The World Wide Web: A replacement, displacement, supplement or adjunct of traditional methods?

R. Godfrey
Department of Applied Computing and Mathematics
University of Tasmania
Launceston, Tasmania 7250
B.Godfrey@appcomp.utas.edu.au

Abstract

There are many advocates who suggest putting teaching material on the World Wide Web (WWW) as a substitute for traditional teaching practice and there are many predictions that the Internet will revolutionise education. However, there are also those, perhaps mindful of previous experiences with educational technologies, who are already predicting the demise of the Web.

This paper describes an experience in using the WWW as a major component in teaching a tertiary Management Information Systems unit, and describes how the material is used by students as compared to traditional delivery methods. This experience is then used to reflect on the nature of the WWW and to forecast its potential for revolutionary change in educational delivery.

The paper concludes that while the WWW offers up exciting new possibilities in course presentation, it is presently a supplementary, not a replacement, technology when compared to traditional teaching vehicles like textbooks and lecture notes.

Keywords

ASCILITE'96, World Wide Web, WWW, multimedia.

1. Introduction

Conventional university delivery consists of two components - the whole group lecture and the small group tutorial or practical class. It is common for the lecture to be a formal delivery of material where content and control is by the academic. Typically the tutorial is a less formal discussion of issues, with content and control shared by the academic and the students. How much tutorial freedom is given to students depends on the discipline, the organisation's culture, and the personal preferences of the academic (who still retains overall control). Practical classes lie somewhere in between lectures and tutorials, with more formal control necessary in those classes that use expensive equipment and/or pose inherent dangers.

While there are local variation on this basic structure, universities have used these techniques for generations, and at present look like continuing to do so, notwithstanding the episodic availability of numerous educational technologies, amongst the latest of which is the World Wide Web (WWW).

Whether the predictions be positive or negative, most forecasts of an impending revolution in educational practice have proved to be at best short lived, and at worst total non-events.

Consider some of the following comments on particular educational technologies:-

"The intention was to break down the walls of the classroom and bring the world in" [Connor, 1970] describing the promise of post-World War 2 radio.

"Teachers are faced by a rising tide of technological hardware ... the tape recorder is still the most widely available, the most flexible and useful." [Jones, 1972]

"the legitimacy and acceptance of commercial feature films in the history curriculum is beyond question" [Prof. Stuart Samuels, quoted in Murray, 1979]

"Despite all advances in technology, the most widely used visual aid is still the overhead projector" [Burton, 1994]

We could go on and on here, but the interested reader is directed to Sims [1995] and to Adam [1996] for more examples.

The examples already referred to were positive claims made by their particular champions of the day. Just as inaccurate, however, have been the prophets of doom who have predicted the decline in education standards with the advent of paper (and the loss of the slate), the pen replacing the pencil, the fountain pen the nibbed pen, and the ball point pen replacing the fountain pen. These technologies have not destroyed education, though (and I admit a personal bias) the pocket calculator might have!

Innovations like those already mentioned crop up from time to time, but while they have all had, and in some cases still do have, their faithful champions and adherents, nothing much has changed in the teaching and learning process, and after a brief period of flirtation/activity with some new technology, things go back to normal.

2. The nature of technological growth and change

The ten million inhabitants of London would be surprised to learn that their city has a maximum population of half-a-million, for that is a prediction made in the late 1890's (just after the first cars appeared). It was based on extending the current horse transport needs and predicting that with that population London would be knee deep in horse manure! Similar predictions were made in Edwardian times about the motor car. A world-wide limit of half-a-million (a popular number?) cars was predicted because then we would run out of chauffeurs. So while we live in a dynamic world where change is seen as so desirable as to be almost elevated to the status of a religious faith, predicting the future impact of such changes is as difficult as ever.

The arrival of the World Wide Web (WWW) is seen by many as the latest hope for a technological revolution in educational delivery. The question needs to be asked then as to how this particular technology will impact on the traditional practices in the future.

In the short term, we can expect use of the WWW to supplement traditional methods. In the medium-to-long term, a number of things can happen:

use of the WWW will fade away;

use of the WWW will continue indefinitely along with traditional methods as a value-adding supplement;

use of the WWW will continue for a while along with traditional methods as an incidental adjunct;

the WWW will displace (and possibly replace) traditional methods.

Technologies that become firmly established typically follow a growth pattern (figure 1) as described by Nolan [1973].


Figure 1: A Nolan growth curve

In the initiation stage, a few committed individuals grapple with the technology in trying to meet basic needs. There is little planning and relatively little management control. Following this, provided others become convinced of the value of the technology, a contagious growth takes place, typically so fast that there is a lack of control over the expansion. This expansion is then brought under control, often with an over-reaction, until finally the needs of management and users are integrated and a balanced mature position is reached. We see this in the growth of personal computers in schools, with slow growth, then explosion with everybody buying different brands of hardware and software, then hierarchic attempts at control (like edicts to only purchase brand X computers) before the technology matures into commonplace. With WWW access a similar explosion in access is taking place, and plans are already being made to control this growth with special education networks where some censorship can be exercised over material available.

The initiation phase needs only a few committed enthusiastic individuals who are able and willing to experiment with new techniques. But the expansion phase requires real benefits to be delivered in order to trigger a contagious "bandwagon" effect where the more people who take up the technology, the more others are encouraged to do so [Adam, 1996]. With rapid expansion comes the need to control the large numbers of users before eventually the technology use plateau's out in a mature phase. But if the first non-enthusiast users of the technology find that its early promise is not fulfilled, then the technology does not follow the Nolan growth curve. Instead it echoes the experience of Sisyphus (who in Greek mythology was compelled for all eternity to roll a heavy stone uphill, only to see it roll back to the bottom just as he neared the top!). If you cannot generate enough inertia to reach the top of the hill, then all effort is wasted and you can arrive right back where you started from.

With hindsight, it is easy to track the growth of successful technologies, but this is not the whole story, for while many technologies, after an uncertain beginning, are now firmly entrenched, others of equal promise have just faded away. Whenever two or more technologies compete, there is a tendency for ebbs and flows in their use, with the possibility that eventually one or the other will disappear. We can illustrate this with reference to figure 2.


Figure 2: Technological balance

With two balanced technologies, both can continue to coexist. However, a marginal change in, or perception about, the attributes of one or the other can tip the balance, and the inertia generated may be enough to eliminate one altogether. Thus while television has impacted on radio, nevertheless both continue to exist. By contrast, in the early part of this century, petrol driven vehicles won out over steam propelled vehicles and are now firmly entrenched, despite the problems of reducing fossil fuel stocks, and the subsequent advent of battery-powered vehicles. Enormous inertia will be needed if ever electric cars are to displace petrol-driven cars due to the extensive and expensive infrastructure already in place for existing types of vehicles.

Sometimes a technology looks as if it is going to replace another, but eventually a balance is reached or it fails to fulfil early expectations. For a time in the 1970s it looked like the analogue watch would be superseded by the digital watch, but more and more people are now switching back to analogue watches, albeit with electronic rather than mechanical movements. In the back of my kitchen cupboards I have many gadgets (like my crock pot) which I once used fadishly for a while until they failed to live up to their promises and/or went out of fashion.

Sometimes an inferior technology triumphs over a better one, as is generally thought to be the case with the demise of Betamax video-recorders at the hands of VHS. While Sony's Betamax was considered technically superior, more restricted licensing arrangements meant that more VHS versions were available, and eventually availability outweighed technical performance.

In other instances technologies grow faster than predicted, for example the Australian uptake of facsimile (FAX) machines and mobile phones, perhaps due to the inherent simplicity and similarity to commonly used existing technologies like the photocopier and the standard telephone.

In yet other cases technological shifts have been entirely unanticipated, otherwise IBM would never have outsourced the production of their PC operating systems to Microsoft, leading to their loss of market dominance.

For one technology (like the WWW) to supersede another (like the chalkboard, library and class notes) it is not necessary for the surviving technology to replace the preceding one, merely to displace it. That is, the successor does not need to mimic or improve on all the capabilities of the current technology, it merely has to remove a significant part of its functionality or cost competitiveness to swing the balance in its favour. For example, the telegram delivery person has passed into history, consigned there by the FAX machine, in spite of the fact that most private homes do not have a FAX machine, or that verbal replies cannot be given as they could for personally delivered telegrams. But because the business sector switched from telegrams to FAX, the marginal private requirements for telegrams can no longer be justified in terms of infrastructure or cost.

3. Educational delivery methods

While much previous educational technology was designed to increase the power and effectiveness of lecture style presentations, more recent innovations have often been centred around the ability to foster self-directed learning. Traditional techniques have gathered a number of students together in one place and/or one time, whereas computer-assisted learning (CAL) and the WWW have permitted students to work in their own time and place. In teaching units such as the subject of this paper, we can consider four delivery modalities (table 1), depending upon whether students are required/desired to be in the same place or not, and/or at the same time or not.
Same time Different time
Same

place

Lectures and

tutorials

Laboratory sessions
Different

place

Tele-tutorials and Tele-conferences Library, CAL and WWW pages

Table 1: Educational delivery modalities

If there is a requirement that all students are taught together, that is that variations on time and place are not permitted between students, then this is best achieved by the conventional lecture or small group tutorial. In computing laboratories students usually work alone (or say in pairs) but because resources are usually not present in sufficient numbers to enable all students to be taught at the same time, classes are scheduled in different time slots in the same place or places. If we want to permit students to be geographically dispersed (a distance education mode of teaching), then the use of techniques such as tele-tutorials or tele-confrences is indicated, as it allows students to be in different places (say next to their home telephone or networked computer), provided they are connected together at the same time. But if we wish to free up students from the restrictions imposed by both same place and same time, then traditional methods like private study in the library or technologies such as computer-assisted learning and the World Wide Web must be used. We should expect then that using the WWW will permit/improve some activities because of the relaxation of the same time/same place restriction, but we should anticipate that other activities which are effected or enhanced when students and/or academics come together in time and/or place will be impossible or less effective. Of course, while the time and place dimensions are major differences between WWW use and traditional methods, other factors will also affect the comparison and future of the technologies.

4. The evolution of the unit

The teaching methods employed in the unit Information Systems have evolved over a number of years to introduce more and more technology each year. The unit has used WWW-based material for the past two years as a supplement to conventional teaching and learning methods. By way of background, the unit is taught internally, and is essentially a theoretical unit, with no real requirement for practical (computer-based) work. It aims to build in experienced computing students an awareness of the management process and the role of information systems in managing an enterprise in a competitive global marketplace. In the unit, the computer system is used as an educational tool, not as the central object of interest, and not because it broadens the reach of the course (as is required for distance education). Thus the unit is a commonplace, run-of-the-mill unit, and techniques described here, the lessons drawn, and the suggestions and predictions made should be applicable to a large body of tertiary teaching, be it history, economics, physics and so on.

I have been using Powerpoint slides to add colour (in the metaphoric sense) to my lectures for some years. In 1994 I used Powerpoint, and handed out hard-copy prints of the slides during lectures. In 1995 I continued with the slide handouts, but in addition put the slides on a student accessible file server, and also used WWW pages as a backbone to the course. This use of the WWW and file server has been continued and extended in 1996, with an objective of not providing paper handouts at all.

Why did I decide to use WWW pages as part of my teaching? Brown [1995] has listed five reasons for creating hyperdocuments such as Web pages.

They are:

as a piece of personal research

as a piece of creativity

as a contribution to the subject

to save staff time

to improve the quality of learning

I was certainly motivated by personal research - coming from a computing department I wanted to explore how the technology could be used. I was attracted to computing in the first place, and had earlier chosen to prepare Powerpoint slides because they were a creative outlet. As time goes on I have added features to my Web pages to make them more useful and visually appealing, although I am aware that others are far more creative in their use of the technology than am I. As a contribution to the subject or discipline, my use of the WWW is appealing to some students who might enrol in my units rather than somebody else's units. Higher enrolment numbers increases the chances that my units will survive university cuts and departmental restructuring. Thus more students might graduate having been exposed to my unit than would otherwise be the case. I am certainly motivated to save time in a climate where (in spite of increasing student numbers) more emphasis is placed on research and less on teaching. Web pages add to my workload initially, but in subsequent years less effort is required to keep them up to date. I have set myself the objective of never handing out paper to students, so I do not need to use the photocopier extensively, to liaise with print shops, or to carry 200 copies of a 12 page handout into a lecture theatre. Using the Web means that the distribution effort in a large class is no more than for a small class. Finally, use of Web pages has improved the quality of learning by adding an element of variety to existing methods. (Many of my students have reported that they have enjoyed the chance to use the WWW for real, as before they had felt a little self-conscious exploring it purely for pleasure and self-interest!)

5. Before: How students operate without the WWW

Before I started using the WWW for my teaching, student learning activity consisted mostly of

attending lectures

receive handouts containing lecture summaries

make notes

ask questions

challenge statements made by the lecturer

socialise with other students

attend tutorials

prepare answers and/or research background to questions posed

ask questions

socialise with other students

visit library

photocopy books and journal articles

copy other students lecture notes

private study

read collected material

organise material

annotate and highlight material

On the student side, the most popular technologies used were the photocopier and the fluorescent highlighter pen. The motto seemed to be "if in doubt - copy it". In open book examinations, some students brought so much material they had difficulty coping with it. (One student even had to ask in the middle of an exam for another copy of the examination question paper because their original copy had been mislaid in all the notes they had brought to the examination!)

On my side, the major technology was the use of Microsoft Powerpoint for electronic blackboard presentation of the major points in the lecture. In addition, I handed out copies of the Powerpoint slides at the start of each lecture. The use of a computer projection system as an electronic blackboard requires students to sit in semi-darkness, so note taking is made more difficult. If I handed out slides after the lecture students did not trust the content, and took copious notes anyway. If I handed out the slides the week before, most students left them at home! So I handed them out on the day, and students tended to annotate them during the lecture as best they could in the reduced light.

5. After: Some observations on the use of WWW in teaching

The transient nature of Web pages presents a few problems. Pages can disappear or change without warning so the interesting link set up in the lecturer's carefully structured notes has gone by the time students try to activate it. Assignment references to particular pages cannot for certain be followed up during assessment to verify their content. As an academic I can limit this by not putting in links to pages outside my control, but this is a very negative approach, (akin to protecting children from reading unsuitable material by not teaching them to read in the first place). Part of the great appeal of the WWW is the ability to build on local material by national and international links to provide access to the best material one can locate. Such links based on the academic's knowledge of what is important and why provide an opportunity for deep learning [Brack, 1996]. Even if I do not link my material to that of others, use of Web browsers allows students to find material for themselves, and stopping this student-directed learning by allowing only local material would be somewhat draconian. So global Web links being desirable, students overcome this transience problem in two ways, either by copying down the HTML source of the page, or by printing a copy, with the printing option being used more often. Another reason given for printing Web pages is the need to annotate as is done in the print medium by margin notes or text underlining or highlighting. This concept is still being explored on the Internet [Rutherford, 1996] and available annotation facilities are somewhat primitive. So for reasons of transience and the need to annotate, we tend to move not towards the paperless class, but rather even further in the opposite direction.

Access to the entirety of the WWW poses another potential problem, that of the quality of the Web pages. Students are used to coming across commercial and enthusiast sites where much money and/or effort has been spent on making the pages attractive and encouraging electronic visitors. I do not have the time and skill resources to match these efforts, but I am constrained to try as best I can. I am protected for the moment from unfair comparisons with more glamorous sites by the fact that educational use of the WWW is seen by students as novel, and among my colleagues I am still in a minority. So I get points from the students for trying, but how long this will last is an open question.

Searching the WWW is easier than searching the world's libraries, but not that easy. First there is the choice of Web browser/index with an ever growing list of tools [see Barry, 1996], each of them using different techniques. Some search only page titles, some do full text search. Some are dynamic and continually updated, others are static snapshots of Web content at some past point. It is difficult to be sure of the coverage or newness of material being indexed, so information gathering is a fairly haphazard process. Added to this hit-and-miss searching is the question of authenticity. If I say something in lectures (however ridiculous) students record it as gospel! If I advise them to read a text book, they can be reasonably confident that the author has views that I at least think are important and worth reading. But they have little idea who wrote pages on the Web - it could be a Nobel prize winner or a ten-year old child in the next street.

As students browse around the Web or follow links provided, there arises the very real possibility that they will get lost or become distracted by stumbling across more enthralling though irrelevant material. (I am reminded of my youth when the attractions of the view of the sports field through the classroom window were my own personal distraction.) Even when students are sufficiently in control or motivated to stick to their learning task, the sheer size of the WWW raises yet another challenge - they don't know when to stop. In lectures you can write down everything that is said. With a prescribed text you can read from cover to cover, but the WWW goes on seemingly forever!

Another issue that arises for the academic is that in creating hundreds of Web pages there is a need for Web site organisation. How will the typical student wish to navigate around the pages? Should I allow unrestricted global access to the pages, or try to erect a firewall and allow only local access? I am torn between a need to protect my creative investment, and the self-aggrandisement potential of unrestricted access!

Eklund [1996] has referred to the empowerment provided by the use of the WWW as it makes the traditional classroom session less important. So for example, I no longer need to worry if I have an off day and give a poor lecture as long as the Web pages are detailed enough. Even if they are not, I can update them later to amplify material that students find interesting, or to clarify misconceptions that arise in tutorial discussions. So unlike the one-shot provided by the lecture, the Web is much more dynamic.

Use of the WWW, if it reduces face-to-face contact, reduces the possibilities for synchronous dialogue but offers the possibility of asynchronous dialogue through electronic mail (EMail) [Wild, 1996; Nguyen, A.,1996]. Thus I have provided Email contact links on each of my Web pages. However, it still needs to be said the Web pages are a static medium, and more interactivity (along the lines of Java scripts and such developments) is required to provide interaction and feedback

Finally, a potential loss from my use of the WWW is that of my job! If all my relevant knowledge is recorded in Web pages, then there might be a temptation for an unenlightened employer to claim ownership and to declare my personal presence to be redundant. This is not an isolated fear. For example, the report of John Brumby to the House of Representatives advised that resistance to technology is founded in part on pessimism about limits to future career growth and promotion [Parliament, 1989]. Academics being pressed ever more to take on extra duties are likely to resist further changes in the form of technology [Nguyen,A., 1996]. Sims [1995] reports that secondary teachers do not see technology primarily as a help but as yet another hurdle to be overcome, for teachers and academics are innately conservative, having an ingrained model of teaching [Cummings, 1995]. While institutions are developing open learning and off-campus programs, individual educators seem to be laggards [Adam, 1996]. We can be sure that in the current climate of university funding cuts that these fears about job security will grow. There is a sense then that the more effort I put into creating WWW material, the more possible it is that I might end up on the educational scrap heap.

7. A view of the future

A little prediction, like famous last words, can be a dangerous thing, as for example the apocryphal quote from the Wordl War I trenches of "we are safe here, we are out of range of their guns"! Thus the comment by Jones in 1972 of the pre-eminence of the tape recorder as an educational technology comes chronologically after the emergence of the first desktop microcomputers. So the WWW may at this moment be dead or dying from some already latent or unobserved technology, only (to return to our trench analogy) the bullet or shell has not yet arrived. Berghel [1995] puts the view that the WWW is already dying, and that its death will be cataclysmal. He observes that in March 1994 Gopher led the Web in packet volume, but within a year had all but disappeared.

But safe in the knowledge that I am not alone, and acknowledging that predictions about educational technology are more often wrong than right, some forecasts can be given based on perceived strengths and weaknesses of the WWW, both as it is, and as it might develop. However, mindful of the triumph of VHS over Betamax video recording, we should add the rider that competing technologies may win out over the WWW not because they are superior, but simply because at some critical point, the scales tipped, albeit momentarily, in some other direction.

We have stated previously that use of the WWW is a different time / different place technology, as also is the traditional, though now rare, process of "reading for a degree" by directed study in the library. It is therefore not surprising therefore that the impact of the WWW is more likely to be felt in the library than it is in the classroom. There is however, an additional dimension to this competition, and that springs from the global availability of the WWW. Students cannot easily be expected to read library material that is not held in the local collection (inter-library loans excepted). However material placed on the Web anywhere in the world is more readily available, given sufficient bandwidth. So university administrators will have the option of replacing or supplementing locally prepared and presented material with courses created elsewhere in the world. This is the same issue as faced with distance education, but with the added impetus of being able to mix and match material from different places in a locally produced framework.

While acknowledging the likely impact of the Web on the library, we have hinted that its impact in the classroom will be much less. If the WWW does not exactly match the needs of educational delivery, can it be changed to meet those needs. Like Sir Humphrey Applebey, we can answer yes and no! Yes it could, and no it will not. Like radio and television before, the educational promise of this medium will be dictated by commercial considerations, with business and entertainment setting the agenda. The WWW may well improve, but not at the insistence of educational providers, but purely coincidentally.

Much technology (and the WWW is no exception) is seductive [Hughes, 1994]. In many ways computer hardware and software has been made deliberately appealing in order to broaden the sales appeal beyond the established corporate purchaser towards the general populace. This appeal is often superficial, with attractive human-computer interfaces being grafted on to software of indifferent utility [Godfrey, 1996]. This superficiality needs to be replaced by substance if the Web is to prove to be of lasting significance.

A major challenge on the horizon is that of bandwidth. If network performance declines with unbalanced growth, teaching and learning on the Web might become unusable, and we could be forced to remove global links and treat the Web as a local file server only [Nguyen, T.,1996]. A second major hurdle is that of availability. Until we reach a computer-student ratio approaching 1.0 then we cannot expect universal use and acceptance of the technology. There is already evidence that university administrators are more ready with rhetoric about technology than they are with money.

Many computerised systems including educational technologies like CAL have grown less than predicted because they were oversold or failed to address the real needs of the application area. Early users became disillusioned, and one this disillusionment set in, it reduced further uptake of technology. "It is important to realise that technology in teaching cannot solve fundamental educational problems" [ Slaughter, 1990]. Courses must still be planned, students cared for, assessments made, and concepts explained well. Thus in a sense all educational technologies are supplementary. But it is still possible for the WWW technology to replace the chalk-board technology within this pedagogical supplement. Only time will tell.

8. Summary

We have compared the traditional process of university teaching with the use of the World Wide Web. A number of previous educational technologies have been reviewed by way of explaining the nature of technological change and technology growth, and these experiences have been used to make a number of fairly cautious forecasts on the future of the Web in education, drawing the conclusion that use of the WWW is still driven more by enthusiasm than by demonstrable lasting benefit, and thus it is still impossible to be certain of its future.

I will continue to be a WWW enthusiast (and in 1997 plan to reduce my face-to-face lecturing ad increase the use of Web pages), but I will be cautious in encouraging other to wholeheartedly pursue the same course, particularly when I am conscious that my technological excitement might be dominant over more pedagogical issues. If the WWW persists, I will have gained a valuable (though short-lived) advantage over my colleagues. If the WWW withers and dies, at least I will have enjoyed the experiment.

9. References

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