The theoretically oriented part of the education at the Vienna University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical and Electronical Engineering, is traditionally given by lectures and seminars. Now we intend to restructure the lecture system at ICT (Institute of Computer Technology) significantly, following special research results of modem learning theory. We expect organizational and educational advantages from our new Web based lecturing systems, e.g. better student lecturer interaction, personalized access to information combined with interactive simulation systems. The process of restructuring this part of the curriculum is presented by a description of the current situation, where traditional lecture based systems are complemented by some Hypertext lecture notes and laboratories for remote access, designed for students of our university only. Telematics based lectures and laboratories were started mainly to ease the situation of overcrowded lecture rooms and laboratories, where almost no communication between students and lecturers takes place. Future plans are going further, trying to establish distance education cooperations with other universities on national and international level using WWW and multimedia implementations to modernize knowledge presentation methods and information gathering processes.
Education at the Vienna University of Technology is traditionally given by lectures, seminars (theoretically oriented part) and laboratories (practice). The traditionally held face-to-face lectures leave almost no possibility for lecturer-student interaction. Even in seminars mostly paper presentations are given and, due to restrictions on time and tutoring personal, only short discussions are possible.
With increasing numbers of students and increasing demand for new, additional topics (due to strong national and international competition on academic and industrial level), it is necessary to implement new methods of learning, teaching and interaction in order to enhance creativity, efficient tutoring, advice, and efficiency of the learning process.
At the Vienna University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical and Electronical Engineering, currently traditionally held lectures (sometimes more than 300 students per lecture) are combined with efforts to implement features of educational technology. (Mostly Computer based training, remote laboratories and lectures in WWW). At ICT, Institute for Computer Technology, we try to implement techniques, which are completely new at our faculty - and we start projects on international and national level to share our experiences and lectures.
The next chapters of this paper present our theoretical approach to teaching and learning, the current situation and some project plans.
The innovations in our lecture system will be done according to research results of learning theory, especially information processing learning theory [Rie89], with additional aspects of modem learning theory. As already known, various learning theories ask for special learning and teaching environments to enhance the efficiency of the learning process, e.g. providing material for learning at own speed, learning alone or in groups (different types of learners), more personalized guidance though tutors (according to strength or deficiencies of the learner). Since decades drill & practice systems, tutoring systems and simulations were used and, sometimes, enthusiastically praised. In modem research open and flexible learning (ODL) environments, which allow personalized access to information combined with interactive simulation systems proved to be the most efficient education in many subjects, especially in engineering and natural sciences education.
Some scientists think about the role of IT & T (Information Technology and Telematics) as best tool to deliver educational innovations, e.g. [Gas95]: ,,To enhance the flexibility of both content and didactic support in substantial way (...), the use of IT & T is indispensable. Many of the functions at the core of the educational process itself can be implemented as well, sometimes better or even only through IT & T. To name some: information provision/access, diagnostic study advice, selecting and structuring information, providing didactic support mechanisms, offering environments for practice and problem solving, evaluating progress/results, etc. In this, not everything has to be preprogrammed.... However, a well defined balance between functions as implemented by IT & T and other media is crucial."
In our institute we establish pilots in engineering education, following these research results of learning theory, taking in account many experiences of other countries and institutions, who work with Open and Distance Learning since years, e.g. joined projects with Norway and Finland. According to these experiences, lecture presentations in the Web and remote laboratories are just the first steps in implementing modern learning environments. Adding non-interactive and interactive simulations will enhance the efficiency of the lecture system significantly, as proven in international research [FW94].
Most of the lectures currently held at our institute are traditionally given lectures (face-to-face lectures) with the already mentioned problems for lecturers and students. But some of our lecturers decided to dare an innovative approach for their own lectures, which is now described in two different pilots.
Example 1: Creating Hypertext Lecture Notes
Creating Hypertext versions of the major lectures of one of our professor, Dietmar Dietrich, is also a current focus at ICT. Of course, the new hypertext material is just the first step towards a modern distance education solution. Currently it is seen as a supplement to the traditional paperware with some advantages, which will be discussed in detail below.
Students and Lectures
Dietrich is teaching the subjects Computer Communication Systems, Fault-tolerant Systems in Automation and ASIC Design. All of his students are studying Electrical and Electronical Engineering, and the majority of them have chosen the branch of Computer Technology. Thus they are very interested in experiencing new information technologies, and they are even more interested in the Internet than other students. In addition to that, most of our students have access to the Internet, some even at home. So we expected a positive attitude towards Web material.
To verify this we have questioned 100 students. The results show that only 6% have no Internet access at all whereas 93% have access at the university and 29% have access at home. These numbers are explained by the possibility of getting free internet access at the university and the rather high telephone costs for dialing in from home. The students' average Internet connection time is 2.36 hours per week. We have asked the students some questions about their opinion on Web material as follows (Fig. 1). The possible evaluation range was from 1 to 5 where 1 is best.
We can see that the students appreciate the idea of WWW lecture notes (avg. 2.1), but would avoid learning directly from them (3.8). They would rather use it as a reference (2.1) and print out at least parts of it (2.4), but they would like interactive tutorials as well (2.4). What they evaluated even better was on-line testing (2.1).
Fig. 1 up
Optimizing Structure and Layout
The process of optimizing structure and layout of the Web material was the major task in 1996. The project started with 5 students who had to design and implement parts of a lecture independently from each other. Discussion started with these five different proposed layouts, even with different features, e.g. glossary, full-text search and on-line test. Several meetings with students and lecturer resulted in a requirements specification, which was subsequently implemented by one of the students. This first implementation was iteratively discussed, changed and optimized in a prototyping procedure, leading to the final result shown in fig. 2.
The webbrowser window is divided into three frames. A table of contents in the left frame has proven to be beneficial for navigation. Of course every entry is a link to the corresponding section, and links to other sections can also be found within the main text. However, following too many cross links is confusing. Therefore we have defined a footnote frame, which shows short explanations on anchor terms. In order to give a hint to the user, whether the link target will be the main frame or the footnote frame, all footnote links are written in italics.
Further we developed our hypertext material according to standard design [Gra96], e.g. for the use of fonts and colors. But in contrast to commercial webpages, lecture notes should not primarily impress the reader but give him the opportunity to concentrate on the contents. After trying a lot of different color schemes we have decided to use the standard fonts and headings of the browser with ordinary black on white coloring. Figures and animations should be used where possible and integrated into the text when the size is up to approximately half the window's size considering a resolution of 1024 x 768. Large figures must be placed at a separate page, however, in any case the file size of graphics must be limited to grant fast loading of the page. Additional features that are partially implemented by now include a glossary, a list of references, download of the chapters in postscript format, on-line tests and - most important - an on-line instruction manual.
Comparing Hypertext to Paper Material
The main disadvantage of hypertext material is, that reading a computerized version is not as comfortable as reading a paper version. As long as there is no device as easy to handle as paper and capable of displaying on-line information, many people will prefer course material on paper. This can be seen in the questioning of our students, too.
On the other hand, the advantages of Hypertext are striking. As already known, Hypertext material can be established in a much more structured way, leading to a better overview. The reader can always choose to go deeper into a subject or to move on. Additionally, he can configure the pages according to his personal preferences of fonts or even colors. A further advantage is the possible integration of multi-media into Hypertext. In many cases a good animation can explain a context much better than a lot of single pictures and words. Other features like a full-text search are impossible in paper versions, making Hypertext an extraordinary good reference guide.
Example 2: Experiences with the lecture ,,Databases and World Wide Web"
The Lecture
The lecture of Karl M.Goschka ,,Databases and World Wide Web" covers three topics:
This lecture is accompanied by a laboratory, where the students have the following tasks:
The tools used include an Oracle 7.2 Server on Solaris 2.5 on a Sun SPARC workstation, the Oracle Web Server 2.1 and PL/SQL as server-side programming technique using SQL*Plus and an Apache 1.3 Web Server. The client software necessary to pass the laboratory is a WWW-Browser, Telnet and File Transfer Protocol (FTP). It is even more comfortable with an X-Server.
The New Way
The real outstanding feature of this laboratory is, that there is no need to be present at the institute during solving the tasks, which is absolutely unusual at the Vienna University of Technology in these days.
For traditional reasons there are laboratory hours, when the PC room of the institute is reserved for the laboratory, and advanced students (tutors) give assistance for those present, but the lab can be passed from everywhere on the Internet, supposed the mentioned tools are available. For these tools are standard software on every PC today, this is no limit at all.
To give the ,,remote students" the same assistance as those working in the PC room, every tutor has his email account to communicate with the associated students. The students can also send e-mails to the lecturer to get answers to their problems. This year more than 50% of the students already used this new opportunity.
This approach saves time for the lecturer. But this time is not to be spent in longer holidays, it gives the lecturer the possibility to provide a much better examination at the end of the laboratory. When formerly examination was done by a written test or an anonymous protocol delivery, where the students only got their ratings and no real feedback on their work, it is now possible to give each group of four students 90 minutes of a personal discussion of their work, where it is mandatory to be present. This in turn has significantly increased the average rating of the final examination of the whole lecture.
This large amount of time each student gets is just another very unusual feature at TU Vienna, where too few lecturers are in charge of too many students, normally leaving very few time of communication with each student.
Feedback and Results
The feedback of the students was overwhelmingly positive: The vast majority of the students (97%) liked the possibility to work at the laboratory anytime and anywhere, only 3% felt insecure and would have preferred a more restrictive course. Almost the same percentage (95%) appreciated the final discussion instead of having a written examination or an anonymous protocol delivery. Although getting a worse rate for making many mistakes. they felt it was a good chance to recognize their deficiencies. This resulted in better ratings at the examination of the whole lecture.
The possibility to work on the laboratory remote from the Internet has two main advantages: First it saves time, resources and organizational effort, leaving more time for a very intensive and personal feedback discussion at the end of the work. On top of that, on-line assistance is done by email during the whole course to give answers to problems arising during work.
Second it is now possible to join this laboratory from another university and even internationally, but rigid structures in the course scheme make it very difficult for students from other universities, that the exam is taken into account at the other university. Besides, most lecturers use the traditional way and only few are even thinking about using the possibilities of these new technologies. The authors hope, that these problems will be overcome by time, when other lecturers recognize, that there are possibilities to make even the best traditional lecture better by sensible use of the new technologies.
The almost positive experiences lead to a new project: It is planned to redesign the lecture itself into an interactive WWW application, thus integrating the laboratory as interactive tutorials. This seems particularly useful for this lecture dealing with databases on the Web, where the subject itself indicates the right way to deal with information. Then only some very difficult parts of the lecture have to be held in the traditional way face-to-face, whereas many parts of easier but necessary theory can be given by the Web leaving more time to use the lecture more intensively for questions and discussion with the students. So the university could migrate back from an unpersonal mass-university to a place, where students can discuss problems and solutions with their lectures in a more personal way.
As already mentioned before we started with WWW based lectures, remote laboratories, email tutoring and just a few face-to-face sessions. Now we plan to change our educational system for our institute significantly. Whereas currently most lecturers use the traditional way and only few are even thinking about using the possibilities of these new technologies, the changes will be inevitable. From our experiences we are sure, that the mentioned problems will be overcome by time, when other lecturers recognize, that there are possibilities to make even the best traditional lecture better by sensible use of the new technologies.
In addition we plan to start national and international cooperation on modern approaches to engineering education. Projects are already planned and proposals submitted to the European Commission with Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, UK and Spain. This will lead to a completely new approach in teaching and learning. Multimedia applications will combine lectures in text versions (WWW, disks, files for FTP transfer) with interactive simulations (WWW, CD-Roms), video films and video conferences (via ISDN and Internet).
During the next few years (up to the year 2000) we will establish new learning and teaching environments (pilot lectures) at ICT, but these learning environments will be shared with other institutions in Europe (Finland, Norway and Spain). In this learning environments our students will be able to read theory on some engineering topics, try interactive or noninteractive simulations and get guidance to more specifically useful information via Internet. This teaching and learning environments will be created using WWW pages and Java applets, but we make text versions on theoretical parts of the lectures available for FTP, too. We intend to offer versions for working at home (limited transfer rates, cost problems) and for on-campus learning, for example in student centers and libraries. Paper versions for off-line learning are added, too, but these educational offers will be combined with tutoring by email. For remote student groups we establish video conferencing, mainly desktop conferencing with remote computer centers, and more remote laboratories.
With this approach to engineering education, which is new for our department at the Vienna University of Technology, we hope to create most efficient learning and teaching environments, fostering creativity and excellence in order to be ready for the already enhanced international competition.
In international projects we develop a knowledge base for multimedia lecture development, especially using the already existing experiences from Finland and Norway. Our partners in Northern Europe will share their experiences with us and we will start to create a modern interactive learning system, building a lecture pool, where other institutions, national and international, can join us.
[FW94] Field,M.; Weedon,R.: Professional training in computing: The UK Open University 's Computing for Commerce and Industry Programme. In: Open and Distance Learning - Critical Success Factors, International Conference, Geneva, 10- 12 Oct.1994, Proceedings, Berne 1995.
[Gas95] Gastkemper, Fred.H.D.: Pedagogy. In: Open and Distance Learning- Critical Success Factors, International Conference, Geneva, 10- 12 Oct.1994, Proceedings, Berne 1995.
[Gra96] Graham, I .: The HTML Sourcebook. Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 2nd ed. 1996
[Hir95] Hirohido, H.: Experimental Analysis of User s Behaviour in Hypermedia CAI Systems. In: Liberating the Learner, WCCE 95. Proceedings, Birmingharn 1995.
[Rie89] Riedling, E.: Computerunterstutztes Lernen - Analyse der enthusiastischen Befurwortung von Unterrichtsprogrammen. Dissertation. TU Wien, 1989.
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