Creating and Maintaining Data-Driven Course Web Sites Keeping Up-To-Date While Keeping Your Sanity

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Creating and Maintaining Data-Driven Course Web
SitesKeeping Up-To-Date While Keeping Your
Sanity

• Jesse M. Heines, Ed.D.
• Dept. of Computer Science
• Univ. of Massachusetts Lowell
• http//www.cs.uml.edu/heines

Montreal, Canada, October 18, 2002
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E-Learn 02 Strategic Focus

• Accessibility
• Blended Learning
• Collaborative Learning and Work
• Competency-Based Learning
• Courseware Development

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Blended Learning

• Every few months a new trend hits the training
  industry. One of the latest trends revolves
  around the application of blended learning
  solutions. The idea behind blended learning is
  that instructional designers review a learning
  program, chunk it into modules, and determine the
  best medium to deliver those modules to the
  learner.

Jennifer Hofmann http//www.learningcircuits.org/2
001/apr2001/hofmann.html
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Blended Learning

• Our Blended LearningSM approach is the real
  difference. No other learning option combines
  the synergy of live instructor-led classes and
  live online coaching with proven self-study
  programs, hands-on labs, and a network of outside
  resources. This approach promotes greater
  retention and accommodates differences in
  learning styles. ... Studies have proven that
  adults learn best when they are given a choice
  about how to learn and when they are able to
  influence their learning process.

EpicLearning.com http//www.epiclearning.com/BL_ap
proach.htm
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Blended Learning

• Getting the Most Out of Your Classroom and the
  Internet
• MAJOR TOPICS COVERED
• Understanding Blended Learning
• Why Blend?
• Getting Started
• Further Steps
• Glossary
• PURCHASE THIS GUIDE
• BUY IT CAD 24.95 / USD 17.95 Sales within
  Canada subject to 7 GST.
• METHOD OF PAYMENT Purchase Order, Cheque, Money
  Order, VISA
• BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA PDF format, 42 pages total

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Blended Learning

• An old friend gets a new name
• Blended learning is a fairly new term in
  education lingo, but the concept has been around
  for decades. Essentially, blended learning is
  ... a method of educating at a distance that uses
  technology (high-tech, such as television and the
  Internet, or low-tech, such as voice mail or
  conference calls) combined with traditional
  (stand-up) education or training.

Judith M. Smith, Ph.D. http//www.gwsae.org/Execut
iveUpdate/2001/March/blended.htm
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Monitorial School 1839
Joseph Lancaster, 1778-1838
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John Dewey
1859-1952
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Dewey Psychology 1896

• Stimulus and response are not fully independent
  events, they are organically related
• Learning involves two-way interaction between
  learners and their environment
• Learners experiences within their environments
  are the basis of the meanings they deduce and the
  goals and actions they pursue

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Jean Piaget
1896-1980
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Piaget Conservation 1969
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B.F. Skinner
1904-1990
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Programmed Instruction

• The whole process of becoming compe-tent in any
  field must be divided into a very large number of
  very small steps, and reinforcement must be
  contingent upon the accomplishment of each
  step... By making each successive step as small
  as possible, the frequency of reinforcement can
  be raised to a maximum, while the possible
  aversive consequences of being wrong are reduced
  to a minimum.
• Science and Human Behavior, 1953

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Skinner Were Done

• There is a simple job to be done. The task can
  be stated in concrete terms. The necessary
  techniques are known. The equipment needed can
  easily be provided. Nothing stands in the way
  but cultural inertia.
• B.F. Skinner, 1954

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Skinner Machine 1954
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Skinner Machine 1954
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Skinner Disk 1958
Student at work in a self-instruction room.
Material appears in the left-hand window.
Student writes his response on a strip of paper
exposed at the right.
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Skinner Disk 1958
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James G. Holland 1960
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A Teaching Machine...
...for LowerOrganisms Holland, 1960
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Teaching Rats and Humans

• There is, to the best of my knowledge, no science
  of maze running to be taught. ... The only
  reason a rat should turn to the right rather than
  the left at a certain point is that it is that
  turn which leads to reinforcement. No better
  reason can be learned because there is none.
• Students sometimes pass courses in logic and
  mathematics in the same way.
• John W. Blyth, 1960

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Maria Montessori
1870-1952
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Montessori Method 1911

• Respect for the learners individuality
• Encouragement of the learners freedom

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Edward L. Thorndike
1874-1949
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Thorndike Principles 1913

• Self-activity
• Interest (motivation)
• Preparation and mental set
• Individualization
• Socialization

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Learning From the Past

• Anyone who tries to draw the future in hard lines
  and vivid hues is a fool. The future will not
  sit for a portrait. It will come around a corner
  we never noticed, take us by surprise.
• George Leonard, 1968Education and Ecstasy

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Cometh Course Web Sites

• Heines student survey, 2000
• 62 respondents in courses supported by course Web
  sites
• I wish other professors maintained course Web
  sites like this one
• 82.3 strongly agreed
• 16.1 agreed

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Cometh Course Web Sites

• Gehringer faculty survey, 2002
• 250 respondents
• 85.2 at least posted their syllabi
• 68.8 posted their assignments
• 53.2 posted their lecture notes
• Grankovska and Heines survey, 2002
• 150 respondents, 25 of whom did not have course
  Web sites
• 68.0 indicated that they would like to have one

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Site Development vs. Time

• David Jordan, 1997
• ... creating and maintaining a course Web site
  roughly doubles the work involved in teaching the
  course
• Grankovska and Heines survey, 2002
• 81.3 of the 150 professors who responded cited
  time as the most serious obstacle to making
  their course Web site everything they want it to
  be or the most significant part of the reason
  why they did not have a course Web site

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Commercial Products
Blackboard
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Commercial Products
WebCT
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Commercial Products
IntraLearn
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Custom-Built Products
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Why Custom Build?

• To save time and/or money
• To give yourself maximum control
• To be able to add any features you like
• To have a test bed for students and ones own
  learning
• To maintaining ones interest and enthusiasm for
  teaching

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Enter the Computer
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Inventor? Year?
A self-scoring multiple-choice apparatus that
gives tests and scores and teaches
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Sydney L. Pressey 1924
A self-scoring multiple-choice apparatus that
gives tests and scores and teaches
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Variant by Skinner 1958
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Sydney L. Pressey 1927
A multiple-choice device that omits items from
further presentation once the student can
consistently answer them correctly.
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Using HTML

• Pros
• lots of WYSIWYG development environ-ments to
  choose from, such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver
• easy to create, easy to deploy
• Cons
• static pages unrelated to each other
• maintenance effort grows geometrically as the
  number of pages increases
• keeping pages consistent and up-to-date can be
  difficult

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Using JavaScript

• Pros
• easy to learn, easy to use, easy to test
• fosters consistency between pages, especially
  when files are included via links
• ltscript type"text/javascript" src"../common.js"gt
  lt/scriptgt
• Cons
• not as structured as a standard computer
  language, and therefore not easy to debug
• client-side technology that is subject to
  differences in browser implementations

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Course 91.461
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Course 91.513
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JavaScript Linking
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setTopMatter Function
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File Naming Conventions

• Standardized naming
• class01.htm, class02.htm, ...
• allows linking to be auto-generated
  algorithmically
• Non-standardized naming
• dynamic_table.jsp, dhtml_events.jsp,
  first_xml.jsp, ...
• names can be stored in a JavaScript array
• Either approach allows automatic generation of
  previous and next links

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Auto-Generated Links
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File Naming Revisited

• Name lecture notes in ISO8601 format
• YYYY-MM-DD.htm
• date can be pulled from the file name
• formatted date can be auto-generated
• date sequences are lexicographically sortable

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setPrevNextLinks Function
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Moving to XML
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XML Data on Home Page
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XML Data on Notes Page
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Course Roster in XML
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Course Roster Listing
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Course Roster Submission
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Where to Process XML

• Client side
• limited support in browsers
• possible need for a plug-in
• browser differences, as always
• Server side
• full support on Java-enabled servers
• required classes are free and readily available
• consistent presentation to all browsers

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How to Process XML

• DOM and SAX parsers
• readily available (http//xml.apache.org)
• supported by multiple languages
• tree-oriented processing
• XSL
• highly efficient
• declarative style processing
• support for queries (searches)
• used directly in JavaServer Pages for my course
  home pages, and indirectly for my lecture notes
  and assignment pages

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Using XSL Directly
Java-Enabled Web Server with XML andXSL Class
Libraries JavaServer Page
GeneratedHTML
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Using XSL Indirectly
Java-Enabled Web Server with XML andXSL Class
Libraries JavaServer Page
JavaServer Page functionaccepts an XPath string
and wraps it in an XSLtemplate to generate an
XSL query on-the-fly
GeneratedHTML
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Indirect XSL Function Calls
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getElementContent Method
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ApplyXSLString Method
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Blended Course Web Sites

• Support for traditional classroom instruction as
  well as students studying on their own and/or at
  a distance
• Projected in the classroom to help structure
  normal lectures and provide an additional visual
  aid
• Some students print the notes and bring them to
  class
• All students are required to use the site to get
  and submit assignments

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Blended Site Development

• Day-to-day notes and assignments created with a
  WYSIWYG environment (FrontPage or Dreamweaver)
• Overall structure coded with standard
  syntax-highlighting editors (UltraEdit) and
  Integrated Debugging Environments (Forte or
  JPadPro)
• Graphics created with a standard graphics editor
  (Paint Shop Pro)
• Site hosted by a Java-enabled Web server (Apache
  Tomcat)

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Blended Site Maintenance

• Notes files are updated before and usually after
  every class
• New notes files are created by cloning existing
  ones and changing only the subject matter content
• Structural data is updated automatically by the
  Java and JavaScript code
• Overall course information, class roster, lecture
  topics and dates, assignment titles and due
  dates, and the like are all maintained in XML
  files

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The Best Teacher

• The best teacher uses books and appliances as
  well as his own insight, sympathy, and magnetism.
• Edward L. ThorndikeEducation , 1912

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Jesse M. Heines, Ed.D. Dept. of Computer
Science Univ. of Massachusetts Lowell heines_at_cs.um
l.edu http//www.cs.uml.edu/heines
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Ed Tech History References

• Lumsdaine, A.A. and Glaser, Robert, 1960.
  Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning A
  Source Book. National Education Association of
  the United States, Washington, D.C.
• Saettler, Paul, 1968. A History of Instructional
  Technology. McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, NY.
• Saettler, Paul, 1990. The Evolution of American
  Educational Technology. Libraries Unlimited,
  Englewood, CO.
• Skinner, B.F., 1954. The science of learning and
  the art of teaching. Harvard Educational Review
  24(2).
• Skinner, B.F., 1958. Teaching machines. Science
  128, October 24, 1958.