Kicking the Tires

Experimenting with Distance Education Technologies at the

University of Michigan School of Information

Lija Bentley

Vlad Wielbut

wlodek@umich.edu

lija@umich.edu

School of Information

http://www.si.umich.edu/

Alliance for Community Technology

http://www.communitytechnology.org/

Act 1: Winter 1998

• Course: first-year, master-level, required

• Lecturers: Maurita Holland and Thomas Finholt

• Enrolled students: 65

• Main rationale: to accommodate 5 commuting students

Tools used:

• Placeware Auditorium 1.2

• WebBoard 2.0

• Web site

• E-mail

Challenges:

• Hybrid environment– separate but equal?– logistical nightmare

• Bandwidth problems

• Sound

The classroom setup

slides

PWmicrophones

black boxfloor

mixing board

internet

capture

Remote students

• Were variably engaged with lecture

• Had diminished opportunities for “face time”

• Had concerns about visibility

• Attended office hours normally

• Could not easily contribute to in-class discussions

Classroom students

• Had a slightly better sense of what happened during lecture

• Approved of the experiment

• Disliked the disruptive effect of the technology in the classroom

Faculty members

• Felt the remote students were “invisible”

• Were dissatisfied with turnout to office hours

• Agreed that microphones were bothersome

• Could not easily involve remote students in the lecture

Major results and analysis

• Hybrid environment negatively affects the professor-student relationship

• Participating students report overall satisfaction with the experiment

Conjecture

• Totally distributed environment would not have this negative effect– closer to original intent of software– would allow other benefits to be more fully

realized

Act 2: Winter 1999

• Course: advanced, master-level, elective

• Lecturer: Derrick L. Cogburn

• Enrolled students: 7 from SI, 10 from Wits, 18 from AU

• Main rationale: to deliver a course via the Internet while giving students the chance to practice international collaboration

Tools used:

• Placeware Conference Center 3.0

• WebBoard 3.5

• DocuShare 1.5

• Web site (VSC)

• Lotus ScreenCam

• RealMedia G2

• E-mail

Training movie Recorded session

Challenges:

• Technological gaps

• Bandwidth problems

• Time zones

• Cultural differences

Research team:

• Derrick Cogburn (CSIR)

• Daniel Atkins (SI)

• Mary Mulvihill (AU)

• Vlad Wielbut (SI)

Do’s and Don’t’s:

• Learn to sleep fast

• Win lottery

• Test, test, test!

• Get help

• Become a control freak

• Never put all your eggs in one basket

• Hire someone from Eastern Europe

Do’s and Don’t’s (contd.):

• Raise the bar

• Keep crybabies out

URLs:

http://www.communitytechnology.org/

http://www.communitytechnology.org/placeware/

http://www.communitytechnology.org/courses/globalization

http://docushare.si.umich.edu/

http://www.netopia.geocities.com/vladwiel