The Online Classroom

KOI ANUNTA/YH

In late April,Yahoo! Internet Life magazine released its second annual report on "America's Most Wired Colleges." Yale ranked 30th, with statistics reporting that one quarter of Yale classes have materials online. Ranked first was Dartmouth College, with 80 % of classes with online components and 100 percent with online work.

Rankings aside, there is still a significant number of Yale classes online, which use everything from simple email lists for announcements to websites that contain entire sets of lecture notes. Professor Vincent Scully JE '40, GRD '49, has online slides for this History of Art class, "Introduction to the History of Art: Prehistory to the Renaissance," Professor Frederick Ziegler posts 3-D models of molecules on the website for his class, "Organic Chemistry", and countless other professors and teaching assistants send weekly announcements over email or through newsgroups.

However, Instructional Computing, a branch of Yale Information Technology Services (ITS), hopes to increase the number of classes online with a new server intended solely for online class materials. In the past, professors hard-pressed for time pawned webpage writing duties off on students. In addition, teachers who wanted webpages had to go through middlemen to have an account established. Meanwhile, students looking for class webpages had to wade through the URL's at the bottom of syllabi or search through numerous directories and servers.

Now, thanks to a new server implemented by ITS and Instructional Computing (IC), these difficulties may slowly fade away. Space has already been allocated for the more than 1600 classes being taught this term, on classes.yale.edu, the new web server. The computer that will run the new server boasts higher levels of disk space and computing ability with its I 4-drive 25 gigabyte (billion-bytes) RAID system, a Pentium II processor and 128 megabytes of RAM.

At Present

The ITS staff and the design team hope that eventually, all Yale classes will start to use the new server. Currently, however, there are only about 20 classes and 120 students using the service, but the numbers are growing. There has been minimal publicity since the kinks are still being worked out of the system. In addition, it will take time for the hundreds of professors with class websites on departmental, personal, or pantheon servers to shift over to the new server. However, the staff at ITS is optimistic about the future use of the server, and its capability as a viable educational tool. Director of Instructional Computing Edward Kairiss explains that IC is going to take the first semester to experiment with the efficacy of the server's configuration, but hopes "to encourage migration," to the new server. Director of Academic Computing Services Philip Long is also enthusiastic about helping students and professors move onto the new server.

"We are anxious to lower the barriers to faculty and students to take full advantage of emerging electronic teaching and learning opportunities," Long said.

One of the key features of the new server that ITS hopes will "lower the barriers," is a specialized interface that IC programmer Peter Snow designed. The software features two separate interfaces, one for teachers to set up their pages and one for students to access the pages for their classes. The student interface at http://classes.yale.edu/student can be accessed by entering a NetID and password. Then, the software asks the student to enter the names of their classes, searches for the online components for the indicated classes, and then returns a customized page complete with a pop-up help screen, menus, and links. At the top is a colorful menu listing options of interaction: course web pages, syllabi, class materials, and student uploads. At the bottom, there are also links to a newsgroup and a chat room (refreshed in real-time but remaining on the server until 4 am each day). Although one needs a password and a NetID to access the server, websurfers outside of Yale can still link to individual class pages.

Professors and students using the new server's online tools have sent mixed reviews, though. LeeAnn Einert, GRD'01, a teaching assistant in the German department had a positive opinion. "I have to say that in general I like the new system a lot," she said. After figuring out the system, she could interact easily with her students. "It's a testament to the ease of the system that I, a sometime technophobe, was able to create a website, however basic and spartan, to welcome my students and let them know that they are in the right place," Einert said.

Statistics department professor Donald Green had a mixed response. "I like what I've seen, although it could use a bit more by way of documentation; that will come with time," Green said.

Professor Jim Wallis, who is teaching a Forestry and Environmental Studies class, "GIS in Water Resources", completely online, said that while the support from Instructional Computing was excellent, establishing the web page was a time consuming process. He explains, however, "the process is aggravated by severe storage constraints, by the [interface] which was designed for single shot upload and downloads, by restricted folder structure, and by a file transfer protocol that is cumbersome and restrictive."

In context

Once ITS works out the kinks, and more professors move onto the server, Yale may have a very strong online component to more than one quarter of all classes. However, within the online community, the debate still rages over what sorts of online tools really facilitate learning. At Yale and other schools, where classes use online tools that range from simple newsgroups to elaborate websites, students have differing opinions on exactly where and when a class may benefit from online components. Armando Valdes-Prieto, BK '01, is a student in Computer Science 112-Introduction to Programming, taught by Professor Paul Haduk, who puts all the lecture notes, assignments, and course materials on the class website. Valdes-Prieto greatly appreciates the website, stating, "It's a cool class...Everything is right here [on the page.]." In fact, since the lecture notes are presented in an interactive fashion, and all assignments are submitted online, Valdes-Prieto has stopped going to class regularly. However, he conceded that while classes like Computer Science "lend themselves," to a completely web-based format, there are many more classes where a exclusively online format would not add value. Valdes-Prieto cites Vincent Scully's History of Art class, where "the lecture is integral...and where it's nice to hear the professor [lecture]."

At University of Pennsylvania, Alexandra Minkovich, '01 takes classes in Classics and politics that require participation in class newsgroups. Minkovich points to the the many personal, non-academic emails that are posted on newsgroups as a drawback.

"Sometimes kids are stupid and write personal e-mails to the [professor] and send it to the listserv," she said. "But I think when there is an actual assignment, everyone writes a lot more to the listserv." Overall, she feels that the newsgroups are not "necessarily get used all that often."

Another benefit of putting classes on the web, claim some, is increased communication. In a recent lecture at Yale, Scot Plous of Wesley University explained that when he added an online requirement to his classes, almost all of the students responded positively or ambivalently. Other statistics corroborate such a positive response. The online magazine HotWired, in a recent article, states, "A sociology department study at California State University at Northridge, reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, found that an average of 15 percent of the students in a normal classroom will respond to questions. People teaching online have found closer to a 90 percent response rate."

The ability to elicit greater participation and interaction and the capacity to share information dynamically and efficiently are both inherent in the Internet, as an educational tool. As ITS moves towards using this tool to a greater degree at Yale, pockets of enthusiasm exist in various departments. One enthusiastic professor, William Whobrey of the German department, is excited about offering more resources.

"[Webpages] bring all the exciting...resources to the students' fingertips, and we incorporate these resources with our classroom activities," Wholbrey said.

The Student Interface,

The Teacher Interface

Email the folks in charge

Yahoo Internet Life ranking report on Yale

Yahoo Internet Life ranking report on Dartmouth

Hotwired Report on online classes

Cause and Effect report on online classes

What do you think? Respond in Speak your Mind.

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