Enabling Active Learning in Web-Based
Virtual Campuses:
(Creative Pyramid Schemes)

Thomas Hofheinz and Michael Daecher
Independent Learning
EIMC: A Distance Education Center
The University of Texas at Austin

ABSTRACT

Designing Web-based learning environments for correspondence students has been a challenging and delightful project for the Distance Education Design Center, the production group for Independent Learning at The University of Texas at Austin. While extrapolating Web sites from the mail-based courses provided to all students, we have learned how to construct "pyramidal" Web sites which entirely parallel print-based courses delivered through the mail, sites constructed from essential elements found in text files plus value-added elements accessible to students with a wide range of computer capabilities. Our dual task has been to assure that all students enjoy the same basic educational opportunities and that students with greater computer capabilities wind up with dynamic learning tools rather than ornamental "bells and whistles." Focusing on the educational, evolutionary, and technical challenges of our work putting courses on the Web, we will demonstrate how these challenges informed two of our upper-division college-level courses - "American Science Fiction" and "United States History Since 1865."


Developing our Web course components compelled us to become self-aware of the philosophical and practical considerations informing our instructional design and to re-assess instructor and student needs. Our instructors write and revise our courses on a contractual basis. We try to evolve the Web components around their work. On the other hand, even Internet-fluent instructors eager to develop new methods tend to think in the linear verbal narrative patterns of traditional textbooks and study guides. Consequently, Web developers at the Distance Education Design Center have become deeply engaged in initiating curricular and instructional design, rather than merely responding to directives from instructors and suggestions from students. Such initiative requires delicate negotiation between seemingly inertial, "traditional" educational techniques and the plethora of tools and gimmicks spinning out of the Internet's creative maelstrom.

Our first major challenge in the Web projects thus far has been translating linear, textual course narratives into something interesting and unique to the medium. Like many of our colleagues, we found certain options such as conferencing and e-mail to be obviously relevant and appealing. The difficulty came when we focused on the narrative dynamics inherent in any course. Few things are more crushingly dull than large text files loaded onto a monochromatic Web background; merely putting up existing study guides and ancillary course material is equivalent to telling students that you'd simply rather put stress on their printers than on your own. At the other extreme, turning the Web course component into a "jump site" to purely peripheral, illustrative links neutralizes its power as an agent in a dynamically interactive classroom matrix where every element enhances and opens up into another. We are evolving a modular approach toward course presentation by which we hope to avoid either temptation. What follows is a brief history of the ways in which this modular approach emerged through two Web-enhanced courses and an overview of the technical choices and challenges we have faced in developing them.

The writers and instructors of "American Science Fiction" and "United States History since 1865" came to us with an enthusiasm and aptitude for Web development and a desire for optimal extension, enhancement, and preservation of course content. Both agreed with our commitment to ground the Web sites in basic to intermediate HTML so that a student with an older PC or Macintosh and with rudimentary Internet access would have little trouble taking a course by way of the Web. Most important, both instructors are good writers with strong insight into how narrative articulations work within a college course.

The Web component for "American Science Fiction" largely evolved from our own initiative and our rather impatient desire to "put something up on the Web." Frank Dietz, the instructor, is an American SF aficionado employed as a computer game developer. Working with Mr. Dietz, we decided to create an integrated learning environment comprised of (1) some sort of narrative page sequence paralleling but not repeating the printed study guide which remained the course's foundation; (2) Web-integrated conferencing software simple enough for easy access but elegant enough to enable strong interaction among students and with instructors; and (3) an exciting hypertext gallery or playground related to the course which would serve both as a "hook" for potential customers and an educational resource for students. We agreed to begin by designing a home page for "American Science Fiction" with course information, a "meet the instructor" link, and a highly interactive hypertext timeline detailing SF's historical context. The timeline, which was originally an appendix in the printed study guide, went up in simple text files that we slowly converted into links to educational sources on the Web, mostly textual but with some visual images and audio files added. What we created is a virtual library of SF literary history by which students can directly experience the relation between technology's development and SF's fictional representations. After the timeline was underway, we designed a set of topical pages keyed by title to study guide chapters, each of which includes illustrative material and an item called "Food for Thought" which is a topical question ("Why should aliens want to invade the Earth?") built into a link taking the student straight to the conferencing interface. The conferencing program we chose is Interaction, an entirely Web-integrated package that creates bulletin boards and chat rooms through form submission.

Hopefully, in "American Science Fiction" we created a simulated classroom and research environment where "static" and "interactive" elements dynamically enhance one another while reinforcing the narrative which unifies the course's study guide. At the same time, when we finished the basic Web architecture of that course, we had not even begun to address the issue of how to put a correspondence course entirely on-line, a situation in which the question of whether to retain or jettison a course's traditional narrative is much more urgent. A pyramidal course structure is easier to put on-line when its wide and heavy base rests in a bound bundle of paper and its ascending levels articulate through playful processes such as an interactive science fiction timeline or conferencing software. When the study guide is part of a course's on-line architecture, even innovative and playful dimensions of the course can be weighed down by the tedium of basic explanatory protocols.

This is the challenge that faced us when we took on our second on-line course project, "United States History Since 1865." Don Palm, the course's author and instructor, had signed on to help develop an entirely Web-based version of his course at a time when the many disadvantages of loading a study guide up on the Web were not apparent. The powers-that-be in our department were also eager to come up with a "paperless" course, and this was the moment. Consequently, when we received Palm's proposal we were faced with the daunting prospect of putting a study guide up on the Web in an interesting manner. Most of the links Palm provided us were interior links to other text files conveying course information. Finding relevant links to exterior educational sites required time we could not afford to spend until we put up essential study guide materials that wouldn't put students to sleep or fry their printers.

Our ongoing work on the "United States History..." module has revealed a surprising number of ways to convey a course's basic informational and narrative structure through hypertext in such a way that the text deepens instead of being eclipsed or merely ornamented. We took our first step in that direction when we scrutinized the course's study guide in order simply to make each chapter shorter on the Web. In the study guide, each chapter concluded with three sections, one after another: "Themes," "Concepts," and "Study Questions." Using a simple table format with smaller lettering, we set "Themes" and "Concepts" to the left of "Study Questions," thereby greatly shortening the page while, at the same time, we reinforced the relation between concept and application through simple juxtaposition of text. The use of tables also varied the textual field at the point where the author's general commentary on the chapter's subject matter segued into work assignment. While the table solution was in the works, we set the general commentary in bold lettering to differentiate it further from what followed, and framed it at the beginning with a juxtaposed image collage and epigraph above it. "Jump links" under the course title also allow the student to go straight to whatever part of the page is needed, and a "respond" link above the study questions takes each student straight to the conferencing software armed with a set of relevant topics. The result of all this, surprisingly, is an almost purely verbal narrative in a simple graphical arrangement which is a pleasure to call up on one's screen.

There is much to be learned from such varying of a textual field on a Web page, even if it involves discovery of the obvious. Creating such variation in a textual field is like the child's finger game of "fortune teller," where a sheet of paper with differently numbered and colored fields folds into a kind of puppet which communicates a different sort of message depending upon which way the fingers fold the paper out. The Web page's static nature can encourage a non-static response, just as a page of printed text not only allows but encourages all sorts of reading backward and forward, cross-referencing, skipping, and association with text not immediately adjoining it. Oddly enough, this insight has led us not to postmodernist visions of hypertextual fractals, tesseracts, and nebulae, but to a world more like that of children's books, with their pop-up figures, "look behind this" windows, boldly demarcated text, and enhanced discoveries of local but mysterious meaning. Rather than take us beyond reading, hypertext can take us back to the point where we learned to read and help us to read in ways that link the old and new.

This insight about textual fields on the Web is particularly reassuring to us as we work to establish all essential elements of the on-line learning experience at the level of the text file, then build an ascending and narrowing pyramidal structure for those increasingly fewer students with higher computer capabilities. Written verbal narrative is clearly a strength, not a burden, a powerful concomitant to the labyrinthine interactive choices of hypertext. It enhances, rather than obstructs, other media such as visual imagery and audio recordings, and it ensures that students at many levels of access can share the excitement of new educational experience. The "nuts and bolts" of our effort, though, has required a range of technical choices which have clarified the horizons of the possible. (TH)

* * *

It is often a difficult balancing act designing a Web course that is easy to use and accessible to the greatest number of students on-line. Many technical concerns - from download time to network security - must be addressed before a Web course can be unveiled to the public.

Many issues should be considered when designing a new Web course. Will every student with Web access be able to meaningfully experience the full design? How about download time? Will anyone wait more than a minute or two before quitting the site? These are essential issues related to the browser. If you believe what you read, everyone has access to lightning-quick modems, the best resolution color monitors, and a stack of available memory the size of the Death Star. We constantly remind ourselves not to believe the hype. It is always helpful to have a test subject to keep the project grounded. For this, we use Michael Daecher's father.

Satisfying his demands for a pleasing Web experience is a constant struggle-a computer nerd he is not. Using a Mac Performa with about 12 MB of RAM, a 14.4 modem, and Netscape 1.0, he is curious about the Web but not necessarily converted. He is also a middle school principal, perhaps not familiar with the college level courses we offer, but certainly qualified to be a judge of their effectiveness. He tells me when the graphics are slow to download, when the design is confusing, or if the background color gives him a headache. And I always go back to the drawing board.

There does come a point, however, when a decision must be made. We use Netscape as the foundation for our Web courses. Our server statistics have shown that more than 90% of recorded hits are from the Netscape browsers and Netscape controls 75% of the market, so it is reasonable to assume that most people are using that browser and plan accordingly. Microsoft Explorer still represents a small, though growing, number of users, and supports many Netscape features, such as frames and tables. However, to be sure to accommodate everyone, even those who have text-only browsers, we make sure to use "ALT= " tags in our HTML script. When we err, it is on the side of Netscape. It is difficult to experience the full range of browsers on one computer.

The single biggest concern to us has been download time. Since we have decided against putting as much text on the Web as can be found in the paper version of the course, graphics play a large role. Creating the graphics for online use has often been a tortuous ordeal. (We are convinced that Adobe Illustrator was not designed for the Web, and it should say that on the box in BIG RED LETTERS.) Most of our images are now created in Photoshop, and saved as GIF files as indexed color. This keeps the file size to a minimum. We are always trying to improve the resolution and size of graphics files, with the largest at about 50k. There are several plug-ins available for Adobe Photoshop that can compress files, offer transparency, and improve screen color. Once we obtain these plug-ins (currently on order) we will probably go back and redo most of our larger images to make the sites even quicker to access.

Instead of using background files, which often take time to download and obscure the onscreen text, we use the hexadecimal color chart to vary the background color. This takes no extra time to download, as it only changes the color of the background from default gray to another color of choice. Once we start using the compression plug-ins we will experiment with background files as the design dictates.


Creating universally accessible Web sites is only the first technical stage in the creation of learning environments, or virtual classrooms, on the Web. Such creation often involves the bandying about of assorted conferencing software with little end-user consideration. But as much consideration should be taken for the end-user here as with any other design elements.

Initially we wanted to use the Pacer Forum conferencing software as an adjunct to our Web-enhanced courses. This required that separate software be sent to students, who would be responsible for installing it on their systems and solving any compatibility problems. It also required that any student who wished to use both the Web and conferencing resources would have to play hopscotch between Netscape and Pacer Forum, since they do not interlink. For this reason, we opted against using Pacer Forum even though it enabled professor/student interaction we were searching for.

On all of our courses we use Interaction Web-conferencing software on a Webstar server. Interaction is shareware developed by a graduate student. It requires no additional software or hidden costs, and runs on a dedicated Webstar server, which is essential to insure course security. The Webstar server allows us to assign passwords to students when they enroll in the course. The course's homepage includes a gateway for enrolled students; our network administrator keeps track of the growing number of passwords and names. Once the students are inside the Webstar server, the course and conferencing experience begins.

Security and practicality were primary concerns as we tested Interaction on our first course, "American Science Fiction." Interaction uses the World Wide Web, requiring no additional software for the student. This not only saves money, but also circumvents any technical gadgetry or know-how on the student's part.

Again, to use any aspect of the Web course, we assume that students simply know how to navigate the Web. Interaction brings the classroom experience online. It offers real time chat groups (something few professors are interested in, but raises interesting possibilities nonetheless) as well as discussion groups that can be designed according to the professor's desires. Discussion can be directed towards a single topic chosen by the professor or opened up to include any subject related to the course. We have found that students enjoy stretching the course discussion, just as in any good classroom discussion, to include current events, films, etc. This has been the most gratifying aspect of our work, something that reminds us of the possibilities with which we are working. If done right, classrooms can be extended into cyberspace where real people can discuss real issues.


Of course there are technical problems that are beyond even the techies that make the Internet work. We use two servers for our work, the main UTS server on the main campus here at UT and a local server, Webstar, located in our office for our conferencing needs. Servers can be cantankerous, affected by sunspots, whims of minor gods, or even a change in wind direction. And sometimes there is little we can do other than wait for a good connection to the backbone. Bandwidth is a recurring problem. There is simply not enough room on the road for all of the traffic. At these times, we must remind ourselves that the Internet is still developing. Bandwidth may remain a problem for another 5-10 years. But we have identified some ways to shore up our system to make it more robust and user friendly. We are currently in the process of installing an Ethernet connection that will make our network more stable. The fewer times we have to change the domain names for the Webstar server, the better. If students can't get onto Netscape, or if the connection is slow, they will be frustrated, and the whole point of our work will be lost in a series of expletives.

We are constantly trying to avoid the temptation to add more "bells and whistles" to our sites, such as javascripts or VRML. Instead, we are concentrating on developing stable and challenging environments where students can learn. The question should not be, "How can we put up a Web course?" but "Why should we offer a Web course?" Once that question is answered, the design should follow. The Web should be more than just advertising, and it is. For the future we must concentrate on creating value for our students, not just a cumbersome and elitist approximation of "cool." It is impossible to satisfy everyone. However, every effort should be made to design courses that can be used first, and admired second. (MD)

Michael Daecher
University of Texas at Austin
Suite 1.114
3001 Lake Austin Blvd.
Austin, Texas 78703
(512) 471-9260
lantern@mail.utexas.edu

COPYRIGHT

Thomas Hofheinz and Michael Daecher © 1996. The authors assign to the University of New Brunswick and other educational and non-profit institutions a non exclusive license to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive license to the University of New Brunswick to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers, and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the authors.

N.A.WEB 96 - The Second International North America World Wide Web Conference http://www.unb.ca/web/wwwdev/ University of New Brunswick.