The Use of Internet Tools to Supplement Communication in the Classroom

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The Use of Internet Tools to Supplement
Communication in the Classroom

• Kenrick Mock
• kenrick_at_uaa.alaska.edu

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Overview

• Authors Experience using Online Tools
• Case study as opposed to wider generalizations
• Online bulletin boards
• Ways to stimulate interaction
• Online chat
• Via web-link
• Via instant messaging
• Other tools, e.g. surveys
• Discussion

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Introduction

• Universities and instructors have jumped on the
  WWW and Internet bandwagon
• Web pages for everything
• Course syllabus, assignments, textbook site,
  solutions, etc.
• At UAA 1400 courses online via Blackboard
• Common tools in place
• Bulletin boards (newgroups) ? Discussion Group
• Real-time chat and whiteboarding
• File sharing
• Email
• Assignment drop box
• Grading tools for students faculty

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Online Discussion Groups

• Some worthy goals for online discussion groups
  Karayan and Crowe
• To facilitate or extend class discussion on an
  equal basis. Students that are shy, outspoken,
  slow to respond, or impulsive all become equal in
  the online discussion group.
• To encourage group interaction.
• To build classroom community, sharing, and mutual
  learning through student-to-student or
  student-to-faculty interaction at their own time
  and convenience.
• To encourage ESL speakers to become more fluent
  in English.
• Survey in CS0/1 class 85 intended to work from
  home, less opportunity for interaction in a lab
  satisfy with online groups?

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Tinkering with Online Tools

• All of these goals require participation and
  motivation on behalf of the students to make the
  online discussion forum a success
• What steps can an instructor take to maximize use
  of the discussion forums?
• What tools are most effective to achieve some of
  these goals?
• E.g. online chat vs. instant messaging?

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Initial Experiment Online Bulletin Boards

• Appears to be a natural form to foster community,
  sharing, and discussion
• 1996 Local Usenet newsgroups
• Not promoted in class, not really used, students
  needed to make an extra effort to read the
  newsgroup, learn newsreader
• 1997 CGI Web-based bulletin board
• Just click on a link, read, post messages
• Minimal instructor effort expended
• Posted a few hints on homeworks, clarification of
  problems
• Fantastic response!
• Students posted regularly, helping one another
• Auxiliary discussions
• Students continued to post messages after the
  course was over

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If you build it, they will come?

• Alas, such voluntary participation appears to be
  the exception rather than the norm. Subsequent
  courses
• Three posts over the entire quarter
• Most courses averaged about a dozen posts with
  only one or two threads based on course content
• With encouragement by the instructor to post
  questions online
• Rationale that all students can benefit by seeing
  another students question and answer in case
  they had a similar problem
• Handful of additional questions
• 5-7 content-based threads
• Activity dominated by a small number of students

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Reasons Cited for Lack of Use

• Nobody else posting, why should they?
• Is anyone actually reading the web board?
• Perhaps a hit counter might be useful
• Overall lack of motivation
• Hypothesis
• Perhaps web board did not build critical mass,
  a point where it can take on a life of its own

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Exploring Critical Mass Mandatory Assignment to
Post

• To explore the critical mass idea, an assignment
  was created that required students to post a
  message introducing themselves
• Used for Intro to Computing courses
• Perhaps build critical mass early by stimulating
  the board with activity
• Served dual purpose of ensuring students had
  their accounts, could get online
• Result
• After completing the mandatory assignment,
  activity dropped off to same levels as before
• Apparently not enough useful content in the
  contrived exercise

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Modification Post Useful Content

• To investigate if the content-free posts were the
  problem, I required students to post their source
  code solution for a particular problem
• CS1 course
• Students given the ability to post anonymously
• Only 15 elected to do so
• Students encouraged to view posted code, not to
  copy
• Potential issue of plagiarism
• In some cases poor code posted online, errors
• Provided a good forum to point out errors,
  improvements
• Activity picked up in the context of the posted
  assignments
• Discussion forum can be active, appears to
  require faculty involvement, motivation
  (coercion?)

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Forced Participation?

• Karayan and Crowe
• survey indicated students felt online
  participation should be optional and not affect
  their course grade
• CS1 course survey
• Rated online exercise as Very Useful, Somewhat
  Useful, Undecided, Somewhat Not Useful, or
  Definitely Not Useful.
• 20/30 responses
• 50 selected Very Useful
• 40 selected Somewhat Useful
• 10 selected Undecided
• Students might not like it, but overall feel it
  is useful

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Online, Real-Time Chat

• Online forum good for conversation between
  participants at different times
• But Online chat superior for real-time
  discussions
• Online chat rooms have the capability to build a
  strong community, sometimes even bordering on an
  addictive nature
• Examples IRC, MUDS, MOOS

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Experiments with Online Chat

• Announced Online Office Hours in class where I
  would make myself available online
• 1996 - IRC
• Used regularly by only 3/40 students
• As with usenet, extra effort required to log in,
  learn program
• The three did use the medium heavily (already
  IRCers)
• Easier to interact, share code snippets
• Enjoyed the instant response
• Students would commonly log in, see nobody else
  there (or Id be idle), log out and never return
• 1997-1998
• Similar behavior using Java-based chat rooms and
  public chat rooms (e.g. Talk City)

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Instant Messaging (IM)

• Online chat that appears to more closely match
  desired interaction by students
• Students notified when instructor is online and
  available
• Can then initiate chat dialog
• Messages can still be
• delivered if offline when
• recipient logs in (like email)
• Not lost like chat rooms
• IM clients are popular
• and software likely already
• installed for many students

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IM in the Classroom

• 2000 When IM use promoted for CS0 course
• 35 Students
• 35 used IM software for class-related work
• Not a high number, but better than before using
  chat servers
• In a survey, all of the 35 rated instant
  messaging to be either Very Useful or Somewhat
  Useful except for one student
• Very positive feedback also received on course
  evaluations
• Students that use IM tend to be satisfied

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Disadvantages of IM

• Additional burden placed on instructor
• Students ask questions all hours of day or night,
  whenever instructor is online
• Good for students
• Tough for instructor
• Could set status to away, not answer questions,
  say busy
• Too easy to ask the instructor questions?
• It didnt work, what now?
• Much harder to do this with physical office hours
• Of course, the instructor can discourage such
  questions or not answer
• Lack of standards in IM
• Yahoo (15), AIM (30), ICQ (15) , MSN (40)
• New standards coming, universal clients...
  (Trillian, Jabber)

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Online Surveys

• To help gather some of this data, I used online
  surveys
• Easy to do with common tools
• HTML, CGI, JavaScript
• As with all surveys
• careful controls, wording
• at least useful measuring
• perceptions among the
• respondents.

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Sample Questions for CS1 Course
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Some useful data from feedback

• Students actually liked that they could provide
  feedback
• Someone cares!
• Can provide feedback on student perceptions
• E.g. lab in horrible shape? Not according to most
  students.
• Enough activity on bulletin board?
• Students also can provide free-form feedback that
  may not have occurred to the instructor, e.g.
  regarding bulletin board use
• I was afraid posting code or answers would be
  considered cheating
• Great idea, wish it was used more to discuss
  homework and problems
• I dont want to be responsible for giving out
  bad solutions if I post my homework online
• I did not think people used it I would of used
  it more if I thought people read it.

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Conclusions

• Online tools can be useful
• Measures such as formal assignments may be
  necessary to increase utility
• IM modality preferred to chat, likely to grow in
  popularity
• Many future directions
• Better tracking of usage/benefits/results
• Tie in with performance?
• All interaction through such tools (e.g. distance
  course) vs. tools to supplement in-class
  discussions?
• Evaluation of groupware, new multimedia tools
• Questions? Discussion?
• Your experiences with such tools?