Lessons learned the hard way: Encountering a few potholes while taking a course onto the Information Superhighway
Rick KunkelUniversity of St Thomas
St Paul Minnesota USA
Lessons learned the hard way: Encountering a few potholes while taking a course onto the Information SuperhighwayRick KunkelUniversity of St Thomas St Paul Minnesota USA | |
It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done. Samuel Smiles
For ages it has been understood that failure is a great teacher. It also is well known that we learn more from our failures than from our successes. Nevertheless it is rare to find papers or presentations at academic conferences which trumpet the author's or presenter's failings. Yet, that is the aim of this paper, which shall relate the failings of my first attempt to support my classroom teaching with a Web site containing course information, discussion areas and study materials. No doubt some of the mistakes I have made will appear in hindsight to be obvious. It is my hope that, by discussing these failures, others making their initial foray into developing Web site support for classroom teaching will learn from my mistakes rather than repeating them.
In November 1997, I attended the Educom Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Among faculty members in attendance, the most keen interest focused upon getting one's courses online on the World Wide Web. I attended several conference presentations and demonstrations regarding software products to develop Web courses such as Learning Space from Lotus/IBM, WebCT developed by the University of British Columbia, Top Class from WBT Systems, and Web Course in a Box developed by Virginia Commonwealth University and others. The conference presentations inspired me to try to take one of my business law course onto the Web the following semester.
He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed. William JamesLast semester, for the first time, I taught a class in the University of St Thomas' Weekend College program. The course met for only half of the contact hours of traditional courses (28 hours vs. approximately 50 hours.) The course met every other Saturday morning for four hours. I believed that the course presented a unique opportunity to use a Web site to provide information and course content to replace content that would have to be cut from the classroom teaching. In addition, assignments and exercises could be presented via the Web site to encourage continuous learning and attention to the class during the two-week intervals.
The only real failure in life is one not learned from. Anthony J. D'AngeloUnfortunately, my first experiment with a Web site to support my classroom teaching was a failure for a number of reasons. This paper will focus on the lessons I learned from my not-very-successful first experience.
| Lesson One |
Developing a web course is much harder than it looks.Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. Louis E. BooneThe point of this observation is not that developing a Web site to support a course is too difficult, or that the benefits of the Web site are insufficient to justify the burdens of creating the site. It merely is a lot more challenging than one anticipates. The presentations and demonstrations at the Educom conference repeatedly emphasized how easy it was to get your course online using the software. The presenters deftly manipulated the software so that a few points and clicks later - "Voila!" - your course is on the Web. This is necessary to overcome faculty fears that the amount of work is so great that they will be unwilling to try this new approach.
The emphasis on ease of use may cause one to seriously underestimate the time, work and commitment necessary to make a successful Web site. This certainly was my experience. Perhaps as one with above average technology skills and familiarity with HTML I was especially prone to assuming that I could easily convert existing materials to a Web application. "I'll take my other materials, convert them to HTML, put them on the Web. Easy!". In fact, a number of new teaching elements needed to be created for this new learning environment. Developing good discussion questions, monitoring and responding to student discussion, converting existing materials to display on HTML all required more time and attention than I expected. Faculty members developing courses for the Web need to be prepared for the commitment of time and effort necessary to create a successful site. It will be as deceptively easy as it appears.
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| Lesson Two |
Be realistic about the requirements of developing your own custom siteIt is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. Herman MelvilleI saw demonstrations of several different software packages at the Educom conference. Each had several useful features, but none of them had all of the features I preferred. In addition, the sites I would create using the programs would have a standard look and feel similar to pages created by every other faculty users. I wanted a site that would have my own unique features. In addition, a colleague recently observed that he felt the off-the-shelf applications made it difficult to make a good match between the content he intended to provide and the context in which it was presented by the program. I thought that, being somewhat technologically proficient, I would be able to create my own individual site, with its own unique context matching my content. The dilemma of choosing between easy to create off-the-shelf materials versus investing the time to create customized materials arises for faculty in several contexts (i.e. textbooks, previously prepared PowerPoint slides or tests banks). In general, I prefer to customize my own materials, and this approach has served me well in other settings. I chose to develop my site using NetObjects Fusion 2.0 rather than one of the specialized Web course applications. My site can be found at: http://140.209.81.176/wc/home.html |
| Although I felt I was being realistic about the time required to prepare a custom site, it required a greater investment of time than I anticipated. In addition my attention was devoted to learning the Fusion program, issues of colors, layouts, design, etc. In retrospect, for my first Web course, it would have been better to devote a much higher proportion of my time to content issues, and to ongoing maintenance of the site with less concern for appearance. Customized improvements and unique features could have been added as time permitted. Of course, the off-the shelf applications are designed exactly with this purpose in mind.
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| Lesson Three |
Content is the most important thing, so prepare it firstFailure to prepare is preparing to fail. UnknownThroughout my various adventures in educational technology, one impulse I have had to struggle to resist (usually unsuccessfully) is the urge to try all the bells and whistles of new technologies. I often invest countless hours tweaking elements to get just the right background, or graphic, or some other feature, rather than focusing on the content. My Web site was no exception. I spent several hours creating buttons, navigation bars, layouts, etc. While I was very pleased with the appearance and navigation on the site, by the time the semester started, I had very little content already created on the site. I had assumed that I would be able to add the desired content to the site on a "just in time" basis throughout the semester. After all, I frequently make spontaneous changes and additions to my traditional clases in this way. However creating content to share via the Web, as compared to an in-class lecture delivery is quite different. The "create content as you go" approach was successful for a few weeks, but as the semester progressed other demands began to interfere -- maintaining the site, preparing and grading exams, marking papers, administrative demands -- until gradually less content was posted to the site and more was handled in class. Finally, the press of other demands forced me to stop updating the site altogether and handling matters entirely in class or by e-mail.
Whatever time you allot to developing and maintaining a site during the semester, there always will be countless other tasks competing for your time and attention. The needs of the students are better served by making sure the content is there when they need it, even if the interface and navigability may be a bit wanting. In retrospect, much of the content I needed to post could have been prepared in advance, such as discussion questions, comments to post in discussion areas to stimulate discussion or focus discussions, copies of classroom presentations, explanations of assignments, or a frequently asked questions page for the topics that come up each semester. The more you can prepare in advance, the better. While improvements to the site's appearance could have been handled as time permitted, it was unwise to try to provide the content in this manner. For my fall semester classes, the content will be ready before the semester begins, making updating during the semester much easier.
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| Lesson Four |
Make a strong commitment to incorporate the site into the course from the outsetThe men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try nothing and succeed. Lloyd JonesI approached the Weekend College class, and the role of the Web site as a component of the class with a great deal of uncertainty. I had never taught in the shortened time format of Weekend College, had never used a Web site discussion area before (and neither had most of the students), and of course, was uncertain exactly what kind of content would eventually be posted on the site because I had not yet prepared it. As a result, the syllabus for the course was largely silent regarding the student's obligations to participate online and the need to frequently visit the site. I figured we could try some features of the site, see how things developed and be flexible regarding what and how much would be required of students online. This is contrary to my preferred style which is to specify at the beginning of the semester the requirements for students exactly. In other words, I had a failure of nerve. I tried to dip my toes in the water, rather than jumping in with both feet. This proved to be the wrong approach. From the outset, I should have the Web site an integral part of the learning experience by requiring frequent visits to the site. This was particularly true regarding online discussions that I tried to encourage, but did not specifically require. I estimate that about one-fourth of the class liked the discussions and found them helpful, another one-fourth felt they should participate in the discussion area, but did so half-heartedly, and about one-half of the class never participated or offered only token participation. Like most students, if work is required or has some meaningful impact on their grade, it will get done. If it is optional, most will not do it. This may have been especially true with my Weekend College students, who are working adults with jobs and families demanding their time. Even when some exercises were successful, many students made it clear they did not want to be required to visit the Web site and post message every few days if they could avoid it.
In retrospect, I wish I had used both a carrot and stick approach from the outset in the organization of my course. The stick: a minimum number of contributions to the discussion area at specified intervals (in particular, not just the day or two before the next class meeting). The carrot: some sort of extra credit or participation credit for discussion area postings in excess of the minimum. If I had failed to develop enough content to meet the minimum requirements, I could alway back off on the requirements. But attempting to create or expand course requirements for Web site participation during the course gave students the sense that I was shifting course requirements in midstream.
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| Lesson Five |
Don't retreat too quickly in the face of your failuresNot many people are willing to give failure a second opportunity. They fail once and it is all over. The bitter pill of failure is often more than most people can handle. If you are willing to accept failure and learn from it, if you are willing to consider failure as a blessing in disguise and bounce back, you have got the essential of harnessing one of the most powerful success forces. Joseph SugarmanFailure is an unavoidable occupational hazard for early adopters in the area of educational technology. Inevitably unanticipated problems will arise in taking a course online that will result in much of your work being ineffective. When these setbacks occur, the natural reaction is to return to strategies already proven to work. As the problems with my Web site cropped up, I believe I pulled the plug too quickly in returning to my usual methods. I was too accepting of the failures that occurred and did not bounce back to overcome them. In retrospect, I think if I had stuck with it just a bit longer I could have corrected the problems and still use the Web site effectively to enhance the course. For my next experience, when things start to fail, instead of retreating to the familiar, I will try to forge ahead. |
| Lesson Six |
Don't let failure discourage you from continuing to innovateFall seven times, stand up eight. Japanese proverbI was surprised at the degree of frustration and disappointment I felt over the way things had turned out in Web site experiment. There was great temptation to not invest the time and energy into another Web site endeavor. It has taken a few months to restore my enthusiasm for another attempt, but I am looking forward to it now. Already I am working on content for the Web site to support my fall classes, and will get to the new design and navigation elements later this summer. Perhaps at a future conference I can report a successful experience rather than a failure from which I learned a great deal! |
| Richard G. Kunkel, J.D. Associate Professor of Business Law University of St Thomas St Paul Minnesota USA rgkunkel@stthomas.edu Please cite as: Kunkel, R. G. (1998). Lessons learned the hard way: Encountering a few potholes while taking a course onto the Information Superhighway. In C. McBeath and R. Atkinson (Eds), Planning for Progress, Partnership and Profit. Proceedings EdTech'98. Perth: Australian Society for Educational Technology. http://www.aset.org.au/confs/edtech98/pubs/articles/kunkel.html |