Faculty Collaboration on Multidisciplinary Web-Based Education
Authors:
Dr. Ashraf Saad, Information Engineering Technology
Dr. Vladimir L. Uskov, Information Engineering Technology
Associate Professor Kettil Cedercreutz, Mechanical Technology
Department
Dr. Sam Geonetta, Humanities and Social Sciences Department
Professor Jack Spille, Chemical Technology Department
Professor Dick Abel, Professional Practice and Career Placement
Department
OMI College of Applied Science
Abstract
Motivation
Interdepartmental Collaboration
Main Project Outcomes
Other Findings
Future Work
References
Contacts
Teaching, learning, and doing business online through the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) are bound to change the structure of our traditional educational and business institutions. However, the effects will be more greatly felt by those who are directly involved in education. This motivated six professors of five different departments of the OMI College of Applied Science, University of Cincinnati (UC), for the interdepartmental collaboration in enhancing the professional development of OCAS faculty on WWW-based education. The paper describes in details the main outcome of the UC Faculty Development Grant – i.e. OCAS faculty "brainware" on WWW-based education, which enabled several OCAS professors to create WWW-based courseware in various technological areas.
The Internet is having a profound impact on the delivery of instruction and the means for conducting business. Each day, millions of users harness its interconnectivity to access forums or databases, enroll in online courses, and supply information online to clients, vendors, and staff. In increasing numbers, organizations are implementing corporate-wide Web sites and Intranets. Intranets, which are implemented via Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wide Area networks (WAN), utilize many of the same Internet services and features internally within the organization (and hence the name for this type of networks) – and therefore more securely.
Whether over the Web or over an intranet, a variety of instructional tools are becoming commercially available to help instructors in preparing for the delivery of courses online, either in support of distance education goals or as complimentary to a traditional course offering. On the business side, collaboration tools are being developed to enable engineers to cooperatively design a product over the Web, regardless of their "physical" presence in the world. Web-based tools being developed for both areas of instruction (teaching/learning) and engineering (product development/project management) have one objective in common: to provide sufficient features and software functions that would enable a group of individuals to communicate online in pursuit of their common goal – either instruction or product development.
2. Interdepartmental Collaboration
Project Team. The authors, faculty members in several departments of the OMI College of Applied Science (OCAS) at University of Cincinnati (UC), started a project in 1998 as an interdepartmental collaboration to investigate the use of Web-Based Instructional (WBI) tools at our college [1]. The project team included representatives from various areas such as Information Engineering Technology, Mechanical Engineering Technology, Chemical Technology, Professional Practice and Career Placement, and Humanities and Social Science, thereby providing an objective multi-disciplinary performance of the project and evaluation of its results.
Goals. Two project goals were set since the beginning of our project:
Methods. The following set of activities were deemed necessary to achieve both goals:
Faculty Development. As a result of this project each faculty - project participant, succeeded to:
Outcome # 1 - Faculty "brainware" on DE systems. The project team conducted research to identify various aspects of DE, WBE, and DE systems worldwide. Particularly, the list of research topics included but was not limited to:1) the examples of well-known international and national (USA) DE systems, as well as smaller local DE systems, 2) models of DE systems (international, national (USA), local), 3) generations of DE related technology, and popular DE media /support technologies, 4) organizational aspects of DE, 5) DE degree programs, DE credit/noncredit courses, 6) DE teachers, and DE facilitators, 7) DE classrooms and equipment, 8) DE targeted student body – i.e. DE students, 9) DE tuition fee, 10) DE administrators, 11) list of features of common DE system (international, national (USA), and local), 12) costs of DE hardware, courseware, and software, 13) financial support/initial investments to DE systems, 14) DE students, DE teachers, and DE facilitators, and 15) "No Significant Phenomenon" of DE education. Numerous DE systems worldwide have been analyzed such as:
1) Well-known international DE systems: National Technological University (USA) [http://www.ntu.edu], The Open University of the United Kingdom (UK) [http://www.open.ac.uk], British Columbia DE System (Canada) [http://www.etc.bc.ca], The Open University of The Netherlands (The Netherlands) [http://www.ouh.nl], The University of South Africa - UNISA (South Africa) [http://www.unisa.ac.za], The Open Learning Agency of Australia (Australia) [http://www.ola.edu.au], Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong [http://www.oli.hk], Centro de Ensenanza a Distancia (Spain) [http://www.ceac.com], and other international DE systems.
2) Well-known national DE systems: The Pennsylvania State University (USA) [http://www.cde.psu.edu], The Indiana State University [http://www.ind.net], The INTEC College (South Africa) [http://www.intec.edi.za], Monash University (Australia) [http://www.monash.edu.au], Instituto Nacional de Educacao a Distancia (Brazil) [http://www.ibase.org.br/~inld], Horizons University (France) [http://www.h-university.com], and other national DE systems.
3) Local (USA) DE systems: Bellevue Community College (CC) [http://online.bcc.ctc.edu], Clackamas CC [http://dl.clackamas.cc.or.us], Laramie County CC [http://www.lcc.whecn.edu], Cerro Coso CC [http://www.cc.cc.ca.us], Cosumnes River College [http://crc.losrios.cc.ca.us/online], Contact South – a Consortium of Ontario Colleges (Canada) [http://www.contactsouth.org], and other local DE systems. A library of on-line courses in the information Technology area can also be found at the University of Cincinnati [http://gartner.uc.edu/gartner].
The detailed results of our investigation on DE systems are presented in [2].
Outcome # 2 - Faculty "brainware" on WBI tools. We conducted research to identify the features and capabilities of various WBI tools that can enable an instructor to design, develop, maintain and manage WBE curricula and courses. Vendors were contacted for demo versions of products. Members of the project team met regularly to discuss various WBE-related issues and, specifically: advantages, disadvantages, features, and problems encountered during pilot course creation. More than twenty available WBE tools were selected for analysis on the first stage of research. They were ToolBook Assistant/Librarian [http://www.asymetrix.com], AuthorWare [http://www.macromedia.com], ClassWare [http://classware.uc.edu], Convene [http://www.convene.com], CourseInfo [http://www.blackboard.net/courseinfo], Director [http://www.macromedia.com], FirstClass Collaborative Classroom [http://www.education.softarc.com], Front Page'98 [http://www.microsoft.com], Intrakal [http://www.anlon.com], Learning Space [http://www.lotus.com/learningspace], MentorWare [http://www.mentorware.com], TopClass [http://www.wbtsystems.comindex.html], Virtual-U [http://virtual-u.cs.sfu.ca/vuweb], Web Course in a Box [http://www.madduck.com/wcbinfo.wcb.html], WebCT [http://www.webct.com], Webmentor Enterprise [http://avilar.adasoft.com], as well as Norton Connect, Allaire Forum, Team Wave, WebBoard, QuestionMark, and PlaceWare.
Features of WBI tools, usually, fall under three categories [3], specifically, 1) WBI tools for WBE courseware design and development, 2) WBI tools for WBE courseware management, and 3) WBI tools for "student-student" and "student(s)-teacher" communications via the Internet.
Course design tools include: 1) course templates to maintain consistency to the course format and provide the instructor with the tool to easily publish a course on the Web by focusing on the content that will be entered in the template, without having to worry about learning HTML, 2) search tools to provide a topic- or keyword-based search of course material, and 3) course-related links: to refer students to other web sites with information pertaining to the course, without having to exit the course site.
Course management tools include 1) on-line assessment tools such as quiz/test generation, administration, and grading – based upon a bank of test questions, and 2) student tracking tools to track student access of course material as well as student progress on assignments and tests.
Course communication/collaboration tools [4] include 1) synchronous communication – support for live interaction such as chat rooms, shared whiteboards, audio- and video- conferencing, and 2) asynchronous communication such as built-in email, file sharing, threaded discussions, bulletin boards, and workgroups.
As a result of our research, the variety of available WBE tools was reduced to several applications for further careful and in-depth consideration and utilization by OCAS faculty. These applications fall under two categories:
The second group of applications offers more advanced tools/features for the creation of Web-based courses at the expense of learning how to utilize those tools/features.
While our project has primarily focused on DE, WBE and WBI tools, our investigation had led us to conclude that features of WBI tools can be readily deployed in a collaborative multidisciplinary engineering environment. Nowadays, many engineering companies cannot have the experts needed for the development of a given product under the same roof. For instance, a number of engineering disciplines come together in order to develop and produce an electromechanical device (e.g. a cellular telephone), such as: digital electronics, mechanical engineering, production engineering, and even environmental engineering – to decide on which environmentally-friendly materials can be used for the product. Experts in each field can utilize an on-line collaboration tool to interact while designing the product, therefore breaking the barrier of distance between them. It is therefore extremely beneficial for the students of our College to learn how to deploy and use WBI tools, since such skills will be highly valued by their future employers. Going forward, our objective is therefore to first get students familiar with these tools through the learning experience of a course that utilizes them. The next step would be to require them to master one of these tools, augment it, and then deploy it as a collaboration tool in an engineering setting for cooperative multidisciplinary problem-solving.
Future activities of the project team in 1999-2000 deal with a design and development of pilot WBE courseware in various technological areas that are appropriate for the College of Applied Science, University of Cincinnati.
Applied Science Faculty on WWW-based Education: Preparation for Teaching in the 21st
Century", Faculty Development Council, University of Cincinnati, March 1998.
Dr. Ashraf Saad, Information Engineering Technology
Dr. Vladimir L. Uskov, Information Engineering Technology
Associate Professor Kettil Cedercreutz, Mechanical Technology
Department
Dr. Sam Geonetta, Humanities and Social Sciences Department
Professor Jack Spille, Chemical Technology Department
Professor Dick Abel, Professional Practice and Career Placement Department
All authors are members of
OMI College of Applied
Science
University of Cincinnati
2220 Victory Parkway
Cincinnati, OH 45206