FEEDBACK:
Comments on &
observations of group discussions of various on-line learning issues & questions, most
are WebCT-related…additions & revisions welcome! Several excellent comments &
case studies contributed by L. Gervais & R. Guy (Coll�ge Bor�al)
Send suggestions to gbcooper@cambrianc.on.ca
- HOW DO YOU SUPPORT NEW FACULTY LEARNERS?
- STUDENT FEEDBACK?
- WHAT ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT IS REQUIRED TO RUN A WEBCT
SUPPORTED COURSE?
- WHAT TECHNICAL SUPPORT IS REQUIRED TO RUN A WEBCT
SUPPORTED COURSE?
- HOW DO YOU GET FACULTY AWAY FROM THE TECHNOLOGY TO FOCUS
ON THE LEARNING PROCESS?
- WHAT STRATEGIES, TECHNIQUES ARE USEFUL FOR
INCLUSION/PARTICIPATION IN THE LEARNING BY STUDENTS?
- HOW DO YOU GET COURSE DEVELOPMENT DONE? HOW DO YOU
SUPPORT IT?
- FRENCH LANGUAGE INTERFACE?
- WHAT WORKS LEAST WELL?
- HOW WELL DOES WEBCT ACCOMMODATE SPECIAL NEEDS
STUDENTS?
- IN-CLASS SUPPORT VERSUS TOTALLY ON-LINE?
- FACULTY WORKLOAD ISSUES?
SOME STATS FROM OTHER COLLEGES (L. Gervais &
R. Guy)
CASE STUDIES FROM OTHER COLLEGES (L. Gervais &
R. Guy)
1. HOW DO YOU SUPPORT NEW FACULTY LEARNERS?
- three-hour introductory session, student & designer perspective
(Sheridan)
- release time on SWF, 8 hours, Open Learning Center, dedicated to
on-line learning, collect feedback from students, help faculty achieve predictable,
consistent results, provide a model to follow (Georgian)
- team-based strategy, seconded faculty & staff, content expert,
learning designer, web technician, approx $8000 per course, set course standards &
template (Sir Sanford Fleming)
- just the WebCT tutorials alone not good enough
- use smaller modules – smaller issues
- provide training when faculty schedules permit
from L. Gervais & R. Guy:
- Training sessions in small groups (10 or less) work best
- Team based development
- Consider faculty release for initial development
Get frequent feedback
back up
2. STUDENT FEEDBACK?
- What ISN’T useful - throwing students out to learn on their own,
with no guidance
- Brigham-Young study, surveyed students in traditional and on-line
based courses, revealed no statistical difference in test results, positive outcome was
students are motivated when instant feedback is used
- Senior-year students seem to enjoy on-line learning more
- Students can communicate with instructor more easily outside of class
time (Ryerson)
- In chat room, change header to "INSTRUCTOR IS IN"
- On-line learning must augment traditional teaching, no point if there
is no perceived additional value
back up
3. WHAT ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT IS REQUIRED TO RUN A WEBCT SUPPORTED
COURSE?
- Have to convince admin there are greater benefits beyond purely
financial ones
- Admin can see what I’ve done anytime, it’s always live!
- Human resource support is critical to success
- Need KEY people to be supported, need to invest in technical support,
such as network specialist, programmers, graphics designers, etc.
- People need to be multi-disciplinary
from L. Gervais & R. Guy:
- Requirements for success
- Human resources are key in successful implementation of WebCT
strategy
- Multidisciplinary personnel to work as team
- Incentives
- A support model
- Presentation of benefits over costs
- Participation of administration with faculty
- Deal with intellectual property issues
- Centralization of resources and activities
- Benefits cannot be directly tied into cost cutting but rather to
better use of existing resources
back up
4. WHAT TECHNICAL SUPPORT IS REQUIRED TO RUN A WEBCT SUPPORTED COURSE?
- Must plan for extra loads
- Create an environment which supports testing
- What are the loads? Need to know the answer
- There must be communication between developers & network support
folks
from L. Gervais & R. Guy:
- Hardware must be scaleable and robust
- Implement a testing platform in parallel to established system to
ease transitions
- Develop communication strategy between users, developers and support
- Address connectivity issues with respect to location (LAN vs
Internet)
back up
5. HOW DO YOU GET FACULTY AWAY FROM THE TECHNOLOGY TO FOCUS ON THE
LEARNING PROCESS?
- Get them in the door first, then talk about the learning process!
- May have to allow the "enamored with tech toys" to get them
started
- One-on-one follow up seems to help
back up
6. WHAT STRATEGIES, TECHNIQUES ARE USEFUL FOR INCLUSION/PARTICIPATION IN
THE LEARNING BY STUDENTS?
- Discussion forum, seminar simulation, stimulate collaboration
- Seed questions, focus the discussion
- Enhance existing WebCT features, add questions, games, pop-ups
outside of WebCT
- "video classmates", opinions on an issue, clip played from
local CD-ROM
back up
7. HOW DO YOU GET COURSE DEVELOPMENT DONE? HOW DO YOU SUPPORT IT?
- Team approach works
- Content specialists can’t do it themselves
- Use students, help get stuff up on the Web fast
- Have design & development meetings
- Use templates
- Look at different types of training done
- TIP sheets, not just "how-to", but "how-to teach
on-line"
- LOTS of time needed
- Commit – full-blown course or hybrid? (supports existing course)
back up
8. FRENCH LANGUAGE INTERFACE?
- Vital to success in French-speaking environment
- Need to be able to switch between two languages
back up
9. WHAT WORKS LEAST WELL?
- Problems with conversation elements (e.g. chat)
- Monitored chat needs lots of hard drive space
- Chat, discussion not really strong compared to current tools
- Transfer of files, but .PDF good
- Problems with firewalls in some cases (e.g. port:8900)
back up
10. HOW WELL DOES WEBCT ACCOMMODATE SPECIAL NEEDS STUDENTS?
- There are some barriers
- WebCT working to put utilities in place
- WebCT working with ATRC at U. of Toronto (Adaptive Technologies
Resource Center)
- Easier to build web sites properly now, instead of retrofitting later
back up
11. IN-CLASS SUPPORT VERSUS TOTALLY ON-LINE?
- Using right tools, show and hide functions as needed
- Standardize? Or is each course unique?
back up
12. FACULTY WORKLOAD ISSUES
- On-line takes as much time if not more time
- Maximum number of students should be about the same
- Faculty release time? One semester for one new course?
- Intellectual property, who owns it? Contract says the college
13. SOME STATS FROM OTHER COLLEGES (courtesy L. Gervais & R. Guy)
| College |
Use of WebCT |
Comments |
| Humber College |
- 263 full or partial courses on WebCT
- 6000 students/users registered
|
|
| Niagara College |
- Used within mobile computing initiative
|
|
| Fanshawe |
|
Delivered by part time
faculty Full-time faculty participate on voluntary basis |
| Sir Sandford Fleming |
|
Developed templates to
facilitate production and ensure standards |
14. CASE STUDIES FROM OTHER COLLEGES (L. Gervais & R. Guy)
Case 1 – Humber College : Instructional
Support Studio
Full time personnel
- 1 WebCT Administrator/Web designer (collaborates with Server
Administrator)
- 3 general project development consultants
- 1 WebCT project development consultant
- 2 Graphic designers
- 1 secretary
- 1 coop student
- Other faculty members are seconded for one to two years to work on
specific projects.
- These individuals become champions when they return to normal
workloads
Desired competencies
- Balance between generalists and specialists is required.
- Team members must be able to support two or more of the following
needs :
- Programming with network background
- Graphical design
- Troubleshooting
- Multimedia
- Web support
- WebCT
- Basic HTML
- Instructional design
- Application use (Flash, Dreamweaver, Audio and video editing for web,
etc)
WebCT administrator’s role
- Course maintenance
- File and course clean-up
- Support faculty with assistance
- Troubleshooting
Student registration process onto WebCT Server
- Faculty request to add course onto WebCT (assists in tracking users)
- College list
- Download comma delimited datafile (student names, ID)
- Upload to WebCT server
- Automatic username and password generation
- Regular updates to include late registrants, drop/add
Special needs
- Oise/UofT addressing special needs requirements for Web
- WebCT addressing issues because of US legislation
What helps in WebCT use
- Faculty to develop within full work load – need some release
time
- Less than 10% participate freely
- 50% of users find WebCT user-friendly
- Development team to support
- Allocation of registration fee directed to course development
- One-on-one training works best
- College culture is critical
Faculty support
- WebCT used within current workload assignments
- Series of Workshops
- Appointments in Instructional Support Studio
- 20 hours of basic multimedia support (students provide assistance to
faculty)
Case 2 – Fanshawe
- Faculty support through 3 courses (Intro, Basics, Advanced)
- 3 hour sessions
- 2 hour courses also offered 4 to 5 times per semester
Case 3 – Seneca : Centre for New Technologies and
Learning
- 5 full time faculty provide development support
- Students provide additional support
- Faculty submit proposal for course development
- Support team assembled around selected projects
Case 4 – Georgian College : Innovation Centre
- Instructional design
- Identify standards and media requirements
- Developed manual on How to develop a WebCT course
- Deliver course on Brain Rocket – matching learning styles to
available learning technologies
Conducted a study of 8 software packages for on-line
learning/teaching
- 8 faculty members learned to use each package to develop learning
units with each
- Varied backgrounds and IT competencies (basic to advanced)
- Defining factor – ease of use
- Blackboard
- Web Course In a Box
- WebCT
- ….
- LearningSpace (last place)
Case 5 – Sir Sandford Fleming : Bell Institute for
Learning Design
- Production team
- Internships by faculty
- Develop templates
- Format content, multimedia according to College’s look and feel
- 3 day workshops on WebCT
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