North American Web Developers Conference, October 1998:

Using the Internet to teach Internet Technologies

Siet Leng LAI (lsl@np.edu.sg)
Andy LEONG (lhk1@np.edu.sg)
Fong Shian Cheow (cfs@np.edu.sg)
The Centre for Computer Studies
Ngee Ann Polytechnic
Republic of Singapore

ABSTRACT

The Centre for Computer Studies (CCS) is an academic centre of   Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore. With the pervasive and growing use of the Internet, the centre is gearing towards the vision of distributed learning using the Internet. "Internet Technologies" is one of the modules launched by the centre. It is an elective module offered to the final year diploma students and it was selected as the pioneer project (called Neverland) of the centre in achieving the goal towards student-centered distributed learning.  This pioneer project was initiated in November 1996 and it has been run in 1997 and 1998 semesters. In this paper, we will discuss how the Internet is used to facilitate effective, self-paced learning and the various ways to motivate and encourage the students to explore the ever advancing technologies. We have organized the distributed learning environment into various inter-related virtual corners  such as Course Material Corner, Interaction Corner and Assessment Corner. We will discuss how the various corners contribute to the student-centered distributed learning using the Internet. 

Keywords: Internet, Distributed Learning, World Wide Web

 

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Centre For Computer Studies (CCS)[1] is an academic centre in Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore. It was established by the Singapore Government as an integral part of the national programme for the education and training of Information Technology (IT) professionals. Today, the Internet plays an important role in education to provide enriched and effective learning to the students. To fully exploit this advance technology in providing a conducive learning environment for the students, our centre is gearing towards the vision of distributed learning[2, 3].

One of the modules launched by the centre is the "Internet Technologies" module. This is an elective module offered to the final year diploma students of the centre. The  module provides a comprehensive study on the concepts, principles and issues of the Internet including the Internet Infrastructure, Web Application Development, HTML(HyperText Markup Language), CGI (Common Gateway Interface), Java Applets, Web Database Publishing and Web Security.

In line with the strategic vision of the polytechnic and the nature of the subject, the Internet Technologies module was selected  as a pioneer project (named Neverland) for the centre in realizing the dream of student-centered distributed learning. This  project was initiated in November 1996 and it has been run in 1997 and 1998 semesters. The main purpose of moving towards distributed learning  is not only to provide a more effective and dynamic approach to deliver, disseminate knowledge and to reinforce the teaching through the Internet but also to provide a conducive environment to foster creative thinking and  to encourage students to explore new technologies. With the use of the Internet as the underlying infrastructure, the learning will become borderless and it will  also help to overcome the constraints of time and space.

In this paper, we will first discuss how distributed learning using the Internet can contribute to more effective, student-centered mode of learning. Then, we will depict our incremental approach in realizing our project Neverland and how various virtual corners are organized and implemented to achieve our objectives. Lastly, we will discuss our experience in using the Internet to teach the Internet Technologies and what we are looking forward to in the future.

 

The Internet and distributed learning

 

The Internet provides access at any time and almost anywhere. It is pervasive in many areas such as business, research and development, manufacturing and it is especially important in education and learning. In the traditional practice for on-campus   learning, one will need to attend lectures, tutorials and practicals in the classrooms. With the advent of technologies especially with the introduction of the Internet, distributed learning becomes an attractive and effective means not only to provide education curriculum by exploring the underlying technologies but also to provide a complete and conducive environment for effective learning.  It is   student-centered rather than traditional instructor-centered mode of learning.

 

In general, distributed learning can surface in the following two possible ways :-

With the use of the Internet, it not only provides friendly, easy-to-use environment with the convenience of time and space but also facilitates quick updating, disseminating of materials, student-centered and conducive learning environment.  In other words, it frees the students from the constraints of time and space. Furthermore, it could also be used to complement classroom interaction, facilitate collaborative learning, asynchronous learning and encourage creative thinking. In fact, various universities, colleges or institutions have been actively embarking on this area such as cyberprof[6] from University of Illinois, World Lecture Hall[7] and many others.  In realizing the benefits of distributed learning and to fully exploit the Internet, our centre, CCS (The Centre for Computer Studies), is gearing towards the virtual classroom[4, 5] concept by first adopting the course supplement approach and gradually moving towards the full-scale virtual classroom. This thus gives rise to the pilot project named Neverland -   using the Internet to teach Internet Technologies.

An Incremental Approach

figure 1

Figure 1: Learning at any time and anywhere

The ultimate objective of the project Neverland is to achieve learning at any time and anywhere. As shown in Figure 1, the students can access course-related information ranging from course material, assessment,  discussion groups, on-line guides etc. using Web browser regardless whether they are at campus or at home. The learning process has to be enjoyable, stimulating and student-centered. This will encourage participation from the students and encourage active learning and creative thinking among the students. Furthermore, students can have more freedom in terms of time, space and learning pace.

In order not to disrupt the normal operation of the course and due to the availability of the resources and the Internet access, we have adopted an incremental approach in achieving the  goal of distributed learning. The project Neverland is staged into three main phases :-

In fact, the Internet is not only used as vehicles for learning but is also used for teaching whereby lecture delivery and preparation are fully Web-enabled. Our distributed learning environment is logically organized into four virtual corners whereby the students use the Web browsers as the uniform user interface in accessing any course-related information.

Figure 2 shows the first home page for the project Neverland which encompasses the four logical components :-

Figure 2

Figure 2: The project Neverland

 

 

Course Material Corner

This corner provides one-stop service for course-related information retrieval such as lecture materials, self-exploration readings/sources, on-line guides, tutorials and practical instructions. Figure 3 shows one of the perspective of the Course Material Corner.

Figure 3

Figure 3:  One perspective of the Course Material Corner

All the course materials including lectures, practicals, tutorials and assignments are made available on the Web. These include the necessary audio/video clips in the lecture materials, relevant hotlinks to other Web site for readings/exploration. Figure 3 shows  one of the lectures to be accessed.

Certain lectures are pre-recorded  with audio/video, as shown in figure 3, so that the students could select and view them from the browsers at their own pace. This is to address the asynchronous learning aspect whereby students do not need to physically attend the formal lectures. Instead, they can select the pre-recorded lectures according to their needs.

An integrated case study for a possible commercial set up (SuperFast CyberBanking) as shown in Figure 4 was used throughout the module to reinforce the learning in terms of infrastructure, Web application development and security etc. Thus, the students could always relate the new concepts to a commercial scenario and have better understanding on various topics  for a possible commercial environment. 

Figure 4

Figure 4: Case Study - CyberBanking

During the course of study, the students are asked to develop a Web-based application (e.g. Web-base book kiosk, CyberMovie) based on what they have learnt during the module. The students' products are incorporated in the Web so that they can learn from the others at the end of the assignment period. Furthermore, a small-scale contest is introduced among the groups of students and the best design was demonstrated to the rest of the students. This is to promote peer-to-peer learning.

 

Interaction Corner

This corner includes all forms of interaction or communication such as electronic mail, news discussion, video, audio, real-time video-conferencing  through the Web interface.

All announcements and activities such as seminars, competition are presented on the announcement notice board at the Web site. Everyday, students need to monitor the announcement board to keep track of the activities.

This is to facilitate  exchange of ideas, information, knowledge or notification. This will encourage students to participate, provide feedback and discuss problem in unlimited space. In fact, students actively participated in the discussion group by posting their opinions, suggestions, problems encountered, tips and techniques in solving certain problems etc.

This allows students to locate and talk to the lecturers by video conferencing or electronic mail whenever they are in doubt.  For instance, students may have queries when they are browsing the lecture materials (in terms of Web content or even lecture-on-demand), they may invoke video-conferencing tools to locate the respective tutors according to the topics.

Students can share out their applications, discuss tutorials/practicals interactively or any other course materials on the Web to share their knowledge or ideas with the others. They can even solve problems collaboratively using the Internet. Thus, virtual tutorial session in synchronous mode can also be conducted regardless of distance.

The students are also encouraged to share their experience,  ideas,   knowledge or to report faults by using electronic mail, news discussion, bulletin board. Web browsers become the only interface that they deal with in their daily life. Interactive Chat, video conferencing are also used by the students extensively to interact with the others. Currently, Microsoft NetMeeting[8] is used to provide video-conferencing, chat and  application sharing. It is especially useful in collaborative problem solving in team assignment. The students can also use it to locate the respective tutor and discuss interactively even though they are at home.

During their course of studies, various speakers from the industry are invited to give seminars/talks to the students. Virtual seminars from the other part of the world can also be conducted whereby speakers from overseas are invited to talk to the students in real-time mode.

Assessment Corner

This corner houses assessment-related information such as quizzes, multiple choice question/answer, explanation. This helps the students to judge and monitor their own progress. At this moment, only un-graded  questions such as True/False questions, multiple choice questions, fill-in-the-blank questions are used by the students to assess their progress.

In preparing the assessment questions, the respective lecturer enters the self-paced assessment questions with answers using  Microsoft office documents. At this moment, three different types of questions are incorporated namely, Multiple-choice, True/False, Fill-in-the-Blank types.

Explanation for assessment may be in the forms of descriptive explanation, pointer to certain part of the lecture material, external links, video clips. Students can even invoke video-conferencing tool to check with the lecturers when necessary.

In the near future, more complete assessment will be incorporated whereby the students' performance will be kept and monitored to facilitate graded assessment.

Experience and Future Work

Internet Technologies module was first run in January 1997 and the students taking this module actually welcomed the move. According to the formal feedback from the students, they found that this method of learning is beneficial to them because

The students were very positive and supportive throughout the pilot run period though there were occasionally technical and administrative problems encountered.

However, there is a need for a paradigm shift  from traditional classroom learning to more  student-centered distributed learning. Thus, both groups of users i.e. lecturers and students need to adapt to the changes. First of all, more preparation effort are needed by the instructors because they are not only concerned about the content of the course but also the Web-enabled format. In fact, during the initial run, a lot of time and effort have been spent in preparing the course materials. Some forms of assistance and off-the-shelf tools such as LearningSpace by Lotus[9] will definitely be of great help. Secondly, since it heavily relies on the technologies, some forms of contingency plans have to be in-place in the event of network faults, server down time etc. This is especially crucial since we are providing lecture-on-demand, virtual seminar, real-time access and demonstration during lecture. Thus,  support from the computer support group, network performance, reliability, availability become critical as compared with traditional classroom mode. Using the Internet for learning and teaching is exciting and beneficial to the users but students who are weaker technically found it more difficult to adapt to the ever changing Internet technologies.

In fact, there is a need for clear understanding, cooperation and commitment among the students as well as the lecturers in order to pace through the pilot run successfully.

Neverland  has provided us with the insight of the use of Internet for teaching and learning. It is still in its infancy stage and there are rooms for improvement in the following areas :-

CCS Neverland is its evolving stage, there will be more useful and integrated Web services  incorporated in the near future.

 

Conclusion

Distributed learning provides a framework to integrate multimedia and telecommunications technologies with creative approaches to education. We have begun to apply the technology to education centre-wide and gradually to the whole campus in future. Neverland  will provide a conducive environment to support effective learning in the polytechnic. However, it is still in its infancy stage and there is a need for effort and commitment to realize the distributed learning environment. Internet Technologies module was chosen as the pilot project to demonstrate the potential benefits and its feasibility. Upon proving its effectiveness, the implementation will be incorporated across the whole centre or even polytechnic. In future, we may invite partnership in achieving the virtual classroom concept e.g. collaborate with local university, other polytechnics, or even overseas colleges or universities to work on some of the modules. In fact, during the various stages of the implementation and the pilot run, students found that they were benefited from it on one hand or the others. They welcomed  this new mode of learning i.e. more student-centered, explorative. Majority of them appreciated the efforts put in by the teaching team put in and they also shared the same vision of a distributed learning environment with the department.



Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Mr Chee Nam ENG, Mr Adrian THAM, Mr Cheng Luh NG, students at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, for their contribution to the development. Thanks also go to Ms Meng Lan  KOO, Ms  Soh Tin TEOH, Ms Irene KWAN  and other Computer Support staff for their assistance in setting up the environment.

References

  1. The Centre for Computer Studies (CCS), Ngee Ann Polytechnic,
    http://www.ccs.np.ac.sg/
  2. Distributed Learning Overview, Teachers College, Columbia University, http://www.tc.columbia.edu/~academic/edtech/tc/index.htm
  3. Workshop on Web-enhanced courses and distributed learning systems, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, June 1997,
    http://talon.extramural.uiuc.edu/ws97/distributed
  4. Richard MacMinn, Towards a Virtual Classroom, College and graduate school of Business, The University of Texas Austin. http://finweb.bus.utexas.edu/aea_presentation/aea_presentation.html
  5. Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Teaching in a Virtual Classroom, Proceedings of the International conference on Computer Assisted Instruction (ICCAI'95), National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, March 7-10
  6. CyberProf, an Interactive Web-based educational software, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
    http://cyber.ccsr.uiuc.edu/cyberprof/
  7. World Lecture Hall,
    http://www.utexas.edu/world/lecture/
  8. Microsoft NetMeeting,
    http://www.microsoft.com/products/prodref/113_ov.htm
  9. LearningSpace, Lotus,
    http://www.lotus.com/home.nsf/tabs/learnspace

Siet Leng LAI (Ms)
The Centre for Computer Studies
Ngee Ann Polytechnic
535 Clementi Road
Singapore 599489
lsl@np.edu.sg

© 1998. The author(s), Siet Leng Lai, Andy Leong and Fong Shian Cheow, assign(s) to the University of New Brunswick and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive license to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The author(s) also grant(s) a non-exclusive license to the University of New Brunswick to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers, and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the author(s).

Questions about this paper may be addressed to: lsl@np.edu.sg