Implementing Instructional Technology: A Team-Based Approach

John T. Schlotterbeck
History Department
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135-1350
(765) 658-4591
JSCHLOT@DEPAUW.EDU

I. Introduction

One of the biggest challenges in implementing instructional technology is the steep learning curve novices face, especially senior faculty. After twenty years or more of teaching, our classroom styles are pretty well set. Most of us were trained as linear thinkers, products of the Enlightenment; we hired typists to prepare our dissertations; and think of instructional "technology" as a piece of chalk and a blackboard. The bewildering array of software programs, arcane language of "computerese," and, perhaps, most importantly, the multi-dimensionality of the web can immobilize experienced teachers. There is a final Catch-22;" only by using instructional technology can you appreciate its potential for enhancing instruction and student learning. You really don't know what you don't know.

In Fall 1998 I received a Mellon Foundation Grant to incorporate instructional technology in a large survey course in Early United States history. I want to summarize my experiences with this project, especially the benefits of a team-based approach to developing and implementing instructional technology for uninitiated faculty. With support from DePauw University's Faculty Instructional Technology Support Center (FITS) a three-person team--a faculty consultant, a student intern, and the instructor--developed the course web site. Next I will show how we used the site as an instructional tool and, finally, conclude by sharing the teaching and learning outcomes--both anticipated and unexpected--in using this technology in a history class.

II. The Process

The FITS model for instructional technology is built around a team-concept; this approach was essential for this project. Teams consist of the classroom instructor, a faculty member knowledgeable about instructional technology, and a student intern familiar with web site design and construction. Each member had a distinct role. The instructor knew the subject matter and defined the pedagogical issues of the project. Dennis Trinkle, a historian and pioneer in applications of instructional technology in history, was the faculty consultant and brought awareness of the classroom environment at DePauw, understanding of theoretical issues in using instructional technology, and practical experience from his own history courses. Robbie Morse, a workstudy student and, later, FITS/Mellon intern, had extensive experience in web site design and construction and knew the software and hardware required for the project. After the project is implemented, the instructor receives training to maintain the site, but FITS staff provides on-going advice and support.

A. The Instructional Problem

The first step was identifying the pedagogical problem or instructional need that technology could help solve. A basic principle of FITS is that technology is merely one tool for meeting educational objectives and that technology should never be used as an end in and of itself. The team began by examining the existing educational outcomes of the course, assessing the quality of learning in the course, identifying existing impediments to students' learning, and envisioning ways instructional technology might help solve these problems.

The course is a survey of United States history from Columbus to the War of 1812 is part of the three-course U. S. history survey and enrolls 30 to 35 upperclass students. By the semester's end, I hoped each student would:

1. Understand the evolution of American society, institutions, and cultures from early colonization through the War of 1812.
2. Recognize ways varied sources are used to study our nation's early history.
3. Know how to read and evaluate primary and secondary historical sources by examining historical evidence critically and understanding the perspective or bias of different sources.
4. Learn basic history research skills using library and Internet sources.
5. Be able to express ideas clearly both in papers and essay exams and orally through active participation in class discussions.

While attaining basic knowledge of early U. S. history was important, the second and third outcomes were the most critical--and most difficulty to achieve. I wanted students to discover how profoundly, yet subtly, events and decisions of people in the distant past affect their world by reading classic historical texts that define the multiple meanings of "America" or capture experiences of representative groups who shaped early American culture and society.

Reading texts from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries poses real challenges for students, however. Before they can interpret a particular document's significance, they not only have to understand early modern prose but also need to place the document in historical context. In the past I relied on commercial readers but the convenience of an anthology is offset by inevitable compromises: the collection omits texts I needed and includes material I didn't want. Furthermore, they have limited visual materials to illustrate concepts. How could instructional technology help students become more skilled readers of primary historical texts?

I also wanted to expand the range of historical sources beyond printed texts. In class I often use visual materials to illustrate a point or as a primary source to analyze. Maps, charts, political cartoons, paintings, and architecture, and other visual images can be powerful learning tools, but one needs to apply the same critical tools used for texts to interpret them. Because these images were unavailable outside of class, their use in the course was severely limited. Some of the most exciting work in Early American history is in material culture and historic archeology, much of which is available on excellent web sites. Instructional technology was potentially a powerful way to expand the range of historical sources students could use to understand Early American history.

The team began the project with the idea of creating a web toolbox that would be a collection of instructional materials for lectures and for student projects and an archive of course handouts and requirements, readings, lectures, and primary sources that would be available to students to use outside of class. I could project an image in class, for example, and then ask students to study a similar set of images on the web site and write a brief analysis that becomes part of the next day's discussion. One could easily compare different texts or images simultaneously, for instance, the hierarchical interior space of Anglican Churches as compared to the egalitarian space of Great Awakening Churches. Over time, I planned to add background information on particular texts and images, a glossary of unfamiliar words, links to additional resources, etc.

The initial thinking, thus, was to use new technology to improve old pedagogy. As the project developed, however, unanticipated possibilities emerged. A class of thirty students tends to rely on the instructor for their learning looking for lectures to provide course content and models for analyzing source and by participating in instructor-lead discussions. I have experimented with different formats, such as learning groups and student oral reports, but was never completely satisfied with the results. We explored ways instructional technology could increase student-initiated learning and added an electronic communication link, a DISCUS bulletin board, to the project.

B. Constructing the Web Site

The team was essential for keeping my learning curve to a manageable level. Trinkle focused on how to design a web site that could meet the project's goals. He had me look at a number of history course web sites and we discussed what I thought worked well and what didn't. He also provided readings on principles of good web design: content comes first, design follows purpose, consistent page format, uncluttered page layout, including lateral links within the site, and so on. He provided URLs to sites with style manuals, advice on writing papers, and the like. Finally, he emphasized the importance of making the web site indispensable to the course. We had many conversations about how students would use the web site: As an archive of course documents (syllabi, lectures, and assignments, etc.)? As a resource for non-text materials? As a file of supplementary readings and reference materials? How should the bulletin board be linked to the main site? How were students going to navigate around the site? What internal links were needed?

At the conclusion of this part of the project we had a very rough template for the site (Illustration 1) that laid out the main headings and outlined a structure for organizing information. As you can see it was (and remained) a work in progress, and the final site didn't follow the outline in its entirety. The purely informational sections proved less useful, for examples, while the resource section expanded enormously from the original plan.

Robbie Morse provided technical expertise which enabled our discussions to focus on implementing the learning goals and not on the mechanics of site construction. He used Front Page for web layout and navigational tools, Java script for the images, and Dreamweaver for the pop-up windows. The class web site was located on the I[Instructional]-drive on the campus network. This functions as an intranet site; access was limited to students enrolled in the course. All living units are wired to the network; students living off campus or without computers had to use one of the computer labs. Because the Discus bulletin board is on the university server and accessed through netscape, we added several links to Discus from the web site.

As I located images for the site--maps, cartoons, paintings, architecture, etc.­-Morse suggested ways to organize them to facilitate student use. As the site grew, he included internal links between different sections of the site. Morse first encouraged me to include a Discus bulletin board and we worked out its role in the course. He made numerous suggestions about improving the visual layout of web pages and trouble shooted each section as it was added to the site. As a recent graduate Morse could also anticipate problems students might have using the site and suggested many small but significant improvements. As with any site of this size there were many bug that had to be worked out, especially with the pop-up windows, and without Morse's hundreds of hours of work, it would have been impossible for me to complete the project.

At the beginning of the semester, we had completed the main sections of the site and the first month of assignments. Morse and I continued to work on the site over the course of the semester. While this was a bit risky--and stressful for Morse with several just-in-time deliveries--it provided us intermediate feedback on how the site was working and made enabled us to make modifications as we went along.

Contrary to faculty folklore, not all undergraduate students are computer geniuses, and history classes, in particular, attract a surprisingly large number of computer avoidant and even computer phobic students whose computer use is confined to word processing and e-mail. Morse created handouts explaining how to access the web site and log onto the Discuss bulletin board. He also led a lab session the first week of the semester to walk students through the process; even after two weeks, about a fifth of the students reported difficulty accessing the site, especially from living units! Morse provided similar support for me, coming to class for the first few weeks until I became comfortable using the computer and projector and navigating the web site. He monitored student use of the site and communicated by e-mail with students having difficulties. His continued support, especially the first weeks in the semester were essential for a relatively smooth launching of the project.

III. Outcomes:

Much of the site is pretty straight-forward. The opening page (Illustration 2) has a large graphic of portraits and images of the American Revolution (there was a similar graphic for the colonial period) with the main table of organization: Home, Overview, Instructor, Syllabus, Assignments, and Resources. This table is repeated on the side and at the bottom of every page to facilitate lateral navigation throughout the site. The on-line syllabus has links to assignments and resources which are missing in the print version handed out at the beginning of the semester. This feature is repeated in the Assignments section, which include hot links to Discus, readings in the Resources section, and web sites.

The heart of the site is the Resource section, which is organized into subsections: Articles, Images, Lectures, Maps, Sound Documents, and How to "Ace" this Course. Sets of images and maps are organized separately into topical or chronological blocks, each with their own label, that are keyed to units of the course (see Illustration 3). Each image and map is labeled individually.

Let me illustrate some of the ways the site was used over the course of the semester:

Images were incorporated into lectures replacing overheads and slides. Almost all of my lectures use maps; scanned images are a vast improvement over photocopied reproductions used for transparencies, as I have far more choices in selecting maps, cartoons, engravings and the quality of reproduction is much better. Two lectures examine painting and architecture in the colonial and revolutionary era to illustrate cultural developments. Illustration 3 includes European graphic representations of the "New World." Read in conjunction with Christopher Columbus's written accounts to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1493 describing the New World we examined how Europeans conceptualized indigenous people in terms of their own culture to justify conquest.

The Discus bulletin board transformed the nature of discourse in the class. In addition to formal papers, students write informal responses to reading assignments and films, and summaries of small group discussions. Although the latter are often reproduced for the entire class, most responses were private communications between each student and the instructor. The Discus site provided a way to make these exchanges public. Early in the semester I show the film "Black Robe" on French encounters with native peoples in the 1630s. Students were asked to read a movie review and post their reactions to Discus (Illustration 4). They were far more thoughtful and more extensive than private responses I had received in previous classes. Discus was used extensively over the semester to post individual responses to readings and films and reports from small learning groups. I also used it to collect review questions, comment on exams, and post topics for group work. The entire class was involved in a more open way in the collective learning process throughout the semester.

Finally, the web site facilitated small group student oral presentations using material culture to investigate topics that expanded on class lectures and readings. Most resources students needed were either in the Resources sections of the Web site or on web links in the on-line version of the assignment. Since I would not be covering this material and it would appear on exams, most students took this project seriously. Students had lots of choice in selecting topics, and we heard analyses of graphic images and cartoons on the web site; virtual tours of colonial cities; archeological reconstruction of early Jamestown; a video report on the Feast of the Hunter's Moon near Lafayette, Indiana; an analysis of the historical accuracy of the film The Patriot (including film clips); and even composed new words to revolutionary songs! Most groups used presentation software in their reports to integrate images from different sources and not merely to project electronic outlines. (The university's Speaking-Center also provided support and practice space.) The quality of these most recent presentations was, in general, stronger than those from an earlier class that did not use technology. Some presentations were more successful than others, but the assignment fulfilled the goals of expanding the range of sources, making students more responsible for their learning, and energizing the class.

IV. Conclusion

How did the students do? Their reactions in written course evaluations to instructional technology were mixed, but were generally much more positive than negative. Several students wrote in their course evaluations that the site enabled them to keep connected to the class, and others especially noted the value of the student oral presentations. This positive note is encouraging as there were several "technogically-challenged" students in the class. The discus bulletin board was also revolutionary, as students posted responses to one another not just to the instructor. As expected, not every student was comfortable with technology, to the more open dialogue of student work, and to an increase in student-initiated learning.

I learned that instructional technology changes pedagogy more than content. I was expecting to incorporate material culture more fully in the class, but I did not anticipate that in the process of making more resources available to students outside of class my role as a purveyor of expertise would diminish. I began to see classes more as laboratories for learning how to read primary and secondary sources, for finding broader patterns in the data, for integrating different perspectives, and for asking questions. I had to adjust my expectations on how to use class time effectively and to communicate changing expectations to students. Finally, I learned to be prepared for technological crashes, or what to do when the server went down!