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Computer literacy and applications via distance e-learning
Computers & Education 36 (2001) 333–345 www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu
Computer literacy and applications via distance e-learning David Lupo *, Zippy Erlich Computer Science Department, The Open University of Israel, PO Box 39328, 16 Klausner Street, Ramat-Aviv, 61392 Tel-Aviv, Israel Received 14 August 2000; accepted 13 January 2001
Abstract In this paper we present an innovative framework for the teaching of computer literacy and application that can serve as a new educational paradigm in teaching courses in a distance learning format. This new framework combines and integrates new technologies with older distance education teaching aids. We implement this framework in a course called ‘‘Computer Applications for Social Sciences’’ that was developed in the Open University of Israel, a recognized academic institution in Israel. The course, which is based on distance learning and electronic tools such as communication technologies, CD-ROM coursewares, Web-sites and discussion groups, was taught in the second semester of 1999. The course was developed in a way that allows students with no previous knowledge to learn it at a distance. We present here a description of the course and its e-learning tools, a broad study on the 219 students who participated in the course, and a close study on 55 of these students. # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Computer-mediated communication; Distance education; Telelearning
1. Background The Open University of Israel (OUI) is a distance education institution designed to offer academic studies to students throughout Israel. Its home study method allows its students to pursue a higher education, whenever and wherever convenient, anywhere in the country, and without interfering with their other personal and vocational obligations. The OUI offers about 400 courses in Life Sciences, Natural Sciences, Mathematics, Computer Science, Social Sciences, Management,
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +972-3-6460738; fax: +972-3-6460744. E-mail address: [email protected] (D. Lupo) 0360-1315/01/$ - see front matter # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0360-1315(01)00022-7
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Jewish Studies, Education, Humanities, Psychology, Communications, Music and Art and has more than 30,000 students from all over Israel and abroad. 1.1. The study format of the OUI Each course at OUI is designed to meet the particular needs of students coping with studies individually, at home, and is composed of most or all of the following elements: course textbooks, assignments and exams, study centers and tutors, technologies, media and supplements. The written textbooks are supplemented by multi-media programs and by tutorial assistance in as flexible manner as possible. OUI is a multi-campus university with tutors in different localities throughout the country offering guidance and a personal link between the student and the university. Tutorial sessions in regional study centers range in levels of frequency from once a week to once every three weeks, depending on the study format chosen by the student. About 30% of the students prefer the individual-study format (4–7 meetings per semester), while 70% are enrolled in the group-study format (10–15 meetings per semester). 1.2. Technology, media and supplements A broad spectrum of technological and media supplements, as described below, enhance the written course material in accordance with the needs of each course. The technologies give rise to many pedagogical and social issues, as discussed by Beller (1996). In the next few sections we present a short description of the technologies used in the Open University. A more detailed discussion can be found in Beller (1997), and was described by Friedman and Beller (1997) at the 18th ICDE World Conference. 1.2.1. Broadcasts on cable TV OUI broadcasts, which offer enrichment in the broad spectrum of topics taught at the university, accompany many of the courses. The broadcasts are presented on cable television with segments aired several times a day, every day of the week. Telecourses, in which the video material is an integral part of the course rather than enrichment alone, are also offered, and additional telecourses are in development. 1.2.2. OFEK — interactive distance education via satellite Studies that are broadcast via satellite to many sites throughout Israel offer interactive lectures, professional training programs and symposia (Beller, Kurtz, & Or, 1997). This enables a lecturer to deliver a live lesson from a central studio concurrently to any number of classrooms located all over the country. The students in these remote classrooms can participate in the lesson by means of voice-communication and data-communication (Kurtz, 1998). 1.2.3. Multimedia study material combining various media on the computer This material is also being developed in order to highlight important sections of study. Some of the courses already developed use interactive courseware (available on CD-ROM) as an integral part of the study material sent to the students. These multimedia-based courseware programs
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enhance interactive learning and stimulate and enrich the learning process, and thus replace passive learning with interactive, multifaceted personal experience. 1.2.4. Computer-mediated-communication (CMC) OUI offers an interactive on-line learning environment via the Internet, called TELEM, that forms an integral part of the teaching and learning process (Aviv, 1999). Engaged in research, development and integration of distance learning and teaching methods, TELEM makes use of advanced information and communication technologies for the mutual benefit of both students and teachers (Jonassen, Davidson, Collins, Campbell, & Bannan, 1995). The CMC courses include interactive learning materials via electronic asynchronous communication (i.e. discussion groups, e-mail, download materials). Every CMC course has its own Web-site, HTML and Javabased. These Web-sites can be accessed via any Internet-connected computer in Israel and abroad. Although communication is, at present, basically asynchronous, the TELEM team is developing synchronous technologies that will integrate more interactive aspects into the CMC learning process as discussed by Moore (1989). 1.3. The course background As described above, OUI has developed an innovative model of learning, based on new technologies, which combines and integrates on-line technologies and older distance education teaching aids and combines them with the three-layer model presented by Cookson (2000). This is intended to provide an innovative framework that can serve as a new educational paradigm in teaching courses in a distance learning format. To participate in any of the CMC courses, each student is required to have basic knowledge of computer applications, including the Internet. There are still many OUI students who come to their academic studies with little or no computer literacy and application know-how and, therefore, cannot participate in the Web and computer-aided course activities. Moreover, we would like to see all of our students and graduates sufficiently computer-literate. They should understand the underlying concepts of computer science, how a computer works, and how to work with basic applications such as a word-processor and an electronic worksheet. They should also have the fundamental skills needed for working with the Internet. The rest of this paper is built as follows: Section 2 overviews the course ‘‘Computer Applications for the Social Sciences’’; Section 3 describes the technologies used in the course; Section 4 describes the way the course is taught; Section 5 illustrates some findings of student feedback; and Section 6 gives our conclusions and suggestions for future study. 2. Course overview The course is a one-semester, two-unit credit course. It comprises four main parts: 1. Introduction to computers: history of computer and computer science; simple algorithm fundamentals and their development; basic components of the computer; computer hardware; basic concepts of programming languages, data representation, information technologies and systems.
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2. Windows95 and word processing (Word): basic concepts of working with the Windows95 operating system: desktop; files and folders; the file Explorer; installing software; basic word processing concepts, and through them more about files, standard menus, hot-keys, etc. 3. The Internet: browsing the Web with Internet Explorer; locating and assessing academic information via different search engines; electronic mail, basic concepts of computer networks, history of the Internet and more. 4. Electronic spreadsheet (Excel): basic and advanced topics of the electronic worksheet: functions; formulas; how to develop a work sheet for a specific problem; showing data through charts and more.
3. Technologies 3.1. Teaching aids The course ‘‘Computer Applications for the Social Sciences’’ was developed by integrating different kinds of teaching aids: printed textbooks, coursewares (on CD-ROM) developed by the SIVAN software company (http://www.sivan.co.il/); interactive Web-based technologies; and a study guide. A different combination of the teaching aids is implemented for each part of the course, as follows: 1. Introduction to computers: Since we assumed that the students have no previous knowledge in computers, no technologies are used in this part. The teaching aids consist only of a booklet, written by the team, explaining the basic ideas of computer science and computer hardware/software concepts. This booklet will be upgraded every few semesters, according to changes in this field. 2. Windows95 and Word: The main teaching aid is a courseware with step-by-step instructions, and short video clips for working with the operating system and word processor. This is accompanied by a printed study guide that contains step-by-step instructions for installing the courseware, guidelines for learning with the courseware, and additional examples and explanations. 3. The Internet: This part uses additional elements of various other technologies. We considered hands-on experience the best way to become used to the Internet. The teaching aids in this part were as follows: A courseware that includes the theoretical background, history and development of the Internet and its basic concepts, and a practical part that includes working with the Internet explorer browser. A book containing all the information needed by a new Internet user: instructions for connecting, e-mail, chat, download and special multimedia aspects. The book introduces both the Internet explorer and Netscape, and different types of e-mail software that can enable the students to access large amounts of information about the software available on the Internet market. A study guide explaining the basic concepts of computer networks, a brief historical outline, some basic theoretical issues concerning the Internet, and guidelines on how to learn this part.
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The course Web-site: The students all participate in the course Web-site that is a part of the TELEM project (Fig. 1), and thus become accustomed to the concept of CMC. The Website is the official communication link between OUI and the course students from the sixth week of the semester. (All other OUI courses, those participating in the TELEM project and those not participating, use regular mail service.) There is also a bulletin board where the students receive messages on changes in meeting schedules, clarifications on deadlines for submitting assignments, etc. The Web-site also includes a discussion group divided into various discussion forums, each of which deals with a different topic of the course. There is also a forum called ‘‘The Course Cafe’’’ where students can speak amongst themselves on any topic they like - sports, art, music, politics, etc. 4. Excel: The teaching aids of this part consist of a book containing most of the features of the Excel software, including a floppy-disk with many examples mentioned throughout the book; a courseware with step-by-step instructions of basic and advanced operations of the Excel software; a concise study guide containing instructions on how to study from the book and the courseware, and providing additional examples and explanations. Throughout the course the students use a printed study guide to help them integrate the teaching aids at each part of the course. The teaching aids used at each stage of the course are summarized in Fig. 2. 3.1.1. The courseware The coursewares, which are sent to the students on CD-ROMs, are easy to install. (The specifications given to the company that developed the courseware included that it be fully automatic.) The students need only to enter the CD-ROM and the installation program begins to run. Following this the students have to make a few clicks, which are fully described in the study guide, along with screen snapshots of the installation progress. We thought there was no sense in asking
Fig. 1. Course homepage (in Hebrew).
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the students to run a setup program before they had any idea of the Windows95 operating system. Here the student only needs to know how to physically enter the CD-ROM, and to click the mouse around the screen (also described in considerable detail in the study guide). The coursewares of Windows, Word and Excel were all constructed using identical standards, screens and navigation rules. Fig. 3 illustrates the Introduction part of the Excel courseware (in its English version). The Windows courseware also includes a short, 2–5 min, video clip for each part that introduces a topic.
Fig. 2. Course teaching aids diagram.
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The Internet courseware differs from the others and includes more Multimedia features, such as hyper-links, a larger number of video clips and on-line exercises. It consists of two sections: a theoretical part in which basic concepts of the Internet and computer communication are explained from the user point of view, and a practical part where the use of the Internet Explorer browser is introduced. Fig. 4 illustrates a screen of the Internet courseware answering the question: ‘‘How does the data move around the Internet?’’ The Internet courseware is based on navigating with hyperlinks. It is based on questions and answers, with each question linked to its answer (and sometimes accompanied by short video clips). The Internet courseware has three main parts: 1. Theoretical aspects of the Internet: A short history outlining its main developments, basic computer networks, and digital communication topics. 2. Navigating on the Web: How to use the Internet Explorer software to navigate the Web. This part included step-by-step instructions, self-interactive exercises, and examples. 3. Terms dictionary: Several hundred terms related to general computer networks topics and the Internet in particular. It was not clear that students with no previous experience in navigating via hyperlinks would be able to navigate in the courseware. However, since the courseware is accompanied throughout by a voice explanation that describes exactly where and how to click to move on, we encountered no problems, and the students found it comfortable to use. At the end of the semester we asked the students to compare studying from the coursewares and from the books. We found that most students preferred studying from coursewares: 74.1% preferred studying from coursewares, and only 13% preferred books (the rest had no opinion). A slightly smaller proportion, 68.5%, thought that the coursewares benefit the studying and only 13% thought they did not benefit it at all.
Fig. 3. The introduction of the Excel courseware.
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4. Teaching the course In this section we describe the course meetings, assignments and grading. 4.1. Face-to-face tutoring meetings In this course we wished to have as few as possible face-to-face meetings so that the students would get used to using electronic communication (e-mail, discussion groups, etc.) with the tutors. During this semester (the first time the course was given) we had five meetings on the individualstudy format and ten on the group-study format; half of the latter were conducted in a classroom with the tutor at a computer and illustrating the material through a projected image of the computer screen, and the remaining half in a computer lab where each student had a computer. The course tutors were all connected to the Internet, and were thus able to take an active part in all the learning processes of the course, an obligatory condition for this course. Unlike tutors in other OUI courses, whose interaction with the students is limited to the tutorials, and one hour per week of phone-tutoring, there was on-going interaction between the students and the tutors of the course ‘‘Computer Applications for Social Sciences’’ during the entire semester. The interaction was based on electronic communication — e-mail and discussion groups — and this contributed greatly to the students’ progress. As we know from past experience, the students of the Open University like instruction meetings and there is great demand for extra meetings in other courses (in some of which 15 meetings are
Fig. 4. A typical page of the Internet courseware (in Hebrew).
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provided). We were therefore quite surprised that only about half (51.9%) of the students of this course thought there was a need for more meetings; 40.7% thought there were enough meetings, and 7.4% thought there could be less. About 30% of the students were registered for the groupstudy format (10 meetings). 4.2. An OFEK meeting Towards the end of the semester we gave, via satellite (OFEK), an extra lesson that included advanced topics about the Word software and the Power Point software. This lesson was given by an tutor in a studio in the Open University, and was broadcast live through satellite to about seven classrooms around the country. We had many doubts about the success of this innovation, since we had no prior experience with the teaching of computer applications through this kind of technology, that is, where there is neither face-to-face interaction nor are the students sitting at computers. Only 11.4% of the students attended this meeting, apparently because most of the students did not believe in the efficacy of studying this particular subject though this medium. In addition, the satellite broadcast was given near the end of the semester when the students had other pressing commitments, such as tests and assignments for other courses. Moreover, the satellite meeting dealt with advanced topics that were optional and not formally included in the course material. We were quite gratified — and somewhat surprised — to get positive feedback from the students that did come to the meeting: 68% were ‘‘very satisfied’’, 28% were ‘‘somewhat satisfied’’, and only 4% were ‘‘not satisfied’’. Only 20% complained that the lack of interaction was problematic. During a course session held after the satellite lesson, we spoke with the students. From their comments it appears that lessons via satellite (OFEK) is a potentially good instrument for instructing this course. Further study, however, is needed to ascertain this premise. 4.3. The course assignments The students were required to submit four of five course assignments. Four of these were electronic assignments sent via e-mail to the tutor. The assignments were as follows: Assignment 1 — Basic concepts of computer hardware/software and of the Windows operating system. Assignment 2 — Word and Introduction to the Internet. Here the students were asked to download the assignment from the course Web-site in Word format, answer the questions in a Word file, attach it to an e-mail message and send it via e-mail to the tutor. They were also asked to introduce themselves in the discussion group by putting a short message there. Assignment 3 — The students were asked to make an advanced search on the Internet using different search engines. Assignment 4 — Basic concept of the Excel software. The students were asked to download an Excel worksheet from the course Web-site, worked on it, and then sent the result to the tutor via e-mail. Assignment 5 — The students were asked to build and analyze a worksheet for a given problem, and to send it to the tutor via e-mail.
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The students were also asked to submit a final project that covered all the applications studied in the course. They were asked to search the Internet for academic information related to their main study field, to develop and process it using the Excel electronic worksheet, and to present the results in a Word document incorporating the worksheet. The Word document with the Excel worksheet was sent via e-mail to the tutor. At the end of the semester the students were required to take a final (handwritten) exam about the theoretical parts of the course. They were asked questions about the basic concepts of computer hardware/software and the Internet, and to develop an Excel model to a given problem. The exam was administered in the same manner as all other exams in all OUI courses: students all over the country take the same exam at different locations around the country (and abroad, at Israeli embassies), at the same time. This stage requires complex organization and was developed along with the growth of the university. 4.4. Grading The students were required to submit at least four of the five assignments and the final project, and to take the final test. The final grade was calculated as follows: 1. assignments: a total of 22–28% (depending on whether four or five assignments were submitted); 2. final project: 40%; and 3. final test: 32–38% (depending on the number of assignments submitted, as stated above). 4.5. The electronic communication Each tutor had a group of 20–30 students. At the beginning of the course most of the students did not use the electronic communication availability to communicate with the tutors and put only one message in the discussion group; they used e-mail mostly to deliver the assignments. At this stage only a small number of students used the discussion group to get help on the course material, or the e-mail to ask their tutor questions. Some students sent few messages, with meaningless content, to the discussion group ‘‘The Course Cafe´’’ in order to try out the discussion group and find out how it works. In addition, many students, when doing assignments 2 and 3, met with some difficulty in sending e-mail with attached file. Many assignments were therefore submitted late, after the students had a chance to talk to their tutor by phone or to meet him or her in class. No tutor was allowed to accept an assignment that was not submitted via e-mail, even though there were some requests for doing so. We did allow tutors to accept assignments submitted after the official date in cases where the student had a technical problem that prevented him or her from sending it on time. We found that after the students had studied the chapter on the Internet, many of them used the electronic communication link to help them with their studies. The students used the discussion group to ask questions regarding the Excel spreadsheet, to request sample tests, for help on the final project and so on. The tutors also found out that more students prefer the e-mail communication link than the phone tutoring. We concluded that after experiencing these communication links, the students discovered that it was easy and convenient to use them. Once the
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students learned how to send assignments via e-mail (through doing assignments 2 and 3), there were almost no problems with submitting assignments 4 and 5 and the final project via e-mail.
5. Student profile As a distance learning institution we have a broad range of students: from young teenagers to pensioners, and from full-time students to working adults with families. Since OUI has an open admissions policy, with no registration requirements, we also have high school graduates, students with no formal high school background, and university graduates from other fields who are not studying for additional academic degrees. Of the 219 students registered for the semester described, 60% were between 21 and 26 years old and 27% between 27 and 35; only 10% were older than 37, while 3% were younger than 21. Most of the students had some knowledge in computer applications before the course. Fiftyfive of the 219 students who took the course were asked which applications they had knowledge of before the course. Their answers are summarized in Table 1. Of those who had some knowledge of the Internet, most knew only the basic applications: browsing the Web and electronic mail, as shown in Table 2. Out of 219 students that took the course, only 155 submitted the assignments, and of these, only 132 took the final exam. It thus appears that many of the students took the course in order to learn the subject rather than for academic credit. We can therefore infer that many people prefer distance learning even when the subject studied is a practical one, such as computer application. The assignment grades (including those of the final project) were high: the average was 94 with a standard deviation of 4 for the regular groups, and 94 with standard deviation of 5.5 for the Table 1 Knowledge of applications before the course Application
No knowledge
Some knowledge
Much knowledge
Windows (3.1x/95/98) Some word processor Some electronic worksheet Internet
21.8% 20.4% 58.2% 40%
50.9% 38.9% 27.3% 40%
27.3% 40.7% 14.5% 20%
Table 2 Knowledge of basic Internet applications before the course Application
Knowledge
E-mail Browsing the Web Searching engines Newsgroups IRC (Chat)
45% 55% 36% 13% 9%
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Table 3 Assignment grades Study format
No. of students
Average on exercises
Standard deviation
Average on final test
Standard deviation
Individual (5 meetings) Group (10 meetings)
56 163
94 94
4 5.5
83 85
16.4 12.4
group-study format. The averages for the final exam were considerably lower: 83 with a standard deviation of 16.4 for the regular groups, and 85 with a standard deviation of 12.4 for the groupstudy format. A summary of these results is presented in Table 3. The correlation between the average grades of the students’ assignments and the test grades was 0.35. We think that this difference can be explained by the inclusion in the final exam of theoretical questions, and a time limit for the exam, unlike their assignments, on which they could spend as much time as they liked prior to sending them on for grading. 5.1. Student feedback At the end of the course we made a close study of 55 of the students who took the course. In a questionnaire they received they were asked how much each part of the course benefited them, and how much it improved their skills on that topic. An overwhelming majority of the students, 96.4%, said that the course greatly improved their ability to use the Internet as an information resource for their academic studies, and only 3.6% thought it did not improve it at all. About 81.8% thought the course improved their ability to use the Word software for academic needs, and 98.2% thought it improved their ability to use Excel. Although 60% had some previous experience in the Internet (as mentioned in the student profile section), they did not know how to use it as an academic tool; this was also true for the other topics studied. The proficient use of computer applications for academic purposes is an important aspect of academic studies today, and was the motivation for developing this course. The students were also asked if they thought the course improved their ability to update themselves independently on future versions of the software packages studied in the course and other software packages. Most of them, 78.2%, thought it did, and only 9.1% thought they would not be able to update themselves.
6. Conclusions and further study Our main conclusion is that computer literacy and applications can be studied via distance learning using our innovative framework, which integrates electronic learning tools with conventional distance learning tools. Also, we think that a university-level course in the use of the computer as an academic tool and of the Internet as an information resource, like the one described here, is of utmost importance. Teaching the course in computer applications by means of the new technological tools themselves contributed greatly to the leaning process. The students thus had active training in computer-based
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technologies, some of which were unfamiliar to them prior to the course. Not only did they get used to these technologies, they also discovered their advantages and qualities. Our doubt that students with no previous background in the use of computers would be able to cope with the technical problems involved with the course technologies was completely confuted. Currently, in the third semester in which we offer the course, more than 800 students are participating in it, and we expect more than 1200 in the fourth semester. Further research in several directions is indicated: reducing the number of tutoring meetings; expanding the learning technologies; and providing more satellite-based and synchronous on-line meetings (Chat, videoconference). Based on the course described in this paper, we plan to develop similar courses for fields other than the social sciences. For these courses, the main changes will be of the examples and exercises, which will be taken from fields related to each specific field of study.
References Aviv, R. (1999). Educational performance of ALN via content analysis. Proceedings of the 1999 Sloan Summer Workshop on Asynchronous Learning Network, p. 51–68. Beller, M. (1996). Integrating new technologies in distance education: Pedagogical, social and technological aspects. In J. Katz, D. Millin, & B. Offir, The impact of information technology: from practice to curriculum (pp. 69–76). London: Chapman & Hall. Beller, M. (1997). Integrating technology into distance teaching at the Open University of Israel. ALN Magazine, 1, March. http://www.aln.org/alnweb/magazine/issue1/beller.htm. Beller, M., Kurtz, G. & Or. E. (1997). Advanced technology in the service of higher education: OFEK — Interactive distance learning via satellite. Proceedings of the 18th ICDE World Conference, Pennsylvania, USA. Cookson, P. S. (2000). Implications of Internet technologies for higher education: north American perspectives. Open Learning, 15, 1. Friedman, B. & Beller M. (1997). Integrating Internet technology into distance teaching at the Open University of Israel. WebNet ‘97, Toronto. Jonassen, D., Davidson, M., Collins, M., Campbell, J., & Bannan Hag, B. (1995). Constructivism and computermediated communication in distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education, 9(2), 7–26. Kurtz, G. (1998). Satellite communication in higher education: OFEK — The service of interactive distance learning via satellite. India: The International Conference on Collaborative and Networked Learning, India Gandhi National Open University. Moore, M. G. (1989). Three types of interaction. The American Journal of Distance Education, 3(2), 1–7.
Computer literacy and applications via distance e-learning David Lupo *, Zippy Erlich Computer Science Department, The Open University of Israel, PO Box 39328, 16 Klausner Street, Ramat-Aviv, 61392 Tel-Aviv, Israel Received 14 August 2000; accepted 13 January 2001
Abstract In this paper we present an innovative framework for the teaching of computer literacy and application that can serve as a new educational paradigm in teaching courses in a distance learning format. This new framework combines and integrates new technologies with older distance education teaching aids. We implement this framework in a course called ‘‘Computer Applications for Social Sciences’’ that was developed in the Open University of Israel, a recognized academic institution in Israel. The course, which is based on distance learning and electronic tools such as communication technologies, CD-ROM coursewares, Web-sites and discussion groups, was taught in the second semester of 1999. The course was developed in a way that allows students with no previous knowledge to learn it at a distance. We present here a description of the course and its e-learning tools, a broad study on the 219 students who participated in the course, and a close study on 55 of these students. # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Computer-mediated communication; Distance education; Telelearning
1. Background The Open University of Israel (OUI) is a distance education institution designed to offer academic studies to students throughout Israel. Its home study method allows its students to pursue a higher education, whenever and wherever convenient, anywhere in the country, and without interfering with their other personal and vocational obligations. The OUI offers about 400 courses in Life Sciences, Natural Sciences, Mathematics, Computer Science, Social Sciences, Management,
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +972-3-6460738; fax: +972-3-6460744. E-mail address: [email protected] (D. Lupo) 0360-1315/01/$ - see front matter # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0360-1315(01)00022-7
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Jewish Studies, Education, Humanities, Psychology, Communications, Music and Art and has more than 30,000 students from all over Israel and abroad. 1.1. The study format of the OUI Each course at OUI is designed to meet the particular needs of students coping with studies individually, at home, and is composed of most or all of the following elements: course textbooks, assignments and exams, study centers and tutors, technologies, media and supplements. The written textbooks are supplemented by multi-media programs and by tutorial assistance in as flexible manner as possible. OUI is a multi-campus university with tutors in different localities throughout the country offering guidance and a personal link between the student and the university. Tutorial sessions in regional study centers range in levels of frequency from once a week to once every three weeks, depending on the study format chosen by the student. About 30% of the students prefer the individual-study format (4–7 meetings per semester), while 70% are enrolled in the group-study format (10–15 meetings per semester). 1.2. Technology, media and supplements A broad spectrum of technological and media supplements, as described below, enhance the written course material in accordance with the needs of each course. The technologies give rise to many pedagogical and social issues, as discussed by Beller (1996). In the next few sections we present a short description of the technologies used in the Open University. A more detailed discussion can be found in Beller (1997), and was described by Friedman and Beller (1997) at the 18th ICDE World Conference. 1.2.1. Broadcasts on cable TV OUI broadcasts, which offer enrichment in the broad spectrum of topics taught at the university, accompany many of the courses. The broadcasts are presented on cable television with segments aired several times a day, every day of the week. Telecourses, in which the video material is an integral part of the course rather than enrichment alone, are also offered, and additional telecourses are in development. 1.2.2. OFEK — interactive distance education via satellite Studies that are broadcast via satellite to many sites throughout Israel offer interactive lectures, professional training programs and symposia (Beller, Kurtz, & Or, 1997). This enables a lecturer to deliver a live lesson from a central studio concurrently to any number of classrooms located all over the country. The students in these remote classrooms can participate in the lesson by means of voice-communication and data-communication (Kurtz, 1998). 1.2.3. Multimedia study material combining various media on the computer This material is also being developed in order to highlight important sections of study. Some of the courses already developed use interactive courseware (available on CD-ROM) as an integral part of the study material sent to the students. These multimedia-based courseware programs
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enhance interactive learning and stimulate and enrich the learning process, and thus replace passive learning with interactive, multifaceted personal experience. 1.2.4. Computer-mediated-communication (CMC) OUI offers an interactive on-line learning environment via the Internet, called TELEM, that forms an integral part of the teaching and learning process (Aviv, 1999). Engaged in research, development and integration of distance learning and teaching methods, TELEM makes use of advanced information and communication technologies for the mutual benefit of both students and teachers (Jonassen, Davidson, Collins, Campbell, & Bannan, 1995). The CMC courses include interactive learning materials via electronic asynchronous communication (i.e. discussion groups, e-mail, download materials). Every CMC course has its own Web-site, HTML and Javabased. These Web-sites can be accessed via any Internet-connected computer in Israel and abroad. Although communication is, at present, basically asynchronous, the TELEM team is developing synchronous technologies that will integrate more interactive aspects into the CMC learning process as discussed by Moore (1989). 1.3. The course background As described above, OUI has developed an innovative model of learning, based on new technologies, which combines and integrates on-line technologies and older distance education teaching aids and combines them with the three-layer model presented by Cookson (2000). This is intended to provide an innovative framework that can serve as a new educational paradigm in teaching courses in a distance learning format. To participate in any of the CMC courses, each student is required to have basic knowledge of computer applications, including the Internet. There are still many OUI students who come to their academic studies with little or no computer literacy and application know-how and, therefore, cannot participate in the Web and computer-aided course activities. Moreover, we would like to see all of our students and graduates sufficiently computer-literate. They should understand the underlying concepts of computer science, how a computer works, and how to work with basic applications such as a word-processor and an electronic worksheet. They should also have the fundamental skills needed for working with the Internet. The rest of this paper is built as follows: Section 2 overviews the course ‘‘Computer Applications for the Social Sciences’’; Section 3 describes the technologies used in the course; Section 4 describes the way the course is taught; Section 5 illustrates some findings of student feedback; and Section 6 gives our conclusions and suggestions for future study. 2. Course overview The course is a one-semester, two-unit credit course. It comprises four main parts: 1. Introduction to computers: history of computer and computer science; simple algorithm fundamentals and their development; basic components of the computer; computer hardware; basic concepts of programming languages, data representation, information technologies and systems.
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2. Windows95 and word processing (Word): basic concepts of working with the Windows95 operating system: desktop; files and folders; the file Explorer; installing software; basic word processing concepts, and through them more about files, standard menus, hot-keys, etc. 3. The Internet: browsing the Web with Internet Explorer; locating and assessing academic information via different search engines; electronic mail, basic concepts of computer networks, history of the Internet and more. 4. Electronic spreadsheet (Excel): basic and advanced topics of the electronic worksheet: functions; formulas; how to develop a work sheet for a specific problem; showing data through charts and more.
3. Technologies 3.1. Teaching aids The course ‘‘Computer Applications for the Social Sciences’’ was developed by integrating different kinds of teaching aids: printed textbooks, coursewares (on CD-ROM) developed by the SIVAN software company (http://www.sivan.co.il/); interactive Web-based technologies; and a study guide. A different combination of the teaching aids is implemented for each part of the course, as follows: 1. Introduction to computers: Since we assumed that the students have no previous knowledge in computers, no technologies are used in this part. The teaching aids consist only of a booklet, written by the team, explaining the basic ideas of computer science and computer hardware/software concepts. This booklet will be upgraded every few semesters, according to changes in this field. 2. Windows95 and Word: The main teaching aid is a courseware with step-by-step instructions, and short video clips for working with the operating system and word processor. This is accompanied by a printed study guide that contains step-by-step instructions for installing the courseware, guidelines for learning with the courseware, and additional examples and explanations. 3. The Internet: This part uses additional elements of various other technologies. We considered hands-on experience the best way to become used to the Internet. The teaching aids in this part were as follows: A courseware that includes the theoretical background, history and development of the Internet and its basic concepts, and a practical part that includes working with the Internet explorer browser. A book containing all the information needed by a new Internet user: instructions for connecting, e-mail, chat, download and special multimedia aspects. The book introduces both the Internet explorer and Netscape, and different types of e-mail software that can enable the students to access large amounts of information about the software available on the Internet market. A study guide explaining the basic concepts of computer networks, a brief historical outline, some basic theoretical issues concerning the Internet, and guidelines on how to learn this part.
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The course Web-site: The students all participate in the course Web-site that is a part of the TELEM project (Fig. 1), and thus become accustomed to the concept of CMC. The Website is the official communication link between OUI and the course students from the sixth week of the semester. (All other OUI courses, those participating in the TELEM project and those not participating, use regular mail service.) There is also a bulletin board where the students receive messages on changes in meeting schedules, clarifications on deadlines for submitting assignments, etc. The Web-site also includes a discussion group divided into various discussion forums, each of which deals with a different topic of the course. There is also a forum called ‘‘The Course Cafe’’’ where students can speak amongst themselves on any topic they like - sports, art, music, politics, etc. 4. Excel: The teaching aids of this part consist of a book containing most of the features of the Excel software, including a floppy-disk with many examples mentioned throughout the book; a courseware with step-by-step instructions of basic and advanced operations of the Excel software; a concise study guide containing instructions on how to study from the book and the courseware, and providing additional examples and explanations. Throughout the course the students use a printed study guide to help them integrate the teaching aids at each part of the course. The teaching aids used at each stage of the course are summarized in Fig. 2. 3.1.1. The courseware The coursewares, which are sent to the students on CD-ROMs, are easy to install. (The specifications given to the company that developed the courseware included that it be fully automatic.) The students need only to enter the CD-ROM and the installation program begins to run. Following this the students have to make a few clicks, which are fully described in the study guide, along with screen snapshots of the installation progress. We thought there was no sense in asking
Fig. 1. Course homepage (in Hebrew).
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the students to run a setup program before they had any idea of the Windows95 operating system. Here the student only needs to know how to physically enter the CD-ROM, and to click the mouse around the screen (also described in considerable detail in the study guide). The coursewares of Windows, Word and Excel were all constructed using identical standards, screens and navigation rules. Fig. 3 illustrates the Introduction part of the Excel courseware (in its English version). The Windows courseware also includes a short, 2–5 min, video clip for each part that introduces a topic.
Fig. 2. Course teaching aids diagram.
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The Internet courseware differs from the others and includes more Multimedia features, such as hyper-links, a larger number of video clips and on-line exercises. It consists of two sections: a theoretical part in which basic concepts of the Internet and computer communication are explained from the user point of view, and a practical part where the use of the Internet Explorer browser is introduced. Fig. 4 illustrates a screen of the Internet courseware answering the question: ‘‘How does the data move around the Internet?’’ The Internet courseware is based on navigating with hyperlinks. It is based on questions and answers, with each question linked to its answer (and sometimes accompanied by short video clips). The Internet courseware has three main parts: 1. Theoretical aspects of the Internet: A short history outlining its main developments, basic computer networks, and digital communication topics. 2. Navigating on the Web: How to use the Internet Explorer software to navigate the Web. This part included step-by-step instructions, self-interactive exercises, and examples. 3. Terms dictionary: Several hundred terms related to general computer networks topics and the Internet in particular. It was not clear that students with no previous experience in navigating via hyperlinks would be able to navigate in the courseware. However, since the courseware is accompanied throughout by a voice explanation that describes exactly where and how to click to move on, we encountered no problems, and the students found it comfortable to use. At the end of the semester we asked the students to compare studying from the coursewares and from the books. We found that most students preferred studying from coursewares: 74.1% preferred studying from coursewares, and only 13% preferred books (the rest had no opinion). A slightly smaller proportion, 68.5%, thought that the coursewares benefit the studying and only 13% thought they did not benefit it at all.
Fig. 3. The introduction of the Excel courseware.
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4. Teaching the course In this section we describe the course meetings, assignments and grading. 4.1. Face-to-face tutoring meetings In this course we wished to have as few as possible face-to-face meetings so that the students would get used to using electronic communication (e-mail, discussion groups, etc.) with the tutors. During this semester (the first time the course was given) we had five meetings on the individualstudy format and ten on the group-study format; half of the latter were conducted in a classroom with the tutor at a computer and illustrating the material through a projected image of the computer screen, and the remaining half in a computer lab where each student had a computer. The course tutors were all connected to the Internet, and were thus able to take an active part in all the learning processes of the course, an obligatory condition for this course. Unlike tutors in other OUI courses, whose interaction with the students is limited to the tutorials, and one hour per week of phone-tutoring, there was on-going interaction between the students and the tutors of the course ‘‘Computer Applications for Social Sciences’’ during the entire semester. The interaction was based on electronic communication — e-mail and discussion groups — and this contributed greatly to the students’ progress. As we know from past experience, the students of the Open University like instruction meetings and there is great demand for extra meetings in other courses (in some of which 15 meetings are
Fig. 4. A typical page of the Internet courseware (in Hebrew).
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provided). We were therefore quite surprised that only about half (51.9%) of the students of this course thought there was a need for more meetings; 40.7% thought there were enough meetings, and 7.4% thought there could be less. About 30% of the students were registered for the groupstudy format (10 meetings). 4.2. An OFEK meeting Towards the end of the semester we gave, via satellite (OFEK), an extra lesson that included advanced topics about the Word software and the Power Point software. This lesson was given by an tutor in a studio in the Open University, and was broadcast live through satellite to about seven classrooms around the country. We had many doubts about the success of this innovation, since we had no prior experience with the teaching of computer applications through this kind of technology, that is, where there is neither face-to-face interaction nor are the students sitting at computers. Only 11.4% of the students attended this meeting, apparently because most of the students did not believe in the efficacy of studying this particular subject though this medium. In addition, the satellite broadcast was given near the end of the semester when the students had other pressing commitments, such as tests and assignments for other courses. Moreover, the satellite meeting dealt with advanced topics that were optional and not formally included in the course material. We were quite gratified — and somewhat surprised — to get positive feedback from the students that did come to the meeting: 68% were ‘‘very satisfied’’, 28% were ‘‘somewhat satisfied’’, and only 4% were ‘‘not satisfied’’. Only 20% complained that the lack of interaction was problematic. During a course session held after the satellite lesson, we spoke with the students. From their comments it appears that lessons via satellite (OFEK) is a potentially good instrument for instructing this course. Further study, however, is needed to ascertain this premise. 4.3. The course assignments The students were required to submit four of five course assignments. Four of these were electronic assignments sent via e-mail to the tutor. The assignments were as follows: Assignment 1 — Basic concepts of computer hardware/software and of the Windows operating system. Assignment 2 — Word and Introduction to the Internet. Here the students were asked to download the assignment from the course Web-site in Word format, answer the questions in a Word file, attach it to an e-mail message and send it via e-mail to the tutor. They were also asked to introduce themselves in the discussion group by putting a short message there. Assignment 3 — The students were asked to make an advanced search on the Internet using different search engines. Assignment 4 — Basic concept of the Excel software. The students were asked to download an Excel worksheet from the course Web-site, worked on it, and then sent the result to the tutor via e-mail. Assignment 5 — The students were asked to build and analyze a worksheet for a given problem, and to send it to the tutor via e-mail.
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The students were also asked to submit a final project that covered all the applications studied in the course. They were asked to search the Internet for academic information related to their main study field, to develop and process it using the Excel electronic worksheet, and to present the results in a Word document incorporating the worksheet. The Word document with the Excel worksheet was sent via e-mail to the tutor. At the end of the semester the students were required to take a final (handwritten) exam about the theoretical parts of the course. They were asked questions about the basic concepts of computer hardware/software and the Internet, and to develop an Excel model to a given problem. The exam was administered in the same manner as all other exams in all OUI courses: students all over the country take the same exam at different locations around the country (and abroad, at Israeli embassies), at the same time. This stage requires complex organization and was developed along with the growth of the university. 4.4. Grading The students were required to submit at least four of the five assignments and the final project, and to take the final test. The final grade was calculated as follows: 1. assignments: a total of 22–28% (depending on whether four or five assignments were submitted); 2. final project: 40%; and 3. final test: 32–38% (depending on the number of assignments submitted, as stated above). 4.5. The electronic communication Each tutor had a group of 20–30 students. At the beginning of the course most of the students did not use the electronic communication availability to communicate with the tutors and put only one message in the discussion group; they used e-mail mostly to deliver the assignments. At this stage only a small number of students used the discussion group to get help on the course material, or the e-mail to ask their tutor questions. Some students sent few messages, with meaningless content, to the discussion group ‘‘The Course Cafe´’’ in order to try out the discussion group and find out how it works. In addition, many students, when doing assignments 2 and 3, met with some difficulty in sending e-mail with attached file. Many assignments were therefore submitted late, after the students had a chance to talk to their tutor by phone or to meet him or her in class. No tutor was allowed to accept an assignment that was not submitted via e-mail, even though there were some requests for doing so. We did allow tutors to accept assignments submitted after the official date in cases where the student had a technical problem that prevented him or her from sending it on time. We found that after the students had studied the chapter on the Internet, many of them used the electronic communication link to help them with their studies. The students used the discussion group to ask questions regarding the Excel spreadsheet, to request sample tests, for help on the final project and so on. The tutors also found out that more students prefer the e-mail communication link than the phone tutoring. We concluded that after experiencing these communication links, the students discovered that it was easy and convenient to use them. Once the
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students learned how to send assignments via e-mail (through doing assignments 2 and 3), there were almost no problems with submitting assignments 4 and 5 and the final project via e-mail.
5. Student profile As a distance learning institution we have a broad range of students: from young teenagers to pensioners, and from full-time students to working adults with families. Since OUI has an open admissions policy, with no registration requirements, we also have high school graduates, students with no formal high school background, and university graduates from other fields who are not studying for additional academic degrees. Of the 219 students registered for the semester described, 60% were between 21 and 26 years old and 27% between 27 and 35; only 10% were older than 37, while 3% were younger than 21. Most of the students had some knowledge in computer applications before the course. Fiftyfive of the 219 students who took the course were asked which applications they had knowledge of before the course. Their answers are summarized in Table 1. Of those who had some knowledge of the Internet, most knew only the basic applications: browsing the Web and electronic mail, as shown in Table 2. Out of 219 students that took the course, only 155 submitted the assignments, and of these, only 132 took the final exam. It thus appears that many of the students took the course in order to learn the subject rather than for academic credit. We can therefore infer that many people prefer distance learning even when the subject studied is a practical one, such as computer application. The assignment grades (including those of the final project) were high: the average was 94 with a standard deviation of 4 for the regular groups, and 94 with standard deviation of 5.5 for the Table 1 Knowledge of applications before the course Application
No knowledge
Some knowledge
Much knowledge
Windows (3.1x/95/98) Some word processor Some electronic worksheet Internet
21.8% 20.4% 58.2% 40%
50.9% 38.9% 27.3% 40%
27.3% 40.7% 14.5% 20%
Table 2 Knowledge of basic Internet applications before the course Application
Knowledge
E-mail Browsing the Web Searching engines Newsgroups IRC (Chat)
45% 55% 36% 13% 9%
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Table 3 Assignment grades Study format
No. of students
Average on exercises
Standard deviation
Average on final test
Standard deviation
Individual (5 meetings) Group (10 meetings)
56 163
94 94
4 5.5
83 85
16.4 12.4
group-study format. The averages for the final exam were considerably lower: 83 with a standard deviation of 16.4 for the regular groups, and 85 with a standard deviation of 12.4 for the groupstudy format. A summary of these results is presented in Table 3. The correlation between the average grades of the students’ assignments and the test grades was 0.35. We think that this difference can be explained by the inclusion in the final exam of theoretical questions, and a time limit for the exam, unlike their assignments, on which they could spend as much time as they liked prior to sending them on for grading. 5.1. Student feedback At the end of the course we made a close study of 55 of the students who took the course. In a questionnaire they received they were asked how much each part of the course benefited them, and how much it improved their skills on that topic. An overwhelming majority of the students, 96.4%, said that the course greatly improved their ability to use the Internet as an information resource for their academic studies, and only 3.6% thought it did not improve it at all. About 81.8% thought the course improved their ability to use the Word software for academic needs, and 98.2% thought it improved their ability to use Excel. Although 60% had some previous experience in the Internet (as mentioned in the student profile section), they did not know how to use it as an academic tool; this was also true for the other topics studied. The proficient use of computer applications for academic purposes is an important aspect of academic studies today, and was the motivation for developing this course. The students were also asked if they thought the course improved their ability to update themselves independently on future versions of the software packages studied in the course and other software packages. Most of them, 78.2%, thought it did, and only 9.1% thought they would not be able to update themselves.
6. Conclusions and further study Our main conclusion is that computer literacy and applications can be studied via distance learning using our innovative framework, which integrates electronic learning tools with conventional distance learning tools. Also, we think that a university-level course in the use of the computer as an academic tool and of the Internet as an information resource, like the one described here, is of utmost importance. Teaching the course in computer applications by means of the new technological tools themselves contributed greatly to the leaning process. The students thus had active training in computer-based
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technologies, some of which were unfamiliar to them prior to the course. Not only did they get used to these technologies, they also discovered their advantages and qualities. Our doubt that students with no previous background in the use of computers would be able to cope with the technical problems involved with the course technologies was completely confuted. Currently, in the third semester in which we offer the course, more than 800 students are participating in it, and we expect more than 1200 in the fourth semester. Further research in several directions is indicated: reducing the number of tutoring meetings; expanding the learning technologies; and providing more satellite-based and synchronous on-line meetings (Chat, videoconference). Based on the course described in this paper, we plan to develop similar courses for fields other than the social sciences. For these courses, the main changes will be of the examples and exercises, which will be taken from fields related to each specific field of study.
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