Internet Courses for Off-Campus Students

Internet Courses for Off-Campus Students

In recent years there has been a major transition away from the traditional lecture-only
environment in many disciplines. Many forces are driving this change, including availability
of instructional technology, increased emphasis on critical-thinking skills, increased
amounts of information to be mastered in a limited time and student demands for more
technology-based instruction.

Another driving force in this movement toward technology-based instruction is the
growing difficulty of getting all students into the same classroom at the same time. The
difficulty comes about in part because clinical experiences are more geographically
dispersed than before and because the average student starting a professional program
today is much older and has more off-campus responsibilities than a typical student had
10 or 20 years ago.

An additional force in this transition is the inherent capability of technology-expanded
instruction to allow students to better master material. This includes allowing students to
review course-related materials at their own pace, exposing students to augmented
learning experiences that go beyond the classroom and textbook plus improving critical
activities through nonlinear exposure to information and additional activities designed to
encourage critical thinking.

Although there is a wide range of technological options to supplement classroom
instruction, Internet-based courseware is one that shows great promise because it allows
student access independent of time or location and permits directed access to all other
information on the Internet.

WebCT

There are a number of Internet courseware programs such as Blackboard, Director,
PowerPoint, TenCore, ToolBook II, CBT Express, CourseWorks, Authorware, Everest,
LearningSpace and Web Course in a Box. The focus of this article is WebCT, the
software standard used by the University System of Georgia. This is not a comparison of
available courseware tools but rather a discussion of how Internet features are used in
courses.

WebCT is a set of tools used to create sophisticated World Wide Web-based educational
environments. WebCT can be used to deliver online courses or simply publish materials
as class supplements. Examples of tools in WebCT are chat rooms, student progress
tracking, group projects, self-evaluations, grade books, autocorrecting quizzes, e-mail,
automatic index generations, calendars, student homepages and content searches. It can
run on either a Unix or WindowsNT server and can be used by an Internet browser such
as Netscape or Explorer.

Features

Lecture Notes

Any document that has been typed on a computer can become part of a WebCT course.
To accomplish this, the document must be saved in the HTML format used by the Internet.
Almost all programs have this format option. WebCT then "uploads" the document from
the instructor's computer to the course system and it becomes available to students on
the Internet.

One feature of lecture notes on Web CT is document paths. This creates an indented
outline of all notes and documents and how they relate to each other. It is useful to break
large documents into several smaller ones so there will be an extensive outline available
to the students. Students can switch from notes to background documents, graphics or
Internet sites by use of hypertext (text that, when clicked on, takes the user to another
screen) inside the document. Creating hypertext is a very simple task using a Web
browser such as Netscape. Examples of documents that can be used are lecture notes,
schedules, syllabi, position papers, "deep" or background information, article reprints,
tables, suggestions on how best to use WebCT materials, etc.

Calendar

As a general rule, students find having a schedule of events and assignments useful as
they proceed through a course. The calendar feature gives a month-at-a-glance format,
but any day can be clicked on and the items for that day are listed. When a student first
enters the calendar area, any new items automatically pop up in a separate window,
alerting the student to changes or additions. The instructor can declare any item as
"private" so students cannot see it until it is made public. This allows the faculty to create
and upload documents or events listings but withhold them from view until the appropriate
time.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint is a program that allows users to create high-quality presentations that can
be easily incorporated into WebCT. PowerPoint presentations can be saved as HTML
and uploaded into WebCT. This allows students to view and print the actual presentation,
including backgrounds, animations, graphics and notes. If lecture notes are in a
PowerPoint format (or even in a text-document format), students can preview notes prior
to class and therefore not be totally consumed by notetaking during class. This aids in the
learning process as the experience is both visual and auditory and allows more time to
process information and ask formative questions.

Graphics

Most students are aided significantly by graphics, pictures, charts and the like because
multiple inputs are more useful than a single source. Adding these sources to WebCT is
relatively easy. Any graphic saved as either a GIF or JPEG format (the "style" in which the
images are saved) can be uploaded into the program. These graphics can be used to
supplement notes, as part of a test or as illustrations used in assignments.

Internet Sites

The Internet has a wealth of information but unfortunately is also a source of
misinformation. One of the problems students have with using the Internet is telling the
difference between valid information and opinion or misinformation. By having the faculty
select the sites to which the course is linked, students can be limited to only sites that
have useful information or sites with misinformation. The misinformation can be used in
exercises to help students develop critical-thinking and analysis skills. Information sites
are a major supplement to the course content as there are numerous discussions on
almost any aspect of the profession with differing approaches and viewpoints. Exposing
students to these alternate approaches helps them better process the information. Some
sites can be used as laboratories, as they have experiments that can be conducted over
the Internet. Other sites have a multitude of radiographic images with and without
notations and pathologies. Both of these site types are very beneficial to students.

Chat Rooms

One of the deficiencies of any type of distance learning is the lack of student interaction.
WebCT includes chat rooms (areas where everyone can see what is being typed by
everyone else at the same time) as part of every course and also general chat rooms
available to anyone using WebCT. These chat rooms allow for both formal and informal
student/faculty discussions. An example of a formal interaction is that in some courses a
portion of the lecture time takes place in the chat room and all students are required to be
online at that time. This allows students in multiple geographic areas to participate in
discussions about the course material. Individual students or small groups of students
also can set up chat discussions on an informal basis. In both of these situations, WebCT
allows the faculty to see a transcript of all chat room discussions. Edited small group
discussions can be posted to the entire class if the faculty believes that would be useful.

E-mail

When a student enrolls in a course, e-mail service for use only within that course is
created automatically. The advantage of e-mail is that messages can be private, so faculty
members can conduct counseling or converse with individual students in the course
without any other students seeing the exchanges.

Bulletin Board

An electronic bulletin board is very similar to a physical bulletin board in that it is a public
place to post information. The bulletin board can be used by faculty to post assignments,
inform students about changes in schedules, remind students of activities and answer
questions that all students need to know. Use of the bulletin board also provides
opportunities for class discussions free of time restrictions. Students who are not able to
be online at a specific time still can ask questions and respond to discussions that may
take place over several days. This also allows time for students to reflect on the course
content and consider their responses before posting them.

Student Uploads/Presentations

A valuable activity for any course is the use of presentations as an assignment.
Presentations help students process course information, develop critical-thinking skills
and hone communication skills. Unfortunately, most undergraduate programs include few
of these activities because of classroom time constraints. With an Internet-based
supplement, students can be required to produce 1 or more presentations for every
course. These presentations can be in any format the student chooses, such as
PowerPoint, graphics, video, documents, poster presentations, etc. All students can be
required to view the presentations and the faculty can track which students have logged
on to view these items. In this way, the entire class will benefit from the presentations and
can, if desired, evaluate them.

Testing

WebCT has a testing feature that allows for multiple-choice, matching and short-answer
questions. As noted earlier, graphics and videos can be incorporated into tests. There are
2 major drawbacks with the testing feature. One is the amount of time necessary to load
any multiple-choice test. Unfortunately, it is not possible to upload an existing test without
extensive modifications in the document or typing the entire test anew in the appropriate
boxes inside WebCT.

Another issue is test security. Students can print anything they see on the screen and can
make copies. No Internet courseware on the market has totally resolved this issue.
Another security issue involves using books and notes while taking the test. One way to
minimize this problem is to limit the amount of time students are allowed online to take the
test. This issue should be considered when designing an Internet-based course.

Support

Learning any new software package can be a daunting task even in the best of situations.
Fortunately, even in environments where there is no institutional support for implementing
Internet-based courses, there is a significant amount of online help. In fact, with WebCT
there is an extensive support system. The first level of help is the help files online in the
program itself and the example files. These files assist faculty with learning the numerous
features of the program. To help with the more subtle or obscure features, there are a
number of development sites on the Internet. One such site is
http://homebrewl.cs.ubc.ca/webct/docs.

With any software package, there are times when something does not work or does not
work in the way the faculty intended. There are sites to help troubleshoot problems by
allowing other users to help. An example of this type of site is http://webct.uga.edu/
hostsys/faculty/developing.html. Yet another type of Internet assistance is a listserver (bulk
e-mail distribution system) to help share ideas among users. An example of this type of
listserver is webct-users@cs.ubc.ca.

Case Example

There is a major effort to develop Internet-based courses at Armstrong Atlantic State
University. The Department of Radiologic Sciences has partially or totally placed 7
courses on WebCT. These course offerings range from supplemental classroom
activities to courses taught totally with WebCT for off-campus students. One example of
supplementing a course is "Radiobiology and Protection." In this course all lecture notes,
PowerPoint presentations, schedules and background articles are posted to aid students.
Several Internet sites with additional information or different approaches to the same
information are linked. Examples of some of the linked sites are radiation accidents,
human radiation experiments, cell biology and chromosomal sites, lists of advisory
bodies, dosimetry sites, health effects of radiation sites, history sites, physics and
protection publication sites and research sites.

Some students take courses without ever setting foot in a classroom on campus. One
option for these off-campus students is courses that are totally WebCT based. An
example of this type of course is "Fundamentals of Radiation Therapy." In addition to the
syllabus and class notes, there are such useful things as a section on The Seven Habits
of Highly Effective People, online tests, therapeutic communication skills, step-by-step
simulation tutorials, information on state licensure, links dealing with payment issues and
CPT codes, breast cancer risk sites, dose calculation sites, a virtual simulation site and
journal sites. This gives the online student an array of activities in addition to the course
textbook and lecture notes.

The Department of Radiologic Science (www.radsci. armstrong.edu) currently is in the
process of placing all courses necessary to complete the R.T. to B.S.R.T. program online
using WebCT. This will allow any technologist or therapist with an associate's degree or
certificate to complete his or her baccalaureate degree from their home computer.

The program will include all of the advanced professional courses in addition to links and
agreements with sites offering general education courses such as English or history. The
goal of this R.T. to B.S.R.T. program is that the average student will never have to travel to
any campus unless he or she wants to. Although there are several issues yet to be
resolved before this option can be offered publicly, the reality of Internet-based degrees in
radiologic sciences is close at hand.

Elwin R. Tilson, Ed.D., R. T. (R)(QM)(M); Gloria Strickland, M.H.S., R. T. (R)(QM)(M); Mary
Lou DeMarco, M.S., R. T. (T); and Sharyn D. Gibson, Ed.D., R. T. (R) are/acuity members in
the College of Health Professions, Armstrong Atlantic State University, Savannah, Ga.

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