the use of internet tools to supplement communication in the classroom kenrick mock...

The Use of Internet Tools to Supplement Communication

in the Classroom

Kenrick Mock

[email protected]

Overview• Author’s 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

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

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?

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?

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

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

student’s 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

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

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

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?)

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

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

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 IRC’ers)• Easier to interact, share code snippets• Enjoyed the instant response

– Students would commonly log in, see nobody else there (or I’d be idle), log out and never return

• 1997-1998– Similar behavior using Java-based chat rooms and public

chat rooms (e.g. Talk City)

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

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

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 didn’t 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)

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.

Sample Questions for CS1 CourseThe bulletin board would be more useful if students posted their homework solutions online.

Strongly Disagree Somewhat Disagree Neither Agree nor Disagree Somewhat Agree Strongly Agree3 5 13 8 5

I am willing to post my solutions online, as long as there is anonymous posting.


I am willing to post my solutions online, without anonymous posting.


Overall, the bulletin board is useful.


To be most useful, the number of posted messages should be

Lower Unchanged, the activity is just right Higher0 15 20

The machines in the CS lab are of sufficient quality to complete the assignments.


(For ICQ instant messaging users) How useful did you find ICQ to be for online office hours?

Not at all useful Not very useful Neither useful nor not useful Somewhat useful Very useful0 0 1 3 6

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 don’t 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.”

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?

the use of internet tools to supplement communication in the classroom kenrick mock...

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