Charles Sterner, Director of Information Technology
Tim Carroll, Executive Director of Information Technology
Albert Whittenberg, Webmaster
Roane State Community College
276 Patton Lane
Harriman, TN 37748-5011
Through cooperative efforts, educational institutions are better able to
afford the costs and other resources needed to create successful online programs.
In order to produce the same quality of instruction provided in the traditional
classroom, instructional technologists must provide web instructors with
sufficient software, training and support. Using chats, messaging boards
and password protection, cyber educators can interact easily and comfortably
with their students. If promoted and supported, online curriculums will
flourish.
The mission of two year institutions has always been to provide higher education to the local community. To thrive and progress, these schools have been forced to constantly innovate. Although video and audio technology are now the backbone of successful distance education curricula, and email (or modem) courses provide a sufficient arena for some disciplines, such technology can be implemented in bigger and better formats. The empowering World Wide Web lives up to its name in offering the world!
Having an unlimited community of students opens the door to both advantages and disadvantages. With the world as its service area, distance learning programs hail as a new frontier of unbridled potential. Can colleges develop an online presence that yields the same quality education globally as it does locally? With no means to predict potential revenue, schools remain reluctant to wager the resources needed for proper development. Thus, in most cases, progress toward the creation of an online campus is thwarted by insecurities. Understandably, the path between instruction and accessibility must be widened.
In the spring of 1996, Roane State Community College and three other community colleges created the Tennessee Online Community College Consortium (TOCCC). Its goal is to create a complete program to provide an eventual online degree. In addition to offering a wider range of classes, the Consortium improves its resources by cooperation alone. The cost of cutting edge hardware, software and training would be impractical for most schools acting independently, but for schools functioning as a unit, production and development expenses become more reasonable. By learning from each other's mistakes, the trials and tribulations of each individual school build a stronger, more experienced base for future development. This way the TOCCC schools move ahead promoting both their institution and the Consortium.
As a mere quarter of the Consortium, Roane State Community College presently offers eight different courses online. Less than a year old, the infant curriculum endured a host of unseen horrors. Without the existence of "standard procedure," facilitators and instructors were too busy patching holes in the technology to concentrate on the source of the problems. As soon as the dust settled, the Consortium converged to identify the strengths and weaknesses in each school's individual online program. Because of unique demographic and geographic perspectives, course advertising, access and support differed greatly among schools.
As the only school in the group with a full-time instructional technologist and a full-time Webmaster, Roane State volunteered to have its Instructional Technology Center (ITC) host and manage the Consortium’s site. Amidst the creation of an entirely new site for the college, Roane State found the opportunity to simultaneously sculpt a testing ground for instruction was hard to pass up. Despite the fact that they were on summer vacation, five instructors came into the ITC for Web course training. After an entire day of HTML coding, three of the five instructors successfully created their first electronic syllabus. It was not long, however, that feelings of accomplishment faded in the light of the enormous task ahead. Comments like "I should’ve started last summer… " and "How will I have time to create my entire curriculum?" generated waves of anxiety and diminishing hope. Luckily, their enthusiasm was rekindled after seeing a quick preview of both WordPerfect 7 and Microsoft Word 97’s ability to convert documents to HTML.
In less than two weeks, the instructors successfully transformed their written material from the traditional classroom formats into an organized Web of instruction. With use of Microsoft’s Office 97 (or less), the campus network structure and a flatbed color scanner, course documents, images and presentations were easily deployed to the instructor’s own email account. After conversion to HTML, Netscape’s Composer became the final draft editor of choice. Composer was the perfect tool to add some personality to their academic site in a user-friendly, WYSIWYG interface. With such refined publishing capabilities, the barriers once familiar to network access are no longer an obstacle.
With a few tricks up their sleeves, the instructors took their courses online, ready or not. A degree in computer science would not have saved them from the troubles ahead. The Web instructors were instantly bombarded by email and phone calls while enrollment jumped up and down like a pogo stick. Despite a list of requirements and suggestions for courses of this nature, participants were unclear, confused and discouraged -- the concept was new to everyone. Without proper equipment and experience, the online classroom can not prosper. The amount of the problems common to the traditional classroom are dwarfed by the immeasurable number of conflicts created by the mix of people, the computers and the Internet.
The message must get to the student as many ways as possible. Course catalog listings, newspapers, radio advertisements, and others have been discussed as potential local vehicles for awareness in the semesters to come. Eventually, the TOCCC hopes to work out a cooperative effort with local area Internet providers. Until the advantages and disadvantages of cyber education are understood, no amount of information or preparation is in vain.
By midterm, the experienced cyber professors, the instructors at Roane State Community College and other members of the TOCCC were ready to enhance their old class or start a new one. The need to display alternate forms of information and media emerged. As well, the protection of such strenuous efforts became another issue. Instructional technology conferences, Web searches and computer magazines presented great prospects for the use of multimedia on the Internet. Even though the word processing applications and Web browsers were now easier to use and well equipped for Web publishing, it became apparent that the need for more powerful tools for multimedia would soon be addressed.
A true multimedia experience filled with sound and animation was the desired result. The ITC staff found a solution in Asymetrix's ToolBook II Assistant. Unlike earlier ToolBook authoring systems, Asymetrix's newest version requires no programming or scripting. ToolBook II Assistant creates "Booklets" of hyper-text pages generated from a wide variety of templates. By importing digital images, video or rich text formatted documents, a dynamic lecture or testing component with sound and motion or can be created for the World Wide Web using java or the company’s Neuron plug-in. Although a linear presentation can be developed in minutes, the TOCCC instructors will attend a comprehensive all day training session at Roane State in March of 1998 and the instructional technology specialist will teach them how to take advantage of the software's advanced features.
O'Reilly's WebSite 2.0 and WebBoard software were inexpensive solutions to enhanced security and communication. Like many colleges, the TOCCC instructors were not able to easily send or receive binary files. Documents were difficult to share. O’Reilly’s messaging board, WebBoard, solved numerous conflicts. Threaded messages allow attachments of any type, making homework assignments, review sheets and other essential items easy to share. The most amazing feature inside the WebBoard is its built in Chat Room. In true MUD style, this ingenious application can run on almost any platform. With plenty of online documentation, WebBoard was an immediate favorite with the entire college since it also works with text based browsers!
The company’s WebSite 2.0 server software built the missing doors and walls. A single HTML page with course information and a link to the course made the perfect front door for each cyber classroom. By activating authentication on the folders containing class material, a username/password dialog box pops up upon entry. This barrier offers numerous benefits to both the integrity of course and the safety of the material. Instructors were pleased that no one could enter their cyber classroom without permission. At the start of the semester, the ITC sent all participating students and instructors in the TOCCC a quick greeting:
Welcome to Online Music 130!
Your instructor, Sherbie Hampson, is looking forward to meeting you and the rest of your class during her introduction chat Thursday evening at 9:00 PM. The entrance to your course is located at: http://toccc.rscc.cc.tn.us/rscc/mus130/. To enter the course, click the "Enter" button and provide your own personal username and password below:
Username: MUS130S01
Password: MUS130WRS
Roane State's Webmaster and the Instructional Technology Center look forward to your success this semester. Please email webmaster@rscc.cc.tn.us if you need assistance.
Have a great experience online!
Despite technological enhancements, the online curriculum will flourish only if corporations, publishing companies and Internet providers continue to support it. Cyber education is all about putting learning into a format that people today want. This is the challenge of educators and instructional technology professionals. We must continue to develop better ways to get information from the chalkboard to the Internet and ultimately to the student.