In principle, the WWW is a comprehensive multimedia delivery system. In practice, it still is far less. However, for what most teachers want to do, it's wonderful! Most of the paper that we must exchange with students can be handled readily. We can 'practice' test on-line, take in and respond to written assignments, and generally keep in touch. Access will become more general with time, and speed will increase greatly with time. As of last year, 25% of Nebraska household adults surveyed had e-mail from home; 33% had e-mail from work.

On-Line Testing

Real on-line testing is possible.

Factoid 1 -- The 'last' pencil and paper GRE was administered 4/10/99
Factoid 2 -- On-line GREs are under development

Multimedia Learning

Suppose we have an HTML document, A.html:

Imagine cloning an exact copy of this document. Visitors to either document should experience the same learning. There will be small variations.

Now, take part of the text of document B and change it by replacing it with a carefully prepared media piece containing the same knowledge.

Research based predictions.

In general,

Students will like B better than A by quite a bit.

Students will learn better from A than B by a tiny bit.

Active Learning Matters

That's just about never what teachers do. Instead, they put in lots of media. More often than not, and especially when help from designers is sought, the media become interactive and demand student inputs often. In these cases, an average 0.5 SD improvement is experienced when media are used.

Classic case.

Excellent instructor with strong background in learning takes "well worn" class notes, puts into PowerPoint, and makes classnotes available on WWW. Students love it. First test results go into tank.

This is not unusual. The act of creating notes is an active learning act, and a timing act. Take that away, or diminish the student involvement, and performance will go down.

If one listens very hard to many educational innovators, their systems demand alternate evaluations in order to be deemed "successful." I'm the sort that likes to find innovations where students do "better" on the same old tests!

If one takes that to mean that I'm satisfied with current assessments, that would be entirely wrong.

Moral 1. When your evaluations stink, switch to PowerPoint.

Caveat 1. Early adopters from the UNL faculty already were among the most highly rated and regarded faculty.

Moral 2. To increase learning, increase active participation.

Moral 3. The Web hasn't changed either Moral 1 or Moral 2.

Faculty Time I.

Faculty using e-mail to communicate with students report increased communication. That's the good news. That's the bad news.

Syllabus, April 1999 Issue.

"Cyber Course Size: Pedagogy and Politics," Judith V. Boettcher, (Syllabus, 12, 42-44 1999)

Suggests a 2-3 hours per student increment.

I once worked formulas for evaluation. I've published on this ("Faculty Evaluation by Formula,"; Brooks, D. W. J. Chem. Educ. 1980, 57, 295). A good guess for a traditional course is that load goes up by the square root to cube root of enrollment. So, something like:

If you buy this, it means that teaching 50 students is somewhere between 2 and 3 times more work than teaching 5 students, and teaching 500 students is somewhere between 4.6 and 10 times harder than teaching 5 students. Having taught all 5 CC sections of Chem 109 during a single semester, I believe these numbers are about correct.

Factoid 3. At 2 incremental hours per student, 500 students take 1000 hours, or about 6 weeks to get in 2 hrs each.

Factoid 4. To meet 10 minutes with each of 1000 students takes 166 hrs -- one week.

Faculty Time II.

Development Time.

I recently gave a workshop for college science faculty and invited three speakers. The speakers appeared separately, and spoke independently. Each spoke about the very large amounts of development time. All needed help beyond what they spent on this themselves, and the amount of help varied. For two of them, there was measurable incremental enrollment increase. For one, improved student learning rather than just increased enrollment was the goal, and it seemed to be met.

Web Limits Remain Untested

• Today streaming video is poor. It won't be poor forever -- and maybe not for long. We probably can have face-to-face without really being there.
• Automatic testing, especially in courses with convergent content, remains largely untested. Sooner or later, some one will realize that the John Orr testing system is nearly all you need for students that self-regulated effectively. Once this happens, the landscape is likely to be transformed markedly.
• Are we sure we can't supervise labs from our home offices to their home kitchens?
• How many computer programs will go on line with Web interfaces? Taxes?? Database analyzers?? Chemistry stuff??

Anecdote 1.

About 5 years ago I created Mac software that handles American Chemical Society abstracts. The next to last step is making a laser printer copy, and the last step involves 'copying' that onto the 'official' abstract form.

For this meeting, an automatic abstract gathering system was used. One downloaded Wintel software, filled out the form, and then uploaded the abstract using the Internet.

Just a few months later I submitted an abstract to the ACS. They now have a for-real on-line abstract system. In the interim I had encouraged students to develop such a system.

Inevitable Change

For nearly everything in life, there is a sense of knowing what to do. Inexperienced Web users often become lost. Experienced Web users don't. For example, the scroll bar at the right is near the bottom of this if you're seeing it over the WWW. That means you know you're near the end. That's the kind of stuff you learn. It's like watching another driver on the road, and knowing when to hold back or speed ahead. It's like knowing when the hollandaise sauce is about to set up. It's like knowing when the student is about to cry. Lots of 'stuff' that seems like a really big deal today soon will be automatic. WWW metacognition is an inevitable, unintended outcome of our times. You don't have to know to say http://, or that the Web site for Kodak is most likely http://www.kodak.com. Many problems and complaints are just going to go away.