last in terms of hours per week, number
of weeks? How many hours were spent
using the on-line tutorials?)
4) Numbers Attending: (How many students attended the class in total?)
5) Description of Lecture(s): (Please give a general description of the set-up of the classroom
and how the tutorials were used, e.g. as a
lecturing aid, or did the students access them individually or in groups?)
6) Exercises: (Did you set any exercises? If so, please give a brief description)
7) Handouts: (Did you provide any handouts? Are they available via the Internet?)
8) Was the Course Evaluated?:
9) Comments: (Please provide any further comments you have or suggestions for
improvements)
Advertise The Web Site
Assuming that you wish to let remote users access your material you will need to tell people out there
of the site's existence. the most automatic way of doing this is to send the URL to various Web-based
submission, such as:
45
AdCentral - http://www.adcentral.com
WebPosition - http://www.webposition.com
Postmaster - http://www.netcreations.com/postmaster/
AddURL - http://addurl.com/
@Submit - http://uswebsites.com/submit/
Add Me! - http://www.addme.com/
Promote-it! - http://www.iTools.com/promote-it/
Submit-it! - http://free.submit-it.com/
Matilda Search Engine - http://www.aaa.com.au/
Apollo - http://apollo.co.uk/
Starting Point - http://www.stpt.com/
However you should not neglect the traditional advertising routes of appropriate academic journals,
educational supplements in newspapers, and associated discussion lists.
F. Further Reading and Sites of Interest:
21st Century's Teachers' (http://www.21ct.org)
Association for the Advancement in Computing Education (http://www.aace.org/)
Association for Web-based Learning (http://www.awbl.com/)
British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA - formerly
NCET) http://www.becta.org.uk/index.html
CAsTLe (JTAP's Computer Assisted Teaching and Learning) (http://www.le.ac.uk/cc/ltg/castle/)
46
ECSTASY JTAP project (http://www.rave.ac.uk/ecstasy/)
Journal of Computer Mediated Communication (http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/)
Journal of Interactive Media in Education (http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/index.html)
Node - Technologies for Learning (http://node.on.ca/tfl/integrated/)
Paul Allen Virtual Education Centre (http://www.paulallen.com/foundations/_private/main6.html)
Staff and Educational Development Association (http://www.seda.demon.co.uk/) notably its journals
the New Academic and Innovations in Education and Training International
SyllabusWeb http://www.syllabus.com/
Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (http://www.tltp.ac.uk/)
WebNet Journal (http://www.aace.org/pubs/webnet)
Western Governors University - a complete on-line University (http://www.wgu.edu)
World Lecture Hall www.utexas.edu/world/lecture/index.html
i
For a comprehensive case study analysis of the use of the Web as a teaching tool it is recommended
that readers consult Lee, S. D., and Groves, P. On-Line Tutorials and Digital Archives JTAP Reports
(1999; on the JTAP site). This extensive report looks in-depth at the JTAP 'Virtual Seminars' Project.
i
For up to date reports on the use of the Web see the UK Web Focus site (part of UKOLN) at
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/.
ii
Sangster, A. 'World-Wide Web - What Can it Do for Education?', Active Learning 2 (July, 1995), pp.
3-8.
iii
For up to date reports on the use of the Web see the UK Web Focus site (part of UKOLN) at
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/.
iv
The writer is indebted to advice received from Mrs Grazyna Cooper, who teaches Internet Searching
at Oxford University.
v
Whalley, W. 'Teaching and Learning on the Internet', Active Learning 2 (July 1995), pp. 25-29.
vi
King, A. and Honeybone, A. 'Needs Before Means: The Dialectics of Learning and Technology',
ALT-J 4.2 (1996), pp. 4–16.
vii
Nielsen, J. Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond (Mountainview, CA, 1995), p. 247.
viii
The winner of the 1999 UCISA award was the ‘Virtual Seminars’ project (http://info.ox.ac.uk/jtap/).
47
MUDs, MOOs, WOOs and IRC
A. What Are These 'TLAs'?
These strange looking TLAs (three letter acronyms) stand for Multi-User Dimension (or Dungeon),
MUD Object Oriented (or Multi-user Object Oriented), WOO (WEB Object Oriented or ‘W3 + MOO’)
and Internet Relay Chat, respectively. The most significant difference between these and other modes
of Internet-based communication is that 'events' (such as replying to what someone has written) happen
in 'real-time', that is they are primarily synchronous modes. This paradigm has a number of
consequences, for better or worse, that make communication somewhat different from the more 'static'
modes, such as email and newsgroups. This section will concentrate primarily on MUDs and MOOs
and WOOs, since they appear to be the most appropriate for teaching.
B. What Is A MUD/MOO?
MUDs and MOOS are multi-user text-based virtual realities accessible via the Internet. MUDs evolved
from multi-user interactive role-playing games on the Internet (hence ‘Dungeon’, from the ‘Dungeons
and Dragons’ role-playing game). In 1989, an innovative student (James Aspnes) at Carnegie Mellon
University decided to see what would happen if you took the gaming part, including any notions of
'scoring' and killing other 'players' (i.e. users), out of the equation. Thanks to his efforts and those of
Pavel Curtis (at XeroxParc) with LamdaMOO i , MUDs have become more of a communication toola
shared environment where diverse groups of people can go to talk, create and collaborate. The
possibilities such a tool offers for education have not been ignored. The MOO variant in particular has
proved highly popular for educational purposes, since it includes a powerful built-in programming
language that can be used to create entirely new objects, extending the MOO virtual-world. This ability
to create objects and extend the "virtual community" is not just limited to the MOO's original creators.
Indeed, the ability of users to construct new objects is arguably as important as the ability to perform
group communication, a point which some educators have not always grasped.
C. Basic MUD/MOO Concepts
Some of the central properties of MUDs and MOOs that make them different from other kinds of
Virtual Realities (Curtis, 1992 ii ):
48
•MUDs do not employ fancy graphics or special position-sensing hardware... they rely
entirely on plain, unformatted text to communicate with the users (but see below)
•MUDs are extensible from within; MUD users can add new rooms and objects to the
database and give those objects unique virtual behaviour, using an embedded programming
language
•MUDs generally have many users connected at the same time. All of these users are
browsing and manipulating the same database and can encounter both the other users and
their newly-created objects. MUD users can also communicate with each other directly, in
real time, usually by typing messages that are seen by all other users in the same room.
Implied by these properties is that they employ a spatial organizational metaphorpeople typically
interact with other people or objects within ‘rooms’.
D. The Textual Model
Although MOOs are primarily text-based environments, it is possible (though not all that
straightforward or necessarily desirable) to 'bolt-on' graphical front ends e.g. using a 3-D VRML
environment Diversity University is one MOO that is experimenting with this iii :
However, just because it is now possible today to make ‘virtual worlds’ using complicated graphics, it
is not necessarily desirable, technically or pedagogically. The simplicity with which users can describe
themselves and the objects they create is one of the great strengths of MUDs. A richly detailed
environment can be described with a few lines of text. In order to produce an acceptable graphical
representation of the same environment, much greater effort would have to be applied by the user
(Curtis, 1992). In fact this effort may even be wasted (unless you're a graphic designer), as textual
‘play’ and the use of imagination is arguably central to the modal of learning in MUDs:
‘...the sensorial parsimony of plain text tends to entice users into engaging their
imaginations to fill in missing details while, comparatively speaking, the richness of stimuli
in fancy virtual realities has an opposite tendency, pushing users' imaginations into a more
passive role.’ (Curtis, 1992)
49
Fig 1. VRML-enhanced MOO
This is similar to a good novel where the reader experiences alternative methods of reading/learning.
For example it is possible in Diversity University's MOO to actually enter into Dante's Inferno and to
experience it by interacting with the objects in it iv :
[The following is a transcript of an actual telnet session]
Look
Home of the Wrathful and the Sullen
You have arrived at the fifth circle of hell
You shiver, there is a damp cold fog surrounding you.
In front of you is a tall stone tower, looking up you see a
light flickering at the top. In the distance another flame
returns the signal, it is barely visible.
On the tower is a sign.
50
The river styx is in front of you. A boat is approaching you.
A man is at the helm of the boat. Say good evening to the
boatman.
Please read the message board!
Exits include: [up] to The All You Can Eat/Pay With Your Soul
Cafe, [down] to Seventh Circle, First Ring
You see sign, boatman, virgil, dante, sinner, narrator, and
message board here.
It is then possible to interact with the objects therein, from the simple, such as reading a message
board:
read message board
The wrathful and the sullen are doomed to the fifth circle of
hell until judgement day. They lived their lives very angry
and unsociably. This is evident from the encounters Virgil
and Dante had at the river Styx. The boatman also known as
Phlegyas was very rude to Virgil upon his entering the boat.
Once on the river Flippo Argenti rises up out of the river.
He angers Dante with his attitude. The wrathful and the
sullen are condemned to the mud of the river for their sins
on Earth. This is why Flippo is known as the sinner in his
dialogue with Dante. After Dante is insulted by Flippo he
wishes him harm. The other angry inhabitants of the river
attack Flippo as Dante and his guide Virgil look back.
To more complex interactions with ‘virtual characters’ or ‘conversational robots’. These ‘robots’ can
be programmed by users to have fixed responses to certain word - even to words spoken by other
‘robots’! In the example of Dante's Inferno above, saying certain words triggers off a conversation
(from Inferno) between the Virtual Characters. A more interactive use of a robot is at the Prototype
English Resource Center at DU v , which employs a robot, ‘Jesse’, to respond to queries about English
Resources at DU:
"hi jesse
You say, "hi jesse"
"Jesse [to PaulG] says, "Hello, and welcome to the English
Resource Center. I am a teachers' assistant robot here to
51
answer your questions about English Resources on Diversity
University MOO."
"Jesse [to PaulG] says, "Hello, and welcome to the English
Resource Center. I am a teachers' assistant robot here to
answer your questions about English Resources on Diversity
University MOO."
Jesse [to PaulG] explains, "Here is a list of subjects I can
help with. You only need to "say" the word that is
Capitalized by itself for me to answer. Although DU, MUD and
MOO are capitalized, they are not keywords. 1) *PROJECTS on
DU. 2) *LEARNING about DU. 3) *TEACHING tools on DU. 4)
*NETWORKING with other people on DU. 5) *RESOURCES about MUDs
and education, both on DU and on the net. 6) *PEDAGOGY on the
MOO. 7) *GRANTS and funding of DU.
Jesse [to PaulG] says, "Which category would you like to hear
about?"
Conversational robots can (and have been) also be used for language drill vocabulary testing, tutoring
or as room guides (Schweller, 1994 vi ), but the possibilities are almost endless. It is possible to create
many other kinds of objects and behaviours (see ‘Constructionism’ below).
E. Technology Requirements
Another obvious advantage of the textual model is the low technology requirement, at least at the client
end. The lack of graphics makes MOOing a low bandwidth activity, which means that even on a slow
Internet connection (such as a modem), good results can be obtained, even if connecting to a site in a
different continent. This is of particular importance for remote distance learners, but also for many
schools and colleges with poor connections. It also means that no expensive graphics cards or top of
the range PCs are required for display purposes. The software requirement is straightforward, as it is
possible to connect to a MUD/MOO using a simple telnet client (which any networked PC should
have). It is true that more specialised (but still relatively unsophisticated) 'MOO & MUD Client
software' (see below) can make things easier (by having separate text entry and display windows), but
it is not essential and such software is easily obtainable for free.
The technology requirements for actually hosting a MUD or MOO (or WOO) server are obviously
greater, but with the increasing power-to-cost ratio of today's PCs, it is now feasible to host one on an
ordinary PC running Windows (preferably NT), provided it has a reasonable amount of memory (the
server software documentation will usually give you an idea of how much memory is required to
support each user). It is also a relatively straightforward operation to set-up a basic MOO on such as
52
system and most server software is freely available and non-proprietary (see 'MOO Server Software'
below). For larger and/or more complex MOOs, however, it is advisable that a moderately powerful
UNIX machine (such as a SUN Sparc) be used, and considerable thought and planning may be required
for a satisfactory MOO design. However, usually it is neither necessary, or even desirable to set up
your own MOO server for teaching. Many educational MOOs offer educators and students space in
which to build and extend the existing MOO. Moreover, resources created by one group of students
may well be useful to others. An established MOO is also more likely to have a large existing
community with all the benefits that brings for communicating, particularly for advice.
F. WOOs'Webbified' MOO Environments
'... conflict or resistance may appear in several forms. One form is the result of ill
conceived expectations based on experience with rich stand-alone computer applications.
This leads to statements such as, "Is that all there is?"'
(Higgins, 1997 vii )
Despite the caveats mentioned above about the dangers of abandoning (or at least partially replacing)
the textual model of MOOs, there are some compelling arguments for creating an environment that is,
at least from a student's perspective, easier to use. The quote above is very revealing students and
educators used to working under fully graphical (in the sense of buttons, scrollable windows and other
'widgets') environments and likely to be alienated by the austerity of the typical text-only MOO
environment. Higgins (Higgins, 1997) sees the the combination of textual-based MOO, Web front-ends
and other technologies (such as VRML navigation) as an example of the use of transitional
technologies. Bolting together these differing technologies is by no means a perfect solution for
providing ‘environments to serve as our virtual classrooms and for co-operative learning and
communication’ (Higgins, 1997). However, they have the great advantage of being available to
educators now (and usually for free), as opposed to more other more ambitious virtual environment
technologies just emerging.
There are a number of different ways in which Web technologies can be combined with that of MOOs
to provide a useful educational environment. One recent and particularly innovative example is that of
the award winning CoMentor learning environment viii . As well as providing the normal graphical
navigational tools one would typically expect to find in a 'Webbified' MOO, a number of useful
graphical learning aids are also provided, such as a 'concept mapping tool':
53
Fig 2. Concept Mapping
From the educators/administrators point of view, things have been made easier by providing easy to
use controls to manage classes, such as adding and removing users, making new areas, and logging and
viewing student activity.
54
Fig 3. Administrative Page for CoMentor
Educators also have extra capabilities, such as annotating students essays placed within the CoMentor
system. Perhaps more importantly, 'building' activities, such as creating new rooms and objects, has
also been simplified through the use of graphical controls, although this is still perhaps not as
straightforward as is perhaps desirable, since it requires some manipulation of the image files outside
of the CoMentor system:
55
Fig 4. Room Administration in CoMentor
The CoMentor software is available free to UK HE institutions (for further information email:
comentor@hud.ac.uk). Alternatively, especially if you would just like to try out the software, you can
just sample the facilities provided by CoMentor by using the software as set-up at its home at the
University of Huddersfield.
G. Communication, Social Interaction and Sense of Space
One of the main arguments for using MUDs/MOOs in an educational environment is the opportunity
they offer for multi-participant synchronous communication over the Internet. Whilst this is also
possible using IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and other synchronous protocols, MOOs also provide a sense
of virtual space that mimics the real world. This metaphorical sense of ‘being somewhere’ serves a
56
number of useful purposes. Psychologically it is important, as it makes users feel more comfortable to
have common reference points and not be ‘adrift in the ether’. Moreover, Harris ix points out that
‘(these) environments strongly influence the activities that take place there. For example, within
Diversity University's virtual university campus are lounges, offices, conference rooms, classrooms,
living rooms and so on, each with a different purpose and with different objects associated with them.’
Even without any additional prompting, people's conversations and modes of behaviour can be affected
by the mere fact that they visualise themselves as being in a particular kind of ‘room’ talk is likely to
be less formal in a ‘lounge’ than in a ‘classroom’ for example.
Whilst the virtual world of a MOO may have many of the social attributes of ‘real’ places, ‘certain
attributes... however, tend to have significant effects on social phenomena, leading to new mechanisms
and modes of behaviour not usually seen 'IRL' (in real life).’ (Curtis, 1992). It is generally recognised
that people are more likely to talk to complete strangers in MOO then in the real world. This is most
likely due to context, by participating in a MOO you are ‘implicitly assumed to be interested in
conversing , unlike in most real world contexts’ (Curtis, 1992) For this reason MOOs are seen as useful
places to network with other scholars and teachers in related fields for example in MediaMOO x you
can read descriptions of people's research interests as well as their names (Bruckman, 1995 xi ). In most
MOOs, however, a persons real identity is not usually openly available for all to discover - anonymity
is the norm, a person is only defined by his/her chosen textual description. This can make MOOs a
useful 'safe' place to discuss potentially 'difficult' or sensitive topics, such as homosexual parenting or
issues of religion or race.
The practice of anonymity in MOOs has other interesting consequences. In a MOO, someone is only
‘known by what they explicitly project and are not ‘locked into’ any factors beyond their easy control’
(Curtis, 1992). Thus factors such as race, personal appearance, disability and gender need not be
revealed, reducing the possibilities of prejudiced assumptions about a person and restraining physical
factors (such as a quiet voice). This may be one of the reasons why students who are normally quiet
and non-participators in a real world classroom often become much more active in a MOO class.
Women in particular are reported to benefit from this situation. There can however be a different kind
of discrimination those who ‘type fastest speak loudest’ (May 10, 1995 DU MOO log xii ).
H. Building Objects
As well as providing a sense of space and identity, MOOs have another major advantage over other
forms of synchronous communication - the capability for users to construct objects and extend the
MOO. This capacity gives MOOs not just a shared context, but also the opportunity for shared activity.
This can be contrasted with, for example, browsing the Web, which tends to be a much more passive
(and solitary) activity. Amy Bruckman (Bruckman, 1995) points out that the capability build in MOOs
is an example of constructionalist ideas applied to virtual reality design:
57
‘The term 'constructionism,' first coined by Seymour Papert, involves two types of
construction. First, it asserts that learning is an active process, in which people actively
construct knowledge from their experiences in the world. (This idea is based on the
theories of Jean Piaget.) To this, constructionism adds the idea that people construct new
knowledge with particular effectiveness when they are engaged in constructing personallymeaningful products. They might be constructing sand castles, LEGO machines, computer
programs, or virtual objects. What's important is that they are actively engaged in creating
something that is meaningful to themselves and to others around them.’
Bruckman actively endorses this constructionalist viewpoint, arguing that everyone in MOO should be
allowed to create new objects, something that some MOOs constrain to a special ‘builder’ class of
MOO character, as for example, in Diversity University. In MediaMOO everyone is automatically a
builder with full privileges to create objects and to extend the Virtual World. When people create new
objects they are adding value to the virtual community.
I. Diversity University: An Example Educational MOO
Diversity University is a complete representation of a ‘virtual campus’, with offices, lecture, rooms,
classrooms etc. This metaphor, though savagely criticised by some, such as Tari Lin Fanderclai (in
‘New Environments, New Pedagogies’ xiii ), does at least provide a familiar sense of space to students.
In a similar way a number of ‘generic’ building tools to aid the educational process have been
developed. Many of these have direct real world equivalents, partly in order to aid the transition of
teaching in the real world to the virtual. Some examples of these generic tools, include a slide
projector, a recording device, the aforementioned conversational robot, a classroom, a notice board and
a lecture:
Slide Projector
Enables the production a display of up to ten text ‘slides’ (small notes) that can be prepared in advance.
This may be useful, for examples, where a poem is to be discussed and analysed stanza by stanza; each
slide could contain a stanza, which would be shown than followed by discussion.
Recording Device
The recording device is a very useful tool which enables activity in a room (such as anything said or
emoted by people) to be recorded to a note in the MOO. This is often used to obtain transcripts of
MOO sessions which can then be reviewed later
58
Classroom
Allows a teacher to break students into groups. Students in groups can either just talk to others in their
group, without being heard by the rest of the class or they can address to whole class. It is one attempt
to get round the problem of too many people "speaking" at once, by breaking the class into more
manageable groups. These rooms can also be ‘locked’ to all except students in that class, which may be
useful to avoid interruptions.
Notice Board
This performs much as you would expect, i.e. it allows users (not just ‘builders’) to post notices on it.
Lecture
This allows prepared presentations to be delivered. Can be useful for class presentations, as the text
doesn't have to be entered in real time. It should be noted, however that a MOO is not the most suitable
environment for delivering long lectures or presentations. Teaching strategies that actively involve the
participants though discussion or object creation are likely to be more effective.
As has been seen with the conversational robot example, it is possible to extend the behaviour of these
objects to use them in innovative ways.
J. Some Comments About Teaching in MOOs
On questioning the conversational robot Jesse (see above) in Diversity University about ‘Pedagogy’
some useful points are made about teaching in a MOO:
‘Because the MOO is an environment for Computer-Mediated Communication, ones'
pedagogy needs to reflect the special nature of this environment. In a computer-mediated
environment the professor no longer holds center stage. Also, no-one person can hold the
attention of the class for an extended period of time... the most effective pedagogy tries to
take advantage of the ability for frequent participation by the students
Decentering one's authority and allowing the students to participate on their own (with
sufficient directions from the instructor) tends to work best on a MOO.’
For teaching purposes, some disciplines are better suited then others to the textual environment of
MOOs. It is recognised that for certain subjects a more graphical approach is required (such as for
some of the sciences), but for many others the ease with which complex virtual worlds can be created is
a powerful capability.
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The nature of MOO communication makes them particularly suited for collaborative work, for example
collaborative writing, or joint discussion of a literary text. The world-wide nature of the synchronous
communication possible in MOOs is also particularly suited to language learning, as there can be direct
and instantaneous interaction with native speakers from different countries. Indeed, there are a number
of MOOs dedicated to language learning.
MOOs provide more of a total environment than, for example, email discussion lists, but this is not to
say they have to be isolated from other means of on-line communication or real world classes. A MOO
can be thought of as just another tool in the educators tool box, it need not be a replacement for existing
teaching methods, but can be considered an enhancement to them. Even if a course is to be totally online (as in distance learning for example) some aspects of the teaching process are simply not that
appropriate for use in a MOO reference materials, particularly, may be more appropriate on the World
Wide Web.
At a more basic level, there are a number of things that can be done by an educator before commencing
teaching with MOOs that will make the teaching process more effective (for a more thorough
discussion of these points see ‘MOO Teacher's Tip Sheet’ where many of these points where initially
made xiv ):
•Using special MOO client software is strongly advised if MOOs are to be used frequently,
since it helps to avoid confusion when communicating, by separating test input and text
output windows. This avoids the problem of the text you are writing being mixed up with
talk from other users.
•Become completely comfortable with the basic MOO commands and with the client
software (see above) to be used
•Become as knowledgeable as possible about the environment of the MOO which you will
be using
•Check that your institution has sufficient network resources to connect all your class to the
MOO at the same time
•Think about potential time zone problems if you are intending to collaborate with people
in different continents.
•Make sure the students understand the appropriate ‘netiquette’ for the MOO, so that they
will know what behaviour is acceptable and what is not.
K. MOO & MUD Client Software
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The choice and quality of MOO client software has increased significantly for all platforms since the
first iteration of this report in 1997. Of particular usefulness are the Java-based MOO clients, since
these should work on any operating system that has a Java Virtual Machine (this is built into most Web
browsers these days). An increasing number of educational MOOs now have such Java-based
interfaces to their MOOs integrated into their Web pages (sometimes in conjunction with a VRML
view), avoiding the need to download a separate MOO client (the Java MOO client is held on the same
Web server as the MOO).
Windows Client Software
•VWMUD Master - http://www.computek.net/public/vaughan/#VWMUD
•Zugg's MUD Client - http://www.zuggsoft.com/zmud/zmudinfo.htm
•Pueblo (MUD Client) - http://www.chaco.com/pueblo/index.html
•Savitar - http://www.heynow.com/Savitar/
•Rapscallion (MUD client) - http://www.rapscallion.co.uk/
Java Client Software
•MOOca - http://noisey.oise.utoronto.ca/mooca/about.html
•Cup-O MUD - http://www.du.org/java/CupOmud/
•Surf and Turf - http://www.bvu.edu/ctown/WebMOOy.html
Other MOO Client Software
•tkMOO-light (UNIX, Windows and Mac) http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/User/Andrew.Wilson/tkMOO-light/. This is actually a
very good basic client, that does the job of separating your commands from the MOO's text output in
an elegant way, and has lots of other useful features - recommended! However, you will also need to
install a copy of the Tcl\Tk language first. This is easy to do, though, e.g. for the Windows version, just
download the file: ftp://ftp.scriptics.com/pub/tcl/tcl8_0/tcl80p2.exe and then execute it to install tcl\tk.
For other versions, see the documentation on the tkMOO-light Web site above.
•TinyFugue (primarily for UNIX & OS/2) - http://tf.tcp.com/~hawkeye/tf/
L. Setting-up Your Own Educational MOO\WOO
Whilst there are quite a large number of educational MOOs available that you can use for your
teaching, there are a number of reasons why you may you may wish to set-up your own (or collaborate
with others), particularly if more than one of the below apply:
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•The pedagogical model implied by existing educational MOOs (in your subject area,
anyway) may not match your requirements. For example, not all educational MOOs allow
you to become a 'builder' (see 'Building Objects' above), or else they restrict the ability to
build new objects to a special class of MOO character which you have to make a special
request to use (these 'rights' are often only granted to teachers, not students contrary to the
constructionalist approach favoured by Bruckman). You may wish for greater flexibility
over builder 'rights'.
•Creating your own 'test-bed' MOO can be very useful and instructional for learning MOO
building and pedagogical concepts - even if you later decide to make use of an existing
MOO for your actual teaching.
•Whilst there exists a fairly broad variety of subject-specific MOOs, and the larger 'Virtual
University' MOOs (such as Diversity University) play host to a number of different fields
of study, you may wish to set-up your own subject-specific MOO if your field is poorly
catered for.
•Most educational MOOs (the non-language learning ones anyway) reside in the United
States, and for non-US users this may provide several problems. Whilst network speed is
not usually a problem when connecting to MOOs (due to their textual mode of operation),
the increasing proliferation (and popularity amongst students) of 'Webbified' MOOs
(WOOs) may significantly increase network 'lag' when connecting over a transcontinental
link to such a server.
Another factor that may need to be taken into consideration in the future (again particularly for
'webbified' MOOs) is the network charging model for your institution. In the UK, universities are now
charged directly on a usage basis for all daytime incoming transatlantic network traffic. If your
institution is going to charge for such usage at a by-faculty/college level (as a number are considering),
this could end up being expensive for your department if there are many students on a course using a
non-European MOO\WOO xv . For these reasons you may wish to be able to use a MOO closer your
own educational institution, although using a caching proxy may alleviate some of the problems.
M. Quick Set-up Guide
It is strongly advised that before considering creating your own educational MOO, you have some
basic familiarity with MOO systems, including having visited a MOO and possibly having created
some rooms or other objects. It is also recommended that you have a look at some of the documents
below (particularly the first two), so that you have some idea of what you're getting into!
62
If you think you might still be interested in setting-up your own MOO, a good place to start
experimenting is to create a MOO on a PC running Windows (preferably NT, since its more stable,
though it should work on Windows 95 or 98), since this is the quickest and easiest to set-up initially:
1.Download the software - the most basic MOO system requires at least two two main
software components - the MOO server software itself, and a MOO core database. The
following instructions apply to WinMOO, a Windows port of the classic LamdaMOO
server, and the Lamdacore database - both of which are free to download and use (see the
'MOO Server Software' section below for download details).
2.Install the software - you should now have two files - WinMOO-0.1.0beta7.zip (or
something similar if a new version has come out) and LambdaCore-latest.db. First extract
the contents of the WinMOO file (using a utility such as Winzip) to a directory e.g.
c:\winmoo, then move the Lamda-core file to the same location. You should probably now
read the readme.txt file that should now be in c:\winmoo and ideally also the WinMOO
FAQ mentioned there.
3.Initialise the MOO server - assuming you have TCP\IP networking installed (if you can
browse the Web, you probably already do), the MOO server is now ready to be initialised.
Open up a DOS box (under NT, a command prompt) - do not boot into DOS, WinMOO is
a 32-bit application and requires Windows to to operate - and type a command of the form:
winmoo <old-database> <new-database> <port>
For example in this case you could type:
winmoo LambdaCore-latest.db my-moo.db 8888
Once WinMOO announces that #0 is listening on the port you selected (8888 in this case), your
MOO is running:
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Fig 5. Initialising a MOO
NB: Next time you start your MOO server, use the <new-database> name, otherwise any
changes you have made (such as creating new rooms) will have been lost e.g. winmoo mymoo.db my-moo2.db 8888
4.Connect to your MOO - connect to your machine (using your normal IP name or address,
but on port 8888) with your favourite client, e.g. tkMOO-light, or even just a plain telnet.
64
Fig 6. Connecting the MOO (1)
Then type 'connect wizard' to log on as the MOO
administrator:
Fig 7. Connecting the MOO (2)
65
Next, type 'news', this will give you extensive information on 'Getting Started with your
LambdaCore MOO' (you may have back track using the scroll bar to be able to read all the
text):
Fig 8. Final MOO Connection
5.Further information - At this point, if you haven't already done so, you should read some
of the documents listed below and perhaps also join one or more of the email lists also
mentioned, to help you get started.
N. Useful Documents
•Reflections Onna (sic) MOO - http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/1.3/2a.html
•an excellent complete guide written for people who will be setting up an educational MOO system
entirely on their own. However, some of the links to software may be out of date, and it provides no
pointers to MOO server software for PCs or Macs, so please consult the software links given below.
•Establishing an On-line Virtual World for Education http://www.du.org/educore/MOOsetup_main.html
66
•more essential reading - takes you through all the steps necessary in setting up an "On-line Virtual
World for Education", using the LambdaMOO server and the eduCore database, although most of the
principles outlined are applicable to any MOO server set-up. Particularly useful is a checklist of stages
of MOO development, from planning to implementation and beyond (i.e. maintenance etc.).
•MOO Cows FAQ - http://www.moo.mud.org/moo-faq/
•for basic help on getting started with setting-up and administering a MOO
•New Archwizard FAQ - http://lucien.sims.berkeley.edu/MOO/archwiz.faq
•This FAQ list is designed to help new MOO arch-wizards (MOO owners) get answers to their
questions (i.e. once you've got the software installed or are using a someone else's MOO e.g. Diversity
University)
•LamdaMOO Programmers Manual ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/ProgrammersManual_toc.html
•a bit scary for non-Programmers, but useful anyway!
O. Useful Mailing Lists
There are also a number of mailing lists you can subscribe to, which can be very useful for advice:
•The MOO-Cows Mailing List:
‘This is an email discussion list for MOO administrators to discuss technical questions related to the
LambdaMOO server and database. The list is primarily for MOO administrators, but others are also
welcome to subscribe.’ (http://lingua.utdallas.edu/hw/encore.html). To subscribe
send an email to: Majordomo@the-b.org with the following command in the body of your email
message: subscribe moo-cows. NB: Use these details to subscribe to the Moo-Cows mailing list,
instead of the instructions given in the LamdaMOO core database documentation (i.e. what you get
when you type 'news' after first connecting), since the latter are out of date.
To subscribe to OERG-L, send an email to: listserv@wvnvm.wvnet.edu with the following command
in the body of your email message: subscribe oerg-l <your name> (where <your name> is replaced
with your real name e.g. subscribe oerg-l John Smith)
•WinMOO Mailing List - a list for discussion of issues related to the WinMOO server, a good place to
send start-up as well as technical questions. New versions of the software will also be announced here.
To subscribe to WinMOO, send an email to: majordomo@neon.ci.lexington.ma.us with the following
67
command in the body of your email message: subscribe winmoo-l <your email> (where <your email>
is replaced with your real email address e.g. subscribe winmoo-l jsmith@somewhere.ac.uk)
P. MOO Server Software
MOO Servers
•LamdaMOO (UNIX) - http://www.moo.mud.org/ or FTP from:
ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/
The latest software is available at: ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/LambdaMOO-latest.tar.gz
Programmer's manual: ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/ProgrammersManual_toc.html
•The original and probably the best documented and (freely) supported MOO server
•WinMOO (Windows) - http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~cunkel/WinMOO/winmoo-faq.html
Download from: ftp://neon.ci.lexington.ma.us:1221/pub/WinMOO or http://wwwpersonal.engin.umich.edu/~cunkel/WinMOO/WinMOO-0.1.0beta7.zip
•A Win32 version of the LambdaMOO server
•MacGoesMOO (Mac) - http://neon.ci.lexington.ma.us/SpamCentral/scaron/mgm.html
•An enhanced Macintosh port of the classic LamdaMOO server
In addition to the server, you will need a core database. A core database provides functionality
augmenting that of the server. Every MOO needs to start from some kind of core database.
MOO Core databases
•LamdaCore - ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/LambdaCore-latest.db
•the original MOO database core
•APECKS - http://www.psyc.nott.ac.uk/staff/Jenifer.Tennison/APECKS/
•an experimental self-contained Webbified-MOO (though it still needs the LamdaMOO MOO Server)
The CoMentor environment makes use of this: http://www.hud.ac.uk/comentor
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•WOOM - http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/research/ai/publications/WOOM2.0/
•an earlier Webbified MOO
•enCore - http://lingua.utdallas.edu/hw/encore.html
•The enCore is complemented by the useful book (as recommended by Pavel Curtis, creator of
LamdaMOO): High Wired: On the Design Use, and Theory of Educational MOOs, Ed. Cynthia Haynes
and Jan Rune Holmevik, 1998 University of Michigan Press:
http://www.press.umich.edu/titles/09665.html
According to their press release, "the High Wired enCore is the first publicly available MOO core
database designed specifically for educational use".
•Diversity University eDUcore MOO database - http://www.du.org/educore/
•a "Web-enabled, multimedia, integrated, virtual reality collaboration and learning environment"
At the time of writing this report, the eDUcore database has not yet been publicly released, although
limited public beta testing is currently underway. Whilst it is intended to be a commercial product, it
will be available free for schools and other non-commercial users. According to the press release: ‘the
eDUcore provides numerous features especially designed for educational use, and supports a
multimedia Web-based interface as well as the regular text-based system’.
Related Software
•BioGate System - ftp://bioinfo.weizmann.ac.il/pub/software/MOOsupport/BioGate/
•’a package of MOO objects and MOO language code enabling any existing LambdaCore-based MOO
to function as a World Wide Web server. It comes with an integrated web-plus-telnet interface in
addition to VRML and cgi-bin capabilities.’
Q. Some Educational-Related MOOs
For a more complete list, see one of the listings Web sites given below.
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•Cafe MOOlano (primarily for foreign languages and collaborative writing) telnet://moolano.berkeley.edu:8888/
Web: http://www-moolano.berkeley.edu
•LinguaMOO - telnet://lingua.utdallas.edu:8888/
Web: http://lingua.utdallas.edu/
•MediaMOO (media technology) - telnet://mediamoo.media.mit.edu:8888/
•PMC-MOO (PostModern Culture) - telnet://hero.village.virginia.edu:7777/
•Postmodern MOO - telnet://hero.village.virginia.edu:7777/
•Tecfa MOO (educational technology)- telnet://tecfamoo.unige.ch:7777/
Web: http://tecfa.unige.ch/moo/tecfamoo.html
•VROMA (Latin and ancient Roman culture) - telnet://www.colleges.org:7777/
Web: http://vroma.rhodes.edu/
Language Learning MOOs
•schMOOze University (English as a second or foreign language) telnet://schmooze.hunter.cuny.edu:8888/
Web: http://schmooze.hunter.cuny.edu:8888/
•MOO Français (French) - telnet://moo.syr.edu:7777/
•MOOsaico (Portugese) - telnet://moo.di.uminho.pt:7777/
•MundoHispano (Spanish) -telnet://moo.syr.edu:8888/
Web: http://web.syr.edu/~lmturbee/mundo.html
•’LittleItaly’, Italian language MOO - telnet://little.usr.dsi.unimi.it:4444/
Web: http://kame.usr.dsi.unimi.it:4444/
•MorgenGrauen LPmud, German language Mud - telnet://mud.uni-muenster.de/
Virtual Universities
•Diversity University - telnet://moo.du.org:8888/
70
Web: http://moo.du.org:8000/
•AussieMOO - telnet://farrer.riv.csu.edu.au:7777/
Web: http://farrer.riv.csu.edu.au/aussiemoo.html
•PennMOO - telnet://moo.sas.upenn.edu:7777/
Web: http://www.english.upenn.edu/PennMOO/home.html
•Virtual Online University - telnet://athena.edu:8888/NB: Telnet connection appears not to work at the
moment!
Web: http://www.juststeve.com/VOU-Home.html
Links to Educational MOO information
•Educational MOOs/MUDs (list) - http://www.daedalus.com/net/moolist.html
•Educational Technology: Educational VR (MUD) sub-page - http://tecfa.unige.ch/educomp/WWW-VL/eduVR-page.html. Includes a very good list of Educational MOOs, with
descriptions - http://tecfa.unige.ch/edu-comp/WWW-VL/eduVR-page.html#Educational
•Journal of MUD Research - http://journal.pennmush.org/
•"a refereed electronic journal which publishes academic research that relates to MUDs or makes use of
MUD environments."
•More about MOOs - http://www.itp.berkeley.edu/~thorne/MOO.html
•Includes (another) good list of educational MUDs/MOOs
•On-line Educators Resource Group -http://www.du.org/duSvcs/OERG/
Links to MUD/MOO on-line Literature
•Academic and Other writings about MUDs & MOOs http://www.oise.on.ca/~jnolan/about_muds.html
•MOO/MU* Document Library - http://lucien.berkeley.edu/moo.html
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•MUD literature reference list - http://miamimoo.mcs.muohio.edu/mudlit.html
•includes links and/or references to all the seminal MUD/MOO literature
•Papers - [ Synchronous Communications | VR | 3D ] - http://sunsite.unc.edu/dbarberi/papers/
Paul Groves
i
Lamda MOO (telnet://lambda.moo.mud.org:8888/).
ii
Curtis, P. ‘MUDDing: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities’ (Xerox PARC, 1992
available at: ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/papers/DIAC92.txt).
iii
Diversity University (http://moo.du.org:8888/).
iv
After logging on to the DU MOO, type @go #3493 to get to the start of Dante's Inferno and then go
down to explore it further (e.g. to get to the quoted section).
v
After logging on to the DU MOO, type @go English to get to the English Building Entrance and then
go sw (south-west) to get to the Prototype English Resource Center.
vi
Schweller, K. ‘Building Tools for Education’ (1994, available at: http://tecfa.unige.ch/educomp/DUJVRE/vol1/no1/building_tools_for_education.text).
vii
Higgins, R. ‘Milking the MOO COW: Combining Interim Technologies for Learning in Cyberspace’
(1997, available at: http://leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/tcc_conf97/pres/higgins.html).
viii
CoMentor was a finalist in the 1998 European Academic Software Awards
(http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/ctipsych/easa/). To see CoMentor go to: http://www.hud.ac.uk/comentor).
ix
Harris, L. D. ‘Transitional Realms: Teaching Composition in 'Rhetland'’ (available at:
http://acorn.grove.iup.edu/en/workdays/Harris.html).
x
MediaMoo (telnet://mediamoo.media.mit.edu:8888/).
xi
Bruckman, A. and Resnick, M. ‘The MediaMOO Project: Constructionism and Professional
Community’ (MIT Media Lab, 1995, available at:
ftp://ftp.media.mit.edu/pub/asb/papers/convergence.txt).
xii
‘A Discussion About Building Authentic Communities in Virtual Spaces’ from the Diversity
University MOO Log, May 10, 1995 (available at:
http://www.georgetown.edu/bassr/community/moo2.html).
xiii
Fanderclai, T. L. ‘MUDs in Education: New Environments, New Pedagogies’ (available at:
http://sensemedia.net/sprawl/16880).
xiv
Gardner, T. ‘MOO Teacher's Tip Sheet’ (see http://www.daedalus.com/net/mootips.html).
xv
For more information about the JANET's charging model see:
http://www.ja.net/press_release/charging.html.
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Instructional Management Systems (IMS)
A. What is IMS?
The ethos behind this report is the promotion of on-line educational material (where appropriate)
bearing in mind the external pressures on academics to pursue such teaching practices, and also to
utilise the tremendous opportunities that the new technologies can offer. So far the report has outlined
the array of existing material already available via e-mail, CMC, the Web, and MUDs and MOOs,
which are being delivered to students nationally and internationally.
As well as the many advantages already outlined inherent in teaching on-line, one of the most
important benefits is the ability to share courseware and resources cross-institution; which, in theory,
could serve to reduce the workload on academics. In other words, if Academic A in University A
produces a good piece of courseware on-line, providing there were no access restrictions then
Academic B in University B would not have to repeat the exercise as their students can simply use the
existing resource (i.e. negating the problem of ‘reinventing the wheel’). Although many scholars
express problems with using off-the-shelf material in their teaching (i.e. the ‘not invented here’
syndrome), one could simply look on this as one would a textbook or edition which has been produced
by a single author but used by many institutions.
The problems with this scenario are numerous. First, how does one know that the courseware in
University A exists? We have already looked briefly at Internet search engines under the chapter on the
Web, but they are limited. Second, how can one pinpoint exactly what the courseware is about, i.e.
what does it cover and what is its teaching aims, etc.? In other words we need data describing the
courseware, i.e. data about data, or metadata.
This is precisely where Instructional Management Systems (IMS) come in. IMS is a project which
developed in the United States (boasting an impressive collaboration between educational institutions
and the computing industry) aimed at standardising information about courseware (hence ‘managing
instruction’ in a systematic manner). In the UK JISC have funded a UK Centre for IMS Studies to
monitor the developments with this project i .
IMS attempts to address the problems of the perceived lack of open standards in courseware or learning
materials and the systems needed to deliver these. It looks at:
•
Standards for describing learning resources
•
Communication protocols between learning resources
•
Accreditation (possibly financial) for the subsequent use of learning resources
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•
Systems to manage the overarching delivery and handling of learning resources (known as
Learning Management Systems ii )
B. The Potential of IMS
The original specifications document for IMS is filled with aims and objectives that will be strongly
welcomed by most academics. It aims to produce an ‘open architecture for learning’ enabling learners
to ‘pick content from a myriad of sources available’. The advantages of this are:
‘By supporting a development process that encourages the reuse of existing
materials, development costs will decrease and the incentives for investing in content
production with a longer life span will increase.’
(IMS Specification Document, p. 9)
It notes the importance of collaboration in the learning process and sees a need to support ‘rich
interactions and exchanges’. To take this potential even further, a possible model might be:
'All courseware would be constructed from basic subunits containing the smallest amount
of information that can constitute a free standing packet...[consisting of] anything from a
single page with a few lines of text to several pages of multimedia components...Basic
packets of information would be linked together to form cohesive free standing courses or
modules, and in such a way as to allow progression through materials in either a totally
serialist or totally holistic approach, or any combination of the two.'
(Jones et al, 1997 iii )
In other words, if IMS can deliver a satisfactory way of describing, evaluating, and sharing courseware
(inter)nationally then students will be able to create their own learning processes on demand. As the
Teaching and Lifelong Learning project at the Department of Continuing Education (Oxford) notes:
‘Perhaps the most exciting approach under consideration is to build lifelong learning
systems composed of large numbers of very small learning components, each taking
on average 15 minutes to work through. Students studying using this system would
have their needs carefully analysed and, using these components as building blocks,
would have a personal course tailored to their needs.’
(http://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/intall.html)
C. IMS: Some Reservations
To anyone involved the use of on-line teaching the potential of IMS should be welcomed, but the
practicalities of its implementation are slightly worrying. On a conceptual issue the aim to increase the
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life span of learning resources will not necessarily by standardising the metadata linked to it, but rather
by standardising the creation of the resource itself. In other words, we may well be able to standardize
the way we describe a book (which should be welcomed) but the lifetime of the material contained in
the book can only be lengthened if we look at preserving the object itself.
Second, the idea espoused by Oxford’s Continuing Education of sub-dividing learning into clinical 15minute sub-units would seem alien to many teachers and raises what many people believe to be the true
aim of IMS: the automation of the learning process in terms of the analysis of user needs through to the
provision of learning material. In other words the spectre of sidelining the ‘teacher’ from the learning
process, which for so long loomed at the back of computer-based initiatives of the 1980s and early
1990s, appears to have re-emerged. As was stressed at the beginning of this report any moves to
actively cut down staff/student contact time (rather than reutilize it for more constructive tuition)
should be guarded against not welcomed.
Reading through the original IMS specifications one also has to question whether all learning can be
modularized to the extent it suggests. The notion that widespread use of learning materials has been
held back by ‘the lack of a commonly accepted specification’ is uncertain. Instead it is perhaps more
the case that this is simply a result of the different styles of teaching in our Universities, and, of course,
different syllabi.
Above all, bearing in mind the continued debates within the metadata world to provide standards for
describing (least of all managing) individual items such as books, images, video clips, etc., it is difficult
to imagine how one could realistically devise a standard for describing such a nebulous concept as a
learning resource, that would satisfy both the lecturer and the student.
Nevertheless, these are reservations that may be overcome. The overall aim of IMS to facilitate the
increased sharing of ‘learning’ resources has to be encouraged.
Stuart Lee
i
The UK IMS Centre is a joint project between the Open University and the University of Wales,
Bangor. Details of the Centre can be found at http://www.imsproject.org.uk/. See also Sithers, A. and
Brickley, D. ‘An Introduction to the Instructional Management Systems (IMS) Project’ Active
Learning 8 (July, 1998).
ii
The full specification for IMS (available via the UK Centre) is entitled EDUCOM/NLII Instructional
Management Systems 0.5 (April 29th, 1998). Although the full text is over 200 pages long, most of this
is taken up with lengthy appendices and interested parties need to only concentrate on the opening
overview.
iii
Jones, P., Jacobs, G., and Brown, S. 'Learning Stylers and CAL Design: A Model for the Future'
Active Learning 7 (December 1997), pp. 9-13.
75
Computer-Aided Assessment (CAA)
Computer-aided assessment (CAA) has been on the brink of revolutionising education since the early
seventies, if not before. CAA has changed the student teacher relationship, but, unlike the direct contact
of an email list or a MUD/MOO environment, this is in terms of objective performance measurement.
There exist many different CAA packages, from freeware and shareware to expensive and
sophisticated systems. How effective they are depends, to a large extent, on the role they are intended
to play.
A self testing system for students can be fairly easily set up, operated, and administered. A simple
freeware application, such as WebQuiz Writer (http://www.le.ac.uk/cc/ltg/castle/) can generate HTML
quizzes which are easily mounted on a web server. The student can take the test at any time and get
immediate feedback on their own performance.
Also in this category is the system produced by the CASTLE project. ‘CASTLE is an online toolkit
enabling browsers to create a set of multiple choice questions by filling in a series of forms using their
Web Browsers.’ (Nicol, 1998 i ). Again the CASTLE system provides instant performance feedback to
the student, but lacks the performance tracking facilities of other, more sophisticated systems.
A slightly more advanced system, such as the shareware program English College by Chalksoft, can
provide a way of tracking this performance, both for the student and for the teacher. To quote
Chalksoft’s web page:
‘English College is a courseware project which grew out of teachers' own needs for a
computer program which could identify student weaknesses, adapt to these areas of
weakness, and remediate each student accordingly’.
(Chalksoft, 1998 ii )
While, perhaps, not really suitable for use in full scale, formal assessment; this sort of program can
give both students and teachers some insight into the way that a computers will mediate their
interaction.
If CAA is to be used in the formal assessment process the implementation strategy must be carefully
thought out. The need for good technical support cannot be overstressed. A lack of proven track record
means that schemes to implement CAA within HE institutions is still somewhat experimental, and
generally under-supported:
76
‘Resources are required to support development and use within institutions, and to support
distribution and dissemination. A corollary to and consequence of the lack of integration into
curriculum or institution is that such efforts have been under-resourced (often, the enthusiast
wildly underestimates the required resources in the first place!). The under-resourcing takes
place at the level of the individual effort, the institutional scene, and nationally.’
(Reid, 1994 iii )
The chosen CAA system should be used as much as possible throughout the course. This serves both to
establish the integrity of the system by testing its performance under load and to acclimatise the
students to the procedures for its use. A protocol for the implementation of CAA developed at
Aberdeen University (Heard, 1997 iv ) states that:
‘It is very important that students are carefully prepared for CAA examinations, to give them
confidence in operating the keyboard, opening and exiting the … software, and for interacting
with the screen display of questions. It is strongly advised that students are given selfassessment tests throughout the course to ensure they obtain adequate experience in the use of
computers and the objective test software. Such tests also identify students ‘at risk’ for
potential remedial action.’
It is essential to have contingency plans for the formal exam itself. Spare computers in case of PC
failure, extra usernames and passwords in case of login failure, and paper copies of the exam in case of
total system failure.
CAA systems which fall into this category include WinAsks Professional, Question Mark, Question
Designer 3, and Toolbook II Assistant.
Chris Stephens
i
Nicol, J. 'Tools for Computer Assisted Assessment' Active Learning .8 (1998), pp. 49 - 51.
ii
Chalksoft Web Site. Chalksoft Software, 1998. http://www.chalksoft.com/.
iii
Reid, A. T. ‘Perspectives on Computers in Education: the Promise, the Pain, the Prospect’. Paper
presented at the Computers and Teaching in the Humanities (CATH), Glasgow 1994.
iv
Heard, S., Chapman, K., and Heath, S. ‘Protocol for the Implementation of Summative ComputerAssisted Assessment Examinations’ (Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen, 1997).
77
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