The Language Teacher
December 1999

A Web-Integrated Course: A Shared Perception?

Katharine Isbell and Jon Reinhardt

Miyazaki International College


Introduction

The overall goals of the Applied Information Science and Environmental Issues (AISEI) course at our college are to expand environmental awareness, increase computer skills, and develop the English language skills of Japanese college students. As the course instructors, we consciously chose not to use print materials in order to reinforce the environmental theme. Instead we developed a course website that functioned as a textbook, interactive study guide, student portfolio, and research tool. As a classroom-based research project, we used weekly web-based student feedback logs to gain an understanding of student perceptions and attitudes towards the course structure. Thus, this paper will provide an overview of our research, including an explanation of the web-based feedback forms. It will offer an analysis of the student responses and suggest implications for future web-based course design.

Background

AISEI used English as the language of instruction and followed a collaborative content-based instructional model (Sagliano & Greenfield, 1998). Students were expected to reach a basic level of proficiency as they used English to understand, discuss, and write about simple computing concepts and environmental issues (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche, 1989). The course was taught by two language specialists with computing backgrounds.

The class met for one hour and forty minutes (8:30 - 10:20) three times a week (MWF) for 15 weeks. As a second-semester, first-year course, AISEI traditionally has low student enrollment and during the semester that this articles describes, there were nine first-year students with low-intermediate English proficiency in the class. All but one student had taken Introduction to Applied Information Science the previous semester and had basic computer skills, including those in word processing and email. The class was held in the college computer lab containing Macintosh Power PCs, and students were generally seated in front of a computer the entire time. The instructors' computer at the front of the class was connected to a light box projector. Images could be projected onto a large screen in the front of the room for instructional purposes.

In initial planning sessions, we agreed on the following three guidelines to direct the development and implementation of the course:

Project-based syllabus

Projects emphasize learning through the accomplishment of various tasks to achieve an end product (see Fried-Booth, 1986; Henry, 1994). In addition, active learning tasks can be easily integrated into project work. These include cooperative and collaborative activities that require the formation of critical thinking skills, decision-making skills, and learner autonomy (Bonwell & Eison, 1991).Thus, language and computer skills and computer technologies can be introduced, practiced, and expanded as needed by the students to complete a project. Environmental issues would function as an overarching theme for all of the course projects.

We designed the projects to encourage student autonomy (Little & Dam, 1998). Responsibility for each project's success rested in the hands of the students as they worked to demonstrate what they were capable of doing independently. However, projects done at the beginning of the semester were thoroughly scaffolded (see Chamot & O'Malley, 1994) to create a low-risk learning environment in which students could become comfortable learning autonomously. Early projects usually involved the whole class while later projects were completed by small groups or individuals. In general, we gave the students a basic outline of each project and the students located and organized materials through a series of tasks to complete the project. Project grades were determined according to criteria agreed upon at the beginning of the semester. Here is a brief description of the four projects students completed over the semester.

Course website

The fact that the class would be held in the computer lab and our decision to use little paper in the course encouraged us to develop an innovative course website. We agreed that the non-linear nature of the website would lend itself perfectly to the non-linear, integrated character of the project-based syllabus. Thus, project descriptions and instructions, learning activities, support materials and student feedback logs could all become part of the website. In addition, we would utilize available JavaScript and cgi-bin technologies(1) to make many of the tasks and activities interactive, that is, the presentation of the material would be affected by the user's choices (Ebersole, 1997).

The website layout used a basic frame design: narrow left frame with a larger main frame. The site navigation bar, an image map in the left frame, linked the six main sections of the site: This Week, Calendar, Projects, Activities, People, and Links. Also part of the navigation frame was a hidden visitor counter. The counter's source site provided extensive details on the website's hits including date and time of visitor access. All the website pages were visually unified by a consistent design theme which included a class logo, clear headings, and a simple color and graphics scheme.

Formative evaluation

Responding to a recent call by Shetzer (1998) for educators to examine the use of computers in the class, we incorporated an action research project to help us formatively evaluate (Daloglu, 1998) the students' perceptions of the web-integrated course design and implementation.

The Action Research Project

Teacher-initiated action research is one readily available tool teachers have to improve classroom performance. Action research helps the teacher understand the complex and varied interactions that make up a language classroom at a particular point in time with a particular group of students. By its very definition, action research cannot make strong theoretical claims, but it can provide a framework in which an instructor observes a determined phenomena and reflects on its effect in the classroom (LoCastro, 1994).

After we identified our area of investigation, we developed a research plan and began to gather data systematically. Our principal means of gathering data were weekly web-based student feedback logs with which we collected, collated, and analyzed student feedback. We also maintained online teaching journals. In addition, we observed students in the classroom and shared our work-in-progress with colleagues.

When designing feedback items, we focused on student attitudes and reactions to the course. However, just as we provided more support with beginning projects, we scaffolded the content of the feedback logs to help students become comfortable with the concept of regularly and freely giving their opinions and ideas. Early logs asked students simply to relate what they had learned in class, what skills were new, and what they would change about the class if they could. We used simple fill-in-form HTML, such as text areas and pull-down select menus, to create the feedback logs. Over time we discovered that we could focus responses more easily if we used pull-down select menus and clickable radio buttons as opposed to blank text areas. We found data collection particularly easy because of the web-based nature of the instrument. Once we had an HTML template of an online feedback log utilizing fill-in-forms and cgi-bin, substituting items each week took very little time.

We asked students to respond to a wide range of feedback items, which in retrospect probably did not all conform to the research focus yet in many ways provided us with new directions to explore. Logs asked students to:

The end of the semester marked the end of our data collection stage. Although we had been discussing the data as we collected it, at this time we began to analyze and reflect on the data more deeply.

Discussion

In this section, we discuss the responses from two feedback logs. In addition, we would like to invite readers to visit our website where it is possible to view all of the feedback logs to which we have linked the students' responses (2) and our interpretation of those responses at <http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/classes/fall98/aisenv/index.html>

The November 13 feedback log (see Appendix 1 for questions) asked students to think about the various parts of the class website, including favorite, least favorite, most used, and least used page or feature. The responses indicated that a major reason why students liked the course website is that it helped them stay organized and focused throughout the semester. Several students liked the People page because they could access class members' homepages and check their own grades and attendance. Interestingly, the latter feature was a reason why one student did not like the People page; he was scared to see his grades! The most popular pages seemed to be Calendar and This Week since these pages allowed students to stay up to date and review past classes. Overall, we were pleased with the students' reactions to the design of the website.

The critical feedback that students offered will influence the redesign of the website. Students mentioned that they disliked or seldom used the Links and Activities pages. These comments might be prompted because the teachers rarely used either page in class demonstrations. Next year we may want to have the students develop these pages. We think if the students felt a certain degree of ownership of the page, they may be more likely to use it. One student did not like Calendar because it was difficult to access quickly. We might want to reverse the chronological order of this page so that the most recent dates are at the top of the page. Another student disliked Projects because of its high text density. High text density was also a reason why one student printed some pages. It may be that we need to think more carefully of the students' needs when creating pages that give the students instructions. In short, what seems like a good description to instructors may be overwhelming for students.

The December 4 feedback log (see Appendix 2 for questions) focused on student attitudes towards group work. The results indicated that the students were positive about independent group work and an autonomous learning environment. All of the students agreed with the statement "I like group work" and the majority preferred group work to working alone. Half of the students chose yes, mostly to "I like being the group leader", while the other half chose sometimes, which suggested to us that group work was successful because there were enough students willing to lead the groups. This was consistent with the positive attitude demonstrated in the written comments:

This last response could have been prompted by the statement "It bothers me when some students are absent", to which the student reactions were evenly distributed from No, that doesn't bother me to Yes, that really bothers me, though the distribution leaned slightly more towards the latter statement. Interestingly, all of the students felt that they did more work than the others in their groups, with two students answering that they felt this was always the case. Nevertheless, this apparently did not negatively influence the students' overall enjoyment of group work.

With regards to decision making in class, students agreed with a slight positive balance towards "I like it when the teachers make the decisions in class", with half of the students answering sometimes. The exact same slight positive balance was given towards "I prefer it when the teacher makes groups than when I choose the group". In both of these items, three students answered yes, usually, but no student answered yes, very much. These answers would seem to indicate that the students prefer the teacher to make most class decisions.

Contrary to this conclusion, however, a full three-quarters of the students agreed with the statement "I like making decisions in class," with one yes, very much, while the remaining quarter answered sometimes. This is a definite positive balance that we interpret as indicating that the students are comfortable with student decision making and student directed learning environments, possibly more so than teacher-directed situations. Still, the fact that students responded positively to teacher decision making leads us to conclude that the students did not necessarily see their autonomy in exclusive opposition to teacher decision making.

Conclusion

The development, implementation and evaluation of AISEI has been very exciting for us. The research project has prompted us to think about many other areas of the web-integrated course to investigate. We feel that an effective course website requires substantial planning, and we want to incorporate what we have learned from the research in our next website. We hope to create a website that is flexible enough to allow student decision making and incorporate more student ownership while maintaining the solid framework of the course. However, in any action research project, it is important to view the research as cyclical. After implementing design changes, we will begin the action research process once more.

References

Bonwell, C. & Eison, J. (1991). Active learning: Creating excitement in the classroom (ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1). Washington, DC: George Washington University.

Brinton, D. M. Snow, M. A. & Wesche, M. B. (1989). Content-based second language instruction. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

Chamot, A. U. & O'Malley, J. M. (1994). The CALLA handbook: Implementing the cognitive academic language learning approach. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Daloglu, A. (1998). A model for constructive use of student evaluation of teaching. The Language Teacher, 22 (9), 13-16.

Ebersole, S. (1997). Cognitive issues in the design and deployment of interactive hypermedia: Implications for authoring WWW sites. Interpersonal Computing and Technology: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century, 5 (1-2), 19-36.

Fried-Booth, D. (1986). Project work.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Henry, J. (1994). Teaching through projects. London: Kogan Page.

Little, D. & Dam, L. (1998). Learner autonomy: What and why? The Language Teacher, 22 (10), 7-8, 15.

LoCastro, V. (1994). Teachers helping themselves: Classroom research and action research. The Language Teacher, 18 (2), 4-7.

Sagliano, M. & Greenfield, K. (1998). A collaborative model of content-based EFL instruction in the liberal arts. TESOL Journal, 7 (3), 23-28.

Shetzer, H. (1998). Documenting CALL approaches through action research and critical reflection. TESOL Matters, 8 (4), 13.

Notes

1. It is beyond the scope of this article to further explain these technologies. Please visit the World Wide Web Consortium's website <http://www.w3.org/> for more information.

2. All students have signed release forms giving us permission to display their work.

Appendix 1 - November 13 Feedback Log

This week we would like you to think about the class website and how you use it.

  1. What feature or page do you like the best on the class website? Why?
  2. What feature or page do you like the least on the class website? Why?
  3. Which class website page do you use most often besides THIS WEEK? Why?
  4. Which class website page do you use the least? Why?
  5. What pages have you printed from the class website? (If none, write none in the comment box.) Why?

Appendix 2 - December 4 Feedback Log

Project 4 requires you to work independently in groups. What do you think about this? How do you feel about group work? Please choose whether you agree (yes) or disagree (no) with the following statements.

1. I like group work.

2. I like being the group leader.

3. I do more work than the others in my group.

4. I prefer working alone than working in a group.

5. It bothers me when some of my group members are absent.

7. I like it when the teachers make the decisions in class.

8. I prefer it when the teacher makes groups than when I choose the group.

9. Other comments about group work (optional):


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