SANTOS, Carlos 1, CAIXINHA, Helder 2 & RAMOS, Fernando 3
1
2 Campus of Santiago + CEMED - University of Aveiro, caixinha@gue.ua.pt
3 Campus of Santiago + DETUA/INESCA - University of Aveiro, fmr@inesca.pt
Abstract: As we are facing the new millennium, new challenges appear in the traditional educational role played by the standard Universities. New technological innovations and the globalisation of our society and culture will bring new demands to these institutions. New lifestyles will also bring a demand for a different type of education.
One with more flexibility in the leaning process in respect to the time devoted, the learning pace adopted, the place where the student learns and the selection of contents and courses.
To answer this questions the University of Aveiro decided to launch an Open and Distance Learning Program in 1998. Starting with courses developed to our first year students, the University is building an extensive set of courseware materials that will enable in the future the development of a true and effective Virtual University.
This paper describes the development of this program, the starting objectives and purposes, the challenges faced, the skills and strategies involved, the ODL system itself and the results and conclusions that we gathered so far.
Keywords: ODL system, Virtual University
The University of Aveiro was founded in 1973 and started its graduated courses in 1974. Currently the University has more than 8000 students, 15% of them post-graduated (Masters and Doctorates) and a staff of more than 500 professors and lecturers and 450 administrative and technical supporting officers.
The University offers 31 graduated courses in the areas of Basic Sciences, Arts, Management, Engineering and Teaching, 34 Master programs and 21 Doctorate programs.
The University is located in the city of Aveiro, near the Atlantic ocean and 60 km south of Oporto and 250km north of Lisbon.
The organisation of the University is based on Departments, that are organic units that support research on specific fields and the graduated and pos-graduated programs.
Most of the graduated programs are 5 years programs, and each year is organised in two semesters (October-February, February-June). Since 1992 the first year (first two semesters) of all the Science and Technological graduation programs have a common set of disciplines: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science and English.
The University is headed by a Rector, elected by representatives of all the bodies of the University (professors, students and staff), who appoints 4 Vice-Rectors and 4 Pro-Rectors. The Vice-Rectors have specific responsibilities in the areas of research, pedagogical issues, quality management and co-operation with the community.
Each graduation program has a pedagogical committee that includes both professors and students.
After some months of internal discussions, in 1998 the University decided to setup an ODL pilot program to be offered to the students of the initial common year of all the Science and Technological graduation programs. The objectives defined for this first trial were:
Because of the lack of previous experience in distance learning programs a decision was taken to offer distance learning essentially to cover the practical part of each discipline. This means that students should attend the presentation and laboratory classes existing in each course. However, in some courses notes are also available covering some specific topics.
Thus, in this pilot program, distance learning was supposed to support the following activities/facilities:
Students from the first common year of Sciences and Technology graduation programs were the target group selected first common year, specifically from the courses on Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Computer Science.
The courses of this common year have hundreds of students: typical figures are between 1600 and 2300 students by course, figures that depend on the success rate of each course.
This pilot program was offered during the academic year 1998/1999, and in the first semester the courses offered were:
A numerus clausus of 25 was defined as the maximum number of students enrolled in the distance learning program on each course.
The marketing and publicity of the ODL Program, was conducted by the use of a WWW site (URL: http://www.cemed.ua.pt/ed/), announcements in the University Private TV Channel and also through brochures/ads distributed on the Campus of the University of Aveiro.
The University of Aveiro ODL unit gathers different departments in a common effort. Taking advantage of the multidisciplinary skills of this institutions a valuable team was created for the implementation and maintenance of the University of Aveiro ODL Program.
This unit has a small group of technical staff that supports the web server dedicated to the program.
The software management used is WebCT, that integrates all the tools required (up to now) for the program.
Each subject available within the ODL Program has a professor (a University professor), responsible for the creation of the courseware needed and managing the enrolled students. A different group of Academic professors has the task of evaluating the ODL Program.
The Center of Multimedia and Distance Leaning (CEMED) of the University of Aveiro is responsible for all the Administrative/Logistic Structure and Program Evaluation Co-ordination.
The course management is made at three different levels:
The cost structure of the University of Aveiro ODL Program has the following items:
Investment:
Operational:
All the developed courseware is available to students enrolled in the ODL Program, free of charge, as part of their regular first year academic curricula.
The ODL Program campus Technological Infrastructure is divided in three levels as follows:
Additionally, students can access the WebCT server using any computer connected to the Internet, inside or outside campus network.
In this program, the Open and Distance Learning concept was used as a mean to provide to students an alternative to presential lab classes but not to presentation classes. Thus the materials provided were basically texts and questions concerning practical and/or laboratory exercises.
Another facility provided by the technology in use is the setup and encouragement on use of discussion fora, namely between students. This seems to be a very promising functionality, but very difficult to apply with effectiveness to students of the first year, because of their lack of habits of open participation in such fora.
The WebCT chat tool was used as a virtual central meeting point between students and professors. A real-time open space for the discussion of problems and exchange of opinions within a group of users was created. Different kinds of chat rooms were available:
Some courses adopted a strategy which consisted in the availability of extra-curricula courseware contents, such has historical references, Internet resources and curiosities. This intended to increase the student’s interest and motivation.
The developed courseware fulfilled most of the students expectations, but nevertheless an optimisation and improvement effort is being carried out, aiming to provide the students with better pedagogical contents and improved web-based learning environments.
Finally the Scientific Notation used in some of the courseware developed has created some difficulties which were solved by the use of specific software packages that enable to publish mathematical and scientific materials on the World Wide Web, namely some applications that performed the translation of LaTex to HTML. Recently another solution was adopted for this problem, based on Adobe’s Portable Document Format. On the students side, scanners were available at all the Multimedia Resource Centers, with which they could communicate with the professors using scientific notation (by scanning questions, exercises solutions, etc…).
All the Technological Infrastructure implemented has proved to be efficient, and very reliable with almost no need of technical assistance. As this ODL program is web-based, the underlying network responsible for telecommunications plays a decisive role in the performance of the program, so its operational conditions are the constant object of monitoring to prevent any faults or problems.
The ODL pilot program was delivered through the Internet and was based on the WebCT tool, that provides access control functions, communications functions (such as e-mail, bulletin board and chat) and, also, contents delivery and management functions. To support this program a dedicated server was setup, installed and managed by the University’s Multimedia and Distance Learning Center (CEMED).
In respect to the technological evaluation made of WebCT tool, three important perspectives must be taken:
The professor responsible for each course was also the person responsible to insert and update the contents for the course. CEMED’s staff provided basic training on the use of WebCT at the beginning of the semester, and further help was limited to minor difficulties. This lead to the conclusion that teaching staff had no relevant problems on using the technology.
From the pedagogical point of view professors were pleased with the experience, although it was limited to lab classes. The behaviour of students was encouraging, although a passive attitude was seen in many of them: however this was not so different from their attitude in the presential lab classes. Concerning the results of the teaching/learning process, professors feel that students can learn and progress through ODL in a similar way as in presential classes, but ODL seems to be more effective for students because they can progress at their own pace and manage time according to their individual capacities and interests. All this ODL approach benefits were strongly noticed amongst Part-time students, giving them improved conditions to accomplish with success their courses.
To support the organisation and management of this pilot program the University allocated a team of 2 technical experts in information technologies and communications. The support to this program (server and student facilities management, professors and students support, statistics, ODL mailing list management) was their first priority and occupied them at a 50% level. The evaluation of this aspect of the program was considered excellent both by the students, by the professors and by the University rectory.
The ODL pilot program for the first academic year of all the science and technological graduation programs was setup on the first semester of the 1998/99 scholar year (October 1998-January 1999). It was offered, on an optional basis, to all the courses running on that semester but to a limited number of students per course:
The students enrolled in the ODL program were mainly students with a prior enrolment in the courses and were in a very significant number part-time students. The following two figures show this profile analysis:
Figure 1. First time enrolment in the courses
Figure 2. Type of students enrolled in the ODL program
A great majority of students enrolled in the program used the system, i.e., they have logged into the server. The following figure shows the percentage of this students:
Figure 3. % of students that logged in into the ODL server per course
The total number of accesses, during all the semester, to the server was the following:
Figure 4. Total number of accesses to the ODL server
The number of accesses to the server per student was very variable and, in some courses, it was detected a tendency of concentration of the accesses on a small number of students. The following figure shows the percentage of accesses of the 3 most frequent students per course:
Figure 5. % of accesses to the ODL server from the 3 most frequent students per course
The average number of accesses per student to the ODL server in the different courses, had a similar evolution as the following figure shows.
Figure 6. Average number of accesses per student to the ODL server
Most of the accesses to the server were made from the university’s campus, namely from the three Multimedia Resource Centers reserved for the ODL students and from other access points spread around the campus. The following figure illustrates the origin of the accesses.
Figure 7. Geographical distribution of the accesses to the ODL server
The overall final results of the ODL students were similar to the results of conventional classroom teaching students, although a greater improvement was detected in the success rate amongst Part-time students enrolled in the ODL program in comparison with others not enrolled. The ODL program was a good approach to this specific group, namely in providing a greater flexibility in the learning pace and their time management demands.
The ODL program proved to be an effective learning approach that could fulfil certain needs felt by specific groups of students namely Part-time students and Full time students who had some schedule difficulties to attend the conventional classes.
The concentration tendency detected in the accesses to the server (Fig. 5), should require in the future an even more active role of professors in the effort to stimulate a higher communication level within the less ”active” students group.
Despite some initial difficulties concerning the participation of students, the overall evaluation of the program is considered to be very positive. A good measure of this evaluation is that in the second semester of the academic year 1998/1999 (February 99-June 99) this experience continued with the courses of the first common year of all the science and technological graduation programs of the University but is also going to be expanded to several other courses, on many different graduation programs. The courses where ODL is currently being used are:
1st year of all the science and technological graduation programs
Degree on Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering
Degree on Teaching of Mathematics
Degree on Chemical Engineering
Degree on Environment Engineering
It was also curious and relevant to note that other professors of the University have already announced their interest to include ODL methodologies and technologies in their courses, and are planning to do it in the beginning of the next scholar year. That is, for instance, the cases of professors from the Cultures and Linguistic Department, that are planning to offer courses on Latin and Greek.
This first experience was very important to the promoters of this project. A significant knowledge base was gathered. Several methodologies and technologies were implemented and tested.
The students response toward ODL Program was encouraging, although in some cases a passive posture emerged from the students behaviour. New pedagogical strategies are being tested with the aim of obtaining better results in this matter.
From the professors point of view this Program was a very effective approach to some students that had some problems in attending the conventional classrooms lab classes.
The results obtained in this first experience could be strongly linked to the special characteristics (see figure 1 and figure 2) of our ODL Program enrolled students. In the second semester the ODL Program was opened to courses where enrolled students present a different characterisation. This new courses introduced also several new approaches to the ODL Program. This will bring out by the end of the second semester a new array of data and conclusions, that will enable us to build a more precise and objective scenery.
Future development plans for this ODL Program can be resumed as:
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