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In 1967 Glenn Whitehouse, a brilliant electrical engineer working for Kennecott Copper--the world's second largest open pit copper mine in the world, designed a system to go into the rich underground veins in Missouri and pull out lead ore. Glenn's design was a brain child that won Kennecott Copper the World's Outstanding Electrical Engineering Feat of the Year award. However, the success of the design required Glenn to leave his comfortable home and family in Salt Lake City and commute for two years to work in the Missouri mines training the workers how to use the system. My story is not about Glenn, but rather the fact that a gap existed between the workability of Glenn's high tech knowledge and the capability of the workers to implement his designed electronics. The story demonstrates well that the success of high tech depends upon the knowledge and willingness of the user to evolve into the technology. Unfortunately, training people can be painfully slow--even more so when personal finances restrict the training. Such has been my experience with distance education. While high-tech computerism is rapidly being implemented by major institutions all over the United States, a vast audience of users desiring high tech benefits are encased in low levels of knowledge and older systems. What a gap! How can distance education take place in such a chasm, and what skills need to be learned to bridge the gap? A profound need exists to develop methods which will move users through the Evolution of the Low-Tech Revolution until pocketbooks and knowledge can catch up with the rapidly moving high tech. That bridge was my challenge presented by Continuing Education of Ricks College.
My contact with Cont. Ed. was a pure fluke of circumstance. After mentoring me for an entire Fall Semester in his computer classroom, a kind colleague, Allen Hackworth, shared his vision of distance learning with me. Having a history of packet writing and armed with teaching experience from a variety of texts, I saw a way to repay Allen for his mentoring kindness by writing a program which could make his vision a reality. I gave up an entire Christmas vacation to produce the text which I felt was fair payment for an entire term's tutorage. My text packet contained 15 weekly lessons incorporating a department-approved composition text, an approved software grammar drill program, and my classroom experience "bests". I had barely plopped the text on Allen's desk when a knock at his door unveiled Doug Stuz from Continuing Education who had come to discuss the possibility of a distance education class with Allen. Doug left that day carrying my packet before Allen ever had a chance to read it. Interested in its potential, Doug walked the idea through his superior, Ron Campbell, who walked the idea through multiple levels of approval all the way through Academic Council. It was reported back to me that everyone wanted to ". . . test the waters. Would I be willing?" Obviously, I said yes.
The first trials run in the summer of 1996 was simplistic. I added a faster modem to my 386, installed Eudora, and mailed the text packet to a located student with the expectation that assignments would be returned by email. Cont. Ed.'s field test student, Lin Hull, was an English Honors student with seven married computer-literate brothers fathered by a computer systems owner. Lin was the only candidate to respond from 150 announcement phone calls.
Though the course started with a packet mail-out, it was more than a glorified independent study since continual interaction (called community in the virtual classroom) occurred between teacher and student. Both Lin and I used desktops at home and 486 lap tops when traveling. We never missed a due date even though she mailed from married brothers' houses all over the western United States, and I received and returned comment from Idaho or Utah where I have married children. On one visit to Utah, my son-in-law helped me create a home page posting the outline and lessons on the Internet for Lin's convenience. Now all Lin or I needed was a telephone outlet. What a marvelous experience ensured. We never had a hitch. What freedom! I remember thinking, "If this is what DE (Distance Ed.) is like, I will take a hundred." Then the evolution began.
I soon learned I had experienced inflated beginners' luck as misconceptions about online students and equipment began to unfold. The next term with eight student started with a black-out of the entire northwest leaving me the ability to mail out but not receive. My children in Utah, unaffected with the black-out, picked up my email and called the messages to me on the phone line, so I could return answers until the black-out was over. The next week the Ricks network went down, and again I scrambled to keep the class together. I realized I needed to gain some depth talking to (or listening to) others involved in such undertakings as mine. Seeking such guidance, I subscribed to a Computers and Writing list group (AWC-L) housed at Texas Tech University and composed of 600 subscribers with a nucleus of veterans--knowledgeable in all facets of the teaching of composition. I looked to this group to gain insight about helpful features to implement into the course to make it more dependable and effective. It was being a lurker on this list that awakened me to the real distance between the high tech revolution most of them discussed and the low tech revolution to which I was committed. The first misconception I faced was the disclosure that students would sign up for an online course without computer knowledge. What a shocker! Worse still--students with frightfully old computers would register for the course. I could understand that the LDS belief in the large family might be a factor in a shortage of funding for upgraded equipment, but why would students select to register for an online course if they hadn't had any experience online? My also surprised experienced mentors couldn't enlighten me either, but . . . I decided if you don't know what you don't know, you don't know not to bite into it. Should these potential students be screened out? Not if I truly was ". . . testing waters". Cont. Ed.'s goal was to be able to place a course online to anyone anytime anywhere. In compliance with their vision, I engaged my personal problem solving skill.
My first change was to reorganize the time frame of the course. I rewrote the lessons to synchronize the eight text chapters to eight weeks, one per week. Then, two extra weeks were tacked onto the front of the course for buffer time allowing a weak student to become acquainted with computerism before getting into text chapters. The shortened ten week duration fit nicely between my beginning and end-of-term demands when real classrooms needed new syllabi and assignment schedules. This was more in line with the block term concept.
The front two weeks of the course provided a Lead Time Week and a Practice Week. Lead Time allowed the student to send and receive a series of emails and to locate a willing neighbor to aid in software installation. Lead Time allowed me time to double check addresses and alternate lines. The second buffer week, Practice Week, forced the student to become acquainted with both homepage and text and to submit two practice assignments free from the threat of grade damage while learning to function as a virtual student. The practice assignments included a scavenger hunt which gave me a report of personal equipment/programs used and a brief autobiography which I posted on the Internet to bond and motivate class members. Practice Week also included an exercise in understanding stats, so students could receive motivation to improve from their own computer instead of a continual dependance on me. During this stage of evolution, I completed an html class, so I could relieve my son-in-law, also a Doug, of the responsibility of maintaining my homepage. Doug agreed to remain my technical support should I get in over my head. Remember, I had only one computer course with Allen to prepare me for this experience, so even low tech was fairly new to me.
This ten-week offering survived Fall semester nicely and served members of the outer community working regular daytime jobs. Winter semester, however, brought the challenge of a second misconception. The previously experienced audience as individuals with regular jobs trying to fit a college course into evening hours changed to a new profile. The Winter semester registration drew in a majority of unexpected campus regulars: students from the traveling Show Time group, Baseball and Track team members, and Agricultural field-trip participants. Each of these students were away from campus so many Fridays, it was virtually impossible to fulfil their GE requirement in a MWF classroom . Additionally, practice schedules cut them from Tues-Thurs or evening classes. The flexibility of online was their answer. At that time, campus offered email, but not Internet, to students–another hurdle. Here was a new stage in the evolution. How could I teach the course with email only? The answer was easy.
Although it seemed a step backwards to the packet beginning, the course homepage could be printed and mailed out as a manual. I named the homepage the TRP Manual because Internet is information on a TR(i)P. Not everyone caught my sense of humor. I placed the TRP Manual at the Reserve Desk in the library for any student who had campus email but no Internet access at all. Did we get takers? I should say we did. I now had to consider teacher workload–yet another step in the evolution.
The reversal from too few to too many forced me to set perimeters for what a teacher can comfortably carry. These perimeters fell into two categories: 1) organizing the huge bulk of messages needed to send, receive, and store from increased numbers of students, and 2) finding methods to give students sufficient personal attention (community) without excessive time investment.
The storage of the bulk of messages evolved through several stages. In the beginning I printed the papers as they came in with the intent to dump at the end of the semester. After only one semester, I gave up the printing in favor of saving assignments on floppies and using disk-only scoring. Moving messages even one extra time was too labor intensive. The upgrading of my personal computer to a Pentium and adding additional hard drive storage became the next step in the evolution. Though I kept graphics off my homepage (with the exception of two places) to accommodate students with lesser machines, I realized that I, the instructor, needed speed and a place to keep everything in one spot. My upgrade worked.
By creating file names for students to use when emailing submissions, I could drop the assignment into its own file storage when I was finished with it. I found by creating three extra files--
To address the provision of community for the class, I selected personal correspondence which guaranteed regular student interface since I lacked synchronous time and knowledge for moos. I reserved some time each day for answering questions but developed a rather extensive system of group messages to handle the bulk of the communications. I sent these messages with a group address list, so minimal time was invested. These group messages were sent every class day at first and then tapered off to about half after I hooked class members to each other as web pals. I could never co-ordinate webbing with other schools although I thought the idea a promising possibility. Nevertheless, my student's locations and variety of course taking circumstances supported successful webbing within the class.
I paid careful attention to putting my name in the address box and the group list name in Blind Copy, so students were never furnished more than their web pal address by me. This was a caution I learned from my listgroup. Furnishing full class addresses to one location tempts pranksters which could invite legal problems later on. Two such cases are in the courts right now stemming from neighbors of younger brothers or sisters.
Often I put a writing tidbit in the group message and asked for a smilie in return. The return of smilies constituted a line check to insure students received and responded. Students enjoyed this bit of community which only took the push of one button. Additionally, I experimented with a chat program that students could load with no charge; however, chatting succeeded only in summer terms. Campus bound students eagerly chatted to set up meeting times and such after campus arrival. Since the summer terms included students from all comers of the United States, these chats became very lively. Other semesters, however, were quite a different story. Because the majority of fall students had radical schedules, they had no interest or even the capability to go online synchronously. Occasionally when campus students wanted to meet each other, I scheduled a room for them to gather These were always very rewarding meetings.
With the perimeters of my class accommodated by skillful use of both computer and time, I felt effective. Large classes were indeed manageable. Each student received good interaction with the reading and emailing of responses following a specific method (! $ X ?) taught in the first lesson.
Composition rewrites were assisted with a Machine Edit that enabled a print-out for individualized self-study and supported by random teacher and peer edits. The writing improvement was unquestionable no matter the audience or season. Yet . . . even though I should have been content with the course's success (and my loss of fear toward using tech support in teaching), I grew greedy for even more speed. I sensed from my superiors that another move further over the bridge of low-tech was eminent. The vibes coming from the college administrators favored distance learning as a less-time-per-student relationship rather than the more-time-per-student relationship that I still had. I dived into this new stage of evolution focused on two things: 1) how to give quicker support for student concerns such as computer crashes, servers down, natural disasters wiping out systems, or personal emergencies, and 2) how to be faster (and perhaps more efficient) with testing methods.
Being acquainted with high tech features through my listgroup discussions, I glimpsed a vision of how to move my audience toward higher tech. The mystery had such a simple answer--more time at the machine. The more time a person spends on the computer, the more proficient the user becomes-just like playing the piano, but . . . how could I justify more computerism when the approved credit was being issued for writing only, not computers and writing? I could not require more time at the computer to fulfill assignments. However, if I could find a way to entice students to visit the computer on their own time, they would have the more-time more-comfort reward. It was worth a try.
I moved forward into this idea by designing a Newsboard--no, not a fancy one as the listgroup described encumbered with student web page designs and forum posts, but a Newsboard with a place to post class interests. One link was for autosketches and a second spot to post group messages for any student whose email server didn't deliver (a notoriously often situation for hotmail and aol users). This saved me tracking and resend time. The Newsboard included a place to post gradepoints for the scoring of assignments and a place to post answers to questions re-asked time and again. These features saved me additional time while serving as magnets to the computer. Next, I provided space on the Newsboard to send a message via the Internet that would arrive on my email line. This feature proved valuable when students from Ohio were caught by tornadoes, and all the email and phone service went down. The students found one Internet access at the Red Cross station and sent me a message of their situation. I emailed their score returns as well as their status to the others in a group message. Students loved having these extras. The virtual classroom had become warm and personal. More formal links were added for visiting libraries, other online offerings such as OWLS (Online Writing Centers), and tutoring pages for both writing and computing skills, and documentation. My homepage was bursting with features--all designed to pull the student into the online world toward the higher tech. It worked.
By now I had evoluted into higher tech myself. I had found software programs which increase speed and efficiency of my instructor's responsibilities: MicroGrade for grade averages, Rightwriter for the Machine Edit, MLG for grammar drills. When a student needed additional help, I used canned instructions from a macro bar or the marginal comments feature sent as an attachment. It even worked to do tile critique which means to open the comp on one side and put your comment on the other with the same spacing. Then when the student opens the tile, all the comments open beside the original sentence. Sometimes a student has only enough knowledge for internal marks, so I use ///three slashes--then add the words of critique and three more slashes to mark the end///. Rewriting became an important part of the course. Though Midterm, Sentence Power, and Final exams as well as Chapter quizzes earned points, the greater number of points awarded toward the grade is for the writing effort. For Chapter quizzes I use the educator's server from Hawaii. Many test correction programs are out there, but Hawaii is free to educators and returns the scores to the designated place--instructor or student. My exams are housed comfortably on my local server with selection boxes as the basis for the test.
Yes, it has been a three-year evolution into high tech, but when I heard one of the campus gurus make the comment that I was using sophisticated technology, I thought "Hooray, I have crossed the bridge. Now if I can just get my students all the way across, they will be ready for high tech when they can afford it." What do my evaluations indicate? Well, since the creation of the Newsboard, students have begun to claim they are no longer afraid of an online course. They claim they have somewhat outgrown the need for the community within the class that they once thought vital and that they are ready to move into a higher level online study with more glamour and speed. They have crossed over the bridge of low tech with me. When colleges and homes have the funding and knowledge to update sufficiently to carry buttons, bells, whistles, and frames on homepages, animated graphics and video clips within the monitors, or complete courses on CD Rom, my alumni will be waiting
Does this mean my job is over? Oh my, no. It will be a number more years for this low-tech/high-tech chasm to close. In the meantime, I will try to figure how to reduce the amount of reading without slow-loading graphics, and how to use homepage links to send students directly into libraries instead of depending on only online sources. I am searching for ways to protect the integrity of my tests once they are put online, and I'd really like to know how to keep a student from expecting instant feedback from the instructor. Somehow, online students subconsciously envision the instructor at the end of the line 24 hours a day.
Additionally, there is a need to explore ways of using low tech in campus classes. Recently, I had campus lab students use an assignment from the net with the horizontal tile feature when the broadcast unit of the lab malfunctioned. It was wonderful to have backup technology that day. There is much, much more to learn, but learning new things takes time. This year, Cont. Ed. has challenged me to serve a new audience with the course--high school students Wanting Dual Credit classes. The high school labs had to be made college course worthy. Methods had to be improved and practiced. High school students need to be taught to psyche up to college load. Walking the virgin soil is challenging but time consuming, and training people in any new pathway is always slow . . . painfully slow. Nevertheless, progress is inevitable. Just as Glenn Whitehouse of Kennecott Copper traded his comfort in Salt Lake City for the cold dark mines of Missouri in preparation for workers to use their new system, the college instructors face leaving a comfort zone in the real classroom to meet the challenge of the technology revolution in the virtual one. I have no idea how long Cont. Ed. will need my services. I am sure my course will be phased out as soon as the mentality of the student and the pocket book of the college market can close the chasm between low and high tech. I can't help thinking as this course's designer, I have much in common with Glenn Whitehouse. But then, I guess I do. Glenn is my brother. Online addresses:
Homepage of Mary Lula Welch
http://www.srv.net/~welchm/courses/
Short-cut address to the El I IC Newsboard
http://www.srv.net/~welchm/courses/10wk/newsboard.html
Free test service from University of Hawaii
http://www.motted.hawaii.edu/
AWC-L Listgroup for Computers and Writing
http://english.ttu.edu/acw/operations/category.html#wnting
Shortcut address for samples of web pals from other institutions
http://moo.du.org.8888/OOanon/cybercomp/do/browse
Shortcut addresses for samples of other Online Course Homepages:
http://www.srv.net/~welchm/courses/10wk/logistic.html
Brigham Young University Online Courses
http://coned.byu.edu/is/index.html