Facilitating Student Interactions Through
Automated E-Mail
Michael L. Rodgers
The project described here was designed to meet student needs in CH 180, "Chemistry in Our World", a course that meets Southeast's University Studies Physical Systems core requirement. The course has been incorporated into several degree programs, most notably Nursing, Sports Medicine, Health Promotion, and Athletic Training. A majority of the students are at the Freshman level. A majority hold at least a part time job, and a large minority live off campus. Maintaining student interest and developing disciplined learning habits figure prominently in the dynamics of the course.
Computers have played a significant role in CH 180 from the course's beginnings ten years ago. Lab experiments were controlled by computer. Grades were maintained on spreadsheets. Formal lab report writing assignments were carried out entirely in a word processor environment. Graphs were printed and numerical calculations were performed using custom applications1. Every student in the course was (and is) expected to put into practice basic computer skills: word processing, file management, data entry, printing, etc. An optional, hands-on computer skills lab is offered early each semester.
With the increased availability of networked computers in the early 1990's, e-mail and conferences were added to the list of resources available to students in CH 180. Students were awarded bonus credit for obtaining a user code, and several lab exercises were adapted to give credit for submitting either questions or responses to assigned problems by e-mail. Comments made on end-of-semester course evaluations indicated that students liked the way that e-mail kept them actively engaged in the course at times other than scheduled class hours and instructor office hours. Many students were able to communicate from job sites during breaks. To further promote asynchronous access to assistance and information, a Web Page for CH 180 was inaugurated in Fall, 1996.
CH 180 is currently served by a secure Web Page2, which provides all course handouts, old exams, assignment keys, PowerPoint presentations used in class, assignment due dates, and a timetable of upcoming events. The course Web Page also collects student lab data for further analysis, and disseminates personal grade information. A student gains entry by providing a Student Identification Number, plus a four - digit personal code (known to the students as the "PIN") that was assigned in class.
As the CH 180 Web Page became more robust, student traffic in the instructor's office diminished markedly: fewer students "dropped by" to pick up an assignment, or to inquire about the date and time of the next help session, etc. Indeed, early efforts to upgrade the Web Page were driven by the desirability of access to course materials that was independent of the instructor: over half of the CH 180 students in one "pre-Web Page" course evaluation reported traveling to the instructor's office at least once, but upon arriving, found that the instructor was unavailable, in spite of very generous office hours and a well-advertised "open door" policy for office visits. Even students living in the nearest dormitories would have invested nearly half an hour in each such attempt. The benefits to both instructor and student of Web dissemination of course materials were obvious: less time spent managing course logistics permitted more time to be devoted to direct learning opportunities.
However, reduction in office traffic apparently also reduced the intensity of instructor-student interactions. The office traffic itself produced numerous learning opportunities, usually beginning with a phrase such as, "Dr. Rodgers, while I'm here can I ask you about ...." These informal teaching moments, while in one sense inefficient, were very often the times of most effective learning, possibly because the students knew that, in the more private setting, ignorance or misunderstanding could be addressed without revealing it to others in the class.
Several approaches were therefore considered to promote interaction (both instructor - student and student - student) without losing the benefits of asynchronous access to the course materials. Computer conferences had been used since 1993, but interest was always limited to a few students, perhaps because the CH 180 conferences were never mediated. Additionally, the instructor would be required to carefully monitor the conference if students were to be rewarded for participation. Moreover, the open design of conferences seemed not to adequately duplicate the private setting of the office that is preferred by many students. Web-based bulletin boards are being used to promote collaboration and interaction in some courses at Southeast3, but they, like conferences, seem to suffer from the lack of a reward mechanism and privacy.
Ultimately, an e-mail approach to enhancing interaction was adopted4. Unlike conferences, e-mail is extremely popular among CH 180 students. E-mail is already being used to support several course assignments. The personal nature of the content of many e-mail messages sent from students to the instructor suggest that students are comfortable with the level of privacy afforded by e-mail. A student who gets help via email need not fear public display of questions that the student considers to be "too dumb." E-mail also fits well with the server-side philosophy adopted by the Chemistry Department (vice infra) to maximize student access from minimally capable home computers: e-mail is the most ubiquitous of Internet facilities.
An automated Internet e-mail facility was constructed to manage the flow of student-generated questions and answers in CH 180 assignments. The facility monitored a directory to which both student- and faculty-generated e-mail messages were sent. When a message appeared, a student was selected, to whom the message would be passed. If the student did not attempt an answer in a fixed time period, the message was forwarded to a second student. The process continued until an answer was generated, or time ran out. If an answer was generated, it would be sent to the instructor for evaluation. Students gained points by attempting an answer, and for submitting a correct answer (as evaluated by the instructor.) The facility tracked the progress of each question through the class, for the purpose of awarding credit to participating students.
The Southeast Missouri State University Chemistry Department maintains a server for its academic, administrative, and service functions. The automated e-mail facility was written in Virtuflex™ 2.0, server-side software for development of interactive Internet applications5. Virtuflex was designed to permit rapid development of dynamic functionality in Web sites. As such, it eliminates the need to program in PERL, C/C++, or Visual Basic, in order to add interactivity to Web pages. Virtuflex features a macro command structure consisting of five macro types which control evaluation of mathematical formulas and conditional expressions (EVAL), set environment variables (SET), control data and files (GETDATA), manage SQL database operations (DBASE), and perform actions such as sending e-mail and appending files (ACTION). The macros are integrated into HTML templates which are processed by Virtuflex at the server, before the template is sent to the client. Virtuflex allows macros to be embedded within one another; this feature permits construction of very sophisticated applications.
The use of Virtuflex represents a divergence from Southeast Missouri State University's server administrators' philosophy of Web interactivity6. Concerns about server load and stability have led the administrators to construct a model for Web interactivity emphasizing client-side applications. That is to say, the favored interactive Web applications are those taking advantage of advanced browser features, such as Java or JavaScript, and browser plug-ins. While these client-side applications effectively add interactivity without an inordinate increase in server load, they also require reasonably capable client computers. While this is not a concern in Pentium-equipped computer labs, many of our students (>25% in a recent survey) have older computers at home that cannot use many client-side features. We want to provide students with maximum access to Web-based instructional materials, whether on-campus or off, so we have decided instead to implement applications on the server-side as much as possible.
The facility is based on Virtuflex's GETDATA:STDIN macro, which can be set up to collect information from e-mail, and on the ACTION:EMAIL macro, which sends an e-mail when a Web form is processed. The " ... GETDATA:STDIN macro works by assigning an email address to a specific Virtuflex template." When a student sends a question or a response to the assigned e-mail address, the e-mail is parsed between header and footer variables specified by the GETDATA:STDIN macro. Parsing decides whether the e-mail is a question or a response. If the e-mail is a question, the student's name is saved to a table in a miniSQL database, along with the date and time, and a registry number. If the e-mail is a response, the responding student's name is saved to a different table in the database, along with the date and time, and the question's registry number.
In both cases, the names of the participating students are temporarily deleted from the class roster, and the remaining names are saved to an ASCII file, using the ACTION:FILE:WRITE macro. A random name is then read from the ASCII file by a GETDATA::RANDOM macro. The e-mail address corresponding to the name is then located by the DBASE:SELECT macro, and the original e-mail is then sent along to the selected student by the ACTION:EMAIL macro.
Additional software, based on the GETDATA and EVAL:TEST macros, checks the e-mail activity for each registry number; if no activity occurs within a 48-hour time period, the facility selects another student and sends the original e-mail. If the second student fails to respond in 48 hours, the original e-mail is sent to the instructor for action. Students gain points by attempting an answer, and for submitting a correct answer (as evaluated by the instructor.) The facility tracks the progress of each question through the class, for the purpose of awarding credit to participating students.
The parsing of incoming e-mails done by the GETDATA:STDIN macro culls out
almost all messages that are not part of the question/answer process: students
are instructed to preface all questions with the words, "CH 180 E-mail Question."
If the required preface is missing, the e-mail is not further processed.
Likewise, e-mail answers must be prefaced by the phrase, "CH 180 E-mail Answer",
and the e-mail MUST contain the original question's registry number. Of course,
e-mails from persons not on the class roster are likewise rejected. All valid
e-mails (questions and answers) are appended to an ASCII log file by an
ACTION:FILE:APPEND macro.
Project Outcomes
Preliminary results indicate widespread student acceptance of the facility. Several students have commented that they use the facility more because of the possibility of earning bonus credit. A few students experienced difficulties because they forgot to include the required phrase in submitted questions. Those students were advised to include the required phrase in their e-mail signature file;7 upon doing so, the difficulties seemed to be resolved. It is still too early to tell if the facility actually enhanced student - instructor or student -student interaction, primarily because the class enrollments have been unusually small since the facility was inaugurated. Very small class sizes permit the instructor to use scheduled class and lab time to establish close working relationships.
In the future, it is hoped that questions and responses can be parsed using
a dictionary of appropriate terms. This approach might at least partially
automate evaluation of questions and responses.
Notes
1. See, for example, Michael L. Rodgers, "Linking Lab and Lecture with PowerPoint Presentations," presentation at the Mid-South Instructional Technology Conference, Murfreesboro, TN, April, 1997.
2. CH 1800 Chemistry in Our World, taught by Dr. Michael Rodgers,
http://mbond2.st.semo.edu/cgi-bin/virtuflex?template=ch180grades/s98cowin.html
3. A good example is SW 215 Social Agencies and Services, taught by
Dr. Jack Stokes,
http://cstl.semo.edu/sw215/.
4. Sue M. Duttera and William J. McCoy, "Computers Across the Curriculum", presentation at Chem Ed '95, Norfolk, VA, August, 1995.
5. Virtuflex Software Corp., VirtuflexTM 2.0 Users Manual, Cambridge, MA, 1997.
6. Marc Bond and Michael Rodgers, "A Server for the Chemistry Department", funding proposal to the School of University Studies, Southeast Missouri State University, October, 1997.
7. Carolyn Gedney, Steven Dorner, Kate Sadil, and Ron Durbin, Eudora Windows Freeware Manual, 1994.
The author wishes to extend his sincere thanks to Dr. Marc Bond, Chemistry Dept, Southeast Missouri State University, for the many hours he spent patiently explaining the workings of Virtuflex.
Michael L. Rodgers
Associate Professor of Chemistry
Chemistry Department
Southeast Missouri State University
Cape Girardeau, MO 63701
phone: 573 651-2360 FAX: 573 651-2223
e-mail: c822scc@semovm.semo.edu