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Design and Development of a Hybrid Instruction Model for a New Teaching Paradigm Oge Marques1 , Jeffrey Woodbury2 , Sam Hsu1 , and Stéphane Charitos2 1 Department of Computer Science and Engineering 2 Department of Languages and Linguistics Florida Atlantic University 777 Glades Road Boca Raton, FL – 33431-0991 Abstract In recent years, many universities have sought to develop distance learning courses and programs that are delivered through the Web. The promising results achieved by many of these projects lead to a question: How can we integrate the best features of Web-based learning into a conventional classroom-based model of instruction? To answer this question, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Department of Languages and Linguistics at Florida Atlantic University are jointly working on a pilot project that integrates conventional classroom teaching and Web-based distance learning technologies to form a hybrid instruction model for a teaching paradigm that can be easily applied toward learner-centered education. This paper explains the motivation for this project and describes its main technical aspects. A number of the pedagogical and practical issues related to the proposed model are reviewed and the results obtained in its first trial are discussed. Conclusions drawn from a student exit survey and from classroom experience are presented at the end of the article with recommendations for future implementations of a hybrid instructional model.

Background / Motivation This project was prompted by the needs of the Department of Languages and Linguistics at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). This department has been using computers and multimedia to support the teaching of foreign language and culture for the last two years. Several of its professors possess a high degree of computer literacy and are willing to explore new ways in which technology can be applied to improve the effectiveness of their instruction. The department is also responsible for maintaining the Foreign Language Media Center (FLMC), a multimedia computer laboratory consisting of 50+ networked Macintosh computers, VCRs, laserdisc players, laser printers, scanners, and a wide assortment of multimedia educational titles for foreign language learning and educational multimedia development.

The idea of implementing a Web-based version of one of the department's courses arose as a natural extension of the work developed so far in educational technology combined with evolving pedagogical goals. The curriculum for all foreign language majors at FAU requires a course on Research and Bibliographic Methods (FOL 3880). It was originally intended as an introduction to researching, structuring, writing, and editing a research essay for foreign literature, culture and linguistics courses. Its usual course materials consist of two style and writing manuals: Joseph Gilbaldi’s MLA Handbook for Writing Research Papers (4th ed.) and James Lester’s Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide (8th ed.). A crucial aspect of the course was to introduce students to the traditional and electronic reference materials housed in the university’s library as well as how to access them. A number of factors led us to redesign the course so as to incorporate Web-based materials: 1. The department of Languages & Linguistics had just opened its Foreign Language Media Center (Spring 1997). 2. The necessary databases for research in the Humanities were becoming more complete as well as more easily accessible electronically via the Web. 3. Professors were, and are, demanding that their students acquire “computer literacy” as an important basic skill for all their courses in the college of Arts & Humanities. 4. The Department of Languages and Linguistics wanted to investigate the viability and effectiveness of incorporating Web-based course materials into its curriculum in order to serve better the needs of a largely non-traditional student population (i.e. commuter population). 5. There was accrued interest on the part of professors in Computer Science and Languages & Linguistics to work on collaborative projects that would take advantage of technological advances in the delivery of course materials and combine these advances with the course’s revised pedagogical objectives. 6. There was, and continues to be, an overall desire in the Department of Languages & Linguistics to incorporate more electronic materials in all of its course offerings.

These final two aspects were brought together in order to offer the most efficient and effective way of combining the traditional and electronic classroom. FOL 3880 was chosen as a “pilot class” for the introduction of electronic materials because of its optimal adaptability to the technologies currently available, and because it is largely a “text centered” course that depends heavily on the use of library resources. Thus, we could investigate, in an incremental fashion, a variety of technologies for delivering course materials. Moreover, a decision was reached to first explore solutions for presenting information, assignments, and research resources in the form of text and explore audio-video media at a later date. The redesigned FOL 3880 course was to be the first class in the College of Arts & Humanities to offer a significant portion of its materials and assignments through the Internet. The project was discussed and developed in order to explore the possibilities presented by the Internet and electronic materials as well as to provide a working model for other faculty in the College of Arts & Humanities. We did so that we might share our experience and future attempts at integrating technology into the classroom. Since more and more information sources are being transcribed into digital format, it became clear that this type of course was perfectly suited to the task. It allowed us to experiment with contents and procedures common to any other course, but its distinctive feature is that it easily integrates the tools needed for accomplishing course objectives with an electronic version of course materials and assignments within the same environment. The environment, in this case, includes the traditional classroom as well as a computer connected to the Internet and basic software tools such as Web browser and e-mail software.

Overall description of the project Realization of the new model has been implemented as a two-phase project. In the first phase (October through December 1997), the basic framework (Web pages, CGI scripts, mailing lists, and tools) for the selected course was conceived, designed and implemented. Each and every aspect of the course was discussed thoroughly, so that the implemented framework could reflect the real needs of the instructor and especially those of the students [1]. In the second phase (January through April 1998), the course was taught using both conventional as well as electronic resources. This allowed the model to be tested and evaluated by the instructor and students. The technical framework basically consists of a set of HTML pages, CGI scripts, tools, and procedures that might be eventually updated, improved and supplemented by

additional materials 1 . The first phase of the project comprised: 1. The development of the course Website, consisting of more than ten HTML pages, including: • A login page for attendance control purposes. • A welcome page. • The course syllabus, with links to the actual course material corresponding to each week. • Announcements (news). • Assignment proposal, for both conventional and online assignments. • Online exercises. • Help and FAQs. • A contact list with the e-mail addresses of the instructor and of all students. • An e-mail form, to allow students to send messages without having to leave the browser. • Useful links for the course. • The course site credits. These pages were organized in a tree structure to make it easier to navigate and maintain their links and relationships. They are based on a fixed template for visual consistency. 2. The setup of a mailing list for the course, whose subscribers are the instructor and all the registered students. 3. The setup of individual e-mail accounts for all the students. 4. The implementation of the concept of "virtual office hours," in which the instructor is available to answer to questions by e-mail with minimum delay. 5. The setting up of a Web server, mail server, CGI server and associated software. 6. The preparation of a "student package" containing all the necessary software to access the course contents and resources from a remote PC (e.g. at home). 7. Provision for automatic control of student attendance to the Web pages. 8. Assignments, exercises and quizzes proposal online (Web-based). 9. Electronic submission of assignments and exercises (using e-mail and CGI scripts). It was assumed from the beginning that the pages should be simple, elegant and functional. Therefore they were not to include any additional features that would require more than a standard browser. For this reason, it was decided that multimedia contents, PDF files, Java applets and any other feature that could require additional plugins or could be software- or version-specific should be brought into the project only if there was a strong pedagogical reason for doing so. In general, our intent was to keep the use of 1

The preliminary version is available at http://www.cse.fau.edu/~omarques/fol3880. The final version can be found at http://www.flmc.fau.edu/fol3880.

Internet tools (not only the Website) as simple and effective as possible and thus provide an environment that every student could easily adapt to [2]. Even after having decided on these restrictions, we had to face a number of technical challenges, such as: • Devising a login process that should allow the instructor to keep track of the students' attendance to the Website as well as prevent unauthorized access to the contents of the site. This objective was only partially accomplished by leaving the site "unprotected" and writing a login CGI script accessible through an optional login screen. • Moving the site from a UNIX-based machine to a Mac-based server. Although the HTML pages did not pose any problem, the CGI programs, originally written in C and compiled under UNIX, had to be partially rewritten and recompiled on the Mac. • Lacking a graphics/art specialist in the design team, we were faced with time consuming design issues such as image creation/editing, color usage, and visual appeal.

The proposed hybrid model: pedagogical & practical issues In the proposed hybrid model, a course is taught using primarily live lectures and conventional resources (classroom, textbooks, physical library, and pen-and-paper assignments). In addition, Internet-based tools are used to deliver courseware, submit homework assignments, render help, communicate with the instructor, search for information, etc. By combining these two approaches we endeavored to provide a balanced combination of the best of both worlds. On one hand, we kept the advantageous characteristics of live lectures, such as interaction, spontaneous immediate feedback, synchronous, real-time, live communication between instructor and students, and among students themselves. On the other hand, we made use of well-known positive features of Web-based distance learning from the students' viewpoint, such as geographical independence, the ability of learning at their own pace, and the freedom to further explore a subject on their own. As a result of our discussions concerning the electronic and traditional classrooms, it was clear that we sought to implement a “hybrid model” of instruction that would not transport us immediately into the realm of pure distance learning, nor constrain us to the boundaries of the traditional "professor centered" classroom. A simple and primary goal was to have students become much more aware of the great variety of Internet resources at their disposal and thus have them acquire a different view of sources that would go beyond solely considering books and journals located in the university’s library. We wanted to design a course that integrated new electronic media, but at the same time we also wanted to involve students more directly in the class by

having them use different resources that encouraged learning skills as well as retrieving, ordering and analyzing information. In prior semesters, students had indicated, through instructor evaluation, that the course should be more engaging and that they would like to spend less time on the tedious details of writing a research paper, such as proper punctuation, block quotes, cross indexing or citing from primary sources. While the course, in its current hybrid format, does insist that students pay meticulous attention to form and content, we believe that it communicates this requirement much more effectively by presenting it through a variety of media. Moreover, we wanted to allow students to contact the professor and other students in ways that would supplement the face-to-face contact they have in class and during office hours. We wanted students to be able to ask questions while they were actually working on an assignment. Thus we provided each student with an e-mail account and made it possible to check messages at any computer with an Internet connection, e-mail software and a Web browser. By offering students the tools and resources to complete their assignments in many different ways and locations, we hoped to make students more independent as learners, expecting them to develop the skills they would need to conduct independent research. One main goal was to encourage independence by decentralizing the course. In other words, we aspired to a model that would de-emphasize the role of the instructor as guardian of knowledge to that of a guide or facilitator in the student’s attempt to learn by doing. In this “learning centered” model, students would become aware of the developmental aspect of writing, that it is a process accomplished over the period of a semester. Nevertheless we deemed it vital that the professor and the students see each other as a group on a regular basis. The communication and understanding that are achieved in classroom discussions could not be equally obtained through the resources we had at our disposal. In fact, we had little reason to believe that reducing class hours would achieve the course goals more effectively.

The pilot project: lessons learned and open questions The first part of the project was a very fruitful experience where the four co-authors of this article met and discussed in detail the different aspects of the class and how to achieve the goals we had set. This portion of the project demonstrated to all of us the benefits derived from collaborating with faculty from other disciplines. Indeed the project would have advanced at a much slower pace without this collaborative aspect. We look forward to continuing such multidisciplinary enterprises. Student interest in using computers and the Internet was mixed until they discovered that they could do a good

portion of their bibliographic searches at home or from any computer that had an Internet connection and a browser. Students were enthused that they could send documents as email attachments and thus avoid physically coming to school. Assignments could be distributed in class, via the course Website or via e-mail; they could also be returned to the professor in a traditional manner or electronically. One upshot of this flexibility was that it allowed students to turn in assignments as soon as they had finished them, resulting in many assignments being turned in before the official classroom deadline. Assignments where students had to search the Web for specific bibliographic information required them to be more resourceful than in the past. Traditionally, students would only look for bibliographic information in the University’s library. When they were unable to locate texts they would, more often than not, turn to the reference librarians for assistance. In the new format, students were challenged to show greater resourcefulness and come up with a variety of strategies for overcoming these and other obstacles. For example, they consulted other students, contacted the professor via e-mail for assistance, inquired at the Foreign Languages Media Center for tips on using Web search engines, etc. There were a number of technical stumbling blocks that somewhat hindered the project. One such obstacle was the relatively long startup time encountered. This was due to the fact that students had to be not only introduced to the bibliographic resources that they would use, but also introduced to basic computer skills. For example, differences in software applications had to be explained and students had to acquire an initial basic understanding of how to search the Internet. The use of e-mail was not as successful as hoped: students who had e-mail prior to the class used it; those who had no experience in using e-mail rarely made use of it. Moreover, students had to be reminded, in class, to check their e-mail for assignments, updates and answers to their queries. The Website itself posed certain problems. Although students indicated that the site was easy to access and to use, they did not regularly login to the Website and therefore the login data was inconclusive. We assume that students used the Website less and less because they felt that checking the Website was not useful if it didn’t contain new or required materials. The professor was able to update pages and fine tune them, however it became clear that no new exercises could be created for the Website in direct response to the students’ requests or needs. Designing, writing, and posting new exercises on the Website along with updating the whole site was far too time consuming to be done accurately and effectively while the course was underway. Thus the independent nature of the project, i.e., no extraordinary institutional support for development or technological assistance, created a lack of flexibility due to the various tasks required of the professor. In general, the course needs a great amount of attention, far beyond the standard contact

hours that are required of a professor. The maintenance and updating of the Website, e-mail consultations as well as the instruction of software applications and other electronic resources make large time demands on an instructor. The exit survey clearly indicated that students are aware of the Internet in general, but that they do not have much knowledge concerning other resources (FTP, Gopher, Archie, other libraries’ on-line databases, and on-line text repositories)2 . Time must be made, not simply to mention these resources, but to demonstrate their usefulness for the students. Being housed in a traditional classroom (not connected to the Internet or not able to support the use of a computer and a projection system in class) also posed unnecessary problems when trying to answer specific question that arose from students’ unfamiliarity with word processing software and the Internet. It was clear that detailed answers to formatting or technological questions left some students completely out of the discussion, that is to say, those who were less familiar with computers and software in general. In many instances, the professor had to defer answering because a verbal description would not have been practical or reliable. In essence, words needed to be supplemented with hands-on experience. Nevertheless, the overall results of the exit survey in a population of 15 students indicate that the approach was successful and should be extended to other instructors and courses. Examples of these answers were: • 46.7% of the students considered themselves (very) interested in computers before the course; this percentage grew to 73.3% after the course. • Even though 86.7% of the students had used the Internet before the beginning of the course, only 20% had used it for bibliographic searches. • 66.7% of the students considered e-mail a useful tool for school contacts and studies. • All the students indicated that in the future the course should offer more (or at least the same amount of) Internet and computer technology. • No student considered the Website for FOL 3880 difficult to use. • 80% of the students rated the organization of the FOL 3880 Website good or very good, but only 33.3% rated it (very) useful for the course. At the end of the pilot project a number of questions remain to be answered. • One has to ask to what extent will the success of this hybrid of approach depend on the average level of computer literacy of the instructor and other professors involved?

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The exit survey showed that less than 30% of the students have ever used any Internet resource other than Web or email.

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Some students used e-mail to communicate with the instructor. Will the number of e-mails sent to the instructor decrease if they use Web conferencing or discussion lists? Would that save instructor's time and be beneficial to other classmates? Will the new ease with which students can access information continue to motivate them to do more exhaustive or detailed research?

Further work Some of the aspect of the course we would like to further develop or implement in the future include: • Developing more on-line exercises. • Incorporating a discussion list that would be a required writing component for the course. • Designing online surveys that would be administered at the beginning and the end of the semester. • Devising a more effective method of tracking the surveys after the course passes to another instructor. • Creating a more flexible or modular Website, i.e., make it easily reconfigurable so as to correspond to the different needs of professors who offer the course in the future. • Examining other applications or media that would enrich the students’ learning experience (i.e.: software for collaborative writing and editing, software for building bibliographic databases; Java, Shockwave, or Hypercard exercises; audio and/or video materials; PDF files for online and printable format models, FAQs, or Help files). • Increasing the breadth and detail of FAQ and help files.

Conclusions and recommendations The initial experience and feedback concerning our project augur well. We are encouraged by the positive response on the part of both students and faculty. The mixture of electronic and traditional classrooms is well suited to the progressive development and implementation of a learning centered model of instruction. The independent nature of the project allowed for a great amount of flexibility and for open channels of discussion and collaborative work during the planning stages, but hampered flexibility while the class was offered. The proposed “hybrid model” of instruction worked well in the context of courses with a strong dependence on text-based resources, whether they be traditional, electronic, or on-line. As a pilot course, FOL 3880 presents a promising model that will serve as a springboard for integration of electronic or Web-based materials in course offerings in the Department of Languages and Linguistics as well as in the

College of Arts and Humanities. The benefit to faculty was substantial, because of the pedagogical and technological insights gained and exchanged through collaborative work. We would recommend this type of approach to similar departments and institutions that seek to integrate electronic resources into the classroom. Students sometimes may need to be prodded to use these new materials, but once they are familiar with them, they quickly recognize the broad usefulness of these skills they acquire. Instructors who will teach the class need their own period of acclimation and training in order to be able to teach the wide variety of information and skills that FOL 3880 now offers. This training could be accomplished by having instructors who might be unfamiliar with computers and the Internet audit the course during the semester prior to teaching it. They also need time to establish a working rapport with the support staff in order to have all the different aspects of the course mesh. Just as many students learn that collaborative projects are not only desirable, but necessary to their learning experience, we believe that instructors will have to reassess the traditional image of the teacher as the sole person responsible for gathering, organizing and presenting information to a group of students. The material requirements for this type of course can be quite modest and in some ways are only restricted by one’s energy level and imagination. However, we cannot overstress the need for multiple layers of support in order to accomplish the desired pedagogical goals in a timely and effective manner. Collaborative work already provides a crucial aspect of this support, but institutional support in the form of technical assistance during the course’s design and implementation phase is equally important. Adequate leadtime (at least one year) or release time for participants who are initiating the project would allow for closer and more tailored delivery and follow-up of the course. Moreover, it is clear that many professors are hesitant to become involved in such projects, precisely because there is little institutional support or recognition for projects that appear to administrators as tangentially related to faculty assignments.

Acknowledgements This work was partially supported by CAPES (Brasília – Brazil).

References 1) Kilby, T., Rules for Good WBT http://www.filename.com/wbt/pages/rules.htm

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2) Price, Robert V., "A Model for the On-Line CollegeLevel Guided Study Course", Techtrends, November/December 1996, 39-43.