WebCT puts courses on-line to add teaching time and interactivity

Academic Technologies consultant Sarah Ross-Lazarov gives pointers to faculty members on the web-authoring features of WebCT at a Nov. 10 workshop in Studio 107 LC. Photo by Rex Bavousett.

What made the difference to Troyer’s course? In a word, WebCT.

Short for Web Course Tools, WebCT is a powerful software product available to all UI faculty, TAs, and staff who have teaching responsibilities. It’s a tool to help teachers develop web sites to accompany their courses.

Which is a little like saying a Porsche can help you get around the block. WebCT is extremely powerful, with a large suite of features that can adapt to a wide variety of courses and teaching styles. At its most basic, WebCT can be used to publish a course syllabus on the web. Instructors can put up links to other web resources. And there’s a calendar feature that highlights important events and deadlines.

WebCT can automate the testing process

Troyer, who has been using WebCT since it arrived on campus in 1997, takes advantage of its more advanced features, including quizzes. Her course has always included 10 ten-minute quizzes. She used to administer these in class, using up 100 minutes of class time, as well as hours of her own time for grading. Now she puts the quizzes on her WebCT site. Students take the quizzes on-line, on their own time, and get their scores instantly.

"You can do quizzes in a variety of formats from multiple choice to short answer to essay," Troyer says. "You can automate the grading with a database containing a wide range of possible correct answers. You can even choose whether or not to reveal the correct answer, or a prototypical correct answer, as soon as the student has completed the quiz."

Troyer believes that WebCT discourages cheating on quizzes. With 300 students in one room, proctoring a paper quiz is an iffy proposition with plenty of opportunity for copying. With WebCT, many students take the exam at home alone, with no pressure to reveal the answer to a would-be cheater in the next seat. She administers her WebCT quizzes open book and open notes, like their earlier paper counterparts. And students draw their questions randomly from a database of possible questions, so two students taking the quiz at side-by-side computers likely don’t get the same question.

WebCT has even helped Troyer improve quizzes.

"It gives diagnostic statistics about the questions, so I know if they are unequal in their difficulty," Troyer says. "I had a quiz, and there was one question where 70 percent of the people who drew that question got it wrong. I pulled that question out of the database and allowed those students to take that quiz over."

Continuing class discussion on-line (and in Spanish)

Judith Liskin-Gasparro, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, directs the General Education Program in Spanish, a large program that includes six different courses. She likes the interactivity of WebCT. In sections that use WebCT, students participate in bulletin boards and chat rooms where English is not allowed.

"We’re looking for ways for them to intensify their contact with the language," Liskin-Gasparro says. "The research on second language acquisition shows that using the language can speed up the learning process. With the chats, they are communicating with other students in the class in real time. A bulletin board is asynchronous communication. We start a cycle of messages every couple of weeks. The instructor poses a question, students are required to respond, then the next week they have to respond to each other’s responses."

Tom Rocklin, director of the Center for Teaching and one of the people responsible for the selection of WebCT as software supported by the University, points out that WebCT sometimes can be used in surprising contexts.

"You usually think of computers as gaining efficiency when you deal with large numbers," Rocklin says. "We had a faculty member who said, ‘I’m in music. I teach one person at a time. It’s not too clear to me how I’m going to use this.’ Then I got an e-mail from this person six months later, saying that she’d found out how it could help her. A bulletin board was a great way for her students, who rarely saw each other, to keep in touch."

Other bells and whistles can be incorporated into WebCT sites, such as graphic images, audio clips, and video clips.

Iowa’s changes to WebCT expand its capabilities

While WebCT is a commercially available product, Iowa’s computer gurus have made custom improvements. Perhaps the most useful Iowa innovation is in the area of student management. Students must log on with an ID and password in order to access a WebCT site. Previously, the instructor had to type in the entire class list in order to grant them access to the site. Programmers in Academic Technologies, a group within the University’s Information Technology Services division, changed that. Now, the class list is downloaded directly from the Registrar’s Office, with periodic updates until the drop/add date has passed. Instructors can grant access to guests, allowing students to audit the class and visit the web site without registering for credit. Iowa’s modifications to the software have been so successful, the WebCT company has built them into its next release of the product.

Getting started with WebCT

If all this technology sounds intimidating, it isn’t. The program is designed to be easy to use. Instructors can start small and add features as they grow more comfortable. And help is always available from Academic Technologies.

"When you start out, you see all the options," says Sarah Ross-Lazarov a consultant with Academic Technologies. "We recommend even to the most ambitious faculty to start with one. See how it works. Sometimes we refer to WebCT as a candy jar. You can reach in and pull out a tool that’s already programmed, like a calendar or a chat room."

There are several ways to get started or get more information about WebCT.

First, visit Iowa’s WebCT course site at http://courses.uiowa.edu. The site includes a list of the more than 400 UI courses that currently use WebCT. It also includes a demonstration of WebCT version 3, a new release that will be available in January. (For those who have current sites in version 2, Academic Technologies will continue to support that version and will assist instructors who wish to upgrade their current courses to the new version.)

Anyone who attends one of the four-day nTITLE programs (New Technologies In The Learning Environment) will get an introduction to WebCT. Academic Technologies is introducing a new set of workshops called NExTT (New Experiences with Technologies in Teaching), which will offer two- to three-hour sessions on à la carte topics including WebCT. Academic Technologies also runs ad hoc WebCT workshops as needed.

The best way to get started is to contact Academic Technologies directly at (33)5-5194 or at webct@uiowa.edu. The staff there will meet individually or with groups to answer questions or give instruction. Or, simply go to Studio 107 on the ground floor of LC South, where help is available on a walk-in basis.

The bottom-line question is, can WebCT help teachers teach better? If Troyer’s experience is any indication, the answer is yes.

"Because WebCT saves time, I can assign papers," Troyer says. "I now have 300 students writing three five-page papers."

Article by Sam Samuels