A slightly shorter version as it appeared in InfoBITS Newsletter
Leon James, Professor of Psychology
University of Hawaii
January, 1995
This is my first semester in which I make full use of the university's online telecommunication facilities for the courses that I am teaching. Students use e-mail on UNIX, become familiar with Gopher on the Internet and create their own Home Page on the World Wide Web. All reports are submitted online, typed by the student in hypertext format (called HTML), and linked to the reports of other students.
In my view, the most important instructional aspect of this set up is the interlinking that students do with each other's reports and comments. This course-integrated telecommunications activity not only gets students to read each other's work and experiences, but also creates a virtual 'super-document' out of their work, through the hypertext linkages. At the end of the semester, instead of having left over a bunch of student papers to be thrown away , (how wasteful and undignified!), we now have a virtual hypertext super-document that links paragraphs from different students to the outside world and to each other, even to students from previous semesters. I shall briefly describe the educationally beneficial features of this approach, its set up, how the links are produced, and some personal observations.
Course produced documents are constantly changing -- nothing stays put for very long. An example is the course Syllabus and Instructions. When I first prepared the online Syllabus, the Web document was about 10 screens, or three typed pages. As the first class was approaching, I continued to add to it, inserting paragraphs here and there, and updating and expanding older paragraphs. By the time students saw the document online, it had expanded to 50 screens, or 15 typed pages, and it is being worked on throughout the semester, as new information needs to be communicated to the class. In a hypertext cyberspace course environment, students need to go over, or 'browse,' the same documents on a regular basis to see what's new. This requirement trains students to acquire screen browsing habits, or 'navigation,' which is an essential part of telecommunications literacy, whether on the Internet or the online library catalog.
Advantages to hypertext documents
But length is only one way in which the document changes. The other dimension involves the hypertext links, which constantly change (added or deleted), enriching the document as time goes by and as more people make use of it. The more people create links and comments, the richer, and more 'virtual,' the hypertext super-document becomes. Hard copies of the syllabus and other course instructions are fixed, do not change, remain the same, and everyone reads them once or twice, usually in a linear fashion, from page 1 onward. But hypertext documents, as long as they are being perused, grow richer and more complex in cyberspace. Probably no two people in the same class ever read a hypertext super-document in the same paragraph sequence, and no two students in the same course see the same content, since content depends on the links you explore online. The number of links and the permutation sequences produced by just 20 students in one semester's work is astronomical and cannot be exhausted even by the most ardent users.
This great fluidity and amorphousness of hypertext super-documents raises important instructional issues which educators will have to carefully research. I can see some potential problems in terms of defining course content and disciplinary area within a virtual instructional environment. I believe we'll be able to cope with this problem. In the meantime, I'll continue to experiment and observe.
Ordinarily, when a student cites a journal article or book in a term paper, the citation links the student's comment within a paragraph to another publication. The entire article may be referred to, or a particular page location may be indicated. But when this is done in hypertext format, the reader doesn't just get the bibliographic citation, with the article itself to be later located and read. In hypertext documents, citations are potentially linked directly to the full text of the article, and by clicking or pressing RETURN on a link, the browsing reader is catapulted in a flash to the location of the text itself, whether it sits on a local computer on this campus, or is somewhere on a computer in Sweden or Australia. You do not need permission to make links from your document to any other document anywhere. Fabulous! Still, right now in 1995, access to full text documents on Internet does not overlap significantly with what we obtain in libraries, namely books and scholarly journals. In the same way, library collections do not, and will not, contain the documents that are created and live on the Web.
Empowering Students for Creative Expression
A student may write a paper on a self-modification experiment to become a more careful driver. By itself, the paper is limited, even if it has some citations to the literature. In hypertext, the student may add several links on every page, greatly enriching the document for users. For instance, the student may express the opinion that "it's difficult to be objective about one's own driving style," and then creates five visible links (automatically highlighted on the screen) which, when selected by a browsing reader, takes the person to five locations, sequentially, as follows.
The first hypertext link takes you to a 10 page document located in Seattle, a pre-publication copy of a conference paper on driving behavior. The second link wisps you to a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) file located in Washington and kept up to date weekly by an automobile news group and archived in automated LISTSERVS to which you can make links or mail yourself a copy on e-mail. Here you have the opportunity of exploring other items such as some driving videos produced by AAA. When ready, you are catapulted through the third link to an electronic magazine article available online in full text and maintained by the commercial HotWired publication. The fourth link lands you in a student's report who took the course last semester, and who described a similar self-modification experiment in which the goal was to become more aware of one's thoughts and feelings while driving from home to the UH campus. The fifth link takes you to a two-page comment written by another student in this semester, who has read the sentence we are discussing, and has written a rebuttal and another hypothesis as to what is happening with drivers' awareness. Two additional links the student considered, but decided against, included the text of a DOT (Department of Transportation) document on the Washington Government Gopher, and a driving simulator program in Michigan, directly accessible and performable on the terminal.
Having whizzed around for a few minutes (or even a few seconds) between these five hypertext links, we find ourselves back at the student's comment that "it's difficult to be objective about one's own driving style." Now we have more understanding and more perspective on the student's opinion, and we have learned the basis upon which it rests. In effect, the student is making two parallel intellectual contributions. One is the content of the paragraphs in the document; the other is the information journey we are made to travel as we traverse the five links put there by the student. Vary this example in different ways for different topics or activities, and you'll soon realize how educationally powerful, how culturally enriching the new telecommunications technology can be. In this new instructional super-medium, the instructor is no longer the sole influence that determines what is important or what is related to what. The curriculum is now more open, less fully predictable. In part, the medium has become the message, and the student its messenger. I can live with that. It's good.
Hypertext Cyberspace Learning Communities
My plan is to continue to create a generational learning community in cyberspace. It is a virtual reality whose 'size' and complexity grows every semester, as each new class adds its own reports and links. Year after year, long past their stay at the University of Hawaii, former students will be able to re-join the cyberspace learning community by simply logging-on to the Internet from anywhere. They can then enter the hypertext super-document and discover what has happened to their own Home Page reports and comments. They can travel the new links that were produced since their last visit and read what generations of students have subsequently said about their work. What a wonderful opportunity to have, enriching us all in unknown ways still to be discovered!
I have twice before in my courses attempted to implement such a generational curriculum approach, with partial success due to hardware limitations. My first attempt was in the print medium in which I attempted to maintain a generational curriculum collection with the students' typed reports. After 15 semesters, both my office and outer hallway in Gartley were totally engulfed with shelves and boxes overflowing with student papers. I would select copies for particular exercises and carried them to class. I was literally drowning with the physical weight and volume of my students' ideas!
I was rescued from this depressing procedure by adopting PLATO. It was wonderful and students loved it. See
Jakobovits, Leon A. Course-Integrated Electronic Socializing on PLATO. UHCC Newsletter, 1991, 28(2), 12-14). See these archived student files.
But however lovable PLATO was, it really was a technological dinosaur featuring very poor editors and inflexible operations. It was unfit for what I needed. Then came universal access on campus to UNIX and for the first time last year, I taught in a course-integrated telecommunications environment. The results were excellent, and you can access my report here.
For me, the great moment arrived a few months ago when the College of Social Sciences, installed a World Wide Web server in Porteus (CSS server), under the management of Harry Partika who is responsible to Dean Richard Dubanoski. Under the expert and friendly technical advice of Webmaster Eric Hagen and volunteer Internet coach Kevin Bogan, I was able for the first time, to create an instructional set up that truly met my vision for a generational cyberspace learning community. With this approach now in place, I feel that the University of Hawaii is soaring ahead into the 'futures of education', and I encourage my colleagues to start experimenting with this new amazing educational technology.
I confess that in the current, less than user-friendly environment, there is much frustration you can expect, and enormous additional demands on your time (e.g., 100 hours for the syllabus). However, this may not be unrealistic for a brand new course. Next semester, I expect to spend less hours on my two syllabi, since as I explained, they are being up dated throughout the semester as part of course maintenance. My work habits also had to accommodate to a new pattern. Right now, I feel the need to spend about four hours a day (I should say night!), managing my electronic educational community. This involves logging on, taking care of student e-mail business, browsing through their reports and new links, typing in comments to their reports (when I think they're called for), and continuing to construct and build up the cyberspace zone -- a task which involves my acquiring more skills in UNIX file management, and the use of the versatile EMACS editor. I have purchased a manual for each of these systems and I use them, along with much repetitive trial and error, to make the system do what I want. It's a great feeling to see oneself grow in mastery over the brute machine.
Socio-Educational Use of the Information Superhighway
Once the set up is installed and your procedures are running smoothly, it is the instructor's individual style that determines how much interaction and intervention is necessary or desirable. I tend to start with heavy participation at the beginning, with gradual tapering off as the students start producing and interacting. There are decisions to be made about how much of class time to allow for discussions about the Internet adventures (which students are very proud and happy to share!), as opposed to course topics, if different. Almost all students in my classes are still computer novices with knowledge mostly limited to word processing and online catalogs. Despite this I give them no formal training and have them rely mostly on online Help facilities and manuals. The computers on campus are loaded with online tours, demonstrations, and practice exercises for learning the Internet (e.g., ROADMAP on the CSS Web, complete with online quizzes).
My online syllabus includes extensive instructions on how to get started with logon procedures, UNIX directory management, lynx navigation and HTML code typed with the EMACS editor. I also rely on the group's solidarity with each other to get an individual unstuck when in trouble. The faster learners help the slower, and within four to five weeks 90% of the class is on board, surfing the Internet and creating World Wide Web documents. Yes, you can hear them complaining a lot, very excitedly but also very happily. In my 25 years of teaching on the Manoa campus, I have never seen more student enthusiasm and pride for learning than in my course-integrated telecommunications classes. At the end of the semester, anonymous student feedback reveals that many experience a changed self-image that no longer is tainted with depressive technophobia. I feel terrific when I read their expression of heartfelt and genuine appreciation for the course.
I also like to share myself professionally so that students, through my Home Page, have access to my Curriculum Vitae, a list of all my publications and the full text of several of my pre-publication drafts. I also share with them my Lynx bookmark file, which allows them to visit my favorite places on the Internet. On my Home Page students will also find links to get to our official Psychology Department files and the College of Social Sciences files where many individual departments put up their Home Pages.
In my Home Page, which students visit several times a week, I continually add links to various places of interest, such as student organizations, other departments and colleagues around the world, conferences, discussion groups, and all sorts of documents I find as I roam around the Web World. This week, I discovered by browsing the CSS Web server, that Professor Chadwick in International Relations also has a Home Page for his students. In two minutes I created a link to his page, and now the two student communities are linked for intellectual exchanges across the two courses (perhaps to the surprise of Professor Chadwick when he discovers of the existence of the link!). With equal facility and ease, using the information superhighway, I could create links to other course communities anywhere in the world. The age of the global virtual university is now upon us! (See Home Page Architecture ideas.)
This all may seem intimidating to uninitiated instructors, and hopelessly complicated or foreign. It appears to be all these things, true, but this is only during the accommodation phase. I started from scratch as a typical middle-aged technophobic professor, but I had the strong belief that I must join the information age or become second rate. The library played a big role in helping me overcome my initial technophobic aversions (and fears), with the introduction of the online catalog and CD-ROM databases. The campus technocrats and administrators are doing their job by installing and placing at our disposal the marvelous capabilities of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Thank you! Now it is up to us faculty to make use of it in effective and creative ways.
Cyberspace and the Spiritual World
Go to a related article for INET '95 conference
Go to the PLATO article
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