- Email: [email protected]
An academic challenge for the year 2000: perfect the memex
Computers & Geosciences 26 (2000) 627±633
An academic challenge for the year 2000: perfect the memex John C. Butler Department of Geosciences, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA Received 11 January 1999; received in revised form 4 March 1999; accepted 4 March 1999
Abstract The evolution of the Internet is increasing at an ever-increasing rate. The rate of incorporation of Internet-based resources into university courses, however, does not seem to be keeping pace. In large part this seems to be a function of the mindset of university faculty rather than a technological shortcoming. For the past few years faculty have used the Internet to learn how their colleagues are adopting this new medium into their courses. Passwordprotected course pages will restrict that learning process if university administration and publishers exercise ownership of the intellectual property produced by faculty. A team approach is needed with instructors providing the content and graphic designers, programmers, and cognitive experts adding their skills to produce the ®nal product. This team should be involved from conception through assessment of the results. Focusing on the development of an entire course may not be a wise investment of time and money for a faculty member. It may make more sense to focus on the development of small segments, units or modules or analytical tools that can be incorporated into a variety of courses at other institutions. If such units can be evaluated as good practices, and if an ecient distribution mechanism can be devised, the bene®ts should increase exponentially as new resources are contributed. 7 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Internet; Distance learning
1. Introduction In response to the results of a mental exercise by Arthur (1997) in which he attempted to measure the rate of the evolution of technology, I suggested that the Internet is evolving at a rate some 100,000,000 times the rate of biological evolution (Butler, 1998a). Although this construction was more whimsical than scienti®c, there were some interesting parallels. The age of the Earth was taken as 4.5 billion years. The age of the Internet was 1945 Ð the date of publication of
E-mail address: [email protected] (J.C. Butler).
``As we may think'', by Vannevar Bush (1945), in the July issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Bush muses, ``Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private ®le and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, memex will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and ¯exibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement of his memory.'' Was Bush omniscient? Was he forecasting the Internet? I think he was just playing a game that most of us have played more than once. He was `dreaming' about an entity Ð his memex Ð that
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J.C. Butler / Computers & Geosciences 26 (2000) 627±633
would allow him to function more eciently. I remain convinced that the Internet can accomplish the same goal. Given the rate of evolution of the Internet and its associated technologies over the past ®ve years, it is a challenge to speculate where applications of the Internet to the creation of learning environments are headed in the next half decade. Given the charge to the contributors to `think ahead', this contribution will focus on anticipated challenges facing those who are experimenting with the Internet and its associated multimedia technologies to create learning environments. This is being done with the expectation that some of these prognostications may well be either reality or evaluated and discarded by the time the reader has this manuscript in hand!
2. Higher education Ð 1999 Higher education seems to be in a state ¯ux (Butler, 1999). Changing demographics of potential college students (ethnicity, gender, age, part-time versus fulltime) are causing many universities to rethink their mission, goals and objectives. Legislatures and university governing boards are demanding accountability and base funding (at least in part) on performance measures such as retention and graduation rates. At the same time there are internal forces for change. Many faculty are now seriously debating the role of teaching at a university in the overall evaluation process. We talk about life-long learning and wonder what it really is and what we can do to promote whatever it is. Analyses of these internal and external forces which are promoting change often reveal an underlying belief that the so-called `new technologies' will play a role in formulating an action plan Ð either directly or in serving as a catalyst for change (Butler, 1998a). Given this apparently widely held belief, it is instructive to examine how geoscience faculty are using the Internet in their courses and how this is impacting change.
3. You show me yours and I'll show you mine When Kris Kristoerson (Songs of Kristoerson, http://www.wuwien.ac.at/usr/h92/h9225291/kris/songs/ yoursmine.html) sang: If you're feeling salty, then I'm your tequila If you've got the freedom I've got the time There ain't nothing sweeter than naked emotions
So you show me yours, hon, and I'll show you mine, I think he was talking about learning how the Internet is being used by looking at Web-based resources produced by his colleagues. Butler (1998b) noted that the widespread willingness to `share by showing' Internetbased resources is impressive. This nearly universal practice (as most resources are not yet password protected) can have a double impact. First, the instructor has access to a wealth of information from which to select resources for his or her evolving course pages. Second, the instructor can gain insight as to how colleagues are conducting similar courses. This is a win± win situation as both the faculty member and his or her students may ultimately derive bene®t. Colleagues in their respective locations may actually `interact' with each other in sharing resources. As departments begin to move from `home-grown' web pages to commercial frameworks such as WebCT (http://homebrew.cs.ubc.ca/webct/webct.html), learning by sharing may become more restricted. For example, a preview of the Earth Ð Atlantic Canada Perspective (www.stmarys.ca/academic/ conted/webcourses/frontpage.htm) is available, but the `course pages' themselves are restricted to students enrolled in the course. Copyright restrictions by both publishers and universities may force producers of the future to password protect their intellectual property. At the University of Houston a modi®cation to our copyright policy is currently being presented to the Board of Regents. In part the policy reads: ``The University will assert ownership of copyright developed by faculty, sta or students, of any. . . programmed instruction materials. . . . The University will not assert ownership for any book, journal article, text, glossaries, bibliographies, study guides, laboratory manuals, syllabi, tests and survey instruments''. Thus, the medium seems to be the dierence between what you can do with a published book and its digital equivalent. ``It is recognized that the boundaries among traditional forms of works of authorship may be dicult to apply to certain works in newer media. For example, the line between books and programmed instruction materials may not be apparent. For purposes of this policy, a work whose presentation and use are interactive will be regarded as a computer program rather than a book. When questions of ownership arise . . . . it will be managed as through the University owns the copyright.'' If such policies are widely adopted, then password protection will inevitably follow. This may make sense ®nancially, but will deprive colleagues of the opportunity to learn from your eorts.
J.C. Butler / Computers & Geosciences 26 (2000) 627±633
4. Evolution of Internet-based resources: 1995±1999 In August of 1995, I performed a survey of geoscience departments to determine the extent to which Internet-based course resources were being produced (http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anonreadme.html). The motivation was sel®sh. I wanted to see what others were doing and copy the methodology of those that I judged to be successful. About twice a year I have used V.J. Ans®elds' Directory of US and Canadian Geology Departments (http://www.sdgs.usd.edu/esci/vans®el/Geodepts.html) to literally point and click around these departmental resources. As of January 1999, approximately 42% of the more than 1000 geosciences departments were listed in this directory. Many departments publish a page of courses with Internet resources. Others `hide' these resources in individual faculty member's personal pages. These nonscienti®c surveys have been repeated approximately every six months and the results have been distributed as the ``Virtual Geosciences Professor'' pages (http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anon®eld.html). In January 1999, 186 departments (about 45% of those listed by Ans®eld) were `publishing' 1069 course resources. The rate of growth of such resources is given in Fig. 1 and the increase in the ratio of course resources to the number of producing departments is given in Fig. 2. For both plots month one is August of 1995.
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The number of Internet-based course resources has increased markedly during the past 3.5 years, as has the average number of course resources per department. However, it is apparent that the number of faculty actually producing these resources is increasing at a much lower rate. In fact, a conservative estimate is that less than 5% of the geoscience tenured or tenure track faculty in North America are actively involved. Many of the faculty who were producing one such resource in 1996 are now producing three or four. Thus, the growth depicted in Fig. 2 is more a re¯ection of repetition than of new converts. Central to the survey was the de®nition of a course resource. In 1995, a course resource was de®ned as a collection of materials that was more than simply text. That is, the resource had to take advantage of the distributed nature of the Internet and include images, links and, where appropriate, cgi (common gateway interface) scripts. Although the course resources currently listed on the Virtual Geosciences Professor's page meet this simple de®nition, an evaluation in 1999 reveals than more than 75% of the resources remain rudimentary at best. Perhaps they would be more appropriately termed interactive syllabi, as they are often little more than a course outline with both internal and external links. This was expected in 1995, but not in 1999. These resources are often little more than a digitized version of what historically has taken place in a classroom where the professor or instructor is the center of attention (the sage on the
Fig. 1. Rate of growth of Internet-based course resources and producing departments.
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Fig. 2. Courses per department.
stage). Many of these resources (including many of those produced by the author) fail to take advantage of the distributed, nonlinear attributes of the Internet as a mechanism to foster learning. The reasons for this state of aairs are quite straightforward. Just about anyone can learn enough HTML (hypertext markup language) to create a primitive web page. Alternatively, one can purchase software that allows a ®le to be saved as an HTML document. Scanners are widely available as are digital cameras and the production of images is straightforward. Putting all of these resources together to create a resource that facilitates learning, however, takes a level of design (graphical as well as cognitive) that most faculty simply do not have. Lacking such skills, the interested instructor responds by spending time trying to acquire them. In many instances this can be shown to be an inef®cient, time-intensive process. What is needed, in my opinion, is a team approach with instructors providing the content and graphic designers, programmers, and cognitive experts adding their skills to produce the ®nal product. This team should be involved from conception through assessment of the results. If you ask a faculty member what they have learned as a result of incorporating Internetbased resources into a class, they will respond that ``it takes a lot more time than I would have thought!''
5. Creating learning environments Even with the availability of a team to assist in the preparation of technology-bases instructional materials, some instructors are poorly prepared to do much more with the content than what they are currently doing Ð passing it verbally from one generation to another. ``From my mouth to your pencil'' is one way to describe this lecture model. One wonders if the brain of the pencil holder needs to be involved at all in the process. Perhaps we would be better o if we viewed teaching as a learning profession or at least a learning-facilitating profession. In part, this assessment of the current state of aairs re¯ects the state of preparation of the instructor, for this profession. I imagine that most university instructors, other than those in Colleges of Education, have never taken a course in pedagogical theory or inquired as to dierences in learning styles. In fact, many of my colleagues and I believed (or still believe) that there is only one way to learn Ð the way that WE learned! A professor is in a classroom, face-to-face with a group of students, with information ¯owing primarily from the instructor to the students. This is how it was in the Precambrian when I was a student and how it has been in most of the courses I have taught for the past thirty-two years. What this teaching methodology fails to acknowledge is how and where the ``real learning takes place''
J.C. Butler / Computers & Geosciences 26 (2000) 627±633
Ð outside of the formal classroom setting. In retrospect, I realized that my eciency of learning increased when I was surrounded by books and journals and other sources of information with periodic interruptions to study or share ideas with colleagues. In talking with colleagues I gradually came to realize that not everyone learned the same way. Some preferred the lecture mode. For these auditory learners it was important that they hear the material. I, however, needed to see the text and the images and to take notes and bounce ideas and concepts o fellow students/learners. I would classify myself as a passive visual learner. Many of my students today are active visual learners. Static images in texts or on a screen are not nearly as conducive to their learning as is a game-playing device that allows them to be a part of the action. Each of these learners (auditory, passive visual and active visual) would bene®t from a `memex' that could be adapted to their particular learning style. Again, the Internet may be the answer with respect to the distribution process. What is needed is an intelligent interface that controls what information goes to what learner in what format. Clearly, none of these are new ideas. Had I bothered to read the appropriate literature I would have discovered that my ideas were truly tips of well-established icebergs. Given that a typical classroom contains students with dierent learning styles, what is the ideal role of the professor/instructor? Pickering (1995) suggested that the instructor should become a guide and/or a facilitator. Boyd (www.mines.edu/fs_home/tboyd/ GP311/objectives.html) argues that we need to teach by doing. Thus, the teacher or instructor could be thought of as a talented coach. A successful learning environment is one that can accommodate multiple learning styles. It is an environment in which learners gain access to what they need when they need it, and one in which learners play an active role and are held accountable for their own learning. Most of us were not trained to be coaches, facilitators, or guides and there is some concern that we could be replaced by the `memex'. The mission of the Western Governors University (WGU) is to promote competency-based degrees through high quality distance education (www.wgu.edu/wgu/index.html). The founders of the Western Governors University argued that one could search for the best course in physical geology, for example, and distribute that course to all students enrolled at the university. Much of the opposition to the concept of such Mega universities, in fact, seems to stem from a fear of loss of employment rather than an objective analysis of such a learning environment. Many of my colleagues either object to distance education in general or view it as a second rate opportu-
631
nity at best. Most of my colleagues probably had the luxury of being full-time, residential students when they were undergraduates, and the concept of learning without the face-to-face classroom setting is a foreign one. Some argue that the role of the instructor is to generate enthusiasm in the class and yet most of my instructors seemed bored. Many of these same colleagues view Internet-based course resources as the ®rst step towards distance education, and the second step towards the possible elimination of their positions. Thus, they have failed to experiment with the Internet as an adjunct to their formal, structured classroombased courses.
6. Assessing the learning environment Assessment remains a ®nal frontier. What contribution to learning does the Internet make? Can one measure the dierence in performance and learning when dierent teaching styles are used? Thomas L. Russell, North Carolina State University, has been collecting the results of studies designed to assess the impact of delivery methods on performance and learning (//www2.ncsu.edu/oit/nsdsplit.htm). In almost all of the 248 case histories he has collected there was no signi®cant dierence in learning that could be detected and attributed to the delivery method. Where there was a dierence it was most often in favor of the nonlecture presentation format. Moore and Kearsley (1996), for example, note that ``comparing the achievement of learners as measured by grades, test scores, retention, job performance who are taught at a distance and those taught in face-to-face classes is a line of research going back more than 50 years. The usual ®nding in these comparison studies is that there are no signi®cant dierences between learning in the two dierent environments, regardless of the nature of the content, the educational level of the students, or the media involved''. They argue that it is reasonable to conclude that there is insucient evidence to support the idea that classroom instruction is the optimum delivery method and that the absence of face-to-face contact is not in itself detrimental to the learning process. ``What makes any course good or poor is a consequence of how well it is designed, delivered, and conducted, not whether the students are face-to-face or at a distance.'' Russell summaries his analyses as follows. ``While this documentation speaks volumes about the futility of these studies, it also acknowledges the fact that the questions about the comparative impacts of the technologies remains of paramount importance. It is dicult, if not impossible, to separate the emotional response from the results of a statistical analysis.
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Those that want to believe that face-to-face instruction is superior will always be able to ®nd fault with studies designed to see if there are dierences.''
7. The Golden Colorado meeting In August 1998, a group of 20 geoscience instructors, industry training coordinators and cognitive scientists met on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO, for three days of presentations and discussions. This meeting, sponsored by a National Science Foundation grant to the American Geological Institute, focused on how the Internet is being used to assist with the creation of learning environments (Butler, 1999). A summary of this conference and the interests of the participants are given by Hu (1998). One of the outcomes of the meeting was a realization that there was little interest in a `universal course' in any particular discipline. Each individual or company wanted to put their own mark on the material. There was keen interest, however, in smaller units of material Ð a unit or module could be an eective simulation or a laboratory exercise or a digital handout. It was agreed that such units should be designed to emphasize learning and that, whenever possible, they should be interactive rather than passive. If these units or modules were readily available, instructors could select from all available units those that best ®t their immediate course needs. In the process of selecting suitable units, the instructor would gain ideas that eventually could lead to the development of new units. Thus, a self-sustaining process would be initiated. Whereas the importance of producing these units or modules was never in dispute, lengthy discussions took place about the mechanics. Who would decide which units were suitable for inclusion in a collection? Where would the units reside? Would they be housed on individual servers at the home institutions of the producers or would there be a central repository? Would there be a charge for accessing resources? Who would pay for the infrastructure needed to make such a system work eciently? Would the creator of the resource have control of his or her own intellectual property? Would producers have permission to make their intellectual property available? No one had complete answers to these or other issues.
links to Internet-based resources with more than half produced by individual faculty members. Given the discussions at the Golden meeting, I decided to change the emphasis from the compilation of lists of lists of resources to the recognition of good practices. The lists themselves will be maintained in the form of archives, and as such will still have some utility. The downside of this shift is that the author is making the decision as to which resources are included, involving a judgment that many may not agree with. The philosophy adopted is that these resources are good ones to look at to get ideas. They are not intended to be the de®nitive list. At the present time good practices are recognized (http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/goodpractices.html) in the following areas: department commitment, individual courses, on-line courses, laboratory exercises, analytical tools, applets, data, handouts, images, resource materials, student project and virtual ®eld trips. 8.1. Departmental commitment Three departments are recognized for their commitment to experiment with the Internet as one way to create a meaningful learning environment (www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/gpdepart.html): Columbia University and Barnard College, Cornell, and the University of British Columbia. All three are rather dierent with respect to their eorts, yet all three share common features. Someone in the administration has given their blessing to the eort. But an administrative blessing is insucient in the absence of resources. In all three cases, support teams have been formed to provide the set of skills necessary to produce the resources. Faculty at Columbia University and Barnhard College have redesigned the introductory courses in their Environmental Sciences program (climate, solid earth and life) (http://rainbow.ldgo.columbia.edu/ees/lithosphere/index.html). The motivation that led to the design of these courses was for the students to work with real data to solve real problems. A data viewer (http:// rainbow.ldgo.columbia.edu/ees/tut_data.htm) was designed to facilitate the manipulation of large datasets and these resources are available for use by other faculty. Although designed for use by students on their own time to solve homework exercises, the instructors found that the data viewer was an important part of the lecture environment and it is now routinely used to illustrate concepts in class.
8. Good practices
8.2. Individual courses
The current version of the Virtual Geoscience Professors home page contains more than 2000 individual
I have followed the development of Introduction of Geophysical Exploration (www.mines.edu/fs_home/
J.C. Butler / Computers & Geosciences 26 (2000) 627±633
tboyd/GP311/) at the Colorado School of Mines for several years. This course illustrates several important factors that should be of general interest. First, part of the expense of producing this yearlong course was covered by a grant from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). This is encouraging, as it suggests that other societies may prove to be a source of support for other courses. Second, the ®nal version of the course was designed to be distributed on an anywhere-at-anytime basis. Thus, George Geologist on a rig in the North Sea could take the course at his own pace. It is interesting that the course instructors (Boyd and Roemig) opted not to use the course in this way at the School of Mines. The course pages are for the students to use on their own and lecture time is now spent asking and answering questions and `coaching'. Thus, the Internet resource has had a marked eect on how face-to-face time is spent. Third, the course focuses on `doing' geophysics and not reading about or hearing about geophysics. Interactive Java applets are the workhorses of these pages. For example, there is an exercise, which involves interpreting a gravity pro®le in an area where there are some abandoned coal mines. An interactive applet (www.mines.edu/fs_home/tboyd/GP311/MODULES/ GRAV/DESIGN/GravityForwardJava.html) allows the learner to experiment with the various parameters that control the anomaly Ð width of the tunnel, depth of the tunnel, density contrast between the tunnel ®ll and the country rock, number of recordings among others. I have used this applet in a freshman physical geology class to illustrate a gravity anomaly and ®nd it to be eective without having to give several lectures in geophysics. Thus, a tool designed for one level may be useful at another.
9. Conclusion In keeping with the spirit of this special issue, several prognostications can be drawn from this review. I believe that the number of restricted sites (password protected) will increase in response to the ®nancial concerns of publishers and university administration. This may be wise ®nancially but it will make it more dicult to learn by sharing.
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Of potentially greater concern are the worthy current eorts that may be abandoned because of a lack of support from colleagues and the administration. The key element is time and how to wisely invest it. If one senses that the time spent producing a learning resource is not viewed as a wise investment by one's peers, then most will stop such activity in favor of time-honored publishing and securing external support. Similarly, if the administration fails to support the establishment of teams of experts then the eorts of many faculty will cease. Focusing on the development of an entire course may not be a wise investment of time and money for a faculty member. However, it may make more sense to focus on the development of small segments, units or modules or analytical tools that can be incorporated into a variety of courses at other institutions. If such units can be evaluated, and if an ecient distribution mechanism can be devised, the bene®ts should increase exponentially as new resources are contributed. Assessment remains a ®nal frontier. Technologies will evolve. There will be bigger and better applets, more powerful analytical tools and larger and more sophisticated databases to explore. The question remains, however; do these technologies make a dierence in learning? Experts in the cognitive sciences must be an integral part of the design and evaluation teams.
References Arthur, W.B., 1997. How fast is technology evolving? Scienti®c American 2, 37±39. Bush, V., 1945. As we may think. Atlantic Monthly, July, 121±128. Butler, J.C., 1998a. The Internet - A catalyst for change. Computers & Geosciences 24 (7), 617±621. Butler, J.C., 1998b. You show me yours and I'll show you mine. GSA Today 8 (2), 9±13. Butler, J.C., 1999. The tangled web. Active Learning, in press. Hu, W., 1998. Conference on web-based learning and assessment. Geotimes 29. Moore, M., Kearsley, G., 1996. Research on eectiveness. Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, CA 312 pp. Pickering, J., 1995. Teaching on the Internet is learning. Active Learning 2, 9±12.
An academic challenge for the year 2000: perfect the memex John C. Butler Department of Geosciences, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA Received 11 January 1999; received in revised form 4 March 1999; accepted 4 March 1999
Abstract The evolution of the Internet is increasing at an ever-increasing rate. The rate of incorporation of Internet-based resources into university courses, however, does not seem to be keeping pace. In large part this seems to be a function of the mindset of university faculty rather than a technological shortcoming. For the past few years faculty have used the Internet to learn how their colleagues are adopting this new medium into their courses. Passwordprotected course pages will restrict that learning process if university administration and publishers exercise ownership of the intellectual property produced by faculty. A team approach is needed with instructors providing the content and graphic designers, programmers, and cognitive experts adding their skills to produce the ®nal product. This team should be involved from conception through assessment of the results. Focusing on the development of an entire course may not be a wise investment of time and money for a faculty member. It may make more sense to focus on the development of small segments, units or modules or analytical tools that can be incorporated into a variety of courses at other institutions. If such units can be evaluated as good practices, and if an ecient distribution mechanism can be devised, the bene®ts should increase exponentially as new resources are contributed. 7 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Internet; Distance learning
1. Introduction In response to the results of a mental exercise by Arthur (1997) in which he attempted to measure the rate of the evolution of technology, I suggested that the Internet is evolving at a rate some 100,000,000 times the rate of biological evolution (Butler, 1998a). Although this construction was more whimsical than scienti®c, there were some interesting parallels. The age of the Earth was taken as 4.5 billion years. The age of the Internet was 1945 Ð the date of publication of
E-mail address: [email protected] (J.C. Butler).
``As we may think'', by Vannevar Bush (1945), in the July issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Bush muses, ``Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private ®le and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, memex will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and ¯exibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement of his memory.'' Was Bush omniscient? Was he forecasting the Internet? I think he was just playing a game that most of us have played more than once. He was `dreaming' about an entity Ð his memex Ð that
0098-3004/00/$ - see front matter 7 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 0 9 8 - 3 0 0 4 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 9 7 - 7
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J.C. Butler / Computers & Geosciences 26 (2000) 627±633
would allow him to function more eciently. I remain convinced that the Internet can accomplish the same goal. Given the rate of evolution of the Internet and its associated technologies over the past ®ve years, it is a challenge to speculate where applications of the Internet to the creation of learning environments are headed in the next half decade. Given the charge to the contributors to `think ahead', this contribution will focus on anticipated challenges facing those who are experimenting with the Internet and its associated multimedia technologies to create learning environments. This is being done with the expectation that some of these prognostications may well be either reality or evaluated and discarded by the time the reader has this manuscript in hand!
2. Higher education Ð 1999 Higher education seems to be in a state ¯ux (Butler, 1999). Changing demographics of potential college students (ethnicity, gender, age, part-time versus fulltime) are causing many universities to rethink their mission, goals and objectives. Legislatures and university governing boards are demanding accountability and base funding (at least in part) on performance measures such as retention and graduation rates. At the same time there are internal forces for change. Many faculty are now seriously debating the role of teaching at a university in the overall evaluation process. We talk about life-long learning and wonder what it really is and what we can do to promote whatever it is. Analyses of these internal and external forces which are promoting change often reveal an underlying belief that the so-called `new technologies' will play a role in formulating an action plan Ð either directly or in serving as a catalyst for change (Butler, 1998a). Given this apparently widely held belief, it is instructive to examine how geoscience faculty are using the Internet in their courses and how this is impacting change.
3. You show me yours and I'll show you mine When Kris Kristoerson (Songs of Kristoerson, http://www.wuwien.ac.at/usr/h92/h9225291/kris/songs/ yoursmine.html) sang: If you're feeling salty, then I'm your tequila If you've got the freedom I've got the time There ain't nothing sweeter than naked emotions
So you show me yours, hon, and I'll show you mine, I think he was talking about learning how the Internet is being used by looking at Web-based resources produced by his colleagues. Butler (1998b) noted that the widespread willingness to `share by showing' Internetbased resources is impressive. This nearly universal practice (as most resources are not yet password protected) can have a double impact. First, the instructor has access to a wealth of information from which to select resources for his or her evolving course pages. Second, the instructor can gain insight as to how colleagues are conducting similar courses. This is a win± win situation as both the faculty member and his or her students may ultimately derive bene®t. Colleagues in their respective locations may actually `interact' with each other in sharing resources. As departments begin to move from `home-grown' web pages to commercial frameworks such as WebCT (http://homebrew.cs.ubc.ca/webct/webct.html), learning by sharing may become more restricted. For example, a preview of the Earth Ð Atlantic Canada Perspective (www.stmarys.ca/academic/ conted/webcourses/frontpage.htm) is available, but the `course pages' themselves are restricted to students enrolled in the course. Copyright restrictions by both publishers and universities may force producers of the future to password protect their intellectual property. At the University of Houston a modi®cation to our copyright policy is currently being presented to the Board of Regents. In part the policy reads: ``The University will assert ownership of copyright developed by faculty, sta or students, of any. . . programmed instruction materials. . . . The University will not assert ownership for any book, journal article, text, glossaries, bibliographies, study guides, laboratory manuals, syllabi, tests and survey instruments''. Thus, the medium seems to be the dierence between what you can do with a published book and its digital equivalent. ``It is recognized that the boundaries among traditional forms of works of authorship may be dicult to apply to certain works in newer media. For example, the line between books and programmed instruction materials may not be apparent. For purposes of this policy, a work whose presentation and use are interactive will be regarded as a computer program rather than a book. When questions of ownership arise . . . . it will be managed as through the University owns the copyright.'' If such policies are widely adopted, then password protection will inevitably follow. This may make sense ®nancially, but will deprive colleagues of the opportunity to learn from your eorts.
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4. Evolution of Internet-based resources: 1995±1999 In August of 1995, I performed a survey of geoscience departments to determine the extent to which Internet-based course resources were being produced (http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anonreadme.html). The motivation was sel®sh. I wanted to see what others were doing and copy the methodology of those that I judged to be successful. About twice a year I have used V.J. Ans®elds' Directory of US and Canadian Geology Departments (http://www.sdgs.usd.edu/esci/vans®el/Geodepts.html) to literally point and click around these departmental resources. As of January 1999, approximately 42% of the more than 1000 geosciences departments were listed in this directory. Many departments publish a page of courses with Internet resources. Others `hide' these resources in individual faculty member's personal pages. These nonscienti®c surveys have been repeated approximately every six months and the results have been distributed as the ``Virtual Geosciences Professor'' pages (http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anon®eld.html). In January 1999, 186 departments (about 45% of those listed by Ans®eld) were `publishing' 1069 course resources. The rate of growth of such resources is given in Fig. 1 and the increase in the ratio of course resources to the number of producing departments is given in Fig. 2. For both plots month one is August of 1995.
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The number of Internet-based course resources has increased markedly during the past 3.5 years, as has the average number of course resources per department. However, it is apparent that the number of faculty actually producing these resources is increasing at a much lower rate. In fact, a conservative estimate is that less than 5% of the geoscience tenured or tenure track faculty in North America are actively involved. Many of the faculty who were producing one such resource in 1996 are now producing three or four. Thus, the growth depicted in Fig. 2 is more a re¯ection of repetition than of new converts. Central to the survey was the de®nition of a course resource. In 1995, a course resource was de®ned as a collection of materials that was more than simply text. That is, the resource had to take advantage of the distributed nature of the Internet and include images, links and, where appropriate, cgi (common gateway interface) scripts. Although the course resources currently listed on the Virtual Geosciences Professor's page meet this simple de®nition, an evaluation in 1999 reveals than more than 75% of the resources remain rudimentary at best. Perhaps they would be more appropriately termed interactive syllabi, as they are often little more than a course outline with both internal and external links. This was expected in 1995, but not in 1999. These resources are often little more than a digitized version of what historically has taken place in a classroom where the professor or instructor is the center of attention (the sage on the
Fig. 1. Rate of growth of Internet-based course resources and producing departments.
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Fig. 2. Courses per department.
stage). Many of these resources (including many of those produced by the author) fail to take advantage of the distributed, nonlinear attributes of the Internet as a mechanism to foster learning. The reasons for this state of aairs are quite straightforward. Just about anyone can learn enough HTML (hypertext markup language) to create a primitive web page. Alternatively, one can purchase software that allows a ®le to be saved as an HTML document. Scanners are widely available as are digital cameras and the production of images is straightforward. Putting all of these resources together to create a resource that facilitates learning, however, takes a level of design (graphical as well as cognitive) that most faculty simply do not have. Lacking such skills, the interested instructor responds by spending time trying to acquire them. In many instances this can be shown to be an inef®cient, time-intensive process. What is needed, in my opinion, is a team approach with instructors providing the content and graphic designers, programmers, and cognitive experts adding their skills to produce the ®nal product. This team should be involved from conception through assessment of the results. If you ask a faculty member what they have learned as a result of incorporating Internetbased resources into a class, they will respond that ``it takes a lot more time than I would have thought!''
5. Creating learning environments Even with the availability of a team to assist in the preparation of technology-bases instructional materials, some instructors are poorly prepared to do much more with the content than what they are currently doing Ð passing it verbally from one generation to another. ``From my mouth to your pencil'' is one way to describe this lecture model. One wonders if the brain of the pencil holder needs to be involved at all in the process. Perhaps we would be better o if we viewed teaching as a learning profession or at least a learning-facilitating profession. In part, this assessment of the current state of aairs re¯ects the state of preparation of the instructor, for this profession. I imagine that most university instructors, other than those in Colleges of Education, have never taken a course in pedagogical theory or inquired as to dierences in learning styles. In fact, many of my colleagues and I believed (or still believe) that there is only one way to learn Ð the way that WE learned! A professor is in a classroom, face-to-face with a group of students, with information ¯owing primarily from the instructor to the students. This is how it was in the Precambrian when I was a student and how it has been in most of the courses I have taught for the past thirty-two years. What this teaching methodology fails to acknowledge is how and where the ``real learning takes place''
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Ð outside of the formal classroom setting. In retrospect, I realized that my eciency of learning increased when I was surrounded by books and journals and other sources of information with periodic interruptions to study or share ideas with colleagues. In talking with colleagues I gradually came to realize that not everyone learned the same way. Some preferred the lecture mode. For these auditory learners it was important that they hear the material. I, however, needed to see the text and the images and to take notes and bounce ideas and concepts o fellow students/learners. I would classify myself as a passive visual learner. Many of my students today are active visual learners. Static images in texts or on a screen are not nearly as conducive to their learning as is a game-playing device that allows them to be a part of the action. Each of these learners (auditory, passive visual and active visual) would bene®t from a `memex' that could be adapted to their particular learning style. Again, the Internet may be the answer with respect to the distribution process. What is needed is an intelligent interface that controls what information goes to what learner in what format. Clearly, none of these are new ideas. Had I bothered to read the appropriate literature I would have discovered that my ideas were truly tips of well-established icebergs. Given that a typical classroom contains students with dierent learning styles, what is the ideal role of the professor/instructor? Pickering (1995) suggested that the instructor should become a guide and/or a facilitator. Boyd (www.mines.edu/fs_home/tboyd/ GP311/objectives.html) argues that we need to teach by doing. Thus, the teacher or instructor could be thought of as a talented coach. A successful learning environment is one that can accommodate multiple learning styles. It is an environment in which learners gain access to what they need when they need it, and one in which learners play an active role and are held accountable for their own learning. Most of us were not trained to be coaches, facilitators, or guides and there is some concern that we could be replaced by the `memex'. The mission of the Western Governors University (WGU) is to promote competency-based degrees through high quality distance education (www.wgu.edu/wgu/index.html). The founders of the Western Governors University argued that one could search for the best course in physical geology, for example, and distribute that course to all students enrolled at the university. Much of the opposition to the concept of such Mega universities, in fact, seems to stem from a fear of loss of employment rather than an objective analysis of such a learning environment. Many of my colleagues either object to distance education in general or view it as a second rate opportu-
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nity at best. Most of my colleagues probably had the luxury of being full-time, residential students when they were undergraduates, and the concept of learning without the face-to-face classroom setting is a foreign one. Some argue that the role of the instructor is to generate enthusiasm in the class and yet most of my instructors seemed bored. Many of these same colleagues view Internet-based course resources as the ®rst step towards distance education, and the second step towards the possible elimination of their positions. Thus, they have failed to experiment with the Internet as an adjunct to their formal, structured classroombased courses.
6. Assessing the learning environment Assessment remains a ®nal frontier. What contribution to learning does the Internet make? Can one measure the dierence in performance and learning when dierent teaching styles are used? Thomas L. Russell, North Carolina State University, has been collecting the results of studies designed to assess the impact of delivery methods on performance and learning (//www2.ncsu.edu/oit/nsdsplit.htm). In almost all of the 248 case histories he has collected there was no signi®cant dierence in learning that could be detected and attributed to the delivery method. Where there was a dierence it was most often in favor of the nonlecture presentation format. Moore and Kearsley (1996), for example, note that ``comparing the achievement of learners as measured by grades, test scores, retention, job performance who are taught at a distance and those taught in face-to-face classes is a line of research going back more than 50 years. The usual ®nding in these comparison studies is that there are no signi®cant dierences between learning in the two dierent environments, regardless of the nature of the content, the educational level of the students, or the media involved''. They argue that it is reasonable to conclude that there is insucient evidence to support the idea that classroom instruction is the optimum delivery method and that the absence of face-to-face contact is not in itself detrimental to the learning process. ``What makes any course good or poor is a consequence of how well it is designed, delivered, and conducted, not whether the students are face-to-face or at a distance.'' Russell summaries his analyses as follows. ``While this documentation speaks volumes about the futility of these studies, it also acknowledges the fact that the questions about the comparative impacts of the technologies remains of paramount importance. It is dicult, if not impossible, to separate the emotional response from the results of a statistical analysis.
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Those that want to believe that face-to-face instruction is superior will always be able to ®nd fault with studies designed to see if there are dierences.''
7. The Golden Colorado meeting In August 1998, a group of 20 geoscience instructors, industry training coordinators and cognitive scientists met on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO, for three days of presentations and discussions. This meeting, sponsored by a National Science Foundation grant to the American Geological Institute, focused on how the Internet is being used to assist with the creation of learning environments (Butler, 1999). A summary of this conference and the interests of the participants are given by Hu (1998). One of the outcomes of the meeting was a realization that there was little interest in a `universal course' in any particular discipline. Each individual or company wanted to put their own mark on the material. There was keen interest, however, in smaller units of material Ð a unit or module could be an eective simulation or a laboratory exercise or a digital handout. It was agreed that such units should be designed to emphasize learning and that, whenever possible, they should be interactive rather than passive. If these units or modules were readily available, instructors could select from all available units those that best ®t their immediate course needs. In the process of selecting suitable units, the instructor would gain ideas that eventually could lead to the development of new units. Thus, a self-sustaining process would be initiated. Whereas the importance of producing these units or modules was never in dispute, lengthy discussions took place about the mechanics. Who would decide which units were suitable for inclusion in a collection? Where would the units reside? Would they be housed on individual servers at the home institutions of the producers or would there be a central repository? Would there be a charge for accessing resources? Who would pay for the infrastructure needed to make such a system work eciently? Would the creator of the resource have control of his or her own intellectual property? Would producers have permission to make their intellectual property available? No one had complete answers to these or other issues.
links to Internet-based resources with more than half produced by individual faculty members. Given the discussions at the Golden meeting, I decided to change the emphasis from the compilation of lists of lists of resources to the recognition of good practices. The lists themselves will be maintained in the form of archives, and as such will still have some utility. The downside of this shift is that the author is making the decision as to which resources are included, involving a judgment that many may not agree with. The philosophy adopted is that these resources are good ones to look at to get ideas. They are not intended to be the de®nitive list. At the present time good practices are recognized (http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/goodpractices.html) in the following areas: department commitment, individual courses, on-line courses, laboratory exercises, analytical tools, applets, data, handouts, images, resource materials, student project and virtual ®eld trips. 8.1. Departmental commitment Three departments are recognized for their commitment to experiment with the Internet as one way to create a meaningful learning environment (www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/gpdepart.html): Columbia University and Barnard College, Cornell, and the University of British Columbia. All three are rather dierent with respect to their eorts, yet all three share common features. Someone in the administration has given their blessing to the eort. But an administrative blessing is insucient in the absence of resources. In all three cases, support teams have been formed to provide the set of skills necessary to produce the resources. Faculty at Columbia University and Barnhard College have redesigned the introductory courses in their Environmental Sciences program (climate, solid earth and life) (http://rainbow.ldgo.columbia.edu/ees/lithosphere/index.html). The motivation that led to the design of these courses was for the students to work with real data to solve real problems. A data viewer (http:// rainbow.ldgo.columbia.edu/ees/tut_data.htm) was designed to facilitate the manipulation of large datasets and these resources are available for use by other faculty. Although designed for use by students on their own time to solve homework exercises, the instructors found that the data viewer was an important part of the lecture environment and it is now routinely used to illustrate concepts in class.
8. Good practices
8.2. Individual courses
The current version of the Virtual Geoscience Professors home page contains more than 2000 individual
I have followed the development of Introduction of Geophysical Exploration (www.mines.edu/fs_home/
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tboyd/GP311/) at the Colorado School of Mines for several years. This course illustrates several important factors that should be of general interest. First, part of the expense of producing this yearlong course was covered by a grant from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). This is encouraging, as it suggests that other societies may prove to be a source of support for other courses. Second, the ®nal version of the course was designed to be distributed on an anywhere-at-anytime basis. Thus, George Geologist on a rig in the North Sea could take the course at his own pace. It is interesting that the course instructors (Boyd and Roemig) opted not to use the course in this way at the School of Mines. The course pages are for the students to use on their own and lecture time is now spent asking and answering questions and `coaching'. Thus, the Internet resource has had a marked eect on how face-to-face time is spent. Third, the course focuses on `doing' geophysics and not reading about or hearing about geophysics. Interactive Java applets are the workhorses of these pages. For example, there is an exercise, which involves interpreting a gravity pro®le in an area where there are some abandoned coal mines. An interactive applet (www.mines.edu/fs_home/tboyd/GP311/MODULES/ GRAV/DESIGN/GravityForwardJava.html) allows the learner to experiment with the various parameters that control the anomaly Ð width of the tunnel, depth of the tunnel, density contrast between the tunnel ®ll and the country rock, number of recordings among others. I have used this applet in a freshman physical geology class to illustrate a gravity anomaly and ®nd it to be eective without having to give several lectures in geophysics. Thus, a tool designed for one level may be useful at another.
9. Conclusion In keeping with the spirit of this special issue, several prognostications can be drawn from this review. I believe that the number of restricted sites (password protected) will increase in response to the ®nancial concerns of publishers and university administration. This may be wise ®nancially but it will make it more dicult to learn by sharing.
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Of potentially greater concern are the worthy current eorts that may be abandoned because of a lack of support from colleagues and the administration. The key element is time and how to wisely invest it. If one senses that the time spent producing a learning resource is not viewed as a wise investment by one's peers, then most will stop such activity in favor of time-honored publishing and securing external support. Similarly, if the administration fails to support the establishment of teams of experts then the eorts of many faculty will cease. Focusing on the development of an entire course may not be a wise investment of time and money for a faculty member. However, it may make more sense to focus on the development of small segments, units or modules or analytical tools that can be incorporated into a variety of courses at other institutions. If such units can be evaluated, and if an ecient distribution mechanism can be devised, the bene®ts should increase exponentially as new resources are contributed. Assessment remains a ®nal frontier. Technologies will evolve. There will be bigger and better applets, more powerful analytical tools and larger and more sophisticated databases to explore. The question remains, however; do these technologies make a dierence in learning? Experts in the cognitive sciences must be an integral part of the design and evaluation teams.
References Arthur, W.B., 1997. How fast is technology evolving? Scienti®c American 2, 37±39. Bush, V., 1945. As we may think. Atlantic Monthly, July, 121±128. Butler, J.C., 1998a. The Internet - A catalyst for change. Computers & Geosciences 24 (7), 617±621. Butler, J.C., 1998b. You show me yours and I'll show you mine. GSA Today 8 (2), 9±13. Butler, J.C., 1999. The tangled web. Active Learning, in press. Hu, W., 1998. Conference on web-based learning and assessment. Geotimes 29. Moore, M., Kearsley, G., 1996. Research on eectiveness. Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, CA 312 pp. Pickering, J., 1995. Teaching on the Internet is learning. Active Learning 2, 9±12.