Using a Web-Based System to Support Teaching

Int’l Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education, 2008, 4, 72-85.

Using a Web-Based System to Support Teaching Processes V.Klyuev, University of Aizu, Japan T.Tsuchimoto, University of Aizu, Japan G.P.Nikishkov, University of Aizu, Japan

Abstract A platform-independent Java Web application named TSI (Teacher-Student Interaction) that supports communication between an instructor, teaching assistants and students in a traditional on-campus course is presented in this paper. Using the TSI, the instructor and teaching assistants can handle most of the routine work: upload student personal information, send students personal emails, etc. The system can easily be installed and administered individually by an instructor inexperienced in computers. It is as simple as a pen for students. Students can check their personal data (scores and comments), download educational materials, etc. As part of the TSI, a VBA application is used to analyze the course log files. This tool is helpful in understanding individual and group students’ behaviors. The TSI was successfully tested during four years at the University of Aizu (Japan) in an environment where English is one of the working languages and both students and professors are nonnative speakers of English. Keywords: computer communication; teacher-student interaction; Web browser; server.

Introduction During the last decade, a lot of work has been done in designing new methods and tools to support course management and communication between professors and students in everyday university life. Different solutions have been proposed to simplify student access to class material, to help students submit the results of exercises, to help professors distribute lecture notes, to get student feedback, and to monitor student progress (Llamas-Nistal et al., 2004) In many cases, these solutions are not ideal. In classroom situations where both teachers and students use their second language, communication becomes a crucial factor. Such a situation is found in some Japanese universities where the official language of instruction is English but both professors and students are non-native speakers of English. One solution to improve communication between professors and students is to turn to the Internet and to use modern information technologies. These have impacted the university teaching processes in significant ways.

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There are two main directions in designing communication tools: • universal systems with a large number of features (Angel, 2007; Blackboard, 2007; Top Class E-learning Suite, 2007; WebCT, 2007), • specialized systems dedicated to specific purposes (Tuckman, 2003). The large portion of these systems is designed to support on-line teaching (Pahl, 2003). As it was noticed in (Bonk, 2002), there is a myriad of options, making it difficult to determine the right system to apply to university courses. The number of core functions provided by each system is practically the same. For professors, these functions include: a) making lecture notes available to students, b) monitoring student progress, c) analyzing student behavior, d) obtaining student feedback, e) exchanging e-mails with students, f) providing students with their grades, and g) managing student accounts. For students the set of functions consists of the following: a) accessing class material, b) exchanging e-mails with professors, c) accessing personal grade information, d) submitting the results of exercises, and e) changing their password. The main problem with the tools of the first category i.e., universal systems, is the number of features: The end user does not need most of them (Moodle, 2007; BlackBoard, 2007; Woods et al., 2004; Kaiden, 2002). As a result, the system interface is not intuitive and support from experts and permission for installation from the university network administrator is required (Storey et al., 2002). For example, to learn how to post the basic documents such as a syllabus and a schedule using BlackBoard, the professor should attend a 4-hour workshop (FSU, 2007). WebCT, another famous tool in this category, is equally complicated: Its manual contains 563 pages (Rehberg et al., 2004), which no instructor is inclined to read. Special auxiliary software is introduced to simplify work with BlackBoard and WebCT (Course Genie, 2007). Another drawback of these systems is user frustration with information technology (Lazar, Jones, and Hackley, 2006). (Storey et al. ,2002; Masiello et al., 2005) pointed out that when tools are hard to navigate, they not only have a neutral but negative effect on learning. On the other hand, the tools in the second category, i.e., specialized systems, are difficult to adapt to teaching needs (Yen and Wu-Jeng Li, 2003; Tuckman, 2003). To summarize, we note that information technologies for teaching processes are growing very fast. The market offers many different tools. To use the most of universal systems, users need external assistance. Instructors and students have to waste time to learn how to apply the features of the tool. In the traditional on-campus course, instructors prefer to retain their conventional style of teaching even when using computer technologies. They need assistance in the routine. They want to distribute handouts and assignments before the lecture and to post them on the Internet to make materials available only for students enrolled in their class. Communication with students, tracking their progress, and checking grades by students are tasks to put on the Web. In this face-to-face mode, subjects such as math and computer science remain an individual rather than a group activity. This model is distinguished from either distance or traditional instruction. How can it be employed in campus computer labs? We introduce an approach using the TSI (Teacher-Student Interaction) system that provides assistance in the routine and that may be of interest to teachers and professors. Our aim was to design the tool which can be installed, set up and administered individually even by a professor inexperienced in computers and which is as simple as a pen for the students. The main features of the TSI system are: • This system is in the public domain. • It is written in Java: The TSI can run on any computer. • It is easy to install: An inexperienced computer user can set up this system. • It is stable: In the four years since we have used the system, it has never crashed.

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An instructor is independent: S/he does not need any external assistance or permission of the network administrator to run the TSI. • It is safe: The system does not make any security holes in the local network or in the computer where it runs. • A professor may easily adjust the system to meet the teaching needs. • The interface is intuitive, which makes it appropriate for both teaching and learning, especially in the case of teaching students who are non-native speakers of English. In this paper, we share our experience of employing the TSI and report our findings in teaching courses on programming and software development in an environment where English is one of the working languages, and both students and professors are non-native speakers of English, and student comprehension of spoken English is low.

Framework of the TSI During a semester, interaction between the instructor, teaching assistants (TAs) and students is extremely complex. It includes many verbal and paper-based actions. The set of the core actions was introduced in the previous section. How to achieve the key goal: Both instructors and students have to concentrate on the course and not to waste time to become familiar with the communication technology? There are significant issues to be considered. The classical approach to implement interaction is to involve Web pages, e-mail and CGI scripts. It can be time-consuming to develop and inefficient to use because publishing new materials on the professor’s personal Web page implies modifying the page itself. Putting student scores on the Internet makes them available to everybody. Utilizing e-mail lists makes difficult sending individual messages containing specific information for each receiver. University regulations may forbid CGI scripts on professors’ personal Web pages. Another solution is to use PHP or ASP. This approach is also inappropriate: A standard way to implement a system requires MySQL. An installation of software might be complicated for an inexperienced user. Special measures should be taken to provide the necessary level of security to protect the professor’s computer when an application is running. We used Java to create a Web-based application to implement aforementioned communication functions. The architecture of the system is presented in Figure 1. The HTTP protocol is used for all communications between users and the TSI, allowing participants to employ standard Web browsers. The TSI supports multiple user access. Since Microsoft Excel tables are widely used by professors to keep student scores, this table is a key data component in the TSI. It is sharable between the professor and TAs for updating. Via this table, the students can check their personal scores. In order to use Excel to work with the table on a personal computer, this table can easily be uploaded to the TSI and downloaded to the professor’s machine. It is also possible to edit the score table on the TSI. After investigating the needs of the instructor, TAs and students, the following scenarios were defined.

Initialization The system does not require installation in the traditional way. A TSI directory with its subdirectories is placed on any networked computer with the Java Virtual Machine, version 1.3 or higher. The running TSI manager displays a window with options to set up the system and to start/stop it. Setup options include a course name and the instructor name. It is possible to specify the common part of allowed IP addresses. The TSI replies only to computers with allowed IP addresses. The given domain name is used to create e-mail addresses for students utilizing their ID.

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Specialized Web server

Thread pool Thread 1

Web browser

Web server

Thread 2

Web browser

Mailer

Thread 3

Web browser

... Thread N

Database

Web browser

Fig. 1. Architecture of the TSI system.

Access to the TSI Any Web browser is used for password protected communication with the TSI. The instructor has the highest authority in the system access. He can look through all stored files. Also, he is able to recover lost student and TA passwords. A certain level of security is provided to prevent unauthorized access to the system.

Instructor and TA scenarios Scenarios for the instructor and TAs include the following features: table score manipulation, editing course materials, downloading student submissions, sending personal e-mails, tracking student activity.

Table score manipulation For the instructor and TAs, the main advantage of the TSI system is in the possibility to jointly maintain, modify and distribute a table with personal student information (score table). At the beginning of the semester, the table only contains student names and ID numbers that students use as login names. During the semester, this table is constantly modified by adding student scores, instructor comments and other personal information. The score table can be modified either in the spreadsheet program or within the TSI using a Web browser. Two strategies can be applied: a) keeping the master copy on the instructor’s computer; b) keeping the master copy on the TSI. The second strategy is more efficient if both the instructor and the TAs are going to modify the score table. The current state of the score table is available to all authorized persons (every student can access only its personal data). To prevent any loss of information, there are two possibilities supported by the TSI: a) a backing up of the score table in a text format, b) downloading the score table to another computer.

Personal e-mails The mail function plays a crucial role in communication with students who are not fluent in the language of instruction, especially in the situations when a student comprehension of instructor’s spoken language is low.

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Email TA passwords Back up data Change options

TSI

Check log files

Check course material

Specialized Web server

Instructor

Edit score table Upload course material Delete course material

Mailer Database

Download course material

Web browser

Upload score table

Web browser

Email student passwords

Check score table Submit message to TA and Instructor Upload file

Check uploaded student files Mail message to students

Check message log files

Mail scores to students

Change password

Students

Check student log files

TA

Change password

Fig. 2. Instructor, teaching assistant and student interfaces to the TSI system.

Information stored in the score table is used to send students personal e-mails. It is possible to specify columns (information content) and students (list of recipients). The TSI provides a default body for the message, which can be edited. Since fields of the score table have no size restrictions, any textual data can be put there. This function is simple to communicate with students and powerful to send them as common information (for all students) as personal comments in the same e-mail. Such a combination is a key feature of the TSI e-mail service.

Other functions Other opportunities for the instructor and TAs are shown in Figure 2. Note that course materials are usually presented as PPT, PDF or PS files. There are several functions available only for the instructor. To analyze student activity, a special VBA application exists.

Student scenarios For a student, a typical scenario to use the TSI is as follows. First, s/he receives e-mail from the instructor with a simple explanation of the TSI, the URL of the login page, and a personal password. Using the Web browser, the student logs into the TSI and changes his or her original password since it was generated automatically. The other student actions can be understood from Figure 2. The main TSI menus for the instructor and students are shown in Figures 3 and 4 respectively.

Our experience In a traditional course at the University of Aizu, an instructor and one or two TAs interact with 35 – 96 students. It may include lectures, exercises, a term project and an examination. Exercises are graded on a weekly basis. The semester usually consists of 14 weeks. The TSI was tested by several professors during the last four years to teach different computer science subjects related to programming and software development, such as Programming III, Java Programming, Numerical Analysis, Advanced Algorithms, Algorithms and Data Structures.

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Fig. 3. TSI instructor menu

Fig. 5. TSI student menu

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The students were second and third year students and classes were held once a week. Each class took 2 to 4 academic hours. The total number of student groups was 16. The total number of students who used the TSI is 721. Professors applied the TSI in different ways. Students of 9 groups were provided with class materials via a different course web site. In some courses, students uploaded their results to the special server which was separated from the TSI whereas in another courses, students submitted their reports in a traditional hard copy way. Students of one class reported their results orally. The Java Programming and Language Processing Systems courses (four groups of students were enrolled) utilized the full set of the TSI features. These courses also required a mandatory activity: uploading the results of exercises to the TSI. Figure 5 shows an example of how professors used the main table of the system. Results of exercises of our courses are mainly software source code (C, C++ and Java programs) and term project reports. Most activities are individual exercises except for work on a term project, where students worked in groups of 2 – 4.

Fig. 5. Variant of a score table

Efficiency of the TSI: an instructor view Methodology Log files are useful source of information to monitor student activity and progress. Statistics from the logs can help in apprehending student behaviors. This information provides impartial feedback from students. The TSI keeps the following logs: • The login log: It keeps track of all successful login operations.

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The student activity log: It records actions such as checking scores, checking and sending emails, downloading materials, uploading results, and changing passwords. • The professor and TA activity logs: It records all operations done by them. • The log of unknown users: It allows to see how often users fail to access the system. Our VBA application is to analyze the logs and different student behaviors (VBA was selected for a statistical analysis because the main table of the TSI is an Excel table): • Group student behavior: It classifies logs according to the grades received (A, B, C, D categories) and plots histograms of student activities. These histograms can be populated with data on a daily, weekly, or semester basis. • Group tendency: To identify possible correlations between student grades and their activities, the application plots the corresponding trend lines. The necessary set of options can be specified. • Individual student activity and individual tendency: Every aforementioned histogram and trend line can be plotted for each student.

Results of statistical analysis Log files of all groups were carefully examined using the aforementioned VBA application.

Examination of student behaviors Students who received an A or B grade used the TSI system significantly more often compared to students who received C or D grades. This result holds across all groups. Figure 6 provides such an example. The common pattern is low student activity in the days following the class, after which activity increases and reaches the maximum on the day of the next class. The number of messages received by the professor or TA is very low. This low activity in sending messages is closely linked to the educational culture in Japanese high schools where students usually do not ask questions (Kluev, 2004). On the other hand, there is no restriction in using tools to send messages: Some students employed the usual mail tool. Students who received an A grade were concerned about changing the password to access the TSI. In contrast, students who received C or D grades did not care about it.

Fig. 6. Diagram of student activity (for A and D grades) during a week

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A tendency examination In programming exercises, students work individually at their own pace and have their own learning styles. We think, this is a reason why we found no correlation between student grade and any type of activity except for mandatory ones, when we analyzed a group student profile. As we mentioned earlier, the Java Programming course required submission of student results. Two classes (ONE and TWO) of the second year students were enrolled in this course. We found a correlation between this activity and marks obtained by students in the A and B grade groups: R2 > 0.74, there R2 is the coefficient of determination (α < 0.01). This is not the case for the C and D grade groups. See Table 1 for details. Table 1 Coefficient of determination Class / Grade A B ONE 0.81 0.74 TWO 0.87 0.82

The statistical analysis of log files using individual profiles gave promising results: Individual student behavior (in the case of non-mandatory activity such as checking scores) from the A and B grade groups are stable for most students. It is possible to predict their activity during a semester and their marks after four or five classes. If a scale of grades for exercises is the same for each exercise, then such a prediction can be made quite accurately. Figures 8 – 9 illustrate this conclusion for one student who received a B grade. The trend lines for these figures are based on data from the entire semester (Figure 7) and on data from the first five classes (Figure 8). The “score checking” axis presents the accumulated number of operations made by the student to check the current score and the “points” axis presents the current score. The following example gives an illustration: At the moment, the student checked his current score 14 times he earned 22.5 points. It happened at the fifth week.

Practical issues Analyzing these figures, the professor can see which students are not doing well in the course. Such a conclusion can be made quite early in the course where low activity predicts that the student will get a C or D grade. The instructor can act to help students. On the other hand, if the majority of students are successfully doing exercises (they have a current score of A), it is worth adjusting assignments to make them more difficult.

Evaluation of the TSI: a student view Survey characteristics A questionnaire is a useful instrument to get users’ opinion on tools they utilize (Carrol et al., 2005; Dagdilelis, Evangelidis, Satratzemi, Efopoulos, and Zagouras, 2003; Masiello, Ramberg, and Lonka, 2005). A survey was conducted to understand how easy the system is for undergraduate students, and how helpful it is for them. The questionnaire consists of 13 questions in which an answer is selected from a prepared list. We distributed the questionnaire among the second year students enrolled in the exercise class of the Java Programming course at the end of the semester in paper and pencil format. 22 students from class ONE and 27 students from class TWO participated in our study. The total number of students enrolled in these classes is 47 and 44 respectively. The number of returned questionnaires was 22 (100%) for class ONE and 20 (74%) for class TWO.

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Fig. 7. Individual trend line: Points earned as a function of score checking using data for the whole semester

Fig. 8. Individual trend line: Points earned as a function of score checking using data for the first five classes

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Table 2 Statistics obtained from the questionnaire and from log files Num 1

2

Question

The possible answers

Is it easy for you to use TSI? How do you prefer to submit results of your work?

Yes No

3

How do you prefer to get instructions?

4

Is English reading related to your course difficult for you? Is it convenient to get class materials from the Web (from TSI)? Do you think TSI helps you to study this course? Is it convenient for you to check your current results using TSI? Do you usually check the mail archive on TSI?

5

6

7

8

9

Have you ever changed your TSI password?

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Have you ever downloaded class materials with comments to handouts and assignments from TSI?

Class ONE Questionnaire 100%

Class TWO log

Questionnaire 80% 5%

log

a) Electronically via TSI b) Electronically by e-mail c) in hard copy (paper submission) d) Other: a) via Web b) by e-mail c) during face-to-face talk with an instructor (TA / Professor) Yes No

100%

85% 15%

69% 14% 27%

65% 20% 15%

86% 14%

75% 25%

a) Yes b) No c) Other: (I DON’T KNOW EXACTLY, BUT I THINK IT IS GOOD)

82% 9% 5%

70% 30%

a) Yes b) No c) Other:

91% 9%

60% 40%

a) Yes b) No c) Other:

95%

100%

a) Yes b) No c) Other:

41% 59%

38%

30% 70%

34%

a) Yes b) No c) Other: (I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT CHANGING THE PASSWORD) a) Yes b) No c) Other: (I DIDN’T KNOW, I KNOW TODAY)

27% 68% 5%

17%

45% 55%

34%

32% 59% 5%

36%

30% 70%

36%

11

11

12

13

What do you usually use (read, study) doing exercises?

Have you ever sent e-mails to TA or Professor? How often do you check you personal score?

a) book, title__________________ JAPANESE BOOK RECOMMENDED BY THE LECTURER ANOTHER JAPANESE BOOK b) Lecture handouts from the Java course Web site c) Comments to assignments from TSI d) Materials from the Web you find on your own a) No b) Yes, via TSI c) Yes via my regular mail account d) Other: a) once a week b) once in two weeks c) never check c) Other: SOME TIMES ONES A MONTH THEN I LOGIN

32%

15%

17% 50%

10% 60%

9%

17%

27% 64% 9% 27%

32% 19% 31% 13% 5%

5%

10%

20%

2%

21%

85% 5% 10%

60% 30% 5%

0%

10%

5%

The survey form was anonymous and questions were given in English. The answers to some questions can be gained from log files of the TSI. It helped us evaluate the reliability of obtained data. Table 2 presents statistics we got from the questionnaire and from the log files. Some students provided several answers to Questions 3 and 11. This explains why the total number in the corresponding fields exceeds 100%. The “Other” items of Questions 5, 9, 10, 11, and 13 include the text in upper case. These are comments from the students. We analyzed the obtained data from the different angles.

Easiness criterion The majority of our students (88%) were positive about the TSI (Question 1). The key TSI operations were evaluated as follows: 93% of respondents selected a submission via the TSI as their preferred method (Question 2); 76% of participants reported that the feature to download class materials is convenient (Question 5). On the other hand, the number of students who never downloaded class materials is very high (64%). We have to clarify: A separate Web page was setup by the lecturer to provide students with lecture materials and assignment descriptions. The lecturer and the instructor were the different teachers. Teaching materials placed on the TSI were related to exercises. Teaching materials were prepared in English but they included references to Japanese sources on the Internet. Convenience criterion. The majority of participants (67%) were satisfied with getting instructions via the Web (Question 3). 17% of respondents would like to receive instructional support via e-mail. Practically all participants said that it is convenient to check the current score via the TSI (Question 7). Students regularly received e-mails with their score sent from the TSI once a week. So, they did not need to do that operation (Question 13). Helpfulness criterion. 76% of students involved in this survey are sure that the TSI helps them in studying the course (Question 6). 24% oppose this opinion. Question 11 is about materials used by students as a direct support in their study: Only 7% of participants selected 12

comments from the TSI and 36% preferred Japanese books. On the other hand, at least 31% of respondents downloaded materials from the TSI (Question 10). The data from log files confirm this outcome: 36%. Student answers to Question 4 and discussions in the “easiness” criterion subsection explain this phenomenon. Some important instructions and comments were sent via e-mail to the students to be sure they got this information because the TSI was accessible only from the university computers; e-mails, students were able to receive on their mobile phones. This helps understand the situation with a relatively low activity to download class materials. The mail function as an indirect support feature was used on regular basis. Providing students with multiple choices is one of the key factors to effectively help them.

Reliability of our data According to the results of the Spearman’s rank correlation test (class ONE: n = 6, α= 0.02, rs= 0.9559; class TWO: n = 6, α= 0.02, rs= 0.9545), there is a significant correlation between the data from the survey and the log files: Questions 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. One important outcome was that the use of English for the questionnaire was not a problem for the students; and data we obtained are reliable. The main result from this survey is that the TSI is easy, convenient and helpful for our students. The same answer, we got from informal conversations with professors and TAs who used the TSI.

Lessons learned The only reliable information we could get about students’ group behavior from the log files was that students who work hard usually access the system much more frequently than students who are not successful in the course. The same result was obtained in the study by Grabe and Christopherson (2005). The results of the statistical analysis are promising from the individual profile point of view. For the majority of students who got A and B grades, there is a correlation between a nonmandatory TSI activity (number of operations made by students checking their score, for example) and grades. So in many cases, it is possible to predict a student’s grade and upcoming activity quite accurately after 4 – 5 classes. We can also conclude that students with current score C or D (calculated automatically) after 4 classes need extra attention.

Conclusions The approach described in this paper is an easy-to-implement alternative to technologies based on general purpose systems that are usually difficult to set up and often use a nonintuitive interface. The TSI is no substitute for instructors; it supports their communication with students and handles most of the routine work. This system is extremely useful when an instructor works with non-native English speaking students. It will also help users who are not familiar with computers. Professors and students do not need to waste time learning the TSI; instead, they can concentrate on teaching and studying issues. For professors, it is easy to adapt it to their teaching needs. It can be applied as a supported tool for a wide range of teaching subjects. The system is written in Java and may be installed on any machine. The stable nature of this system was proved in the four years since it has been in use at the university. The VBA application as a part of the TSI can help instructors understand individual and group student behaviors. With this information, instructors can make necessary changes to a course during a running semester and help students learn better.

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The system was highly evaluated by students as a simple, useful and convenient support tool. The TSI can be downloaded from the URL: http://www.u-aizu.ac.jp/~niki/tsi/.

Acknowledgment The authors thank Dr. Renu Gupta for the critical review of an earlier draft of this paper. Our specials thanks to our colleagues for providing us with log files of their classes taught with the TSI. Our gratitude is also to our students for their participation in this study.

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Vitaly Klyuev is an Associate Professor at the University of Aizu, Japan. He received his Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics from St. Petersburg State University, Russia. Prof. Klyuev has published more than 50 papers in refereed journals, conference proceedings, and chapters of books. His research domain includes information retrieval, software engineering, analysis of computer algorithms, and programming languages. Tomokazu Tsuchimoto received his BSc (2005) and MSc (2007) degrees from the University of Aizu in Japan. His Master research was devoted to using augmented reality in medical physics. Now he is with Canon Inc. Gennadiy Nikishkov is a Professor at the University of Aizu in Japan. He holds PhD and DSci degrees from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, Russia. Professor Nikishkov has more than one hundred publications in refereed journals and conference proceedings. His research interests include computational modeling, computer graphics and visualization, and elearning

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