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Universal Access to ECE Undergraduate Information via the Web Bruce C. Wheeler Associate Head for Undergraduate Affairs Electrical and Computer Engineering Department University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Abstract: The World Wide Web is being used as the gateway to all academic information appropriate to 1500 undergraduates in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Our goal is to change the behavior of students so that they will look to department home page first in search of answers to any question related to classes, curricula, and extracurricular activities. Advising materials include explanations of all curricular requirements, links to course catalog and timetable information, on-line lookup of advisor name and homepage, and links to professional societies. We are actively pursuing a departmental goal that students be able to access home pages for all their ECE courses in order to obtain materials such as instructor names and office hours, class assignments, course notes, and old exams. Bulletin boards are integrated into the home pages to encourage interaction among students and instructors. We are pioneering the use of asynchronous learning technology for computer grading of homework exercises and access to teaching assistants around the clock. Our undergraduate organizations (e.g. IEEE and HKN) promote their many valuable services over the web, including publishing of surveys of courses and undergraduate research opportunities. We plan to developing data bases to permit targeted emailing based on class, course, and other demographic characteristics, as well as the integration into the home page of the capability of targeted list serving for students interested in topics such as job announcements and graduate opportunities. Finally, we are beginning to use our web pages as a means of advertising our curriculum to transfer and high school students.
Introduction The Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign (UIUC) has 1500 undergraduate and 500 graduate students. At the undergraduate level separate degrees are offered in Electrical Engineering (EE) and in Computer Engineering (CompE). Not only do all faculty
participate in undergraduate instruction, but also all faculty act as undergraduate advisors during each enrollment period. We are finding that the World Wide Web (WWW) offers tremendous advantages in advising and communicating with our students and have embarked upon a program to change the behavior of our students such that, when faced with any question regarding courses or advising, they will first attempt to find the answers using the ECE WWW Home Page. We are of the impression that this strategy is working and that it is contributing to a much better informed student body at reduced time cost to the faculty. The primary efforts have been three-fold: provide accurate, comprehensive, yet easily navigated advising and curricular information; encourage all faculty to establish home pages for their courses; and to provide assistance in the creation, maintenance, and linking of any other useful information for students. It is now true that our WWW materials are more complete, more accurate, and more up-to-date than our traditional paper Undergraduate Advising Manual, which was reprinted yearly or biyearly. In fact, we are now generating our paper copies of advising information by printing web pages. This paper describes our efforts to provide the best information possible to our students.
Advising Materials Curricula Descriptions In keeping with good WWW practices, all of our descriptions are short and focused so that they are downloaded quickly, can be easily scanned with a computer monitor, and have appropriate links to related materials. The descriptions of the EE and CompE curricula available on the WWW include the following subtopics: • Introduction • Overview of Requirements • Suggested Course Sequence • ECE Electives • ECE Laboratories • Technical Elective Rules • List of Approved Technical Electives • Graduation Check Sheets for EE and CompE
• Student Planning Data Sheet The introduction and overview sections have been written so as to comply with articulation requirements of the Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), as well as to provide an introduction to prospective students, their parents, and guidance counselors. . We describe the intellectual content in the ECE curricula as well as the methods of instruction. The overview includes the rationale for the basic science and mathematics courses, the ECE core courses, and the technical, humanities and free electives. Complete lists of elective courses are maintained, along with explanations of all restrictions on credit. We highlight our four hour freshman ECE course which introduces students to the electrical and computer engineering disciplines and which includes a substantial design experience. Programs of Study Since the fields of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering are very broad, we grant considerable elective course freedom which not only permits but requires each student to plan her or his own schedule during the last three semesters. To assist in those course selections, we have Web information available on the following topics: • Programs of Study in Electrical Engineering • A General Program in Electrical Engineering • Bioengineering and Acoustics • Circuits • Communication Systems • Control Systems • Electromagnetics • Physical Electronics • Power and Energy Systems • Signal Processing • Space Science and Remote Sensing • Programs of Study in Computer Engineering • Artificial Intelligence and Robotics • Computer Systems • Computational Theory • Electronic Circuits • Engineering Applications • Software • Systems and Computation The pages include brief descriptions of the subspecialties along with suggestions regarding the most relevant elective courses. Rules and Regulations One of the most time-consuming activities for both students and their advisors is interpreting the complex set of requirements which have arisen in order to give
students technical elective freedom while maintaining intellectual depth and breadth. Similar complexity has arisen with the overlaying of university wide general education requirements similar but not identical to the ABET inspired requirements for social sciences and humanities. With the WWW we maintain comprehensive lists of appropriate courses with extensive crossindexing. Concise definitions of rules and timely examples are given answering students’ and advisors’ most frequently asked questions. We have succeeded in changing the behavior of many advisors to throwing away their paper manuals and relying solely on the Web materials. The Undergraduate Check Sheet is a complete listing of all required courses and electives which can be used easily to summarize a student’s progress. We are investigating possibilities for on-line student access to the computer graduation check sheet program available to advisors. Since our students register for courses online and asynchronously, we use the Student Planning Data Sheet as a means of assuring that students have seen an advisor and that they are planning for future courses. If it is not returned signed, an advising hold is placed which prevents on-line registration. Since advising assignments change with new students, graduating students, sabbaticals and other assignments, it is necessary each semester to communicate to students the name of her or his advisor. Students may do this using the on-line advisor look-up table. We are beginning to implement a Web based scheduler for advising appointments. Miscellaneous advising information includes access to a calendar of important dates, such as the last day to drop courses, late-breaking advising announcements, and a number of forms for routine schedule modifications.
Course Information University Catalog and Timetable Information Under the topic of courses, the ECE Home Page links to four parallel descriptions of each ECE course. First is the university catalog listing, usually consisting of a several sentence description with hours of credit and prerequisites. Second is the university timetable listing for each semester, which includes section times, instructor names (when known), the rooms, and links to maps identifying not only the building but also the room within the building where the course is to taught. ECE Department Course Descriptions The ECE Department maintains the third, expanded description of each course. This description includes a one-page syllabus identifying the major topics covered.
The listing of prerequisites is given by topic so that students can interpret whether or not they have the necessary background in cases where non-standard prerequisite study may have been taken. Further, the method of instruction, design content, laboratory content, and computer usage are all described, partially in meeting the spirit of ABET articulation requirements. The fourth description is the publication of the results of a survey of all ECE courses, administered by students in the ECE honorary society Eta Kappa Nu (HKN), which gives information regarding the difficulty, organization, and usefulness of each course. These surveys play a very important role in communicating both to faculty and to students basic information regarding how courses are perceived by students. They are invaluable in letting students gauge how much work is really involved in certain notoriously time-consuming courses so that they can adjust their schedules accordingly.
Course Home Pages The ECE Department has made a major effort to put courses on the Web. Whereas approximately 15 of our 92 courses had Web pages in January 1996, there are 35 as of this writing, with more to come in the summer and the fall. All are linked in one place for easy access. While many faculty would have put their courses on the Web without prompting, support from the university Vice President’s office allowed the department to offer support any faculty member by hiring an undergraduate Web programmer for up to 10 hours per week. Additionally, a graduate assistant was hired to help create template course home pages and to assist faculty and students. The assistant was so successful that he has been hired by the UIUC to do the same for any UIUC course. While no restrictions have been placed on the style or content of the pages, there appear to be recognizable stages of sophistication which are categorized here. Beginning Users Virtually all instructors use their home page to list instructor names, class meeting times, office hours, homework assignments and syllabus. Most instructors also post announcements at least on an irregular basis. Many post homework solutions, exam solutions, and summary information on exam performance. Intermediate Users Many instructors (perhaps half) make greater use of facilities over the Web. Most common is the use of bulletin board facilities, either via Network News or a
programs such as WWWBoard. Support for threaded postings is preferred whenever there is much activity. We have many students who have become accustomed to highly interactive conferencing activities in their sophomore year who provide considerable push for greater interaction via whatever bulletin board or conferencing capability is supported by each course. A number of instructors have complete sets of lecture notes, or other notes, available on the Web. Some of these are on-line hypertext documents which can be directly viewed. Many are downloadable Adobe Acrobat or postscript files, which can be produced relatively easily yet preserve formatting, especially of subscripts and superscripts in equations. A few faculty provide Power Point slides or word processor files. The availability of lecture notes over the Web has become so widespread that the College of Engineering computer laboratories to restrict their printing! Many instructors also provide links to professional and scientific organizations elsewhere on the Web. Students appreciate these links, especially when they can learn about career opportunities. Advanced Users Several faculty are in the category of advanced Web users. Among them are Prof. Donna Brown, who has developed an on-line, interactive course package, named Mallard, which has links to written lessons, permits administration of tutorials and quizzes, has interactive help, and which resides on a secure server for integrity in grading. Prof. Brown uses the package with our introductory computer engineering course with hundreds of students. The use of interactive conferencing was pioneered by Prof. Burks Oakley, who experimented with automated tutorial, homework and quiz grading with our introductory circuits class. Prof. Oakley found that conferencing software gave students a tremendously enhanced interaction with instructors and fellow students, resulting in improved retention and exam performance. Several thousand students at the UIUC now use conferencing as one of a number of Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN) techniques. In the ECE Department, variations on the approach include conferencing, interactive bulletin boards, and extensive use of email depending on class size and the nature of the assignments. A few instructors post grades for students to view. The simplest approach is to post grade sheets with codes for student identity. The most advanced is that of Prof. Brown’s Mallard system, which uses a secure server. In a few project courses instructors require students to post their project reports on the Web.
Other Student Related Information Student Organizations At present six ECE affiliated student organizations have links from the ECE Home Page. Most notable are the Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) honorary which conducts and maintains the results of the course survey mentioned above; the IEEE student branch, one of the largest in the world; and the ECE Student Advisory Committee, which has direct input to the Department administration. As an example of student use, the Advisory Committee sponsors a “Power Lunch” program where students can take a faculty member to lunch; signups are done via the Web. Jobs Faculty have found themselves the targets of many company mailings advertising employment opportunities. While the Department does not have the mandate of the College of Engineering Placement Office, we did feel some obligation to make these announcements available. Contrary to our concerns that the process might be time consuming, we have found it easy to post job announcements, especially ones which are transmitted electronically. Students have responded extremely positively to these postings, making the jobs page one of the most frequently visited pages maintained by the Department. Occasionally email is sent to all students reminding them of the existence of the postings and of particularly important opportunities. Targeted Email We have the ability to email all of our undergraduates on any matter, as well as to provide email lists of students for each instructor. We are developing the ability to selectively target email subpopulations of our students in order, for example, to solicit nominations for awards. We hope to give this same capability to our student organizations to assist them in communicating with their constituencies.
Information for Prospective Students We understand that the information available on the Web is likely to be the most accessible information channel to high school students and their parents, teachers, and guidance counselors, as well as to the large number of potential transfer students. We are beginning to provide information especially for them. At present prospective first year students are referred to the UIUC maintained materials which give application procedures, deadlines, tuition, and approximate ACT and SAT scores for admission.
Transfer students are pointed to further information describing regulations on the transfer of credit. Transfer students also can access ECE Department advising documents which describe typical schedules and give practical advice for adjusting to a different academic way of life.
Conclusion The ECE Department at the University of Illinois is aggressively adding Web page material targeted at undergraduates, including both extensive advising and course related materials. We perceive that this approach will result in undergraduates who are much better informed about all procedural and course related matters because they can answer almost any factual question at any time of day or night as long as they can find a computer. We believe that the Web provides efficiencies, especially in the area of advising, which are important for both faculty and students. Additional efficiencies and increased student satisfaction have been found through the use of Asynchronous Learning Network communication concepts to complement traditional courses.
Acknowledgment This work has been supported by a grant from the Office of the Vice President of the University of Illinois as part of the program entitled Applications of Learning Technologies in Higher Education. The Sloan Foundation, which supports the Sloan Center for Asynchronous Learning Environments (SCALE), has been particularly instrumental in helping our faculty develop ALN techniques in the classroom.
