Web-Teaching A Guide for Designing Interactive Teaching for the World Wide Web
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David W. Brooks, Diane E. Nolan, Susan M. Gallagher
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Web-Teaching A Guide for Designing Interactive Teaching for the World Wide Web
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Kluwer Academic Publishers
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9780306476822
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2
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CHF 35.50
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Geisteswissenschaften, Kunst, Musik
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English
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342
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PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
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PDF
When the first edition of Web-Teaching was written, in late 1996, the Web seemed to be emerging as a powerful force in education. The half-decade since has seen remarkable instructional innovation based upon the Web. At the same time, seeking the goose that lays the golden egg, college administrators with little or no technical expertise have driven faculty to create Web courses. Distance education went out; extended education came in. Politicians began to anticipate substantial instructional savings. Thus far, any profits have been minimal and any savings experienced have been small ones.
Web courses and Web-based course supplements have popped up all over all over the world. No central force has yet emerged which dominates the field. Indeed, nearly every college, from the large to the small, has become a player. Tremendous, broad-based Web-delivery activity has characterized the last few years of the 20th century. Elementary students publish Web-sites. Teachers use Web-pages to communicate with parents.
Web-commerce has flourished. The wave of Web-commerce has paled that of Web-teaching. The infrastructure that is emerging to support Web-commerce ultimately will permit piggybacking of Web-teaching. We can expect fast Web access to be available in students' homes.
We see this edition as continuing to offer helpful, research-based suggestions to teachers who would improve their teaching using the Web. The first edition of Web-Teaching was somewhat dated when it came off the press. This edition also shoots at a quickly moving target. Much has happened in four years. Little has happened, however, to modify the principal messages of the first edition. This edition attempts to focus reader attention on research reported from the early days of Web teaching.
There are six things we can say about Web teaching at this time:
1. Course Management Software (WebCT, CourseInfo) has emerged and been embraced strongly by teachers. As a result, the number of teachers whose courses have some Web presence is mushrooming. For our first edition, Web teachers who managed their own servers represented a large fraction of those using the Web. This no longer is so; today few teachers manage their own Web servers.
2. The first edition suggested that Web teaching might not be successful in certain content areas. It turns out that Web teaching can be applied to nearly any non-laboratory course in the curriculum. Even portions of some laboratory and studio courses have been handled well on the Web.
3. While extensive studies are not available, early results suggest that students in Web courses learn about the same amount as do students in traditional courses. Drop out rates in Web-based courses are higher than in traditional courses, but similar to other distance courses.
4. There have been no results that suggest strong learning gains from multimedia approaches to teaching. Thus far, it appears that media have small effects. Active learning approaches have larger positive effects on learning outcomes.
5. Many teachers have developed Web supplements for their courses. There is very strong evidence that the students who use these resources learn better than those who do not.
6. Very few teachers have enjoyed time efficiencies as the result of developing a Web presence. Quite the opposite; teachers find that Web courses take more time. This is especially true of courses involving discussion, where reading Internet-based discussions can become an enormous chore.
A major difference between this edition and the first edition is that this edition was first created on the Web, and then converted to paper. The number of chapters has been increased. Several topics have been included that were missing in the first edition. For example, we devote a chapter to a discussion of Web courseware applications. Courseware helps teachers to organize and deliver courses that are entirely Web-based. We also stress the metacognition of the Web, those core skills that help us know what to do whenever we use the Web as an information gathering or transmitting tool. David Brooks notes, with great personal regret and sense of loss, the passing of his friends and mentors Frank Collea and Alvah Kilgore. They both were prime movers of the first edition.
David W. Brooks
Diane E. Nolan
Susan M. Gallagher
Lincoln, Nebraska
August, 2000
CHAPTER 9
Promotion of Self-Regulated Learning
(p. 155-156)
The early literature about students using the Web describes successful students in terms that teachers frequently use to describe students who traditionally succeed. While all teachers enjoy these successful students very much, many students come to us in less than perfect form to succeed at the tasks we ask of them. This chapter is about making students better at academic survival. A goal for us in writing this book has been to direct readers toward what we believe to be the best available literature to assist you when making Web course design choices. Thus far, the literature related to Web-teaching has spoken about the less than perfect students with a single voice – don’t admit them. While that strategy nearly always leads to teacher success, it does not address the realities of the students we meet.
In traditional settings, the instructor controls the classroom to some degree. Class attendance may be a requirement. Students in a class can engage in activities; participation can be an integral part of their grades. Over the Web, students have much more freedom than in a classroom. They may be logged into a Web site, but not even in the room. It is not possible for the instructor to tell exactly what students are doing. Students who are poor at self-regulation easily can be"slaughtered" in Web-based courses. On the Web, if your students are not self-regulating, how can you hope for success?
The research literature in the area of self-regulation often is found under the heading metacognition {U09.01}. While literature about Web-teaching is sparse on this issue, there is a rich literature about distance learning. In distance settings, attrition rates (lack of success rates) of 50% are commonplace. But it is not clear that high dropout rates are intrinsic to the distance process. Kevin Cox {U09.03} suggests that:"If you have a high drop out rate then all other things being equal you probably have a poor course."
A very basic question about teaching, especially college teaching, is"can we do much anyway?" Christy Horn’s work (studies of introductory biology classes [Horn et al., 1993; Horn, 1993, 1995]) determined that the biggest fraction of lack of success can be attributed to students’ not trying! Worse yet, this problem is not localized; it is widespread at major universities. Students who do not attend classes, do not interact with the learning materials, and, therefore, have very low success rates. Horn’s work is representative of many that document the breadth of a troubling situation. Instructors can do only so much to improve their teaching before the lack of student involvement becomes a limiting factor.
There is substantial hope that successful interventions are possible, however. As one of several responses to Horn’s results, faculty have developed Web pages for student use. For example, William Glider [1996] has developed Web pages with opportunities for submitting questions, access to tutorials, access to old quizzes with answers and discussion, and enrichment materials. Questions are entered using standard HTML form elements. Glider has documented improved student learning [Horn et al., 1997]. Recently Shin [1998] suggested guidelines for instructional design that might promote students’ selfregulation. Keller [1999], originator of the ARCS (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction) model of motivational design, suggests ways to use this in computer-based instruction and distance education.
Puntambekar& duBoulay [1997] describe a system, Metacognition in Studying from Texts (MIST), that includes three features to foster metacognition. Their system was used more productively by high ability than low ability students, however. Self-regulation concerns the entire range of factors that affect student performance. Intelligence is a controversial construct describing factors about which teacher impact, at best, is limited. Self-regulation is something that is teachable and not especially constrained by intelligence [Symons et al., 1989]. Self-regulation accounts for the ability of persons of modest intelligence to become skilled masters of very complex tasks.
Interventions aimed at improving self-regulation are one way for teachers to impact students’ lives. According to Gregg Schraw, teaching self-regulation may be the most important thing a teacher can do for students; it may amount to empowering them to be lifelong learners. This kind of thinking pervades the community of educational psychologists studying these issues:
A new vision of education is emerging. It is one in which children are provided procedural instruction throughout their academic careers, one in which strategy instruction is at the heart of education. This reflects the belief that a major goal of schooling is to teach people how to read, write, and solve problems.
Symons et al., 1989, p. 1
Preface
6
Acknowledgments
11
Contents
12
Introduction
23
ABOUT OUR FORMAT
23
THE INTERNET – A BRIEF HISTORY
24
THE WEB – A VERY BRIEF HISTORY
25
THE ROLE OF COMPUTERS
26
IMPACTS OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES
27
CURRICULA
29
THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
30
WHY TEACHERS USE THE WEB
30
GOALS OF THIS BOOK
31
THE MEDIUM FOR THE MESSAGE
32
THE BOOK’S CONTENT
32
THE TEACHER/STUDENT, SERVER/CLIENT METAPHOR
33
GLOSSARY
34
REFERENCES
36
URLs
37
Research on Teaching: Web Issues
38
THE BIG PICTURE: LEARNING AND NEURONS
38
TEACHERS AND FACE VALIDITY
40
TECHNOLOGY AND TEACHING
42
MULTIMEDIA: DEVELOPING A PERSPECTIVE
43
MULTIMEDIA IN ACTIVE LEARNING SYSTEMS
46
ARE ELECTRONIC CONVERSATIONS EFFECTIVE?
49
THE BOTTOM LINE
50
THE WEB AS A DELIVERY MEDIUM FOR INSTRUCTION
50
A PERSPECTIVE
53
GLOSSARY
54
REFERENCES
55
URLs
57
Software for Managing Web Courses
59
COURSEWARE
60
OTHER SUPPORT ISSUES
66
EXAMPLES FROM COURSEWARE PACKAGES
67
INFORMAL OBSERVATION ABOUT USAGE
70
GLOSSARY
70
REFERENCES
71
URLs
71
Students and Web Use: Expectations
72
METACOGNITION
73
TEACHING STRATEGIES
73
TIPS TO TEACH
75
SEARCHING THE WEB
77
GLOSSARY
79
REFERENCES
81
URLs
81
Encouraging Discussion
82
THE NATURE OF WEB-BASED DISCUSSION
82
STRATEGIES FOR WEB-BASED DISCUSSION
87
SUPPORTING WEB DISCUSSION
91
GLOSSARY
102
REFERENCES
103
URLs
104
Web Multimedia Basics
106
YOUR BROWSER AND COMPUTER FILES
106
TEXTUAL MEDIA
109
HYPERTEXT
113
SOUPED-UP HYPERTEXT
113
HTML BASICS
115
ALTERNATIVES TO HYPERTEXT
117
TRANSFERRING FILES
119
GLOSSARY
121
REFERENCES
123
URLs
123
Interactive Strategies
125
CLASSROOM TRADITIONS
125
HYPERTEXT LINKS
126
CLICKABLE IMAGES
128
FORMS
128
COLLECTING STUDENT TEXT
139
E-MAIL (FOR PROCESSING FORMS)
139
THE LAST MINUTE
142
GLOSSARY
143
REFERENCES
143
URLS
143
Multimedia Beyond Text
144
VISUAL MEDIA
144
STILL IMAGES
145
GIF
147
JPEG
148
PNG, MNG
148
SPECIAL PROGRAMS AND PLUG-INS.
154
3-D
CAD
IMAGES WITH MOTION
159
AUDIO MEDIA
165
GLOSSARY
167
REFERENCES
169
URLs
170
Promotion of Self-Regulated Learning
172
SELF-REGULATION
174
PRINCIPLES FOR ENCOURAGING SELF-REGULATION
175
EXPLICIT TRAINING
180
DISCIPLINE-SPECIFIC SELF-REGULATION
181
EXAMS
182
VIDEOCONFERENCING
183
GLOSSARY
183
REFERENCES
183
Creating and Managing Web Sites
186
DOMAIN NAMES/IP ADDRESSES
188
HARDWARE – ACCESS SPEED
189
SOFTWARE
190
SITE ORGANIZATION
191
DETAILS ABOUT SERVING
192
GLOSSARY
196
URLs
197
Course Supplements
199
EXAMPLES
200
HOMEWORK
213
REFERENCES
213
URLs
214
Col
