Keywords: WWW, MIS, Dalhousie School of Business Administration, on-line course, MBA
More and more, computer technology is being used to supplement classroom learning. From presentation software to simulation demos, analysis software to teleconferencing, technology is being used to deliver lectures, provide examples, evaluate student prog ress and communicate with individual students.
The most frequent means of providing computer support for learning has been the student computer lab. Students stay on campus between classes and use computers in the lab for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation preparation, etc. With the addition of a networked infrastructure, lab facilities have expanded to include electronic mail and "listservs", so that students can send and receive messages, both personal and public, to their instructors and other students.
These capabilities have taken on new dimensions as the Internet and its user-friendly browsers have been added to the educational toolbox. For students, the Internet has become a communication tool, a research tool, and a personal applications support too l.
For the instructor, the toolbox can now further support classroom learning and an increased ability to communicate with students. The Internet can used to supplement the contact that a professor has with students in the classroom, and in some cases, to re place it.
Using the Internet to support learning creates an opportunity to transform the link that exists between the professor and the student. The professor-student link, or the learning relationship, forms the basis of traditional university learning. Much of the disenchantment that has emerged in recent years over larger class sizes is based on a concern for the weakening of the professor-student link. With the limitations imposed by classroom and office hours, this concern is justified. When a professor's reac h is limited to the classroom, the professor's office, and more recently, the student lab, and when there are a large number of students to reach, the ability of a professor to develop and maintain the learning relationship is diminished.
Appropriate use of computer technology carries the potential to transform the learning relationship. The Internet increases an instructor's reach to include not just the students' lab, but the library, students' offices and their homes. This improved abil ity to interact on a one-to-one and one-to-many basis has led many professors to take their courses "on-line".
This paper describes one such course currently being offered in the School of Business Administration at Dalhousie University. Providing on-line course resources to students that can accessed through the Internet, and therefore from any computer with a modem and communication software, has strengthened professor-student links, made feedback and course evaluation more immediate, and introduces students to the realities of the marketplace and industry in a structured way that textbooks and lectures simply could not.
A course can be described in many ways, but a student's introduction to a course is traditionally done via the syllabus. It provides an introduction to the course and gives an overview of expectations and resources. Typically, a syllabus will contain a course description, objectives, a brief description of the professor, the office hours and email address of the instructor, as well as a list of textbooks required, readings suggested, assignments, the grading scheme, and finally, a class timetable or sche dule.
A well designed syllabus should contain most if not all of these elements of the course. These various items in a syllabus can be rather neatly categorized into six components: Introduction, Resources, Communications, Requirements, Scheduling, and Evaluat ion. The introduction provides the course description, objectives and an introduction to the instructor. The resources sections provides textbook and readings information, guides to relevant journals, and in some cases, descriptions of guest speakers. The communications section describes how students can talk to the instructor outside of the classroom. This is usually a statement of office hours, although it has become fairly common for an instructor to also provide an email address. In a requirements sec tion, there are typically statements about the instructor's expectations of participation and attendance, as well as a brief listing of assignments and a description of examinations. The scheduling component usually consists of a list of class times, dates for meeting, what is to be covered during those meetings, and the preparation expected for those times. Finally, the evaluation component provides the grading scheme - the means by which an instructor can convey whether the student has sufficiently met the professor's expectations.
Just as a syllabus can be used to describe a course to students, so it can be used to evaluate a course. This paper uses this approach by considering each component in turn, and by describing how these course components were placed on-line. In each secti on, the advantages and disadvantages are described, as well as lessons learned from the experience. Prior to this, however, a brief description of the university and the course will provide the context for the discussion.
TTG then embarked on exploring the possibilities of a PC based WWW server as an alternative platform. The server installed was a 486 clone with 20 megabytes of memory, running Bob Denny's Win-Httpd WWW server for Windows. Initially, the going was shaky, but as the software improved, stability was achieved and the initial NS Tourism server was born. The NS Tourism Server prompted several press articles and one radio interview on CBC's Information Morning.
At this same time TTG took over the central Dalhousie WWW pages and started to convert them from a text page full of links to a more user-friendly look. Shortly after this, things started to heat up at Dalhousie. When the new look came out Peter Jones, th en Executive Director of UCIS, struck the Dalhousie WWW Working Group to co-ordinate activities and address issues relating to quality of WWW materials. From that group came a set of guidelines still followed today (these are presently in revision).
The on-line WWW course support went over so well that class attendance dropped. It was decided then that 1501 would be "Beta Tested" as a complete internet based credit course. In the summer of 1995 Commerce 1501 was taught on-line via the Internet. Stude nts were located as close as Halifax and as far away as Bermuda. The only piece left out of the on-line version was the final exam. It was given on campus in the traditional manner. This was done for several reasons:
Having the exam on campus did not pose a problem to our students as they were enrolled full time in our co-op program and were returning in the fall. The final exam was given just prior to the beginning of the fall schedule so as not to conflict with the students new schedule.
The success of the on-line course was mixed. Some students had difficulty with their internet service providers. One example, a student in Stellerton, could only access the internet from the local high school and only during school hours. This became a pr oblem as the student had a full time job. Home dial-up access was not yet available in her area.
Since that time several courses have been offered in a hybrid format. Extensive use of the WWW as a support tool exists in Commerce 1501, 1101, 3101 and MBA 5511. Others, like MBA 6322 provide access to course conferences, and syllabus information. Commerce 1101: Introduction to Accounting is slated to be taught on-line in January, 1997.
The present platform for the SBA WWW site is a Pentium 90, 64 megabytes of memory running Website Professional on a Windows NT platform. The server is attached to a Novell Network which enables professors to maintain their course information directly from their office desktop using Windows based html tools. FTP access is also provided to professors so they can easily update their information from home.
The School of Business Administration offers both an undergraduate and a graduate degree in business administration. At the MBA level, an introductory course in management information system is required of all students in their first year. At the under graduate level, it is offered as an elective course to third and fourth year students. The course includes an introduction to both personal and organizational applications, as well as an overview of organizational concepts and the fundamentals of designin g and developing information systems from the manager's point of view. Requirements for the 1995/1996 included five assignments, a multiple choice midterm and a three-hour short-answer final examination. 172 students registered for and completed the course in three sections, in the winter term.
Being the first large course taught by the first author as a fledgling academic, the use of the Internet to support the course evolved as the instructor's comfort with course content and administration increased. The initial incursion was simply an on- line syllabus. The paper version of the syllabus was converted to HTML code by the second author and linked to the COURSES ON-LINE page, which was in turn linked to the School of Business Administration's home page. Beyond this, the only "extras" were an active link from the professor's name to her home page, as well as an active link from her email address to the mailer program.
Course resources are defined as those materials and information that facilitate the learning of students with the objective of mastering course content and meeting course requirements. This can include textbook references, lecture material, supplemental r eadings, and access to on-line test preparation.
Presentation slides were used in the classroom to supplement the lectures. They provided structure and consistency across the three sections of the course. This led to a request from students for the ability to download and/or to print the Powerpoi nt files. Having seen this done in other on-line MIS courses that can be found on the web, we put these files into a directory for students to download, and linked this directory to the course home page. This allowed students to download and print the files from home before coming to class.
Disadvantage.
Test preparation software is used in this course to help students to prepare for the multiple choice questions asked in the midterm exam. This application was developed in the previous year by the second author, and placed on the student lab networ k server. It incorporated questions provided by the instructor with the computerized testbank of questions that are usually provided by the publisher of the textbook. The tester program randomly chooses ten questions at a time, gives an on-line multiple c hoice test, and ends with a final grading. Students reported high levels of satisfaction from this feature. The year after it was developed, in addition to being available in the student lab, the tester program was also linked to the course home page as a file to download.
One of the on-line features that was made available fairly soon into the course was something called "Ask the Prof". This was a form that students could use to send email messages to the professor.
The What's New link from the course home page provided a place to make announcements. New announcements were dated and appended to the list from the top, so that the most recent announcements were read first.
Another feature introduced late in the course was the Conference Centre. This was a page which used proprietary software called Webboard and provided a forum for discussion. Comments could be entered based on short topic names. Students could enter new topics or add to existing topics.
This facility was used on a trial basis during this first course. After a class, the instructor would put a question on the conference and then watched to see who would contribute. This was not done for course credit. Typically, fewer than 10% of the class contributed.
At the end of the course, use of the conference was became a requirement. Students were asked to find an "interesting" website and post its location. Every student used it, obviously because it was for course credit. Some students went beyond the requirements.
A few learned how to insert HTML codes to their comments. Others referred to sites recommended by other students. Few used the Webboard as it was intended - as a conference.
Students were required to submit five assignments. They were typically oriented to computer applications, designed to give students an opportunity to master such things as Windows, Powerpoint, Access, and the Internet. The content of the course - the desi gn, development and use of information systems in organizations as a managerial tool for achieving short-term goals and long term strategic objectives - was woven into the assignments as well, so that both theoretical and practical knowledge could be gain ed from them. Assignment descriptions were not handed out to students in class. They were made available on the course home page.
Tutorials were also distributed on-line. Tutorials were hands-on practical exercises designed to get students used to the applications. No teaching was provided for this. It was expected that students would gain this from the tutorials and practice and from each other.
Numerical grades were awarded for assignments and exams. The instructor maintained marks using Excel. This made it possible to sort student information by name, student number or class section, and to quickly compute class and section averages, highs a nd lows. A converter program was then used to convert the spreadsheet to a web table. The marks were posted as a web page linked from the What's New section. Students would identify their marks by their student number, since student names were not added t o the table. Students were able to see all their marks shortly after assignments and exams were marked. It was a little page that grew. The first three assignment marks were added first, then the midterm exam, then the final two assignments and lastly the final exam.
Lessons Learned.
For the first author, the process of developing a course web page was a relatively slow process that evolved over a four month term during the winter of 1996. It was a process that involved trial and error, openness to the needs of the students, and willingness to learn, primarily from the expertise of the second author.
The method used to develop the course page could be described, in systems development jargon, as a "prototype methodology". Web pages were added and worked with, changed as needed and linked to when ready. As the course begins its second year, revisions t o the course page may reflect a more systematic, carefully thought-out approach, but overall, as we hope this paper has conveyed, the advantages have outweighed the disadvantages. As the lessons learned are applied, there will be new lessons to learn, and further web development to pursue. After all, when is a web page ever truly finished?
Mary-Liz Grisé
Assistant Professor
E-mail: ML.GRISE@dal.ca
Tim Roberts
Training Technologies Group
E-mail: tjr@dal.ca
Dalhousie School of Business Administration
Faculty of Management
School of Business Administration
6152 Coburg Road
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Canada B3H 3J5
URL: http://www.mgmt.dal.ca/
N.A.WEB 96 - The Second International North America World Wide Web Conference http://www.unb.ca/web/wwwdev/ University of New Brunswick.