Introduction

This article discusses my experiences as both a teacher and an instructional designer using WebCT, an on-line course management system. As such, I will first discuss what on-line course management systems are and indicate some advantages in their use. Next I will analyze the development of a course using WebCT, English 302: Advanced Composition (Business), and the process of designing and redesigning this course. Finally, I focus on five "puzzlements" that I concentrated on while designing and teaching this course.

Those puzzlements are:

• How does using a course management system such as WebCT affect teaching?
• How can one design course material for on-line learning in a writing course?.
• How can these on-line materials be adapted for face-to-face classes?
• How can both face-to-face and distance student writing be effectively assessed? (studied in conjunction with EDCI 520)
• What challenges are presented when teaching with technology in a "wired" classroom (a classroom with no computer or projector present but wired for the Internet)?

Online Course Management Systems

Online course management systems (OCMS) are software packages designed to allow faculty to create easily on-line course content, to provide opportunities for learning interactions and assessment, and to manage their courses. As such, they provide both pedagogical tools, such as chat rooms, online quiz creation, and student work space, and administrative functions, such as a grade book and an interactive calendar. Additionally, course management systems typical provide templates or interfaces to help faculty design and layout their web-based material. Since these systems are web-based, they are accessible from any computer with an Internet connection and a Java-enabled web browser.

What this means then, is that although these systems provide an opportunity to work with computers in class, especially if there is a computer lab available, their greatest advantage is that they provide a means for faculty to set up instructional activities and interactions to take place outside the classroom. However, as an instructional designer, I am frequently asked why faculty should use an OCMS, since many of its features are available elsewhere. For example, course handouts can be posted on any old Web page and class can hold on-line discussions using web boards created for that purpose such as Townhall or even Yahoo Club sites.

First of all, with course management software, instructors can add interactivity to their web pages without having to learn advanced programming skills to do so. Setting up a chat room or bulletin board requires no more than a few clicks of the mouse. Additionally, these systems usually provide productivity tools such as an online grade book, a calendar, and student tracking to help instructors run their course smoothly. Most importantly, OCMS allow faculty to put all of the online support for their course in one password-protected space. Such centralization creates ease of use for students, since they will need to know only one URL and password to access their online course material. Furthermore, as student work inside OCMS is not accessible on the World Wide Web, these systems allow professors to create collaborative learning environments while protecting the students' right to privacy.

However, many of the ways in which students and faculty interact online in general are identical to ways that students and faculty interact inside an OCMS folder. The advantage of OCMS is not that they have substantially changed or revolutionized online teaching. Rather, they have made designing the online learning space less technically demanding for faculty and provided an easy way to centralize all aspects of online course support. Many of my insights below about teaching with WebCT could just as easily be insights about teaching with any OCMS, or in fact teaching with the web in general.

What is WebCT?

WebCT is one of several course management systems currently on the market. Like, most of these systems, it provides a suite of tools from which the instructor can pick and choose when setting up his or her course web site.

These features include:

• templates to help faculty set up a homepage and welcome page for their course
• tools for interaction: white board, discussion board, chat rooms, internal e-mail
• tools for assessment: quiz creation tool, student presentation area, student self test creation tool
• tools for course management: online grade book, student tracking, course calendar
• tools for course content: "paths" for organizing related content.
• Support tools for students: glossary, index, search tool, compile messages or course content tool, resume reading tool.

As mentioned above, faculty can choose to use as many or as few of these features as they want. For example, some faculty have decided to use only WebCT's computer-graded quizzes as homework assignments for their students. Other faculty use WebCT to post class handouts and to use the discussion board for out-of-class discussions. On the other end of the spectrum are courses taught entirely online with WebCT. Features that were used in ENGL 302 (Business), in which some sections were taught entirely online, and others in the classroom, are linked to examples above.

ENGL 302 (Business)

All undergraduate students at George Mason University are required to take one 300-level writing class. This writing class is divided into sections that focus on writing in the sciences, humanities, and in business. ENGL 302B is the business section, and is currently being redesigned by a team of faculty to be:

• both an distance and face-to-face course using on-line course material
• focus more on the process of writing
• provide more support for nonnative speakers of English
• connect the writing assignments more closely to the business world

There were 5 sections of ENGL 302B in the spring using the material designed for WebCT, including 2 sections taught completely online and three sections using online material to support a traditional face-to-face class. Distance classes normally did not meet at all on campus or, if they did, only on one or two occasions. Face-to-face classes met one or two days a week, depending upon the structure of the section. Each section enrolled approximately 20-24 students. Students range in age from young adult to middle-aged returning students and many held employment or were raising families. Approximately one-third to half the students in these courses are nonnative speakers of English. Most students in the Business sections are majoring in business-related majors, interdisciplinary majors, or nursing.

Some student strengths reported during the Spring 2000 semester included ability to use vocabulary and write persuasively. Weaknesses included accuracy and proofreading skills, lack of knowledge of business writing conventions, and problems with organization and style, such as overly long sentences or paragraphs. The section that I taught was a face-to-face section.

Redesigning English 302B

A team of faculty began the redesign of the course in the summer of 1999. However, I did not begin to work on the project until the fall of 1999. During that semester, a team of faculty, including two English faculty, one faculty member from the School of Business, and one Instructional Designer (myself) worked on the course. As designed for the Spring of 2000, the course contained the following features:

Schedule
his is a link to an online schedule listing all class assignments, due dates, and class activities. The schedule itself was a simple HTML page uploaded to WebCT and linked to the homepage.

Syllabus
The syllabus was a series of HTML files organized using WebCT's "path" function (link to a picture of a WebCT path).

Course Tools
Links to the online grading system and student tracking, as well as the tool to change one's password, chat rooms, and WebCT internal e-mail. WebCT does provide internal e-mail that is independent of regular Internet e-mail. Many students in the course had regular e-mail as well, so both WebCT and Internet e-mail was used to varying degrees, depending on access to Internet e-mail and ease of sending attachments with Internet e-mail. For example, many of the students who normally used Pine for reading their e-mail made use of WebCT e-mail to send easily their assignments to me as attachments.

Assignments & Handouts
Links to all handouts and assignments for the course, organized by assignment. This information is simply a series of HTML files organized into units, with each unit having a table of contents and navigation tools generated by WebCT. This information could be displayed all at once or set to display only when that particular assignment was being worked on or discussed. Again, the information itself is contained in a series of simple HTML pages uploaded into WebCT and organized using WebCT's "path" tool.

The way the English 302B was taught online in the fall semester emphasized a few large projects, primarily 2 proposal-writing assignments (one individual, one in a group) and a cover letter and resumé. We decided to redesign the assignments to focus more clearly on writing as a process, to add more research skill practice, and to "chunk" the assignments so that distance students would not get overwhelmed when they first looked at the requirements for the assignments. The model that we ended up with had three major projects: a resumé and cover letter, a company profile report, and a proposal.

The latter two projects were linked in that students would write their proposal as if they were either an employee of the company they had researched pitching an idea to their superiors, or a vendor trying to sell a product or service to the company they had researched. In order to keep the workload manageable for both the professors and the students, companies and proposals were chosen beforehand with assistance of faculty from the School of Management.

The company profile and the proposal were also broken down into smaller assignments that focused on different stages of the writing process, for example, researching, organizing, and peer review. Team work was built into the course by having students divide up the company profile into different sections, which each student reporting on a section and sharing information with the other students on their company team.

Redesigning English 302B (cont'd)

Message Board & Online Discussions
A link to the bulletin board tool. Bulletin boards were used for different purposes and to varying degrees in the five sections of English 302B. In my section, the bulletin board was used primarily for collaborative homework assignments, such as posting summaries of articles that other students might be interested in, and posting paraphrases to be critiqued by other students.

Links
Links to other writing resources.

IRC WebCT Resources
Links to help in using WebCT provided by the Instructional Resource Center at George Mason University

Instructor's Homepage

Announcements
Announcements could be added to the top of the homepage by inserting a text box.

Typically for each week, students received an assignment which was described online. The description of each assignment usually consisted of the following:

Overview
An overview of the type of assignment and its purpose in the business world. If the assignment was linked to other assignments, a description of the entire process, including all assignments was included.

Task
A detailed description of the task students were expected to complete, including target audience.

Procedure
A description of the steps students would need to go through to complete the task. Some of the procedures included links to web sites where students would have to read articles or gather information.

Model
A model of a completed assignment, often with questions to think about.

Assessment Criteria for the Assignment
For both the face to face and on-line sections, all of this information was provided on-line. Although my particular section met face-to-face, I decided to keep all of the course information on line, essentially replacing the usual class text with a class web site. It would have been possible to print out all of the above material for each assignment and provide students with a printed packet. However, since many assignments contained links to online articles to read or electronic databases for students to search, I decided to focus on the web as the main medium for course material.

Key Project "Puzzlements"

For me, teaching this course with WebCT was an opportunity to learn more about how OCMS affects the teaching environment. Accordingly, I decided to focus on five key project puzzlements as I taught ENGL 302B.

• How does using a course management system such as WebCT affect teaching?
• How can one design course material for online learning in a writing course?
• How can these online materials be adapted for face-to-face classes?
• How can both face-to-face and distance student writing effectively be assessed?
• What challenges are presented when teaching with technology in a "wired" classroom (a classroom with no computer or projector present but wired for the Internet)?

I traced my engagement with these "puzzlements" with through a course journal which illuminates some of the conclusions I draw below.

Teaching with a Course Management System

Student aptitude with and enthusiasm for on-line learning.

I was amazed at how well the students seemed to do with WebCT. No one seemed to have any problems logging in and most didn't have any problems at all. Everybody successfully posted their message to the [bulletin board]. A lot of faculty seem to be higher maintenance. The issue may be that 1) WebCT is easier to learn for students than for faculty (because they only have to learn how to use it, not design a course in it) or 2) students working in the business world are more tech-savvy than the average faculty member.

Coming from a perspective of supporting faculty, I expected the students I taught to have much more difficulty using WebCT. The major reason for my expectation, I think, is that the faculty interface of WebCT 1.3.1 is considered by many to be somewhat "clunky," consisting primarily of groups of buttons across the bottom of the screen (link to screen capture of faculty view) . These buttons are often three to four levels deep (link to flow chart showing complexity of buttons).

The student view, however, is more straightforward, with students merely having to click on the icon to go to the part of the course material they were interested in. At the first class meeting, I gave students a brief (30 minute) introduction to WebCT, followed by some time to compose their first bulletin board message. After this initial introduction, students encountered few problems with the actual WebCT software. Most of the issues involved lost passwords, although one student accidentally deleted material from WebCT. I also perceived a high level of motivation from students to learn the technology. Since this way a business section, many of the students were preparing for business careers, and they seemed to believe that technology skills would be vital for their career paths. Some mentioned hearing from friends that discussion boards were being used in certain companies. They especially liked conducting their research using online databases, as they saw this as an opportunity not only to practice their research but also to learn how to use technology applications that may be used in their future employment.

Student-faculty contact outside of class facilitated via technology.
This was the first time that I taught a course where students regularly contacted me outside of class through technology. It made it easier for me to remind students of upcoming assignments, post notices of new class locations, and tell absent students what the homework was. I also think that it was particularly beneficial for the students as, given that both the students and myself were very busy outside this class, the making of face-to-face appointments with me outside class time next to impossible.

Logistical Problems
There were a few problems seemingly caused by bugs in WebCT or by operator error. For example, one of my students disappeared from my WebCT folder. Unfortunately, despite my frequent advice to faculty to the contrary, I had not make a recent back-up of the course, forcing me to find all the student's papers on my computer and in my files and reenter them into WebCT. The other priblem arose in my attempt to use WebCT's selective release feature to release course material, assignment explanations, and handouts to students based on the date or based on their name (with half the class looking at one assignment and the other half looking at another). The feature works, but faculty have to be extremely careful to enter the right date and time, and to make sure, if students are divided into groups where each group will look at different material, that no one is accidentally excluded.

Designing Course Material for Online Learning

Need for Clarity
One of the advantages of using the Internet is the ability to make information available to students twenty-four hours a day. In essence, students no longer 'miss' handouts given out when they were absent or lose the syllabus with the due dates for their assignments. In fact, as mentioned above, one of the main uses of WebCT in English 302B was to post descriptions of all assignments, directions for completing assignments, the syllabus and schedule, model assignments, and links to more information on the topics the class was studying.

In addition, the Student Tracking feature in WebCT also gives instructors information about how often students were acessing material and which pages they were accessing, providing valuable feedback to the instructor on how engaged students are in the course. This was particularly true because I had the material in my course folder timed so that information about new assignments only appeared to the students when it came time to focus on the assignments. Usually I released materail about one week before an assignment was due. I soon began to recognize certain patterns of student behavior, such as which students were looking at the material right away, which students did not look at the material until a few hours before the assignment was due, and which students never read all the material related to an assignment at all. Particularly in the case of model assignments, it seems that not all students bothered to look at the model and that the time spent on the model per student was relatively low.

Unfortunately, I did not keep a specific log of these patterns as I noticed them, but such patterns would be an interesting area for future research. Furthermore, as the information in WebCT represented the primary "text" for the class, it was important for the online material be as clear and detailed as possible, not only so that students would learn from the material, but also so that students would be able to complete successfully their assignments. Although we spent a great deal of time writing this material, we still found that the materials were sometimes still not detailed enough.

For example, one assignment asked students to complete an in-progress memo containing specific information on the progress of their research on one company. However, in retrospect, it seems clear that many students did not gain a clear enough understanding of what a progress report was from reading the instructional material, and many submitted assignments that were not, in fact, progress reports. Instead, these students turned in first drafts of their company research. In one journal entry, I noted:

In the days since we had class, I have gotten e-mail from students w/ questions about the stuff in WebCT. Once again, using WebCT is forcing me to be much more online syllabus.

Designing Course Material for Online Learning (cont'd)

Need for Interaction & Active Learners
The decision to make the primary mode of delivery online shifted the responsibility for learning tothe student. Often it seemed that students were not taking that responsibility seriously and were not reading all of the assigned material. As mentioned earlier, the looking at the model essays was a particular casualty. After looking at the student tracking logs logs in the first few weeks of my class, I noted:

I had hoped more students would log into WebCT during the week. Many haven't since the first day. I will have to scare them a little about it on Wed. and let them know that I KNOW how often they check WebCT.

It became apparent to us that in the future, we need more interactive way of instructing students to supplement their reading of the material and completion of the assignments. This conforms to current ideas in constructivist theory that learners need to be actively involved in creating knowledge, as well as the notion from Cognitive Information Processing that students need to interact with the material they are learning for a certain number of repetitions to absorb it.

Some modifications that we could easily execute using the built-in features of WebCT include adding quizzes to check student comprehension of the material, adding discussion questions where students must post their replies to the bulletin board, and adding an activity where student would be required to critique the model essays. I tried to undertake some of these modifications in the face-to-face activities I had planned for my students, but it would have been helpful to have created material in advance created for both the on-line and face-to-face students.

In addition, the online discussion tools could be used to facilitate on-line writing conferences and students could use a bulletin board discussion to post examples of works in progress in order to receive feedback from their peers. Additionally, students could make use of the ability to send documents electronically and to chat online to work collaboratively on writing projects. All of these activities need to be clearly structured with detailed directions, more detailed than for face-to-face instruction, since the instructor will not be there to problem-solve and keep students on task.

Adapting Online Learning Material for Face-to-Face Classes

One of my major problems in teaching this class lay in the fact that it was not scheduled to meet in a computer lab. Since all the material for the course was in WebCT, I was forced either to make lots of copies of the WebCT material to use in class, to try to reschedule classes in computer labs, or to bring my laptop and a projector to the classroom. I wound up combining the three, and each provided its own set of challenges.

It was difficult to reserve a computer lab at the time when I taught. Thus, we could only meet in a lab twice during the semester. The making of copies meant that I had to prepare the copies several days in advance to meet the English department's copying schedule. Also, my lesson had to stick to what was on the copies, since I did not have access to the rest of the instructional material during class time.

Bringing my laptop to class was both good and bad. It was easy to set up and use, but it required me to drag quite a bit of weigh around campus. As I noted early in the semester:

Laptop set up went well. The only problem is lugging the laptop & projector around campus. I will definitely build upper body strength. Having all the material in WebCT and not teaching in a lab is difficult. This class should definitely meet in a lab or a smart classroom & I will request that if I teach it again. I checked the academic lab schedule for Wednesday evenings and there are no labs open except the Mac lab.

It is and will continue to be difficult to integrate technology into courses when there are limited technology-equipped classrooms on campus. I at least had the advantage of having a laptop and a projector to bring to class. Other faculty at George Mason can check this equipment out, but there is only a limited supply.

Lack of Material Designed for In-class Activities

One primary difficulty I encountered while teaching the class was thus the lack of coordinated materials for in-class activities. The materials for the class were primarily designed with the distance learning sections in mind. Therefore, we spent a great deal of time devising strategies that would work well for students working independently with little interaction from the teacher. For example, we devoted considerable time to the writing of clear directions to assignments, providing models and explanations, and devising methods to give students sufficient feedback on their work. Once the course began, it was clear that, although both the distance and face-to-face classes were using the same instructional material, the nature of the class, the type of instruction and hence the type of assessment that was feasible were different in the online and face-to-face sections.

For example, the lead professor on the project, through past experience with online learning, suggested that we avoid planning activities that required a great deal of coordination between students. While we planned peer review for both the on-line and face-to-face classes, we minimized other types of peer activities, such as writing collaboratively and critiquing each other's work. Not only did the face-to-face sections have a much greater opportunity to work collaboratively, but also the lack of collaborative activities in the online version did not give students the opportunity to work on one of the learning goals of the course — the ability to work collaboratively in teams. No effort was made to plan any exercises or activities for the face-to-face class, since we spent most of the planning time focusing on the students in the distance courses.

This meant, however, was that I had to spend a great deal of time thinking about what to do in class. This way not a particular problem for the other two professors teaching face-to-face sections, as they had taught English 302B before. I, on the other hand, was new to the course and therefore did not have as many activities already developed that I could use in class. The material in WebCT worked well as reading and writing assignments, but I was at a loss about what to do in class, especially since there was no textbook on which I could lean for ideas. I did try to make use of the writing handbook which students purchased, but it did not contain any exercises.

Teaching with Technology in a "Wired" Classroom

I had a problem with the computer set up last week, and had to wing the first part of class, which was OK because I had a paper assignment for them. However, the experience gave me a better insight into the frustrations of faculty. I am getting a little frustrated myself. First of all, I HATE lugging the laptop and projector to class. Just the laptop would be no problem, but the projector weighs a ton and I am schlepping it to another building. At least I have my own laptop and can use the IRC projector (don't have to get one from A/V). But I can see now why faculty don't often take advantage of the wired classrooms. It is just a big pain.

It seems clear to me from this experience that if faculty are expected to use technology to enhance their face-to-face instruction, universities must make it easier to bring that technology into classrooms. It is not enough to simply wire classrooms, for example. There also needs to be easy access to suficient computers and projectors, or perhaps field technicians who can set up such equipment in traditional classrooms.

Conclusion

From my experience of teaching ENGL 302B, I gained a richer understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of bringing so much web-based material into a face-to-face classroom, and an understanding of how I can use some of the built-in WebCT features that I had not integrated into any of my online instructional material before, such as the student tracking feature

Many faculty who already teach with technology will recognize my experiences teaching with WebCT. Teaching with WebCT, from a pedagogical standpoint, is not dramatically different to teaching with the Web in general. WebCT's advantage is the ease with which faculty can set up and maintain online course materials, especially for faculty who do not know HTML, Java, and JavaScript. WebCT thus potentially offers access to the benefits of web-based teaching to many more faculty. It also allows faculty to assemble material in one private, password-protected place. In sum, WebCT is a tool that facilitates online course design and management. It is not a tool that will revolutionize online teaching.

Sharon Alayne Widmayer is an Instructional Designer/ Technologist and Adjunct Instructor at George Mason University. Her area of interest is the application of web-based multimedia to the teaching of languages, and she has given presentations on this topic at conferences such as TESOL, IALL, and CALL in the 21st Century. She is also working on her doctoral dissertation in Instructional Technology, focusing on faculty development in higher education. Prior to coming to George Mason, Sharon taught at the University of Maryland College Park, Montgomery College, and Northern Virginia Community College.