World Wide Web Elementary

Technologies for Creating Complex Learning Environments on the Web

by Vlad Wielbut
Community Technology Specialist
with the Alliance for Community Technology

Summary: This article describes, in detail, several commercially available software packages (all based on Internet technology) that allow quick deployment of multi-layered environments in support of distance education. Multiple screenshots illustrate the text.

 

It's evolutionary

    Distance education - the concept of reaching students outside of classroom walls is neither new nor untried. Even before the advent of modern communication technologies, one could take a course or get a degree from a "correspondence school", which used what we now disdainfully call "snail-mail" as its only, or at least primary, mode of communication with its students. Mail carriers would bring bulky packages with learning materials and assignments, and take with them envelopes containing essays, completed exercises, and research projects. Every now and then a student would visit the school building to take a test in person - the only way to ensure that it was he, and not somebody else, who did the learning.
    Then came radio, and later television - two technologies that greatly enhanced the experience of learning away from school. Not every student learns best by reading and not every subject can best be depicted with written words. Now one could hear German or French phrases pronounced correctly by native speakers, or view examples of medieval architecture without leaving one's home. It did not take long for educators to embrace and use these new capabilities; in my native Poland of the 60s and 70s, the entire morning block of the country's single television channel was devoted solely to educational programming, providing courses ranging in subjects from foreign languages to animal husbandry to mathematics, and in level from elementary to high school to college and university.
    Yet despite this quick acceptance and many successful utilizations of these two media for educational purposes, it was hard to overlook their shortcomings: producing instructional material for television was costly and difficult, and the learning experience was painfully unidirectional and isolating. Nevertheless, the lack of a better alternative and the great need for delivering quality schooling to disabled students or those trapped in remote areas kept driving experiments aimed at making television a part of the solution. A few years ago I visited a high school in Michigan and was shown a well equipped and functioning distance education classroom. The setup was truly impressive and included two television cameras, a dozen or so microphones hanging from the ceiling, a sophisticated control panel for the teacher, two monitors, video and audio mixers, and a fax machine for sending and receiving paperwork. This classroom, however, had no broadcasting capabilities but was connected via cables with another, identically equipped classroom in a town nearby. Obviously, it could not be used to reach individual students who, for one reason or another, could not attend either of the two high schools, but was brought into existence as a cost-cutting measure of sorts: classes with traditionally small number of students (such as foreign languages) could be combined into larger ones, with students from both schools attending. There were, of course, other and more noble uses of this state-of-the-art facility, for example experiments with team-teaching, sharing interesting guests, etc., but its cost, complexity, and limitations tipped the scales dangerously toward the "Not Worth It" label.
     Since then the Internet has matured into a full-fledged medium with features that promise to fulfill many dreams, including the one about effective, affordable, interactive distance learning, which will approximate the real-life experience of education as none of the media before it. (I'm consciously omitting the rise and proliferation of the CD-ROM technology. Although it greatly enriches the learning experience and strives to simulate the two-way nature of real-life learning through - sometimes amazingly clever - interactive features, it stands but a step above the "correspondence school" of yesteryear on the evolutionary ladder of distance education.
 

The Lowest Common Denominator

    For those of us constantly surrounded by high-end technology it is sometimes difficult to think in terms of pre-Pentium chips, 14.4 kbps modems, 8 megabytes of RAM, and so on. And yet, these technological "lowlands" are much more common that we would like to believe, and have to be taken into account when planning a distance learning environment that would be as inclusive as possible. This means finding, what is often called, the "lowest common denominator of technology" - such  level of processor speed, network throughput, interface complexity, etc., that it leaves the door open for students with machines advertised as "blazingly fast and loaded" two years ago, while at the same time not turning off those with access to sparkling-new, powerful workstations. It is, no doubt, a balancing act, and we'll probably end up cutting the extremes at both ends: the 9.6 kbps modems and Lynx browsers as well as the guy who insists on posting full-motion video clips on our Web site. How much to cut depends on the particular environment and these will vary from one community to another.
    It is, of course, possible to create a learning environment from scratch and with very low entry requirements, such as MOO or MUD, where everything is done in ASCII text and written descriptions substitute for images, sound files, even VRML worlds. However, at the risk of being too optimistic, I'd say that situations with such severe limits to what is technologically feasible are rare, and increasingly so week by week. Today, with reasonably fast computers being available for well under $1,000, I would describe my ad hoc vision of the "lowest common denominator" as follows:

  • 133 Mhz Pentium-class processor
  • 32 MB of RAM
  • 15 inch color monitor
  • 1 GB of total disk space
  • 28.8 kbps modem
  • Windows 95 or Mac OS 7.5
  • Web browser (Microsoft IE or Netscape Navigator), version 3.0

    At these parameters, it is entirely possible to deliver rich, interactive learning experience that would satisfy and challenge a really wide array of students at many levels of technological access. One tool perfectly capable of creating such an experience is AltaVista Forum 98. On its server side, it will run on either a Unix or a Windows NT machine, alongside one of several popular HTTP servers. On the client side, it can be accessed via a standard, third-generation, Java-compatible browser, such as MSIE or Netscape Navigator. No proprietary clients or specialized plugins need to be installed prior to accessing and using AltaVista Forum 98.
    Access can be limited to pre-registered users, i.e. those who were entered into the system by a designated manager, or open to self-registration. From the Summit - a Web page serving as a gateway to all the other areas (Screen Shot 1) - the users may choose to search for other users and teams, or go directly to their own Vistas. These personal Vistas are one of the core features of this system: they are virtual mini-environments (lockers? offices? desks?), automatically created for each new user, and consisting of the following elements (Screen Shot 2):

  • Internal e-mail client (for correspondence among Forum members)
  • Space for folders containing electronic documents of any kind
  • List of discussion groups being tracked by the Vista's owner
  • List of the owner's favorite links
  • Personal calendar

    Each of these elements can be accessed and modified with a help of a pull-down Tools Menu, listing all the tools available in a particular context: for the Vista it will show "Personal Profile", "Add/Remove Favorite Links", etc., while in the Documents area one will find options such as: "Modify Folder" or "Add Document" (Screen Shot 3). Most of the tools are form-based, so selecting one will likely produce a Web page with fields in which to enter the information to be added (Screen Shot 4). When uploading files, we'll have an option of entering the path directly, or simply browsing our way to the file we want to select.
    Another core component of the AltaVista Forum are the Teams. Creating a Team is a very simple process, involving filling the appropriate form and selecting team members form the list of our AV Forum users. Right then we may also let the system notify these members via standard e-mail that they have been added to a new Team. Once a Team is created, it will be assigned its very own virtual space, complete with Discussions and Documents area, Calendar, Chat room, directory of Team Members, built-in e-mail and a Newspaper (Screen Shot 5).
    There is only a couple of shortcomings in this otherwise powerful and easy to use product: the response time of the server is sometimes longer than one would wish, and moving from one area to another, or using a tool, often produces yet another browser window, which can quickly lead to unmanageable clutter. But the low technological requirements coupled with the rich selection of features make AV Forum 98 stand out in the (very small) crowd of similar solutions. And the price is not overwhelming: the server can be downloaded from Software.Net for $495 (25 users license) or $3,205 (unlimited number of users), although it is quite possible that educational institutions can negotiate a discount.
    What is it good for? One can not, obviously, held real-time lectures or administer tests and quizzes in this environment. Aside from these two, and a few other impossible scenarios, there is plenty of excellent applications for this software in the area of distance education. With group- and project-based learning being the de-facto standard in most schools, colleges, and universities today, anything that helps small teams communicate, meet, exchange documents and ideas is of great importance. It is not difficult to imagine an entire high school using AV Forum as its primary platform, where:

  • each incoming freshman receives a personal Vista of his own, with a collection of useful files already there
  • private spaces for classes, groups, and projects can quickly be created to serve as centers of communications and repositories of relevant material
  • teachers and administrators can disseminate important information to the entire school or target groups via e-mail or online newspapers
  • students can hold all their files in one, easily accessible (whether at school or from home), secure location
  • schedules and timelines are available for viewing and editing with a standard browser.

    Would it be possible to create similar learning environment from bits and pieces, instead of buying this all-in-one package? The answer is: yes, certainly. WebBoard (O'Reilly) could support discussion groups, chat, and document exchange. Calendar Server (Netscape) would provide individuals and teams with Web-accessible scheduling. Any e-mail server could replace the built-in capability in AltaVista Forum. Possibilities and configurations are several, and are definitely worth exploring in situations where some of these various elements are already in place and working great. However, deciding on a patchwork of tools may prove to be more expensive while depriving the system of a consistent, integrated interface.

The High End

    If you ever tried listening to the National Public Radio or viewing CNN video clips on the Web during the infohighway's "rush hour", you know that the Internet is not quite ready yet to become a multimedia channel. The good news is that things here are constantly changing and improving, albeit at a slower pace that the demand calls for. Despite dire predictions of imminent collapse prompted by the incredible, gargantuan growth, the Internet is tugging along, probably not less reliably than two years ago, when the number of users and the amount of data were both but a fraction of today's figures. It seems safe to assume that what today appears jerky, pixelated, garbled, and chopped, a few months from now will be smooth, crisp, and vivid.
    Encouraged by this assumption we can now take a look at several technologies that are - to various degrees - "pushing the envelope", i.e. stretching the current capacity of the Internet to its limits and beyond. However, these are not merely futuristic models, like the gigantic, Ferris wheel-shaped space station envisioned by Stanley Kubrick for the year 2001, but fully functional, commercial products. Although their minimal requirements in terms of machine power, network bandwidth, etc. are somewhat high, they are being successfully put to work in many places around the country even today. In fact, the first tool in my lineup - Placeware Auditorium - was licensed by my own alma mater, the University of Michigan's School of Information, several months ago and used to accommodate a small group of commuting students, who, twice a week, attended lectures without leaving their homes or places of employment.
    The first thing that impressed me about Placeware Auditorium was how cleverly it used the metaphor of a real-life lecture hall to produce interface that, however busy, felt inviting and intuitive. This interface consists of a large Java applet that appears inside of one's browser window upon entering the auditorium's URL (Screen Shot 6). The little picture of the auditorium, with its podium and rows of seats, is not merely an ornament, but one of several interactive components of the applet. When joining the audience of a live event, one is given the opportunity to enter his name or remain anonymous (e.g. as Guest X) and obtains a "seat", usually next to other people in a row that's not yet full; a colored dot will indicate the seat's location. All those seated in a particular row will see the list of names of other people in this row (Screen Shot 6), and will be able to communicate with them - via voice or typed messages - before, during, and after the event.
    Placeware Auditorium is audio-enabled and supports two-way voice communication for both the presenter and the audience. However, 3 conditions must be met before taking full advantage of this wonderful capability:

  1. the machines of people sending and receiving audio must be equipped with sound cards, speakers, and microphones. (This hardware is typically included in all new computer systems nowadays.)
  2. users with sound hardware need to download and install free, plugin-style audio client to do the processing of sound
  3. the Internet connection of the participants should be fast and reliable enough to handle voice transfer without interruptions. Connections via a Local Area Network (LAN) will usually provide the best quality audio. On dialup connections (modems) one should have at least 33.6 kbps capacity, but even the considerably  faster 56 K modems tend to produce short breaks in the audio, especially under heavy traffic on the Net. As the availability of broadband technologies (cable, ADSL, satellite) increases, this will likely cease to be a problem.

    The program's interface for the lecturer is almost identical with that for the audience members, with just a few extra controls for advancing slides, broadcasting, etc. Broadcasting means that the voice of the presenter is delivered to all the audience members, regardless of where they "sit". In comparison, audience members can converse only with people in their rows -  whether as a group, or by selecting a particular person and entering a "private room" (Screen Shot 7) - except when, after getting the attention of the lecturer by rising a virtual hand, they are given the floor and can speak to the entire audience (Screen Shot 8).
    As any lecturer knows, a presentation is much more effective when illustrated with slides projected for the audience, and no lecture hall today can function without some sort of display capabilities. That also holds for virtual auditoria, so a large portion of the Placeware's applet is taken by a display area for GIF images that change as the lecture progresses. These images are simply slides created in the popular PowerPoint (a presentation building software from Microsoft), and converted - with a single click - to images that fit in the designated area on the applet. The fact that the images are heavily scaled down in comparison to their originals means that not everything that can be displayed effectively in the PowerPoint slide show will transfer to Placeware: small fonts, large amounts of text, highly detailed illustrations are out of the game, but this is a relatively small price to pay for the ease with which these materials can be produced. And, as if to compensate for these shortcomings, Placeware provides three valuable enhancement to the slides:

  1. the presenter can underline or circle elements on any slide (in real time) simply by holding his mouse's button down while dragging
  2. blank slides can be added for ad-hoc notes, comments, and questions from the presenter
  3. slides with radio buttons push the level of interactivity significantly higher by allowing audience members to vote or answer questions (Screen Shot 9).

    The software's target market are corporations trying to save on expensive trip to business meetings, and the advertisements rarely mention educational institutions as possible implementers of this technology. This may be due to several factors, such as the often outdated hardware in service at many schools, the lack of adequate Internet connectivity, and the steep price of the product. (The licensing fee for the server is set at around $500 for every concurrent user.) However, the first two obstacles are bound to be removed or reduced in the near future, and as far as the cost is concerned, two mitigating factors make it a little easier to accept:

  1. educational institutions are entitled to 50 percent discount
  2. since the license fee pertains to the number of users accessing the server at a particular time, effective scheduling can make the initial expenditure go a long way. One can easily imagine an entire school district providing it as a service to its schools, with online lectures scheduled for every hour of the day, as long as the size of the audience attending (virtually) any lecture does not exceed the number specified in the license.

    Placeware Auditorium has, not surprisingly, very few competitors, but at least one that's very direct and viable: netPodium. It is, again, a server-based product that relies on Internet protocols and requires a Java-enabled browser as its primary client. Its interface does not invoke familiar metaphors but simply divides the browser's window into several frames (Screen Shot 10): one reserved for the slides, a chat area, a voting/polling area, and controls for the audio. This Spartan simplicity makes it, arguably, less attractive, but flattens the learning curve for the users, and gives the slides significantly more "screen estate", allowing for more text and smaller details.
    Unlike Placeware, netPodium does not have a built-in audio capability, but requires the use of a third-party streaming audio solution, such as RealAudio or NetShow. The biggest advantage of such a setup is that these solutions - RealAudio in particular - have appeared on the market quite a while ago, and been thoroughly tested and improved since then. They are most likely to produce the best quality of Internet audio. And they can be used for delivery of multimedia independent of netPodium. The disadvantages, however, are significant and include the fact that adding these third-party servers is likely to increase hardware and software costs, as well as make the setup and use much more complicated. Not to mention that such servers deliver one-way audio only, thus precluding voice communication from and within the audience.
    The one area where netPodium really runs in front of Placeware Auditorium is that it allows the display of any HTML file, including live Web pages and files that haven't been listed in the roster of slides prepared for the presentation. Interestingly, as of this writing, Placeware Corp. is preparing the release of the new incarnation of its flagship product, with this very ability added to, and the built-in audio removed from its list of features.
    If the last two products are the Himalayas in the land of web-based distance education, The Learning Server is their Mt. Everest. Actually, this may not be such a good metaphor, as it evokes something that is hard to reach, inhospitable, reserved for the toughest climbers and the best equipment, while the environment produced by the Learning Server emanates simplicity, easy navigation, and fairly low entry requirements. Perhaps a better way of visualizing the difference would be to counter impose a lecture hall with a school building. Indeed, the Learning Server creates a virtual school (or university department, or small college), complete with admission, registration, course schedules, real-time online classes and self study materials. And yet, despite this underlying complexity, it presents an interface that is cleaner and friendlier that one could expect (Screen Shot 11), although it would probably be more accurate to speak of multiple interfaces, as the server presents somewhat different face to different users, depending on their role within the system. A Registrar will thus have one set of responsibilities and access to a specific set of tools, significantly different from those available to an Instructor, or a Student.

  • Registrars may: create accounts for Instructors and Students; register Students for courses. (Screen Shot 12)
  • Instructors may: create, modify, and delete courses and classes; teach online classes in real-time; upload self-study materials and assignments for a class, access course catalog. (Screen Shot 13)
  • Students may: attend classes; register for courses; download course materials. (Screen Shot 14)

    The virtual auditorium, which, in the case of netPodium or Placeware constitutes the entire product, here is only a part of the whole, albeit perhaps the most important part. But, amazingly, it is still more flexible and allows for higher level of interactivity than the other two. To begin with, one is offered several tools for real-time lectures and interaction: Standard Whiteboard (Java applet that appears in the browser and may be "floated" for placing anywhere on the screen -- Screen Shot 15), Microsoft NetMeeting (free and powerful conferencing application in its own right), AppShare (application-sharing utility), or FarSite (stand-alone conferencing application by DataBeam, the company behind the Learning server). Depending on the tool used, the list of available features may include:

  1. display of various documents converted (prior to the presentation) into a single "workbook"
  2. textual chat
  3. whiteboard (area for collaborative drawing and writing in real-time)
  4. ability to pass control to a user
  5. quizzes
  6. application sharing (collaborative use of an application, e.g. MS Excel, regardless of its presence or lack thereof on users' machines)

    This pretty picture is not without blemishes, however - of which the most annoying is the lack of built-in Internet audio capability. As of this writing, the only feasible way of voice communication during an online class session is to connect all participants (with the help of a phone company operator) via a teleconferencing bridge. While this may make perfect economic and technological sense in the corporate world, one could hardly expect a distance education student to use two telephone lines (one for data and the other for voice) at his point of access or to pay long distance and other service charges for a teleconferencing bridge. Using NetMeeting's voice and video capabilities is not a viable solution, since these are suitable primarily for one-on-one connections and deteriorate rapidly when more participants are trying to share the link. Good news is that the company appears to be working on integrating audio with the Learning Server and, according to its sales force, expects to come up with a solution within weeks, if not days from today. The other blemish stems from the software's reliance on Java applets, which can be painfully slow to launch. This is, of course, a larger problem that has more to do with the Java language itself than with its specific implementation. And, to be fair, Learning Server's applets are actually some of the leaner and faster ones. Nonetheless, when coupled with the Net's sometimes sluggish pace, it can be quite aggravating and therefore I thought it worth this small complaint.
 

Schools for Rent

    This may well be called the ultimate in virtuality: online schools of this kind not only have no walls, chalkboards, or lockers, but they also don't have the hardware and software that's being used to create their online presence! On the wave of hype and genuine interest surrounding the rise of the Intranets (i.e. internal networks built around Internet standards and with Internet tools), several visionary enterprises - including Netscape, Lotus, and Changepoint - began offering so called "instant intranets", which charged per user rental fees for workgroup space and applications available on hosts owned by these companies. With a standard browser as the primary gateway to these services, a group of people could quickly establish a virtual office that would support document exchange, scheduling, discussions, and more, without worrying even a bit about installing, running, and maintaining the underlying technology. It was only a matter of time before somebody would think of delivering similar services to the educational community.
    RealEducation is one of the first, and, perhaps, the only vendor so far that promises to "design, build, and manage complete online university campuses and continuing education centers, including: an online catalog, bursar's office, library, career center, student union, and bookstore, [where] students can also register, process financial aid, and receive academic advising". All in sixty days, on the company's own servers, with a set of software tools called the REAL System. Colleges and universities - RealEducation's primary market - willing to setup online courses need only to provide teachers, instructional material, and, obviously, students. Oh, and pay the fairly steep price of $120 per student (or $3,000 per course).
    The learning environment created by the REAL System, with its multi-layered complexity and low technological  demands placed on the client, is a cross between the Learning Server and the AltaVista Forums, although without the real-time collaboration features of the former. It also relies on standard HTML, frames, forms, and CGI scripts rather than Java to deliver a rich set of features accessible to standard browsers (not necessarily the 4.x generation): threaded discussions, tests and quizzes, notebook, grade book, course add/drop, and account monitoring. It supports streaming media (in the RealAudio and RealVideo format), thus making it possible to include spoken word and instructional video clips in the course materials. Finally, it distinguishes between the access levels and tools available to Students, Course Managers, and Administrators, whose roles correspond to great extent with those established for Students, Instructors, and Registrars by the Learning Server.
 

Conclusion

     The appearance of multimedia-loaded, highly interactive educational software on CD-ROM stirred a debate on the future role of the teacher, in which one particular question (even when left unspoken) seemed to occupy the center stage: "Do teachers have a future at all?'. Indeed, the shiny disks appeared to perform the most important tasks of a teacher (delivering instructions, monitoring progress, providing feedback, grading) efficiently, cheaply, and objectively. Aficionados of this new technology predicted a rapid slide of the traditional classroom into obsolescence, and advocated a learning environment in which every student would work one-on-one with a computer, exposed to the highest quality material, completing exercises when ready, learning at a pace closely reflecting his abilities, being graded without the slightest bias.
    These hopes (or fears, depending on which side one chose to support) were proven premature and the predictions soon started to look like a cheap science fiction. Problems with this vision were several and I am sure there is enough literature describing why it had to fail. Well, even if there weren't anything written on the subject, it is clearly beyond the scope of this article to delve any deeper into issues such as peer-to-peer learning, individualization, significance of a social environment, etc., which weighted heavily against the CD-ROM-ization of schooling.
    My reason for evoking these dreams is to illustrate the profound difference between the learning environment promoted by CD-ROM and the one created with Web-based tools, as those described above. The latter does not isolate the student within the invisible walls of a one-person virtual classroom but builds a social space that promotes, even forces, interaction with other students, teamwork, consensus building, give-and-take. Moreover, instead of making the teacher irrelevant, it places him in the very center of this environment. Indeed, tools like Placeware Auditorium or the Learning Server will not function without a teacher. Janitors are a different story... ;-)
     It is one of the most exciting aspects of the networked computer in general and the Internet in particular: it does bring everybody so much closer. It does not dismantle communities, but gives them new means of communicating internally and for reaching outwards. It expands our world while making the world smaller for every one. Unlike only a few years ago, technology no longer forces us to change our ways and adapt ourselves to the way it operates, but it tries to mimic our - familiar and proven - modes of interaction, learning, doing business, conversation, and so on. Virtual auditoria strive to look and feel like real ones, and so do virtual campuses. I see it as a growing trend and not merely a fad with a life of a dragonfly; that's why I'm so eager to promote this technology. I don't need a crystal ball to see its growing presence in our future. The signs?  It is getting cheaper every day; it's on the verge of becoming as ubiquitous as radio or telephone; it's constantly evolving and trying to better itself; its positive impacts greatly outnumber the negative ones. And although some of the tools I've described in this article are too much on the "cutting edge" to become widely accepted today, market push and government initiatives will make them, and the likes of them, the Model Ts of tomorrow. I for one, can hardly wait.

Ann Arbor, May 13, 1998. Copyright: Vlad Wielbut

Note: for information on other Web-based tools for distance education, collaboration, and community building, please visit the Groupwork Solutions page on the Alliance for Community Technology Web site.