The Making of Practical Logic 111

Neb Kujundzic, Clark MacLeod, Dale Mattock, Mike O'Brien, Bill Robertson
ITEC@UPEI

ABSTRACT

In October 1997, Industry Canada invited proposals from consortia of Canadian post-secondary institutions to develop web courses within their new NoteMakers program. The University of Prince Edward Island, along with five other Atlantic Canada universities, formed a development consortium and won a grant to create eleven credit courses. Philosophy 111 was one of two that UPEI undertook to develop. Notification of winning the grant was received in December, contracts were signed in January and new contract staff were hired early in February. The grant conditions required that the team create a beta version of the course by the end of February and have the courses essentially complete by April to allow all the grant funds to be paid out by the end of the Federal Government’s fiscal year end. The grant permitted three technical staff to be hired for about 14 weeks each. Any additional staff support would be provided from existing University budgets.

The UPEI project team consisted of the Director of Extension and Summer Sessions, who acted as the overall project administrator; the Manager of Open Learning Development, who was the project manager; and three web designer/coder technologists. All but the Director of Extension were short-term contract employees hired specifically to develop the two new web courses. Part way through the project, the Director of Audio Visual Services was seconded to the team for about six weeks to assist with the technical design. This team supported the development of two courses. Each of the two courses had a faculty team ranging from one person (Philosophy 111) to three (University 101).

The teams had a unique task. UPEI had only a very small history of developing any form of distance education materials or services – two email courses in the previous year. There was no instructional design capacity or process for supporting off-campus teaching or learning. University regulations made it virtually impossible for students to use anything but classroom delivered courses for credit. Fortunately, the
University had just established a new Information Technology in Education Centre that contained all the technical resources needed to develop the courses - but no staff!

The development process began from several philosophical and practical principles:

• interaction was the key to learning – journals, bulletin boards, within-group email, discussion groups
• courses had to be visually attractive, easy to use, interesting and challenging
• the resources of the group, the Internet and the Library would be incorporated into the learning process
• the teaching strengths of the individual faculty members had to be reflected in the design of each course
• the bandwidth demands of the final version had to be small enough to accommodate typical computer equipment and browsers
• materials had to be cross-platform stable
• the course design would be modular and allow for open access and exit
• as much as possible, no pay-to-use operating software would be used and unique programming solutions would be developed as needed
• the project would be a team effort – faculty controlled content, open learning manager directed educational design, project administrator found resources as needed and the technical members developed visual and technical solutions to solve educational and content needs
• as much as possible, solutions found for one course would be adapted for use in the other course

Keywords: NAWEB, NAWeb98, On-line, Courses, Education, NoteMakers, Practical Logic, Philosophy, University, UPEI, ITEC, ITEC@UPEI

Teaching Practical Logic is one of the most challenging tasks in philosophy. Frequently, philosophy teachers avoid this course because it is perceived as dry, difficult, and labor intensive.

My own approach to teaching Practical Logic has always been to avoid lecturing as much as possible. One should especially avoid reading the course material from the written class notes. The main reason for this is that Practical Logic demonstrates a penetrating and detailed logical analysis, and this kind of analysis poses serious difficulties to many students. Students appear bored and baffled by Practical Logic and it is extremely hard to hold their attention.

There are many causes of this difficulty and I will briefly discuss what I see as the most interesting cause. It seems to me that, in the age of TVs, VCRs, computers, and computer games, people do not readily accept critical, detailed, and sustained analysis. Doubt and critical examination are not popular in the age of media spectacles that attempt to reduce the world to simple, black and white, "good guys" - "bad guys," polarities. As John Ralston Saul once remarked, "Skepticism does not sell well in today’s society."

In order to deal with this problem, I usually do two things: first, I present hands-on exercises in Practical Logic classes and, second, I draw these exercises from current local newspapers and magazines. I tend to copy most materials on the overhead transparencies and then employ various active learning techniques to get my point across. For example, I sometimes use the "Far Side" cartoon to discuss a particular problem with relevance or a public statement by Jean Chretien to illustrate a particular kind of inconsistency. Politicians, in general, provide an inexhaustible source of material for Practical Logic. For instance, witness the recent Clinton’s scandal and what it can do for the analysis of doublespeak (as evidenced in "massaging" the term "sexual relation") in Practical Logic.

The difficulties that this teaching style creates in transforming Practical Logic into a web-based course are significant. Since the overheads contain neither my in-class comments nor student responses to my comments I had to re-create, as it were, both parts of my teaching story. I had to simulate the class activities, by the means of writing instead of actually asking in-class questions, as the means of getting students interested in further discussion. I tried to use an informal, almost chatty, style of presentation in order to reach and engage students. As well, I chose simple and easily understood examples because I cannot afford to lose my students at this early stage of learning. Most importantly, I inserted pointers labeled "Discussion" wherever appropriate in my course modules. These pointers lead students to the Bulletin Board (a very important component of every web course) where students should carry on "virtual" class discussions.

This short discussion of my contribution to the creation of Practical Logic is by no means intended to be exhaustive. Instead, I have just touched on a few issues that attracted my own attention. I am sure that the rest of the team will provide a much more complete picture of this complex and challenging, but also very exciting, technological and educational project.

Transformer - Dale Mattock

As project manager and educational designer my role was one of establishing the Practical Logic team. This was a challenge as I had a very limited background in the area of Web technology. The major strength I did bring to this situation was strong communication and team building skills. I also have qualifications and over twenty years experience in adult education, flexible delivery and project management. One would then expect the coming together of the Practical Logic team would be simple - wrong. There were many assumptions that were to be met and overcome.

The first assumption was that the team members each had a clear understanding of their roles. This was not the case. Due to the NoteMakers guidelines the technicians were hired on a short contract. There was the expectation, by the team, that at the end of the contracts only one position would be available. This created an environment of competition, setting of individual boundaries, and each player entrenching himself in a position that would be required at the end of the contract. It was interesting that the two more experienced technicians quickly established their positions at the expense of the third. He was pushed out of the NoteMakers project and it became necessary to create new work for this individual.

How could this have taken place is a fair question. The situation at ITEC@UPEI was not unlike other new service being established too quickly. The University of Prince Edward Island had established a new centre with one-off funding. It did not provide for salaries and there was a need to purchase equipment without a clear understanding of what the newly established service was to be. This period was followed up with a gift from the Webster foundation, which provided funds for about one and quarters positions to take effect toward the end of the development period.

But it was the NoteMakers project that gave impetus to establishing the new service. A Web Master was seconded with the expectation he would coordinate the technical aspects of the on-line course. As his position was not one he was happy with, nor expected to continue in, the situation created even more stress within the newly established team. At this stage I was isolated from the team and had little input or understanding of the situation. The Web Master left after six weeks and the team was left confused and in a serious situation. Each member was looking out for himself and there was little if any sharing of information. To add to this confusion the course writers, the professors, were in the middle of end of year preparations e.g. examinations, marking and administration. They were not in the position to stop what they were doing to begin writing a new course to be beta tested over the summer.

It was at this stage that I became manager of ITEC@UPEI and took full responsibility for the on-line courses. The first exercise was to create a feeling of trust within the team. In reality it was the beginning of the creation of the Practical Logic team. Each player needed to understand there would be three positions available at the end of the contract and that each member was necessary if the project was to be completed. Once the competitive element was removed the team moved quickly into a collaborative and support mode.

The next assumption was that I would have the time to undertake the transformation process I follow in moving a face-to-face course into a flexible delivery mode. The transformer "is the skilled professional who mediates between the expert and the reader. Their job is to put the expert’s message in a form that reader can understand and to look after the reader’s interest in general. For example, any reasonable query the reader might have should be thought about and catered for in a proper manner." (M. MacDonald-Ross and R. Walker, ‘The Transformer’ The Penrose Annual, 1976). Tranformation was developed as a concept for the presentation of information in the 1930’s by Otto Neurath and has been an interest of educational research since that time.

Transformation draws on the practices of educational technology, instructional design, graphic art, editing and flexible education, and makes a contribution, which is distinctive and individual. Theorists place less emphasis on behaviorist strategies than do some educational designers and may place less emphasis on aesthetic criteria than do artists and graphic designers. Their view is to facilitate the transformation of information and ensure that communication is improved and learning enhanced. This all takes time – the one thing we did not have.

The transformation process I follow involves auditing the face-to-face lessons, transforming the face-to-face reality into a distance education mode. I then discuss this transformation with the professor and, where possible, students. The trick here is to capture the ‘magic’ of the individual facilitator and transform it into the electronic mode. The next stage is to work closely with the team to undertake the final transformation to an on-line course. This entails coding the interactive components of the face-to-face lesson into self- assessment exercises and information sharing for the on-line learner.

My third assumption was that one could follow the same processes followed in Desktop publishing. I did not have the necessary understanding of HTML, JavaScript, JAVA or Web page design to be able to support the technicians in what they were attempting to do. I had unreasonable expectations and had little concept of the time involved in coding. The team was very supportive and I realized in this situation I was a beginner and needed to gain skills quickly. I enrolled in workshops on Introduction to Basic HTML, Web Design, and How to Create an On-line Web Course. I also began to ask many questions. The one rule of the team from the time I became manager was that all information was shared and there would always be two members at any external meeting. This ensured that I would not give out incorrect information and there would always be another individual aware of the situation.

The next assumption was we could create two courses in such a short time frame. This proved not to be the case. The course writers simply could not produce quality material at such short notice and still complete their normal daily activities. I then decided to protect the course writers at all cost. This proved to be the correct path to follow so that at no time did the course writers feel pressured or that they were having a negative experience. This was important, as the University needed these new writers to be new change agents who would support further expansion of this new approach to educational delivery on campus. Their ownership of the course was essential if they were to become the new internal change agents.

During the downtime in the writing of course content, time was allocated to coding in-house interactive and self-assessment programs. It was agreed that having ownership of the on-line course programs would be more cost effective in the long run than using proprietary software. The assumption here was that if there was a change in staff the existing staff or new staff could monitor and work with the existing programs. That was not the case. Within four months of operation two team members left. One moved to a better paying position and the other to an international position. The team was left with one programmer who could not code in an advanced level of JavaScript. To resolve this issue the original programmer has been contracted as a trouble-shooter and consultant when required.

With the changing staff the creators of Practical Logic have moved into different positions and only two members of the original team remain, the course writers and myself. The lesson learned here is that in the IT field there will always be a fairly high staff turnover due to the lower salaries paid by universities. It also means unless top coders and designers are contracted in at a higher level of pay, on-line courses will need to be simple in their coding, or ongoing licensing fees paid for access to specific programs. This creates a need for universities to reflect on the higher costs of developing and administering on-line courses.

Web Course Developer – Mike O’Brien

As web course developer there are many things to keep in mind upon starting the development stage of Web Design. The first thing the team had to achieve was making a decision on how we were going to accomplish the task of getting a course on-line.

The main goal was to use the technology we had at hand to create a truly on-line experience for the learner. This task was exciting as a new team setting forth on something we have never done before. We quickly noticed that we all had different goals and objectives. I really knew what I had to do, but failed the see how other member’s of the team were going to help me. It was only later that I realize that this was definitely to be a team effort.

After the decision had been made to design and implement a completely new on-line classroom, we had to make a few decisions. Graphically the look and feel of the site and classroom would be the responsibility of our designers, a very talented and talented group. My goal was to develop numerous interactive applications to fit into the classroom atmosphere. I did this by using such languages as HTML, although not consider a language by most people, it is an implied interpreted language. JavaScript was the power behind most of the Website navigation and interactive components. I decided not to use and Java inside the course because of the possibility of some people receiving the course who may not have a browser capable of reading Java.

Another powerful language used to develop the online classroom was PERL (FOR CGI) This language allowed our team to give the users a tools to interactive with the classroom, students and the teachers. Being the only database tool available to our team, I had to develop a small database using PERL. Unlike contemporary web languages, PERL requires a lot of time and resources to become an effective tool for this kind of work. We used three applications written in PERL, the first one was our Bulletin Board, written completely in Perl with a front end of JavaScript. Remember we had to develop this course for people who have never used the Internet before or have had little experience to the WEB. Another application used on the website was the Journal, a CGI program that allows the users to publish a journal on-line. The main ideal behind the journal was to give students a place to collect their ideas and learning in one place. The users would be able to reach this information through any computer in the world with an Internet connection, so were moving towards a truly paperless society.

After writing raw CGI and JavaScript for thirty hours straight I would sit back and let it all sink in. Every day someone would have a better idea, looking for ways to achieve the ultimate on-line experience. As a programmer I was getting used to the idea of people changing their mind all of the time. The end of the development stage saw us pushed for time to achieve our goals. As the timeframe moved closer things got a little hectic but we finished our project on time.

The development process is a continuous one in the sense that courses require continue updating and monitoring. To ensure this happen the course writer (facilitator) monitors the course content and the ITEC team monitors and updates the technical aspect of Logic 111. It has been an exciting and challenge experience.

Graphic Designer – Clark Macleod

In providing an overview of my experience as Graphic Designer in the creation of Practical Logic 111, I have chosen to illustrate some of the issues I faced as a member of the multi media team. With the knowledge that the end product was a relative success, these issues did affect the timeline of the project and perhaps as a result, the quality of Practical Logic 111. These issues included a lack of adherence to web design workflow, equipment and workspace problems, and leadership changes.

During the design and development of Practical Logic 111 the multi media team underwent a leadership change. An abrupt change in leadership can be detrimental to any team. As a testament to both the team and management the team stayed together and at this point stayed on schedule. The change in technical leadership did bring about a minor problem that later may have affected the timeline of the project.

The previous technical leadership was quite familiar with the technical concepts of designing for the World Wide Web. The problem that arose was that the person that had to step in to form the new technical leadership did not have these same particular technical strengths. In fact she was already performing a number of other functions within our team. Luckily she realized that this was not her "forte" and we took the time to explain some of the technical issues. While this process was agreed to happily I can not help but think that this lack of understanding created delays in the project, and perhaps frustration within the team. In the end it was a positive process as we were forced to be explain ourselves succinctly. It could not be understood that vague explanations would be understood.

Though it may seem obvious, a multi media team needs the proper equipment and workspace to work efficiently. What is not so obvious is what constitutes the fulfillment of these requirements. Our team was in the beginning constantly hampered by this problem. This was due largely in part to the fact that we were originally not going to be together for this length of time. As such an investment was not made in the beginning for a proper set up that a permanent multi media teams needs in terms of hardware, workspace, and software. In terms of the computer hardware we were blessed with a large lab full of new Pentium computers linked to the Internet by a fast Ethernet system. While the network connection was first rate, the computers themselves were not up to the task of professional level multi media development (nor were they designed to be so). We partially overcame some of these difficulties by upgrading some of the systems.

The problems we had in setting up a proper work environment were not so easily solved. We were situated in a large lab that had chronic heating problems. There were days when we were forced to wear winter jackets to say warm or other days we had to open a door to allow cool air to come in. These were issues beyond our control and though were joked about often, they affected our ability to work.

Another workplace issue we were faced with was simple communication and collaboration. The ability to share information over a network is a fairly common phenomenon. In the beginning we shared all our files via floppy disk and later Zip disks. We were never able to gain the ability to share files over the University network by using a shared drive on the University’s server. We eventually resorted to using a free product to send each other files via the internet but having a shared space on the University server where we could place the working copies of files would have been the better solution.

The greatest challenge I faced on this project was the actual creation of this product without strictly adhering to all aspects of what Adobe Corporation calls Web Design Workflow. Web Design Workflow, simply put, is a series of steps that are followed from the beginning of a project, the concept stage, to the end of a project, the production and testing stage. Following these types of procedures is a very fundamental process in software, multi media, and web design and development.

Our greatest mistake, in this regard, may have been not spending enough time in the first stages of development. As a designer I need a clear idea of what information needs to be presented, how we want the user or learner to experience this information, and exactly what is the identity that we want to portray. In Practical Logic 111 this would have necessitated clear directives from all involved in this project, including faculty from the very beginning. Ideally this would mean that all of this information would have to be in the hands of the designer before any of the visuals and site construction was started. Because we did not have the opportunity to have all the information and concepts before hand, we found ourselves having to redesign various parts of the site a number of times; a time consuming process.

The issues that I experienced as a member of the multi media team certainly cannot overshadow the success that we achieved in the creation of Practical Logic 111. I have chalked up these issues as a learning curve in the creation of this new team and product. As these various challenges are addressed we are already noticing improvements in our ability to create interactive products with greater efficiency.

Conclusion

The creation of Practical Logic was much more than a group of individuals coming together to create an on-line Web course. It was the beginning of an educational technology service at the University of Prince Edward Island. The struggle of creating the team was really the struggle of creating ITEC@UPEI. The NoteMakers project has given direction and challenges to the University in that it has ensured a service was established in a short period of time. With this came the need to evaluate equipment, software, venues, university infrastructures, employment contracts and the need for a five year Strategic Plan. All of these have been undertaken and ITEC@UPEI will continue to grow as an educational technology centre of excellence – mainly due to the need to establish a new on-line course - Practical Logic.