Copyright, Leon Jololian, CIS, NJIT, 1997

I. Abstract

The subject matter in this course deals with the study of programming languages. The course provides the student with an overview of the programming features found in different programming languages, the programming paradigms supported by various languages, and the reasoning behind the inclusion or exclusion of certain features from a language. I had the opportunity to teach the course in both traditional and Virtual Classroom® modes. The following represents the summary of my teaching experience in both methods. In this report I try to explain the differences in the approach I use to teach this subject in these two modes of delivery. While no one method, so far, has emerged as a better choice, there is still a lot to explore in distance learning before a decisive conclusion can be made. My challenge was to find the right combination of tools, technologies, and teaching approaches that will enable the distant learner to do as well as a traditional student sitting in a classroom. In particular, the course was centered around a conferencing system (Virtual Classroom® on EIES) with many built-in features to support distance learning. To extent I can report on what has worked for me and what is likely to work in the future. Obviously, every time the course is taught new discoveries can be made and the overall teaching experience is enhanced.

II. A Description of the Course

The course is offered to computer science students in their second year at NJIT. The course prerequisites include knowledge of programming and data structures. The requirements are to have the course textbook and access to a computer on which programs can be compiled and run. The objective of the course is to teach the student to critically evaluate a programming language based on the features it offers and the type of applications for which it is best suited. It is not the intention in this course to teach or concentrate on any one particular programming language but rather to expose the student to a set of programming languages in an effort to compare the advantages and limitations inherent in each language. Coming into the course, students are expected to be fluent in one programming language and to have a working knowledge of another. Although this is not a programming course, the student is asked to write several programs during the course of the semester as part of their evaluation of certain features in a language.

III. Course Requirements For Virtual Classroom

There are additional requirements for the distant learner in the virtual classroom delivery mode. The student must be able to communicate electronically with the virtual class using the EIES conferencing system. Although EIES is under continuous evolution it does support many advanced and sophisticated collaborative features. When I taught the course the system still lacked a graphical interface, although since then many improvements have been made including a graphical web-based interface which not only facilitate its use but also makes it more accessible to potential students anywhere in the world. Some of the features supported by EIES are the automatic tracking of threads of discussions, integrated e-mail facility, support for on-line testing, an electronic grade book, and submitting comments anonymously. Once in use, these features prove to be valuable in facilitating the classroom activities of a virtual class. Besides the system manual, students are given the option to attend a hands-on training session. The training session is scheduled before the beginning of the semester and is meant to both assist the student in learning EIES and to introduce the student to the new learning environment of a virtual classroom.

IV. Description of My teaching Method

Preliminary work

In general, teaching a course as a virtual class requires more preparation on behalf of the instructor than in a traditional course. While in the traditional case the course starts with the first day of class, in a virtual classroom the course needs to start at least two to three weeks before the beginning of the semester. The lead time is necessary in order to convey to the students all the course-related information, to clarify any misconceptions, and to answer any questions about the mechanics and contents of the course in a timely manner. This usually takes the form of an initial welcome letter I send by surface mail to all registered students and follow-up questions I receive by phone and/or e-mail. The welcome letter includes the course syllabus, my office hours, scheduled exam dates, and EIES training dates. The EIES training session has limited benefit since the students most likely to attend are the ones within a close proximity to the campus. In order to provide the entire class the opportunity to learn how to use the conferencing system I believe we need to move to an on-line remote training that students can use to guide themselves in learning the features of the system. The training can be divided into multiple segments or modules that may require the student to spend 10 to 15 minutes per module. The necessity for on-line training is critical if the virtual classroom concept is to expand and include the majority of students who are located beyond a commuting distance.

It is critical that after the first week of the semester everybody is on board and able to use the system to perform minimal tasks such as the ability to read posted comments as well as posting comments to the class. To create a context in which I can determine if anyone is lagging I usually post the initial comment asking everyone in the course to post a message introducing themselves and sharing any appropriate information with their classmates, such as whether they are full-time students or whether they hold full-time jobs, any previous job experiences, hobbies, their expectations for this course, etc. The idea is not only to find out if anybody is having difficulty with using the system but also to develop a feeling among students that they know who is in the classroom and to bring people closer together. In some ways this may allow the students to know about each other more than in a traditional classroom, since often times I find very little interactions taking place among student in my regular class. This can also prove to be critical if I am to ask students to form groups of 3 or 4 members to work on group projects. Familiarity with members of the class and developed friendships can mirror the same effects that influence how groups are formed in a face to face class.

The Weekly Routine

During the rest of the semester the activities become more routine. In the course outline I divide the subject matter into weekly topics with references to my videotape lectures and chapters in the textbook. As in a regular classroom, learning starts with a lecture I give in class that triggers many questions and discussions initiated by the students and myself and ends with the student later reading the textbook and doing the assignment. In the Virtual Classroom I usually initiate a discussion by posting a comment concerning the topic for that week. The comment is in the form of a statement that makes assumptions, assertions, and raises certain questions to which students are invited to respond. After the initial response given by everybody a discussion may start between students representing differing or opposing ideas. I monitor the discussion and allow it to progress as long as it is constructive, intervening only when necessary to clarify a point or correct someone's remark. At the beginning of a discussion I don't take an active role, commenting only when necessary. At the end of the week I try to end the discussion by summarizing the different viewpoints, highlighting the important points, and giving my opinion by suggesting possible answers to the problems raised during the discussion. Therefore the entire weekly cycle consists of four phases, starting with the initial phase where the topic of discussion is posted on Monday, followed by the second phase where everyone contributes their initial opinion. On Wednesday the third phase begins with back and forth discussions. In the last phase I summarize the results of the discussion for that week and post my concluding comments on Saturday. One of my roles during the weekly discussions is to ensure everyone's participation in the process, soliciting comments from certain students either by sending them messages privately or by announcing publicly that not everybody has been heard from yet. One observation about this process is that it does require students to log on the system several times during the week. Usually, students are expected to log on at least three to four times a week. Not everybody will be equally involved in every topic of discussion to the same extent. Some students find it easier to engage in discussions and write about their thoughts and ideas than other students who are more conservative with perhaps less writing ability skills or command of the English language

Contributing Factors to the Success or Failure of Distance Learning

The free exchange of ideas encouraged by these weekly discussions is a crucial part of the Virtual Classroom. It is the process that ultimately forces the students to engage in thinking about certain problems. Without this component, I seriously doubt the effectiveness of distance learning for most subject matter. To the extent that we can use technology to encourage students and facilitate the process we should capitalize on every opportunity and experiment with different techniques to discover what works and what doesn't. Every attempt must be made to keep the discussions alive even when the students' interest is not at a peak. There are many factors that contribute to the success of these discussions:

• The size of the class is a major factor. For example, having a small class, fewer than 10, makes it very difficult for the discussion to stay alive. I believe the level of participation is a function of what you are able to see from the contribution of others. When a class consists of fewer than 10 students there doesn't seem to be an initial momentum to carry the discussion into a stage where everyone is compelled to say something if only to agree or disagree with what has already been said. On the other hand, a large class size with over 30 students can also have a negative impact on the discussion. This time it's not because of the lack of participation but because there are too many ideas floating around and it's hard to keep track of the discussion for both the students as well as the instructor. I think there is a critical mass which I suspect to be between 15 and 25, depending on the type of student and the subject matter being taught, that can yield the best results. It is a balance between having enough viewpoints to start and sustain a discussion and having too many ideas floating around in a chaotic state. For the situations where the class size does exceed the preferable and recommended size, it is suggested that the class be broken into two or more groups each with a good size. The discussions can go on in separate conferences and the results shared at the end of the discussion. While this solution would create a good environment for the student, it does add a considerable load to the instructor for having to manage multiple conferences as opposed to one.

• The duration of the course. A regular semester at NJIT consists of 15 weeks for the Fall and Spring. During the summer, the university offers courses with shorter time span, typically 5 weeks. More recently, distance learning course are being offered in an accelerated mode, typically 7 weeks, in an effort to allow some students to meet their graduation requirements in a shorter time. Even under the best circumstances, my experience has shown that students don't get as much during these short semesters as they do in regular semesters. Even the expectations of students towards what they will learn from these short classes seems to be lower than in a regular 15-week semester. It is not uncommon for example, for some students to schedule certain courses they have very little interest in to be taken during the short summer sessions. Even instructors can have lower expectations of what their students can learn and retain in such a short period. Although I haven't participated in an accelerated Virtual Classroom course yet, I suspect it will be very challenging for the instructor and student. I suspect that the methods I have developed for the 15-week semester may simply break down and become less effective if at all applicable. I think for certain courses we could be doing a disservice to students by accelerating the learning process and expecting to get the same results. I believe that learning does require a certain amount of time to digest and speeding up the process may not achieve the desired goals, especially in distance learning where asynchronous communication consumes more time than having the entire class in one room.

• Timely responses by the instructor to student questions is important. One of the main objectives of the instructor in a virtual class is to keep the students' interest alive at all times if possible. It is easy for someone to lose interest in something when they feel ignored. When a student poses a question to the instructor it is because they seek an explanation or clarification on some idea. But the student's interest may not be the same and will in fact diminish if the instructor's response is not prompt, say within 24 hours. Instructors in a virtual class should be aware of this and provide prompt responses to students. This may require that instructors log on daily, at least once, to check the queue of messages in their mailbox, and not leave any questions unanswered for more than 24 hours. Even in situations where the instructor may not have all the relevant facts to answer the questions a response containing a partial answer should be given to the student, with a more complete answer to follow as soon as the question is fully investigated.

• Early intervention with passive students. Instructors should take note of everyone's participation. In particular, an instructor should look for any passive students who may be logging in regularly but not participating actively in the discussions. A lack of participation can be an indication that the student is slowly losing interest in the course. This may be due to personal factors, unrelated to the course, or it may be a consequence of lack of interest in the subject matter of the course or perhaps the topic being discussed in a given week. The role of the instructor is to interact with the student and encourage them to participate. My experience shows that if you treat a passive student with a passive approach hoping that they will recover on their own, then most of the time that student will end up either falling behind or dropping out of the course.

• Summer semesters have lower retention rates. Even when a virtual class is held during the summer for 15 weeks, there seems to be a higher incomplete and drop out rate during the summer than in the regular Fall and Spring semesters. My guess is that there are additional factors during the summer that affect students. For instance, students may plan to take vacations, typically in the summer months, within the same period in which they are taking a course. Such disruptions can cause the student to fall behind he or she and in some cases may not be able to recover. I think students should be made more aware of the fact that they should not postpone their course work by scheduling non course-related activities while taking a course, or even not to register for courses when they are about to embark on a large project at work which could consume much of their time.
  

Examinations

There were two exams scheduled for the course: a midterm and a final. Exams are an important aspect of any course regardless of the mode used in delivering the course. Exams can not only give us an indication as to how each student is coping with the contents of the course, but also how effective the instructor is in delivering the subject matter to the class. Sometimes, students can be so obsessed by the grade that it becomes their primary objective and learning becomes secondary. Given the important role that exams play in the minds of both instructor and students, it becomes critical that any exam be given in a fair and controlled way. In the traditional classroom exams are relatively easy to administer, since all the students are sitting in a single room and the instructor is there to make sure that students rely on their own knowledge in answering the questions. Unfortunately, this environment is very difficult to emulate in distance learning or in a Virtual Classroom. In this course, I gave the class two options for taking exams. The first option was to invite students to the NJIT campus, typically on a weekend or evening where the exam will be given under my supervision. The second option involved asking the students to nominate a proctor at their end who administered the exam for them. The acceptable proctor nominations are usually a manager at the student's place of work, or a librarian at the local library. Once a proctor nomination is approved, I will send the exam to the proctor (by surface mail, e-mail, or fax) and have the proctor return the exam to me. The first option is acceptable but not practical, since by definition in a distance learning course most students are beyond a commuting distance and only a small number can be in this category. The second option raises some questions as to the fairness of the exam. In most cases I believe that the proctors nominated by the students were very honest and cooperative, but it does present a loophole in the examination process. I have not yet heard of any tool or technology that can address this problem effectively, but it seems to me that until we can resolve this issue there might always be a doubt in some people's mind as to the integrity of the evaluation process.

Assignments

There were five assignments given to the class through the course of the semester. These assignments were programming in nature. The primary objective of these programming assignments was not to test the students' ability in programming but to allow students to experiment, evaluate, and compare features of different programming languages. The assignments were posted in the EIES conference and students were required to read or download them. Once students completed the assignment they would send it to me by e-mail.

V. Recommendations

It is obvious that after a few semester of teaching in a Virtual Classroom there are still many things that we can improve. For the most part we try to emulate traditional teaching in our virtual classroom. There are many of aspects of traditional teaching that are very effective since the teaching methods and techniques we currently use are the results of decades of experience. To the extent that we are transferring our teaching methodologies into this new environment of virtual classroom, I think we have made relatively significant progress. But the idea of distance learning has become viable and an important alternative to traditional learning only recently due to the advent of new technologies that make communication easier and the social changes brought about by computers. Distance learning using the Virtual Classroom is a new paradigm for learning that has not been fully explored. It's true potential has not yet been discovered fully. I expect that as technologies evolve and as experience is gained we may be able to do a better job of educating people using the new paradigm than we currently are able to do in the traditional learning paradigm.

The following are some recommendations that I want to make in an effort to improve the virtual classroom experience:

• It would be beneficial to include a teaching assistant (TA) into the virtual classroom idea. Currently the virtual classroom officially includes two categories of participants: students and instructor. The use of a TA by an instructor is hidden and limited to behind the scenes activities such as grading. I would like to see an expanded role for the TA in the daily activities of the virtual classroom, where a TA can interact with students to answer questions more frequently than the instructor is able to do.
• The use of multimedia should be expanded to support more activities in the virtual classroom. Ultimately I think multimedia applications will play a decisive role in distance learning. We see many technologies available today and may more are on the horizon. But we still lack an integrated multimedia environment that integrates all the activities of distance learning and the virtual classroom.
• The WWW is quickly becoming the information superhighway that can provide the bridge between the providers and the seekers of knowledge on a large scale. It can become the infrastructure on which the virtual university of the future can be built. EIES has already made the transition to become a web-based application with a graphical user interface. Its role can now be expanded to include many of the administrative tasks that a virtual classroom or university requires.
• Currently the format of most of the distance learning and virtual classroom is still rigid. I believe that one of the benefits of the Virtual Classroom® over the traditional classroom is in the flexibility in time that is provided to the student. The assumption is that a student is not necessarily a full-time student but may already be working full time or supporting a family. Distance learning has already provided some benefits to the non-traditional student in allowing them to fit their education within their work and home activities in a way that was not possible before. However, the semester time frame format is still too rigid and we should find ways to accommodate year round and self paced education within the context of the virtual classroom.
• As the boundaries of the virtual classroom and university are expanding there is a growing potential for students whose native language is not English. Since the virtual classroom inherently depends to some extent on the ability of students to express themselves in writing, this does limit the effectiveness of the current state of distance learning.

Acknowledgment

Virtual Classroom® is registered trademark of New Jersey University of Technology. Partial funding for this project was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.