Aim

Rationale

Current work

Project development

Contacts within CERG

The aim of this project is to explore as many aspects as is feasible of the way in which students use electronic resources, especially those which are Web-based.

There is growing use of electronic materials in teaching. This ranges from the broad multimedia oriented courses to basic use of the Web to present various levels of course-based materials.

A review of the literature suggests that there is very little comprehensive evaluation of the user end of these activities - how the student responds to this material.

Many of the assumptions underlying the use of the Web in teaching are based on variations of the thinking expressed in a paper by …. which sees the Web as new educational paradigm. These authors fail to establish that the Web meets any criteria which would indicate that it has the status of a Paradigm Shift (see Kuhn, ). There is the assumption that the Web is more than useful - it is a driving force in educational design and development.

What has yet to be shown is that it is a force except in the minds of those who want to develop from the teaching side.

Our research to date does not suggest that students place particular importance on what they get from the Web. It appears to be seen as another way in which essential information can be transmitted to them.

Informal evidence suggests that students have yet to have attained an electric eye - they have yet reached the position where they deal with Web-derived material as electronic. The suggestion is that much of the content-based material on the Web is printed out for serious use.

If this is the case then the Web has the primary advantage that it is saving the teaching department on printing costs - the students are bearing this cost.

What CERG can do is extend the research which has begun and become a centre of excellence on the educational issues surrounding the Web.

Project development

1. Students as electronic data handlers.
   One of the assumptions which underlies the use of any electronic resources is that students are able to handle electronic resources in such a way that their learning environment is enhanced. That is, there is the perception that the students from the Web-age have developed specific capacities/skills which helps them tune into the Web as an effective learning milieu.

   To date, no research has been found which justifies this assumption. Experientially, it is clear that students are, on the average, more comfortable with computing technology but this does not imply that they can effectively transfer this to specific learning situations which may be different from the normal computing experiences.

   Added to this is the complex question of whether or not Web-based materials improve information handling. One side of this question is the flexibility of well-designed Web site while on the other there is the problem of the lack of informational redundancy in the hyper-linking process. A well structured Web site should allow for flexible extraction of material but in moving from one page to another there is seldom any cross-referencing (outside of the formal links) to the previous information. As the user moves away from the initial bit of information the cognitive links become more and more tenuous.

   There are a number of specific issues which can be explored under this topic. Some are directly linked to psychology through cognitive and perceptual issues. Others have specific educational components (does a Web site facilitate surface or deep learning?). While others are about person-machine interaction questions (what constitutes a good page design against what we know about visual display parameters?).

2. The differential impact of Web and paper resources on student learning.
   This topic is about the work which was begun last year by Judy Sheard and Margot Postema - See report The current research has shown us that there appear to be wide differences in student perceptions between courses.

3. Level of complexity of Web materials
   and the capacity of students to handle that material - comparison with traditional materials

   Some of the material related to this topic has been covered in the discussion of Topic 1. A part of the intention in this area would be to carry out direct comparisons, in a quasi-experimental design, of students learning through electronic and traditional methods. It is this topic which would directly test some of the assumptions about student learning and the electronic era.

4. Identification of the types of electronic and paper materials which students find most effective in support of their learning environment
   It is difficult to understand how the Web as a resource has grown without asking questions about the impact of such resources on students. There has been a long history of "trying things out" on students.
5. Do Web-style educational resource enhance a student's capacity to better manage his/her learning?
   This directly relates to Topics 1 and 4 but it takes on the specific component of how electronic resources fit into educational programs which have been design to encourage students to take more responsibility for their learning.

   There can be the assumption that if you give students access to more open, less formatted, materials, then they will take them on board and utilise them in a personal, educational development mode.

6. Lecturer intention in developing resources compared with student perception and use of those resources.
   This is another topic on which preliminary research was carried out last year by Judy Sheard and Margot Postema - see report

   At this stage we have some information on the time, effort and intention of staff in developing Web-based resources. We need to take this further into educational issues.

7. Patterns of student use of resources
   under the assumption that electronic resources provide a less structured and constrained access to resources

   The topic is similar to Topic 5 but does not assume a self-managed basis but simply asks the more general question about the flexibility and lack of constraint which is assumed to exist on the Web (the postmodernists/deconstructionists/etc are big on this).

   The basic question is "Is the Web more flexible and less constrained in ways which enhance learning?". No assumption is being made here about how learning is defined.

8. Pedagogical issues in the design of "effective" electronic resources.
   This topic is the fundamental educational one which covers much of what is covered in the previous topics.

   It is about educational theory and how electronic resources fit into educational models. From this, it then moves into "good design principles" once the educational issues have been explored.

9. The education role of resources which can be seen as specific to computing courses - value, effectiveness and impact on learning.
   Some of you will now be saying "this has, at last, gotten into our area". And you might be right. There is no information which tells us about differential uptake in the use of the Web in educational institutions, but it is likely that Information Technology faculties lead the way simply because they have the skills.

10. The cost-benefit implications of developing Web resources given the way student perceive and use of those resources.
    There is some relationship between this topic and Topic 5. This one moves beyond the educational and learning issues into the nitty-gritty of time and resources.

    We do not know, in any detailed way, what it means to create various Web resources in terms of time and energy. Some point to the fact that there is no added expense because the material has to be developed - turning it into HTML or a PDF file does not take long. But others indicate that, where educational materials are being designed as Web materials then the time-based expense is high - particularly when those materials have to be regularly updated.