Managing a Web-based Literature Course
for Undergraduates
by Jeffrey L. Merron
Assistant Professor of Mass Communication,
State University of West Georgia, jmerron@westga.edu
"During this class," a student wrote to me, "I have discovered
something about this medium that I had never noticed before. I have found
that the bulletin board environment is more conducive to learning and discussion
than any environment that I’ve been exposed to, including video, chat,
and the traditional classroom setting. It allows students to interact in
an intelligent, organized, and logical manner. We can enter at our leisure,
contemplate the issues discussed, and develop a thoughtful experience."
I received this unsolicited and unexpected comment about a third of
the way through a summer class in 1998. The student, a Business Information
Systems major taking one of his last classes before end-of-summer graduation,
wrote this without conceivable motive: He was not a journalism major, I
had never met him face-to-face, his grade for the class would have little
significance on his academic record. The only rationale I could think of
for this comment was: This student was excited about learning. Five years
of student comments on classes had never turned up a gem like this one.
What had I done?
I taught a course on-line.
An overview of Web-based teaching using WebCT
In 1998, I had the opportunity to experiment with using WebCT, an on-line
teaching package, in three journalism courses. [Detailed
information about WebCT, including access to a sample course, can be found
at <http://www.webct.com/webct/webct.html>].
In one course, the program supplemented traditional classroom materials.
In a second, the program was used more extensively, but the class still
met in a classroom weekly. In the third, the class met only on-line. I
would recommend using some kind of generic software (many packages perform
the same functions as WebCT) as a teaching tool for journalism instructors.
WebCT is a teaching module that works within a web browser (it works
best with Netscape Navigator, and serviceably with Internet Explorer).
It provides the instructor and students with many capabilities—the
ability to post documents in HTML format, the ability to create a document
file that students can easily download, a grade tracking module, and a
calendar. Most useful, however, are the parts of the program that facilitate
interchange between students and professor: e-mail and bulletin boards.
The e-mail function is simple and would be familiar to anyone who uses
any e-mail package, but it is powerful because it allows you to easily
correspond with either an individual, a group of students, or the entire
class without having to collect and compile each student’s e-mail
address. The e-mail is contained only within the program, and is specific
to the class; there is no @ appended to the student’s name because
the program knows where the student will pick up mail for the class.
The bulletin board enables the professor and students to post thoughts,
comments, exercises, papers, and so on in a public forum. WebCT enables
you to create multiple boards; I’ve had success with subject-specific
bulletin boards and with easily-created semi-private boards, where small
groups of students can post.
Perhaps the best part of the bulletin board system, from a pedagogical
point of view, is that it forces students to write. In the summer of 1998,
I taught a course entitled "Literary Journalism" entirely on-line,
and the bulletin board, by the end of the seven-week class, contained more
than 700 postings, which when printed out ran to about 330 double-spaced
pages—a prodigious output for a class of 16 students (see Figure 1).
Although some of these postings were off subject and some focused on where
to hold an end-of-course party, most postings were substantive comments
or questions about the subject matter.
What was most interesting—and pleasing—to me, however, was
the quality of the bulletin board postings and the richness and intimacy
of the on-line classroom environment. This experience seems to be common
among those who have taught and learned on-line. Greg Kearsley, who teaches
at Nova Southeastern University’s Fischler Center for the Advancement
of Education, writes:
"People who have little or no experience with online learning or
teaching tend to harbor some misconceptions (which are quickly cleared
up after actual participation in online classes). The most common misconception
is that online classes will be fairly sterile and impersonal. But once
a person starts to interact with other group members, they quickly discover
that an online learning environment can be very rich and very personal…People
typically find that they are drawn into the subject matter of the class
much more deeply than in a traditional course because of the discussions
they get involved in." (Kearsley, 1998)
Throughout the term, we discussed one book each week; students could
log on to the class from wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and
participate in an "asynchronous" discussion of the reading material.
Although students were required to contribute at least one "original"
post and one "response" post each week, many contributed much
more; the average student posted 20 times in four weeks. About half of
the postings were substantial reflections on course material or on the
comments and questions of other students and the professor, and from a
subjective standpoint the discussion on the bulletin board reached and
sustained a level of quality that is rare in the classroom setting.
Why would this be so? Several hypotheses are worth exploring:
- The medium forces students to take time to think before and during
their participation. Although the ability to edit posts is limited to simple
deletion, the student does have time to reflect and revise what has been
written before posting it for all to see on the bulletin board.
- Students recognize the bulletin board as a place where their thoughts
and work is "published." The essential difference
between writing in "real world" classrooms and cyberspace is
that "in cyberspace, everything is written for publication."
(Ferris, 1997) There is at least a semi-permanence to their remarks,
and therefore they are more likely to take care about what they say, since
once it’s "out there" on the bulletin board, they can’t
"take it back." (although the professor can delete comments,
if necessary). Early researchers in student use of bulletin boards also
noted this phenomenon. "If used effectively, CMC
[computer-mediated communications] encourages and motivates students to
become involved in authentic projects and to write for a real audience
of their peers or persons in the larger world community, instead of merely
composing assignments for the teacher." (Berge and Collins, 1995)
- The technical challenges inherent in on-line bulletin boards just a
few years ago have been eliminated by programs like WebCT, allowing students
to focus on reading, writing, and thinking while at the computer, rather
than the enabling applications themselves. Just a few years
ago, on-line teaching pioneers wrote that "the learning curve, with
regard to learning the system and the technical ‘how tos’ of
the computer and telecommunications, can be steep." (Berge and Collins)
- Finally, students can’t see each other. They can’t get by
on good looks (or a sharp wit) alone, and they know it. Although the use
of emoticons, or punctuation used to express emotions or intention, can
enrich on-line discourse, there is "a protective ignorance surrounding
a person’s social roles, rank, and status. Further, it is impossible
to know if another person took several hours to draft a one-screen response,
or several minutes." (Berge and Collins)
Using a package like WebCT provides other possibilities. In my "Literary
Journalism" course, for example, a "visiting professor"
from Penn State University, 800 miles to the northwest of my university,
participated throughout the summer. He teaches a similar class at Penn
State, and was able to contribute his considerable expertise in the subject
matter at his convenience. Students reported that they enjoyed having a
second professor’s perspective, and that it was a professor from a
different, and distant, university, may have lent a novelty aspect.
In addition, an author of one of the books we read participated in the
discussion of her work. She logged into the classroom three times during
the week we covered her book, and answered students’ questions regarding
both the books content and her experiences as a journalist and author.
The author, who is of some fame and in demand as a public speaker, agreed
to participate because it was convenient for her to do so: she didn’t
have to leave home, she didn’t need any special software, and she
didn’t need to formally prepare. A visiting author or journalist is
not unusual for a typical class, but it is usually difficult to arrange
visits with little advance scheduling; in this case, the author agreed
to participate after being contacted only a week before the class began
discussing her book. Arranging her visit to a physical classroom would
likely have required much more lead time, and may not have been possible.
Students were overwhelmingly positive about the on-line literary journalism
class. In response to open-ended questions asked at the end of the course,
all of the students wrote that, if offered the opportunity, they would
take an on-line class again. A few students specifically requested notification
of all on-line classes when they became available. Students were also positive
about:
- The ability to log on anytime, anywhere;
- The quality of class discussion;
- The breadth of discussion—many students who may not have participated
in a traditional classroom did participate on-line;
- The convenience of accessing class-related materials (handouts) via
the web.
Of the 16 students, seven responded to the survey as posted (several
other responses were narrative evaluations that did not fit the survey
format). Of the seven, five wrote that they were more likely to participate
on-line than they would have in a classroom, while two said their level
of participation was about the same as in a traditional classroom. Even
more heartening was that all of the seven respondents believed that their
participation was of a higher quality than it would have been in a traditional
setting. One student wrote:
I think the discussion went better than if we had been in a classroom.
It’s easy to talk to a machine, and since most of us are writers,
it’s easier to write sometimes than to talk. You’re not afraid
of how the machine will look back at you when you write and post a message.
Sometimes in class, students might not respond to a comment because they
may be embarrassed or think they may be embarrassed.
Another student wrote, "I think that it is easier to express my
views when I am not in front of everyone."
The students generally attributed their better performance to the bulletin
board discussion format. One wrote, "I think more clearly when I type,
and that combined with the ability to review other posts over and over
really helped improve my comments. It let me think about things before
I just ran my mouth."
Students also seemed to rate each others’ class participation performance
highly. One of the survey questions asked students to consider if they
had learned from classmates as well as from the teacher. Five of the students
responded strongly in the affirmative. One wrote, "I learned so much
from other people. Sometimes, I would not understand or pick up on something
I read, but one of my classmates would, and then they would point it out
with me."
Teaching Classes Partially On-Line as Preparation
for a Fully On-Line Class
About six months before this course was taught, I first taught a course
partially on-line. This was our intermediate journalism course, Writing
and Reporting for Newspapers II, and I decided to have the students meet
once a week in a computer lab, and once a week on-line. This experiment
had several purposes: the most immediate one was to foster greater participation
in the 8 a.m. class. As most professors know, 8 a.m. is not the most functional
time for most undergraduate students. My hypothesis was that in a lab-oriented
class, many exercises could—and should—be done in solitude and
at a time when a student felt alert, and that given some flexibility in
turning in assignments, they would do well. In fact, this turned out to
be the case. Students not only performed as well or better as they have
in other lab-based classes, they also seemed to enjoy the on-line environment.
Many of the students had used the internet very little before this class,
and were hesitant when I unveiled my plan the first week of class; by the
end of the term, most felt comfortable with the on-line tools and, almost
as a side effect, felt that they had learned to use the Web better as a
writing, research, and reporting tool. One example of the latter is that
some students who had only used e-mail for personal correspondence, if
at all, started to use e-mail as a reporting tool, and got timely, intelligent
responses from sources who otherwise may have been disinclined to take
time to be an interview subject for a student reporter.
The second, and wholly unintended benefit of teaching this first class
partially on-line is that I familiarized about a dozen students with on-line
teaching and learning. West Georgia has a small communications department,
and of this dozen, about half signed up for the on-line class two quarters
later. Several commented that if they had not been familiar with "how
it worked" that they would not have even considered signing up for
the class.
The third benefit was that I familiarized myself with tools that I would
be using later. The on-line materials started out mostly as "shovelware"—course
materials like the syllabus, assignments, and handouts were made available
on-line. Within a few weeks, students were submitting assignments via the
WebCT e-mail module, and I was returning comments to them via e-mail. I
was able to respond with greater detail than if I had been looking over
their shoulder in the lab setting, and a bonus was that my comments, usually
scrawled almost unintelligibly in a marginal scrawl, were now neatly typewritten.
About halfway through the 10-week term, we had our first on-line discussion
using the "Bulletin Board" module. This was at about time the
Monica Lewinsky story was breaking, and I had students examine a major
daily newspaper’s coverage of the story for one day. Students examined
the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington
Post, USA Today, and The Boston Globe, and posted their
qualitative content analysis on the bulletin board. Then, much to my surprise,
they began to discuss the coverage, and the political events, intelligently
and at length. The heart of WebCT revealed itself in a disarmingly simple
module—one that allowed the students and the professor to exchange
thoughts, comments, questions, and ideas asynchronously through a "threaded"
discussion. In fact, the power of the tool was instantly recognizable,
as the students seemed to be as excited about the discussion as I was;
more than 100 thoughtful postings were made on a day’s news coverage
before the discussion faded away, a remarkable result.
It was after this experience that it became clear that the bulletin
board, with its simple interface and intuitive functions, would be the
heart of the summer on-line class. For the next few years, this may even
be the "killer app" of distance education in the humanities—not
fancy graphics, not multimedia, but asynchronous discussion. The beauty
of the application is that it truly requires no more development time than
a classroom-based discussion, removing one of the largest barriers for
faculty who have heavy teaching loads and little technical or teaching
assistance available for extensive course development.
Promotion of a Web Course to Undergraduates
My course was the second at my university to be taught as a "web-only"
class; the other, which had ended six months before, was a graduate-level
class taught by the state’s teacher of the year—his course required
little promotion and had a ready audience of adult distance learners. My
undergraduate offering faced several hurdles—it competed for students
with other summer classes, and the university required a minimum of 15
students for the course to be taught. Yet, in a typical chicken-egg scenario,
students might be reluctant to sign up for a course that might be cancelled
right at the beginning of the semester. So my goal was to get a half-dozen
or so students to sign up on the first day of registration, and to create
a "buzz" about the class even before registration began. As mentioned
earlier, previous students who had participated in the partial on-line
class signed up early, after it was suggested that their early commitment
would probably ensure that the class would, indeed, be offered, and that
hesitation on their part might take the course off the books.
The course was promoted in course in two ways: on the Internet, a course
page with a flashy "splash" screen was set up; this screen led
to further details about the class, pointing students to information about
the readings, assignments, and also to a WebCT tutorial and information
page. Fliers were also posted with the web address of this page, and a
link to the promotional page was placed on the department’s home page.
Efforts to publicize the course through advertising in a local newspaper
and through the distance education office did not prove fruitful. The course
had 20 slots, and by the end of the first week of summer pre-registration
most of these slots were filled; two days prior to the start of summer
term, students had to be signed into the class because the enrollment had
reached its limit. By the time the enrollment "shook out" a couple
of weeks into the term, 16 students were in the class, and participating
in an invigorating discussion of our first two readings. Recent research
indicates that this number of students falls in the optimum range of 12-20
students for an on-line course. (Boettcher, 1998)
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, most of the students seemed to have a clear
understanding of literary journalism as a genre. In addition, the writing
and reporting methods used by authors seemed to be successfully conveyed,
with the guest instructor and guest author making significant contributions
in this area.
Only one or two students in the course were print journalism majors;
most were mass communications majors with concentrations in broadcast,
and some of the students were from other majors (English and Business,
specifically). As a result, most had little interest in becoming literary
journalists, and only rarely did the discussion ever turn to how to use
the writing and reporting techniques in other journalism work.
Students learned about subjects that they had not been exposed to before,
or saw subject matter from a very different perspective than that taught
in other classes. For example, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test provided
a snapshot of the drug culture of the 1960s that most of the students were
unfamiliar with; similarly, although all of the students had a general
historical knowledge of the civil rights movement in the south, few understood
the difficulties and complexities of integration before reading Praying
for Sheetrock; many students seemed to think about environmental issues
in new ways after reading A Civil Action.
Many of the students expressed at the end of the course that they wanted
to continue exploring the genre on their own, and asked for reading recommendations
from the instructor; some expressed regret that, with a return to a full
class schedule in the fall, they would not have time to read books for
pleasure.
Students expressed their excitement about the possibilities of on-line
learning throughout the summer term, both through e-mail sent to the instructor
and postings on the bulletin board; students also recognized that web-based
instruction helped them become better active, self-directed learners. Many
students commented that they were surprised at how time-consuming reading
postings from other students turned out to be, but that they felt compelled
to read the postings because they were interesting and often they wanted
to respond to individual posts. About half of the students made direct
reference to on-line resources provided by the Instructor, and about four
did independent research and included reference URLs in their postings.
Most of the students expressed complex and ambiguous thoughts much more
clearly than they would, or could have, in a "real world" classroom.
As a journalism professor who is especially conscious of incorrect grammar,
spelling, and punctuation, however, I had to relax my attitude in the bulletin
board environment. I stressed the importance of clear and careful writing
early in the course, but wrote few comments about poorly-written postings—to
do so would have detracted from the "thread" of the discussions.
I am also a believer in the "the more you write, the better you write"
philosophy, and believed that more discussion was, in this case, necessarily
better discussion. Although there has not yet been a definitive
study on whether computers improve writing skills, anecdotal evidence from
professors who use similar bulletin board setups suggests that this is
the case. (Carter, 1998)
Discussion
While it is always difficult to pinpoint the methods that contribute
to the "success" of a class, seven factors seem to have contributed
most to the success of this on-line course:
- In promoting the class, I made a clear outline of the reading schedule,
requirements, and expectations well in advance of registration. The web
page I set up made it clear that only motivated students willing to experiment
need apply.
- The course structure was simple: the class would read one book a week;
each student would be required to post at least two thoughtful comments
to bulletin board each week; each week three or four students would "lead"
the class discussion by writing a short essay in response to question(s)
provided by the instructor in advance; and one medium-length paper would
be due at the end of the course, with students having a choice to write
about one of two books. Other experienced professors report success with
a similar format. One asks students to complete weekly
assignments which they post on a conference area. "Since everyone
could see everyone else’s responses, students could learn from each
other. Indeed, I would actively encourage this by assigning some portion
of the grade for explicit comments relating to other students’ responses."
(Kearsley, 1998) Finally, the grading structure was simple: class
participation, measured by quality and quantity of posts to the bulletin
board, counted for half of the student’s grade; the short essay for
15 percent, and the final paper for 35 percent.
- Although WebCT enables the instructor to establish multiple bulletin
boards, I decided to use one bulletin board only—in previous classes
students had become confused about switching between bulletin boards.
- The course was fully asynchronous. There would be no requirement to
be any place at any time. The advantage to this was that students, who
were required to post both original thoughts and responses to other students’
posts, spent a lot of time thinking about the material and questions posed
to them. Typically, a traditional classroom discussion might elicit two
or three responses to a question; many discussion "threads" in
"Literary Journalism" went on for several weeks and included
dozens of thoughtful posts from about half of the class. One thread, for
example, began on July 22 and ended on July 23; it was composed of 23 posts
by 13 students, the visiting professor, and the instructor; another had
19 posts by 7 students and the instructor; a third had 28 posts by 10 students
and the instructor. Kearsley argues that the bulletin
board situation "also accommodates students who have difficulty expressing
themselves in a spontaneous classroom setting." (Kearsley, 1998) I
knew many of the students prior to the beginning of the class, and my experience
was similar—many of the students who did not speak up in classroom
settings participated frequently in the bulletin board discussion.
- Outside guests were solicited to contribute to the class. These included
the author of one of the books and a visiting professor from Penn State
University.
- Technically simple on-line tools that required a short learning curve
prevented computer neophytes from being discouraged, and enabled all students
to focus on course material, rather than course delivery methods.
- Excellent technical support—via the university’s distance
education office—was available 9-5 Monday through Friday. The course’s
home page included prominently displayed the technical support phone number.
Students were discouraged from asking the professor technical questions,
which can be frustrating for both parties—the students when the professor
can not provide needed help, and the professor when answering questions
not related directly to the course material.
Figure 1: The average number of posts by each student was 36.5,
and the median was also 36.5. The most posts by a student was 84; the fewest
was 7. Other statistics: a) Total words posted—82,449, or about 330
double-spaced pages (calculated at 250 words/page); b) Total words posted
by Instructor—9,706, or about 39 pages; c) Total words posted by Guest
Instructor: 5,761, or about 23 pages; d) Total words posted by Guest Author:
2,386, or about 10 pages; e) Total words posted by students: 64,596, or
about 258 pages (average 16 pages per student); f) Average number of words
per student post: 110 (or about 1/2 page). [This was calculated by subtracting headers of postings (which
included a subject heading, name of poster, date, and thread) from the
total number of words posted. The average header was 22 words long. A typical
header: "Article No. 267: [Branch from no. 178] posted by Alton DuBard
on Thu, Jul. 9, 1998, 22:28 Subject: re: The Perfect Storm"]
Figure 2: Each time a student logged in,
the first thing he or she saw was the course’s home page.
Figure 3: WebCT’s bulletin board was the heart of the on-line
class, enabling simultaneous threaded discussions on a variety of topics.
Figure 4: WebCT enables the instructor to easily compile postings
made by each student.
Figure 5: As the course progressed, background resources from
the Internet and from the school’s password-protected on-line reference
offerings were posted.
Sources
Berg, Zane, and Collins, Mauri (February 1995). Computer-Mediated
Communication and the Online Classroom: Overview and Perspectives. Computer-Mediated
Communications Magazine. Vol. 2, No. 2. URL: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1995/feb/berge.html
Boettcher, Judith V. (August 1998). How Many Students Are ‘Just
Right’ in a Web Course. Syllabus. P. 45.
Carter, Locke (1998). Frequently Revisited Topics on MBU. URL: http://www.daedalus.com/Ms.html.
Ferris, Pixie (June 1997). Writing in Cyberspace. Computer-Mediated
Communications Magazine. Vol. 4, No. 6. URL: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/jun/ferris.html
Kearsley, Greg (1997). A Guide to Online Education. URL: http://www.fcae.nova.edu/~kearsley/online.html.
Kearsley, Greg (1997). The Virtual Professor: A Personal Case Study.
URL:http://www.fcae.nova.edu/~kearsley/virtual.html.
Author Note:
Jeffrey L. Merron, Assistant Professor, Mass Communication Department,
State University of West Georgia.
The author would like to thank R. Thomas Berner, professor of journalism
and American Studies at Pennsylvania State University, for his thoughtful
comments on the manuscript. Thanks also to Melissa Moore for permission
to use some of her written contributions to the course in this article.
Online Journal of Distance Learning
Administration, Volume I, Number IV, Winter1998
State University of West Georgia, Distance Education
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