Abstract

Achieving the standard of a world class university is a common concern among universities in developed or developing countries.  This is part of the vision stated in Universiti Putra Malaysia’s (UPM) Strategic Planning Document 2001- 2010. In realizing this vision, the university sets its focus on eight goals, among which, it is stated that the information technology and communication (ICT) culture must be envisioned through e-University. The strategies adopted by UPM in emerging  the ICT culture is by improving competencies of staffs and students, providing quick and easy access to ICT, integration of ICT in the curriculum, acknowledgement for ICT innovations in learning, providing better internet connection, and working towards sophisticated ICT security system.

The ICT policy was formulated in relation to the university’s strategic plan on use of ICT through e-University.  ICT policy document contains several other policies, such as ICT Management Policy, Knowledge Management Policy and e-Learning Policy.  The e-Learning policy imposes on the use of a common platform for e-Learning, sharing of integrated database, continuous monitoring of the effectiveness of the e-Learning system, providing online access for all academic course materials, evaluation of students and instructors’ competencies in e-Learning, and depository of e-Learning resources in the UPM's knowledge repository.

Although some faculties are already comfortable with the use of e-Learning systems such as Learning Space and Keleidoscope, the university is working on the use of a common platform for e-Learning, e-Sprint, developed for the university’s specific academic and administrative needs.  More than half of the 1200 academic staffs have been given training in the use of e-Sprint.  The development of web-based learning materials is being monitored by the respective faculties. 

Researches on web-based teaching and learning are conducted by several faculties in UPM.  The Laboratory of Instruction and Multimedia Innovations of the Institute of Multimedia and Software in UPM is currently developing the e-Sprint Version 2, and conducting studies on the effectiveness of web-based instruction and web-cast lectures.  The experimental study on ‘Effectiveness of Web-Cast Lectures in Higher Education’ looks into the technical set up and the technical assistance needed to ensure the smooth delivery of streaming lectures.  Apart from that, students’ performance, their perceptions and attitude in using the different types of web-casting technology are compared.

Introduction

Achieving the standard of a world class university is a common concern among universities in developed or developing countries.  Many standards set the benchmark of a world class university.   Among the standards are quality of academic programs, ratio of students to instructor, academic and residential facilities, marketability of graduates, research outputs, research grants and number of patents acquired by the university.  Universities are now competing for the best students, therefore among the facilities that need to be upgraded are those related to academic programs.  Although web-based learning cannot be compared to face-to-face lectures in terms of interaction, and to some extent, effectiveness, but it does provide a platform for imparting knowledge to students in distant locations, improving communication with students, and providing continuously updated materials, prior to lectures.  This enables on-campus students to be more prepared for the upcoming lectures.  Thus, universities need to venture into the potentials and effectiveness of web-based teaching and learning for on-campus, off-campus students and students enrolled for the distance learning programs. 

With the rapid globalization of education through the internet and the World Wide Web, academics need to explore and adapt the techniques and conventions of online teaching and learning (Conderoy & Le Foe, 1997).  According to META Group (2002), within the next two years, 60% of organizations will deploy e-learning system.  In Malaysia, universities can be classified as public universities or private universities.  Public universities are funded by the government while the private universities need to focus on generating income to ensure sustainability.  Some of the private universities are offering virtual education, with no face-to-face interaction at all.  Therefore, in terms of exploration on e-Learning, some of the private universities are spear heading the web-based teaching and learning movement because borderless education such as this, would attract executives and professionals who can only manage to be part time students and could attain a degree in a very flexible way.

Universiti Putra Malaysia’s (UPM), being one of the most respected public universities in Malaysia,  shares the vision on the need to extend teaching and learning beyond the physical border of the university and the accessibility of conducting face-to-face teaching.  The main clients to satisfy are not only the off-campus students or students enrolled for the distance learning programs, but we strive to provide better access to lecture materials to our on-campus students.  To accelerate the acceptance of university academic staffs on e-Learning and to initiate them towards development of web-based learning materials, the vision on e-University is specifically stated in the UPM's Strategic Planning Document 2001-2010.

In realizing this vision, the university sets its focus on eight goals, among which, it is stated that the information technology and communication (ICT) culture must be envisioned through e-University. The strategies adopted by UPM in emerging  the ICT culture is by improving competencies of staffs and students, providing quick and easy access to ICT, integration of ICT in the curriculum, acknowledgement for ICT innovations in learning, providing better internet connections, and working towards sophisticated ICT security system.  Therefore, the current 8 mbps internet connection is being upgraded to 32 mbps.

e-University: A Vision

The ICT policy was formulated in relation to the university’s strategic plan on use of ICT through e-University.  The ICT policy document contains several other policies, such as ICT Management Policy, Knowledge Management Policy and e-Learning Policy. 

The e-University outlines certain strategic plans that are based on the e-Learning Policy.  The e-Learning policy imposes on the use of a common platform for e-Learning, sharing of integrated database, continuous monitoring of the effectiveness of the e-Learning system, providing online access for all academic course materials, evaluation of students and instructors’ competencies in e-Learning, and depository of e-Learning resources in the UPM's knowledge repository.

Academic staffs in UPM have various information technology and communication (ICT) competencies.  Some staffs are quite unaccepting towards the use of computers in teaching such as the use of presentation and graphics tools or having to attend courses on development of web-based teaching and learning materials.  Therefore, it is our focus to provide a platform for developing web-based teaching and learning materials that would enable staffs, who might just know word processing, to upload their teaching materials.  To initiate the efforts in emerging the web-based teaching and learning culture, it is acceptable if an academic staff only provides lecture materials consisting of text only, which is not interactive, and without any hyperlinks to other web sites.  The university does not critically evaluate the value of the web-based learning materials developed by our academic staffs in terms of interactivity, ability to explain beyond chalk-and-talk, motivation, instructional design, and appeal. 

Although some universities, through their 100% online pilot programs, hire a team of instructional designers and programmers to develop online materials, UPM decide to train its academic staffs to design, develop, manage and update the online materials themselves.   The two days training session would get them started on getting their courses online.  We provide technical support team that can be contacted to cater for any problems that the staffs might encounter once the training session is over. 

Although some faculties are already comfortable with the use of e-Learning systems such as Learning Space and Keleidoscope, the university is working on the use of a common platform for e-Learning, e-Sprint, developed for the university’s specific academic and administrative needs.  e-Sprint is developed by the Institute of Multimedia and Software, one of the seven research institutes in UPM.  More than half of the 1200 academic staffs have been given training in the use of e-Sprint.  Each academic staff is allocated 15 Mb of storage space for their e-learning content.  The Sun Enterprise 3500 server has a storage capacity of 64 Gb for each of the four hard disks (64 Gb x 4) and 4 Gb RAM.  Besides the storage provided in the e-Sprint server, staffs can also upload their web-based materials in their own faculty’s server, by just making a link to the particular website.

The e-Learning policy also imposes on the sharing of integrated databases.  Currently, separate databases are used by the bursary, Department of Students Affairs, Department of Academic Affairs, and Students Information System (for online registration, dropping and adding of courses, and keying in students grades).  The development of e-Sprint version 2 focuses on establishment of a uniform and reliable system for campus-wide usage.

The development of web-based learning materials is being monitored by the respective faculties, in terms of quantity of content but not the quality of content.  The e-Learning policy states that academic staffs are to provide at least 40% of course materials online for students’ access.  Some faculties give credit to academic staffs that develop web-based teaching materials, in terms of bonus points in the yearly evaluation of staffs. The university also awards staffs for ICT innovations in learning.

To realize the e-University and the world class university vision, the university administrators are to evaluate students and instructors’ competencies in e-Learning.  Tests on e-Learning skills and understanding are prepared by the Institute of Multimedia and Software and the Information Technology Center.  Staffs are tested on their ability to design and develop web-based learning materials using the e-Learning platform that is currently used, while students will be tested on their knowledge in accessing and utilizing the materials. 

Center of Knowledge Management is responsible in managing and depositing intellectual properties of students and staffs in UPM's knowledge repository.  It stresses on knowledge sharing, to be benefited by all in UPM.  Part of the knowledge to be deposited is the web-based teaching and learning materials contributed by staffs. 

Research and Development on Web-Based Teaching and Learning

Apart from emerging the web-based teaching and learning culture among staffs, several researches on web-based teaching and learning are conducted by several faculties in UPM.  The Laboratory of Instruction and Multimedia Innovations of the Institute of Multimedia and Software in UPM is currently developing the virtual learning system, e-Sprint Version 2.  Apart from that, studies are also conducted to look into the effectiveness of web-based teaching and learning in certain subjects and studying on the effectiveness of the different types of web-cast lectures. 

The experimental study on ‘Effectiveness of Web-Cast Lectures in Higher Education’ looks into the technical set up and the technical assistance needed to ensure the smooth delivery of streaming lectures.  Apart from that, students’ performance, their perceptions and attitude in using the different types of web-casting technology are compared.  Web-casting technology has made it possible for the delivery of digital information over the Internet for reception, viewing, and/or listening.  It can be used to distribute multimedia content to students in an e-learning environment.  Essentially, the three types of web-casting is push, streaming and on-demand.  Push technology, which actually includes both push and pull, delivers information either based on one’s request or because someone else thinks that the user is likely to be interested in it.  Streaming technology refers to the delivery of audio and video signals over the Internet.  The signals can be live (in real time) or delayed (recorded).  The ability to squeeze the audio and video into stream is the basis of streaming technologies.  On-demand refers to the ability to time-shift information that is delivered via streaming technologies.  According to Miles (1998), one would be able to retrieve the audio or video stream and view it at their convenient times.

The Institute of Multimedia and Software in UPM studies on the application of web-casting technology for delivery of lectures because in Malaysia, usage of web-casting technology in education has not been researched on.  Among the earlier research, conducted by the University of Berkeley, was the development of a lecture web-cast system in 1999 (Rowe, 2001).  It took four years for the university to develop the web-cast technology.  The system offers live remote viewing and on-demand replay of lectures using streaming audio and video over the Internet.  The study conducted in the year 2000 and 2001 found that the web-cast technology has improved the students learning. Students reported that they used web-cast technology because they did not understand lecture content, they missed a lecture and/or they do not understand the instructor’s language.

Although many commercially developed e-learning systems are available, the institute is currently developing a new version of the e-Learning system presently used in UPM.  The system incorporates features such as links to other databases in the university to enable students, academic and supporting staffs gain access to various facilities using one system.  The focus of the project is to establish a system that acts as a one-stop teaching and learning resource center for students and academic staffs.  The system is developed and implemented with open source scripting languages namely Pre Processor Hypertext Markup Language (PHP), JavaScript and supported by Oracle and mySQL databases in Linux/UNIX environment operating system.  The system will provide sustainable, scalable, and quality internet based software for academic staffs in creating, managing and deploying online courses.

Conclusion

A lot need to be learned in the full implementation of an e-Learning system.  One big hurdle faced by  UPM is in motivating staffs to develop and continually update their own web-based learning sites.  Apart from the lack of knowledge on the use of the e-Learning system, the lack of time that they can actually reserved for the development of online materials is also a major factor in dampening the full implementation.  Up to date, UPM does not allocate special funds for each staff in assisting the development, for instance, hiring of assistants to look for resources, creation of animations for specific purposes, and to create simulations segments to be incorporated in the web-based teaching materials.   Nevertheless, Universiti Putra Malaysia has a very well set vision in paving its way to be the leading knowledge provider in the region and to be known as one of the leading universities in the world. 

References

Conderoy & Le Foe, 1997, Tips and Secrets of Online Teaching and Learning: An Inside View, Conference Proceeding ASCILITE 97, Perth, Australia.

Miles, P.,1998, Internet World: Guide to Webcasting.  New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Rowe, L. A., Harley, D., Pletsher, P., and Lawrence, S., 2001, BIBS: A Lecture Webcasting Sytem. University California, Berkeley,

       http://www.bmrc.berkeley.edu, printed 15 August 2002.