Teleteaching/Telelearning: What We Still Have to Learn ICT Support in Mathematics and Computer Architecture Courses
Thomas Risse Institute for Informatics and Automation, Hochschule Bremen, University of Applied Sciences
Key words: teleteaching, telelearning, mathematics, computer architecture, informatics, computer science, CAI, CAT, CAL, whiteboard systems Abstract: Problems of teaching mathematics and computer architecture at ordinary universities of applied sciences are notorious. The potential of computer support to help to solve these problems are investigated in traditional, online and on demand settings. Criteria are developed to assess tools supporting courses in these subjects. These criteria are applied to two exemplary whiteboard systems. Experiences using these tools are sketched and pedagogical, technical, and organisational consequences are discussed.
1 Introduction and Delimitation While dashboards of today's automobiles contain more computer power power than the Apollo 13 spacecraft [7], the classrooms all too often appear and function as they did a hundred years ago. The world is in a time of unprecedented change, largely driven by science and technology. Yet schools, colleges, universities do not teach science very well. The demands for science literacy keep increasing whereas students are increasingly less prepared for science and mathematical instruction. And edutainment/infotainment shape the expectations of students in a dubious way. In this situation it is convenient to believe that ICT will solve all practical and pedagogical problems. After all, there is computer support (CAI, CAL, CAT, CMI, CMC, ...) for oncampus courses, 'distributed' courses, self study courses, for distance education in higher education and life long learning as well as for corporate training/education. E.g., virtual universities are based on ICT in general and the WWW in particular. Reduced funding and growing competition force also traditional institutions like Hochschule Bremen, University of Applied Sciences, to discover and adopt new means providing higher education, but the use of technology and new media is in many cases still in its experimental stages. To avoid false illusions we first outline our teaching objectives, identify problems and deficits and set up pedagogical criteria in order to assess the potential of computer support for our courses in general and specific tools in particular. As an example we apply the criteria to two whiteboard systems and present our practical experiences in typical settings. We restrict our investigation to courses, namely mathematics and computer architecture for computer science students at universities of applied sciences with a high rate of traditional lectures, seminars, tutorials etc. And we are well aware that our explanations naturally are
very subjective because teaching is communication between teacher and pupil, between faculty and student and communication unmistakably is a matter of personality.
2 Teaching Objectives We want to enable our students to understand mathematical methods and algorithms which are fundamental for computer science, e.g. the discrete cosine transformation in the JPEGcompression, and to employ mathematical procedures so solve practical problems, e.g. matrix transformations for geometric modelling in generative computer graphics. We want to present computer architecture from a designers point of view. Then, dependencies between instruction set architecture, processor architecture, cache and memory organisation are revealed when striving for maximum system performance given a certain technological level. So, students get to know not only the hardware software interface of different processors but also how to optimise code for a specific target architecture, how to set up benchmarks and how to assess announcements of hardware manufacturers. Our students are to acquire these skills at best in an interest driven and self determined way. On top of that, learning should be fun. There is a hierarchy of three objectives: 1. To impart knowledge: students have to learn facts, methods, connections and coherence. This understanding generates competence to explain facts. 2. To appropriate knowledge by exercises: students have to apply their new skills on given problems in order to become familiar with facts, methods and procedures, to see the relevance and to connect e.g. mathematics and physics or computer architecture and optimisation by a compiler. These skills generate competence to solve (theoretical) problems. 3. Acquisition of sovereignty selecting and applying the right methods: students have to investigate a maybe interdisciplinary problem, study its application context, formalise the problem, select, assess and apply some method conscious of its strengths and weaknesses. These skills, experiences and abilities generate competence to solve (practical) problems. The three objectives correspond to three traditional types of teaching and learning. 2.1
Three Traditional Teaching and Learning Scenarios
We only distinguish lectures, tutorials (run by a peer tutor, accompanying a lecture), and projects (run and managed by the students). These types are characterised by features in the categories situation, time, forms, social components and cognition [19]. We list these features in a somewhat catchy and pointed way. situation focus communication students interaction language feedback questions
lecture faculty /topic one way passive all inclusive instructions of subject little few
tutorial student/deficiency two way active individual assistance of subject, every day via tutor common
Project group/projects objectives many sided, interdisciplinary active, determined mutual help of application via project progress necessary (application context)
time pressure by
lecture subject
tutorial exercises
project problem
speed time horizon
ordered uniformly lecture
individual exercise
group specific project milestone
manner knowledge mode activity self direction
lecture to learn one sided listen, take notes not necessary
tutorial to process two sided exercise, deepen necessary
project to apply many sided, changing plan, realise, etc constitutive
social component determination dependency segregation responsibility acquaintance spacing
lecture faculty faculty individual indifferent polarising distance
tutorial tutor/group tutor (petty) group individual converging nearness
project individual/team faculty/team (petty) team shared converging team spirit
cognition emphasis objective cognition as way of thinking blockade/problem of comprehension
lecture knowledge abstract representation product expert possibly not even noticed
tutorial procedure concrete application process novice tackled
project action real, concrete application process with aim in view expert and novice to be removed/solved
In general, these three types are characterised by an increasing degree of (self-) responsibility, of adequate self-assessment, of the ability to communicate and to cooperate. However, subjects like computer architecture or above all mathematics show that each type has its function with advantages and disadvantages and that traditional courses come off well if all three types and thus the best of the three worlds are combined. Yet, the question remains whether and with which cost benefit ratio computer support offers possibilities to remove or lessen deficits of each type caused individually by instructors, tutors or project managers or by immanent features all the same.
2.2
Traditional Problems and Deficits
Experiences gained in mathematics and computer architecture courses for computer science students are per se personal. Therefore, their presentation is biased. But still we sketch some impressions together with traditional computer support. •
lectures: attempts to activate the students often are fruitless. Students show little curiosity. They tend to perceive application examples e.g. in mathematics only as additional burden due to the need to consider the application context e.g. the physical model also. Abstraction in mathematics (as well as in object oriented analysis and design) or the designers point of view in computer architecture seem to be unwonted, demanding and (over) straining. Reasons may be that school and college nurtured 'consumerism' - an attitude very hard to change. Also, much time is taken up by the other subjects or by jobs so that only little time is left to exercise and to reflect the subject together with its applications. The benefits of new media and computer support are presented in the next section.
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tutorials: unfortunately the rather weak students don't feel like responding to voluntary tutorials resulting in negligible demand. In general, the focus is restricted to marks separating subjects like mathematics and physics. And finally, at universities of applied sciences there is no funding or personnel to organise a strict system of tutorials with obligatory, marked, and corrected assignments. In tutorials, recorded lectures can serve as guidance and reference. projects (e.g. computer algebra or numerical methods in mathematics): according to our experiences students tend to overdo the division of labour in a project so that the overall objective of the projects gets lost. Gurus and free riders may generate a lot of group dynamics. Computer support certainly is useful for project planing, brain storming sessions recorded e.g. by a whiteboard system, workflow and CSCW support, documentation on an information and communication server, like e.g. our Hyperwave server http://www.weblearn.hs-bremen.de.
3 ICT support for Teleteaching/Telelearning Advantages of computer supported teaching and learning, of teleteaching/telelearning have been listed again and again: independence of location and time, individual learning progress, multi media and hyper media support, potential for interaction, integration of animations, simulations etc, access to encyclopaedias, help systems and data bases. Technology and new media have redefined teaching and learning [10] which we again list catchy and pointedly. vision of learning
responsible strategic energised by learning collaborative
tasks
assessment
authentic challenging multidisciplinary performance based generative seamless and ongoing
instructional model
interactive generative
learning context
collaborative knowledge building
empathetic teacher roles
facilitator guide
learner is involved in setting goals, choosing tasks, developing assessment and standards learner actively develops repertoire of thinking/learning strategies learner is not dependent on rewards from others, is passionate learner develops new ideas and understanding in conversations with others pertains to real world, may be addressed to personal interest difficult enough to be interesting but not totally frustrating involves integrating different disciplines involving a performance or demonstration, usually for e real audience and useful purpose assessments have meaning for learner; maybe produce information, product, service assessment is part of instruction and vice versa; students learn during assessment teacher or technology program is responsive to students needs, requests etc. instruction is oriented to construct meaning; it provides meaningful activities and experiences instruction conceptualises students as part of learning community; activities are collaborative learning experiences are set up to bring multiple perspectives to solve problems such that each perspective contributes to shared understanding for all learning environment set up for valuing diversity, multiple perspectives, strengths engages in negotiation, stimulates and monitors discussion and project work helps students to construct their own meaning by modelling,
student roles
mediating, explaining; redirecting focus, providing options co-learner, co-investigator teacher considers self as learner, is willing to take risks to explore areas outside own expertise, collaborates with other teachers and practising professionals students have opportunities to explore new ideas/tools explorer learning is situated in relationship to mentors who coach cognitive apprentice students to develop ideas and skills that simulate the role of practising professionals, i.e. engage in real research students are encouraged to teach others teacher students develop products of real use to themselves or others producer
We set out to improve the learning outcome given the same extrinsic motivation (marks etc.) by intensifying the intrinsic motivation. To this end we have to improve attractiveness, comprehensiveness and perspicuity of traditional seminars. We have to stimulate curiosity and to provoke questions which both lead the students to grapple with the subject. We list some possibilities to achieve this: • • • • • •
attractiveness: illustrate relevance by applications, let the students experience success, provide learning materials like manuscripts, worked examples, demonstration programs (by information servers, help and tutoring systems), comprehensiveness, forcefulness and high impact: provide many (visual) examples, tenets, rules of thumb, examples from students daily lives, plausibility considerations, encouragement for analysis and engagement: motivate, trigger curiosity and investigation, pave the way to understanding (by demonstration programs to model, to simulate, and to experiment), flexibility: establish (interdisciplinary) references, follow students line of thinking, interactivity: react on need of clarification, critic, proposals, suggestions and requests, perspicuity and vividness: provide animations and visualisations (by systems or authoring tools to generate animations and visualisations).
There are two categories of relevant CAx-technologies: Dedicated systems in the first category serve a specific purpose, like e.g. information server providing learning materials, graphic programs generating visualisations and animations or authoring systems allowing to develop entire learning units. [6] assesses such tools by comparison of technical features, [10] includes some indicators like ease of use or support of participation and collaboration. However, we believe that such systems have to be measured alone by the improvement of the learning outcome they help to achieve. Generic systems in the second category support to give lectures, classes, tutorials, seminars, etc. like whiteboard systems, video conferencing systems or complete systems, e.g. mbone tools [8] or eCollege.com's Active Learning System [5] providing technology and services that enable colleges and universities to offer an online environment for distance and oncampus learning. Increasing attractiveness, comprehensiveness, forcefulness and high impact, encouragement, flexibility and interactivity, perspicuity and vividness will increase students motivation and thus the learning outcome. It is near at hand to measure CAx technologies by the extend they improve these features. Again, there are at least three settings to distinguish.
3.1
Settings
There are at least three settings for teleteaching/telelearning: the traditional setting (all students are present in one room), the online setting (some students participate at the same time in another place) and the on demand setting (students participate at another time in another place with asynchronous interaction). We assume that in every online setting students have at least an audio/video connection to the traditional lecture. Most prominent distinction of online settings is the degree of possible interaction: starting with the obligation for all students to use microphones for their statements, via additional cameras und projectors for those participants who make a statement, up to digitising tablets for participants who want to make a graphical contribution. Computer support like learn programs accompanying a course or designed for self study exists since the sixties. Especially with the emergence of multi media technology the degree of sophistication of this type of computer support has increased considerably. In mathematics computer support consists for example of multi media text books and tables, e.g. [3], of computer algebra systems, e.g. Mathematica or of courseware e.g. for calculus and algebra [16], geometry [9] or Fourier series [18] - as we provide [14]. In computer architecture computer support consists for example of emulations of pipeline processors like MIPS or DLX [12] to illustrate how pipeline processors work - as we provide [14]. Further examples are VHDL-simulations of processors or systems to model caching and memory access. Full tutorial systems are developed by authoring software like authorware. Additional systems provide traditional lectures also at a later point in time. eCollege.com Active Learning System integrates such elements into an online teaching and learning environment. For the on demand setting it is constitutive to record lectures. Systems allow different degrees of interactivity (e-mail, chat, classroom bulletin board, video conferencing etc). They differ whether a lecture is published as recorded (authoring on the fly, [2]), to what extend the recording is postprocessed or whether it is given and recorded in a studio – maybe even without students.
3.2
Exemplary Assessment of two Whiteboard Systems
As an example we want to apply our criteria to two whiteboard systems, Tegrity‘s WebLearner [17] and Promethean’s ActiveBoard [13]. WebLearner uses a video camera to grab the whiteboard marked with a real marker pen. ActiveBoard uses digitising tablets so that there is no need to physically wipe out what has been written. These two different recording techniques imply fundamental consequences to the intrinsic value of these systems: •
attractiveness: both systems allow to record whiteboard pages, ActivBoard in a proprietary format, WebLearner as PowerPoint slides. WebLearner supports only PowerPoint presentations and records slides together with whiteboard pages. It records audio with high bandwidth, a video of the lecturer with low bandwidth together with laser pointer trajectories and images of a document camera and compresses them into a single file which can be browsed either downloaded or in streaming mode. On the other hand, ActiveBoard records only the whiteboard pages which students browse by a licence free reader or which can be exported to HTML.
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interactivity: WebLearner grabs annotations on the whiteboard in a separate step. Using a large scale projection of the whiteboard the discourse is interrupted for ca. three seconds until the whiteboard image is projected. ActiveBoard on the other hand digitises in real time so that interruptions cannot occur. WebLearner allows only to clear entire lines whereas ActiveBoard offers undo/redo for each written character. Recording by a camera limits WebLearners orthochromaticity. Users of ActiveBoard can choose the pen colour from a palette of 8, 16 or 24 colours.
screenshot of PowerPoint slide projected to a whiteboard, annotated and recorded by Weblearner [15]
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perspicuity: WebLearner is based on PowerPoint so that whiteboard content consists of PowerPoint slides and annotations only In contrast, ActiveBoard allows to use any windows application: the whiteboard is the desktop, the digitizer pen is the mouse. Hence, with ActiveBoard one brings into action programs for animations or simulations, then one annotates the results and integrates them in flip charts which can be saved for publication or future reuse. flexibility: WebLearner is limited to the PowerPoint format, ActiveBoard handles any format for which a viewer is installed and integrates the result in flip charts. ActiveBoard offers a graphic system similar to Word or PowerPoint with extendable symbol libraries for annotations. WebLearner users zap between PowerPoint slides, ActiveBoard users can also scroll whiteboard pages.
screenshot of an annotated Acrobat page, grabbed and integrated into an ActiveBoard flip chart
Already these few properties show that WebLearner supports authoring on the fly best (whiteboard, audio, video, images of a document camera and laser pointer) [15]. But this functionality goes along with the severe limitation of WebLearner to be based on PowerPoint. In contrast, ActiveBoard allows to use any windows application, to annotate and to integrate their results into flip charts which students browse by ActiveReader or by any standard browser when exported to HTML.
3.3
New Problems and Deficits
Independent of the CAx technologies used, employment of dedicated and all the more generic systems profoundly changes the teaching and learning situation. It may produce – especially in case of authoring on the fly – unwanted side effects which we illustrate in general and for whiteboard systems in particular: • •
distraction: the employment of additional devices itself absorbs some attention of lecturers and students as well. Fortunately, the more familiar all participants become with the new techniques the more this phenomenon diminishes. waste of time due to handling: it takes time to wipe out an ordinary blackboard, Weblearners whiteboard, grabbing and in particular correcting whiteboard content. It takes even more time when WebLearners software crashes from time to time. WebLearner takes ca. 3 sec, ActiveBoard ca. 1 sec to grab a whiteboard page.
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loss of feedback, loss of interactivity: the more technical support hinders the communication between lecturer and students the more the crucial feedback from the students , the 'back channel', gets reduced. Consider a seminar taking place in several rooms. Then the feedback of the students in each room decreases because they all alike have to use technical means to let the students in the other rooms hear their questions or their answers. In addition, the inconvenient obligation to use a microphone decreases the willingness to make a contribution or to put a question. Consequently, to clear away small misunderstandings or to quickly ask little test questions in order to check whether the message has been received, involves inadequate expense of time. Moreover, standing in fear of making a fool of themselves some students do not want to answer or to ask at all. Recording and publishing seminars 'uncensored' (authoring on the fly) of course aggravates this fear. In the on demand setting the circumstantial and tedious interaction by e-mail or chat can at least be improved for example by prescheduled video conferencing.
As trivial consequence, teaching has to take into consideration the techniques and tools used. For example, to bridge the time for grabbing a whiteboard page and to avoid all participants to wait fascinated for the releasing click the lecturer may ask a question, point out an application etc. in order to redirect the attention from grabbing to the subject. Obviously it pays e.g. to ask several questions at once and to let the students answer the whole bundle of questions. In general, lecturing in the online setting or for the on demand setting needs much more planning and self control and is much more exhausting than in the traditional setting.
4 Experiences and Consequences Beforehand it may be pointed out that all strong and weak points of CAx technologies become evident only in every day routine as we have experienced testing the two whiteboard systems. On one hand, at our Department of Electrical and Electronical Engineering and Computer Science it is an inadequate expenditure of energy to postprocess on the fly recorded seminars for few on demand participating students. On the other hand, we want to share lectures with South Bank University, our co-operation partner in London. So we will extend our first experiments sharing lectures with University Bremen. From these experiments we learned that high quality audio equipment is an absolute must, that postprocessing is in general indispensable to make up for little flaws in the performance and discipline of the lecturer, that interactivity and flexibility exist only if the lecturer has absolute command of a whiteboard system and that without authoring on the fly Weblearner limits the lecturer too much compared to ActiveBoard. Other content related or technical consequences are meant to facilitate employment of teleteaching/telelearning elements in our traditional courses. We provide materials like manuscripts, demonstration programs, worked examples etc. on our information and communication server (Hyperwave) [14]. We will homogenise the material at least for mathematics with respect to style and format (pdf). Also, existing and new demonstration programs will get a uniform GUI (Java). We will attack integration of mathematics and physics as well as integration of computer architecture and microcomputers/digital system design (at least by hyperlinked documents and programs). We evaluate our courses with telelearning/teleteaching as we evaluate the traditional courses using questionnaires [1]. Exchange of experiences of colleagues using CAx technologies and
mutual hospitation (so far only in mathematics courses) have proved to be very productive. We will offer a workshop to present to other colleagues those systems which we have become familiar with so that practical experiences are disseminated. It is commonplace that it takes time until all who are concerned have learned how to value a new technology and how to use a new technique or tool adequately. Assessment of a CAx technology in a teaching/learning environment .is difficult because computer support is only one of many factors which determine the learning outcome. On the same ground, adequate employment of a technique or tool is hard to achieve because .it depends on the users (lecturer, students), on the subject taught and of course on the pedagogic. To learn from experiences of others is possible only if one can compare the learning outcome in a certain subject taught by different lecturers to different students in different scenarios and settings. Very promising standardisation efforts [4], [11] will lessen this difficulty. All these efforts whether on a local, institutional or global, i.e. internet level combined are reason enough for cautious optimism with regard to the future of teleteaching/telelearning.
References: [1] Aleamoni, L.M.: Typical Faculty Concerns About Student Evaluation of Teaching; New Directions for Teaching and Learning 31 (1987), p25-31 [2] Authoring on the Fly, University of Freiburg, http://ad.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/mmgroup.aof [3] Bronstein, I.N., Semendjajew, K.A., Musiol, G., Mühlig, H.: Taschenbuch der Mathematik; Harri Deutsch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1999 with CD-ROM [4] De Vries, I.: Instructional Management System Standards; BC Educational Technology User Group Listserv Fall 1999, http://www.ctt.bc.ca/edtech/IMS.html [5] eCollege.com: Active Learning System; http://www.eCollege.com [6] Landon, B. (Douglas College), Bruce, R. (Kwantlen University College), Harby, A. (Centre for Curriculum, Transfer and Technology): A Web Tool for Comparative Analysis of Online Delivery Software; http://www.ctt.bc.ca/landonline/ [7] Lederman, L.M.: ARISE - American Renaissance in Science Education; Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, http://fnalpubs.fnal.gov/archive/1998/tm/TM-2051.pdf FERMILABTM-2051, September 1998 [8] Mbone (Multicast Backbone), http://www.mbone.de, mbone tools (e.g. SDR, VIC, RAT, WBD, NTE etc.) http://bzvd.urz.tu-dresden.de/mbone/software.html [9] Neidhardt, W., Oetterer, Th.: GEONET ... und die Geometrie lebt!; C.C. Buchners Verlag, Bamberg 2000, with CD-ROM, http://did.mat.uni-bayreuth.de/geonet/ [10] North Central Regional Educational Laboratory: Effective Use of Technology; http://www.ncrel.org/ and http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/edtalk/ [11] Olson, S., Loucks-Horsley, S.(Editors): Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards - A Guide for Teaching and Learning; National Academy Press, 2000
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/nses/html/ [12] Patterson, D.A., Hennessy, J.L.: Computer Organization and Design – the Hardware-Software Interface; Morgan Kaufman Publishers, 1997, MIPS: ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/pub/spim/ (SPIM) and DLX: ftp://ftp.mkp.com/pub/dlx/ (WinDLX) [13] Promethean Ltd.: ActiveBoard etc.; http://www.promethean.co.uk [14] Risse, Th.: Materials for Mathematics; http://www.weblearn.hs-bremen.de/risse/mai, Materials for Computer-Architecture; http://www.weblearn.hs-bremen.de/risse/rst [15] Risse, Th.: Exkurs zur Kryptographie; (downloaded or also in streaming mode browsable)
http://www.weblearn.hs-bremen.de/weblearn/WorkSpaces/Teleteaching2000/homepage [16] Story, D.P.: e-Calculus – Learning and Exploring Mathematics; University of Akron, Mathematics and Computer Science Department; http://www.math.uakron.edu/~dpstory/e-calculus.html [17] Tegrity Ltd.: WebLearner etc.; http://www.tegrity.com
[18] Wagner, E., Hammer, S., Iakimtchouk, V.: Multimediale Lernumgebung Grundlagen der Elektrotechnik – Konzeption, Beispiele, Probleme. 2.Workshop Multimedia für Bildung und Wirtschaft, Technical University Ilmenau, 25.9.1998 with demonstration program Fourier Series
http://www.weblearn.hs-bremen.de/weblearn/lernmaterial/Medieninformatik/Four [19] Voss, H.-P.: Hat die Vorlesung ausgedient?; Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Hochschuldidaktik (AHD), Karlsruhe 1996
Author: Thomas Risse, Prof. Dr. Institut für Informatik und Automation, FB E/I, Hochschule Bremen Neustadtswall 30, 28199 BREMEN, Germany
[email protected], http://www.weblearn.hs-bremen.de/risse
