Dodd Hall, UCLA

Conclusions and Future Directions

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Java, CGI, and other Web-based technologies provide instructors with the building blocks to create interactive pedagogical applications that enhance the material presented in the classroom.   The authors began to use internet technology in 1995 by creating a system to easily provide interactive self-graded quizzes to students.  Designed to assist students during their studies outside of the classroom, the quizzes could be accessed by students at any time.  Using the system, Cameron has been able to create new quizzes for her courses at any time, and can easily add new material based on feedback from students in lecture or in office hours.  For a course entitled Linear Models in Economics, Gerdes created two different web pages that assist students in solving linear programming problems, one is a simple interface to a very robust public domain program called lp_solve.  The other, written from scratch using C++, demonstrates the Simplex method of solving linear programs by outputting the series of tableaus required to arrive at the solution.

In early 1997, UCLA introduced a new policy, called the Instructional Enhancement Initiative (IEI) that calls for the incorporation of useful new technologies to augment the experiences of students in the classroom.  Funded by a per-unit fee charged to students, the IEI provides for a basket of classroom enhancements that assist the learning process through technology-intensive means for students to communicate with instructors and teaching assistants.  The most visible of the enhancements is the IEI-mandated Web sites that every undergraduate course in the College of Letters and Science is required to provide.  In many cases, instructors have elected to merely deliver the course syllabus and other materials.  In other cases, instructors have taken advantage of other administrative tools provided, such as virtual office hours, discussion bulletin boards, announcement Web pages, lecture notes, past exams for study, and the like.

In some cases, instructors have begun to provide their own materials that utilize new  technology in ways that go beyond what is possible with traditional technologies such as written documents and instructor-student interaction.  With the advent of IEI, institutional incentives for the creation of pedagogical and other applications that assist in the learning process have begun to arrive.  Realizing that the new technologies require a relatively large fixed investment for learning the new techniques, and in some cases, even a higher marginal cost in the provision of the (hopefully, higher quality) material, the IEI includes a provision for funding faculty endeavors that harness the new technologies.  In the Summer of 1997, the authors participated in one such program, designed to assist a selected group of faculty members (including Cameron) in the provision of pedagogical material using new technologies.  The program also provided for one quarter's worth of research assistant salary for Gerdes to concentrate on the provision of interactive pedagogical tools written in Java.  As a result, we have developed a collection of pedagogical Java applets, with more on the way in the near future.

Over time, the incorporation of new technology into the educational portion of instructor duties is inevitable.  Publishers and other companies have realized the potential of new technologies and have begun to offer products to assist educational institutions in their instructional mission. Though unlikely to replace the traditional classroom setting in the provision of quality education, new internet technologies have the potential to enhance the learning process in myriad ways.  While in the short term, instructor time invested to develop materials using the new technology is likely to reduce productivity in other areas, in the long run the productivity of instructors must inevitably increase if the undertaking is to be justified.  There are two possible consequences for productivity.  In the first case, the build-up of technological capital may allow instructors to educate the same number of students while reallocating their time to higher value, labor-intensive endeavors such as research or more-complex course material.  In the second case, it may be possible to educate much larger numbers of students without significant loss of research productivity. Either way, interactive tools provide the means for students to verify or refresh their understanding of preliminary or basic material.

There is also an important equity consideration in the process of moving toward new media instructional methods.  To the extent that students are drawn from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, new technologies can create a gap between the opportunities of privileged and non-privileged students when access to equipment is limited.  Even when communal lab facilities are available, congestion can impose large costs on many students who must use them.  Furthermore, when course materials are provided exclusively over the Web, lab administrators must also be sensitive to the printing costs involved.

Overall, survey results show that the student reaction to the course Web sites have been positive, and students have been quick to realize the value of the technologies.  While it is too early to tell what the net long term effect that new media will have on the provision of education, early signs have been positive.  In the case of high-quality educational institutions, as opposed to "digital diploma mills," it is unlikely that new technology will completely replace the traditional classroom setting.  The use of CAI is not essential or even sensible for the delivery of certain kinds of knowledge.  For other, carfully selected  applications, CAI can be a boon to the students and to the instructor.