Updated 6 January
2000 Updated 6 January
2000
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
*Prepared for Delivery at the 40th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Active Learning in International Affairs Section, Washington, DC, Feburary 17-20, 1999. Copyright 1999 All rights reserved.
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This paper describes a further extension of our strategy to move from a teacher-oriented to a student-oriented learning environment through the use of "collaborative hypertext." Students were trained in the use of MidasWeb, which is a Web-based environment for the organization, storage, and retrieval of hypertext documents and images. Over the course of the term, students worked in teams to construct their Midas-Web sites by developing the underlying conceptual frameworks for their subject areas and uploading documents.
The results of questionnaire surveys of the students suggest that the MidasWeb exercise did achieve our objective of disrupting the traditional relationship between teacher and student a create a more student-centered environment. The more students became involved in the exercise, the more they felt empowered with respect to the subject matter of the course and took responsibility for deriving meaning from the information that they had obtained. In addition, the experience encouraged them to think about the subject matter across interdisciplinary lines. Because the MidasWeb exercise was structured as a group activity, the effectiveness of the team coordinators had an impact on the success of the teams as well as the nature of the learning experience of the individuals who were involved.
Although the MidasWeb exercise was a successful application of digital technology to classroom learning, it was not a resounding success, because the impact on the students in the course was not uniform. While a substantial majority of them found MidasWeb to be very involving and moved toward student-centered learning, approximately one-third of them, especially students who were uncomfortable with computer technology, did not benefit fully from the exercise. This suggests that in the future more time should be spent on training, and that MidasWeb needs to be made more user friendly for unsophisticated users.
Introduction
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Introduction
The learning activities described in this paper reflect a constantly evolving strategy to promote active learning through the application of digital technology. In earlier research we found support for the proposition that "Webified" course materials do not necessarily promote active learning (Seifert and Bonham 1997). By "Webify," we mean "the conversion of printed material such as syllabi, hand-outs, and readings into basic HTML documents with little interactivity of other features which the Web is capable of supporting" (Seifert and Bonham 1997).
As a result of our dissatisfaction with Webified courses, we attempted to capture some of the robust capabilities of digital technology and apply them to our teaching program. By developing a Web site for a traditional "chalk and talk" course, Theories of International Relations, with hyperlinks to Web resources, audio and video updates, digitized film clips of documentaries and in-class simulations, we succeed in creating an advanced "second stage" cyberclass.1 In addition, we ran workshops to teach students the use of Microsoft PowerPoint and HTML publishing for policy advocacy, experimented with interactive video conferencing and Web-based text chat in a "virtual conference" with faculty and students at another university.
Despite our efforts to promote active learning through the application of digital technology, many students did not take full the opportunities that were available to them. For, example, although an overwhelming majority of the students were very positive about the course site, only 64.8% of them said that they visited half (or fewer) of the twelve hyper-linked locations, and just 6.3% said that they visited ten or more of these locations (Seifert and Bonham 1998).
Clearly the re-designed
course, the workshops, and the virtual conference did not empower the students to take
control of their education and "disrupt" the traditional relationship between
the active teacher (the "sage on the stage") and the passive learner. Although
many students did use the course site on the Web, for instance, it was seen by them as
just another resource--a kind of digital handout. In other words, our efforts were not
transformative, because they did not change the way students viewed their role and they
did not empower our students with respect to the subject matter of the course. The
students, themselves, remained as passive as Web surfers, because they did not have their
own Web site for organizing, storing, and retrieving documents, hypertext, and hypermedia.
Moreover, they did not have access to a Web-based environment for communicating their own
conceptual frameworks and sharing documents with potential collaborators. Nor were they
able to use a variety of computer-based technologies, such as desk-top video conferencing
and text chat to exchange perspectives and concerns.
This paper describes a further extension of our strategy to move from a teacher-oriented to a student-oriented learning environment through the use of "collaborative hypertext." Students in Theories of International Relations were organized into teams on the basis of their geographical or topical interests in the field. After coordinators were appointed for each team, students were trained in the use of MidasWeb, which is a Web-based environment for the organization, storage, and retrieval of hypertext documents and images. In the MidasWeb environment collaborators develop their own classification framework for organizing their documents, enter information on forms, and then upload HTML documents. Over the course of the semester, students worked to construct their MidasWeb site by developing the underlying conceptual framework and uploading documents. At the conclusion of the course, the teams reported on their efforts and conducted virtual tours of their MidasWeb sites (see below).
Some may wonder why we are putting so much effort into "disrupting" and "transforming" the international relations classroom, and how we decided on the use of collaborative hypertext to accomplish our objectives. The original impetus for our efforts comes from our dissatisfaction with traditional teaching and learning methods. This dissatisfaction goes beyond content issues alone. Instead, the issue is the disjunction between what students do in class and what they do in their careers. In the case of the M.A. in International Relations program at the Maxwell School, the emphasis is to train students for careers as practitioners in the field of international relations, by providing them with experiences and skills they need, in conjunction with relevant, substantive content.
In the digital work environment of the 21st century, today's students will be collaborating with people who share their interests, without regard to the limitations of distance and time zones. The collaboration will utilize a variety of computer-based technologies, such as interactive videoconferencing and Web-based text chat. They will produce documents that are truly intertextual; that is, the documents will be hyperlinked to each other as well as to external resources. To facilitate collaboration with colleagues in different physical locations, they will have access to a Web-based environment for communicating with each other and trading documents, as well as self-organizing frameworks for storing and accessing documents, hypertext, and hypermedia.
As technology matures, we as teachers have more opportunities available to continue to advance and enhance education. For us that meant being able to introduce collaborative hypertext to the learning environment. We were especially interested in broadening the role of hypertextual technology in our strategy because the
unique properties of hypertext coincide closely with our three objectives. The non-linearity/multi-linearity aspects of hypertext encourage independent and active learning by allowing readers to actively choose paths that reflect their own interests instead of the author's. In other words, students become "active, constructivist" learners who are better able to contextualize and integrate information (Landow 1992, 121). The connective and de-centering properties of hypertext promote incidental and contextual learning through interlinked paths of information. The center of the original investigation can shift as the reader moves through the web of interconnected subjects and ideas. Finally, the virtual presence afforded by hypertext placed on the World Wide Web dissolves the barriers of geography and time. Through asynchronous communication, collaboration across distances, whether it be across the hall or across the world, can flourish. The vehicle we used to pursue these objectives was a Web-based environment called MidasWeb, described in the next section below.In the traditional teaching environment the teacher (author) controls the text.
2 The teacher develops the conceptual framework for the course and represents this framework in a syllabus, which is distributed to the students either as a paper handout or as a Web page. The teacher searches for resource material, usually books or journal articles, and then provides students with a listing of items that have been ordered by the bookstore or compiled as photocopied course packets. A Web-based variant would be to provide students with hyperlinks to articles in electronic journals or course materials, which they can access from a password-protected Web site. Regardless of how the resource lists are conveyed to the students, the approach is "top down" from the teacher to the student.In the traditional course the texts that the students have been assigned to read are, for the most part, linear in structure; that is, the author constructed the text to be read from the beginning to the end. Of course, no text is completely linear; for example, a text might contain footnotes that elaborate on an argument or provide additional information. Furthermore, the author cannot control the behavior of the reader, who might, jump lightly down the page, start reading in the middle of the text, or look up concepts in the index to find specific areas of interest.3
If the course is not very large, the teacher may organize the students into groups to work on assigned projects and prepare oral or written reports. Typically, students meet as a group a couple of times to divide up the task, work alone on their part of the assignment, and get together at the end to cut and paste a final product. The final product, is submitted to the teacher for evaluation, but not usually archived and made available to the other students, let alone people who are not enrolled in the course but may have an interest in the subject matter. Although some of the students who were involved in the project may have saved the background material that they used to prepare the report, this material is not typically archived for use by others. In short, the project ends when the final report is submitted. The report is not archived, there is no mechanism for obtaining feedback from others, and it cannot easily be updated. In other words, the final product is simply dead and buried.
We can contrast the
traditional teaching environment with the student-centered approach that MidasWeb makes
possible. The International Relations Program was selected by Sterling Software as the beta site for MidasWeb, a
Web-based environment for the organization, storage, and retrieval of hypertext documents
and other objects. Testing began in the middle of August 1998, and the beta site became
available for faculty and student use on September 15, 1998. The MidasWeb software is
bundled with HTTPD server software, an SQL database, and a Linux operating system.4 Client access to MidasWeb-created
sites is achieved from anywhere in the world via a computer connected to the Internet
using a Web browser that supports frames. In the MidasWeb environment, Web site
collaborators develop their own classification framework for organizing documents, enter
information about the documents into forms, and then upload the documents into the
environment. MidasWeb collaborators do not need to know HTML, scripting languages, or
database query syntax, but use navigational buttons and execute common mouse-driven
commands to develop the Web site. Additional features include the ability to create
multiple links, and, therefore, multiple paths to a given object; date/time stamping of
all documents and other objects as they are added to the site; a "What's New"
page; and a utility to send e-mail instantly to fellow collaborators.
To construct their MidasWeb sites, students search traditional source material, which they scan and convert to a digital format. In addition, they search the Web for sites that can be hyper-linked to the Web pages on their MidasWeb sites. Students also surf the Web to find material that they can edit and paste into documents that they can upload directly into their MidasWeb sites. Students can also create or find images that can be uploaded directly into MidasWeb documents. Other media, such as video files and sound files cannot be uploaded into the MidasWeb server, but they can be hyper-linked to MidasWeb documents.
Throughout this process of search, students can discover new ideas and information that promotes incidental and contextual learning , one of our objectives. In MidasWeb students also become active learners and explore their interests in the subject matter of the course, within the context of their own conceptual framework. In addition, MidasWeb is structured to encourage collaborative learning. The permissions feature of the software gives special responsibility to the team coordinators to add categories and delete documents, a feature that constrains the students to work as a group, rather than as isolated individuals.
Because MidasWeb is on the World Wide Web, people who do not belong to a particular MidasWeb team, including other classmates and anyone who can access the Web, are potential collaborators. They can contact the team coordinator, for example, and make suggestions about the conceptual structure, as well as to provide ideas about where to find material and relevant Web sites. This process of collaboration with people outside of the classroom can continue even after the course has ended and the efforts of each team have been evaluated. We encourage the students who have been involved in MidasWeb to continue building their site and to recruit others to use it for their own research. Even after they complete the Program and move on to careers in international affairs, their efforts live on as an "electronic portfolio" of their work in graduate school.
As was mentioned above, the students were divided into groups based on the geographic and topical interests they reported in the Pre-MidasWeb Questionnaire. In addition to stating both types of interests, they specified whether they preferred to be in a regionally-defined or topically-defined group. Below are summaries of what each group presented at the end of the semester. Visitors can view the various portfolios by logging on as a visitor at
http://midasweb.maxwell.syr.edu.
On the whole, the
regionally-defined groups did not integrate their work within the groups as well as the
topically-defined groups. In many cases the sites appear to be a diversity of interests
cobbled together, united only by the common geographical link. In some cases each group
member decided to focus on a specific country and report on it. In other cases each group
member focused on a specific issue of importance to the region. This usually resulted in
uneven coverage of the material. One exception though is the East Asia group. They defined
their area tightly (five countries) and chose to focus on two themes relevant to the
region; economic and security issues. The result was a consistent, in-depth survey of the
two themes as they interrelate between the countries.
The topically-defined countries, on the other hand, were generally more cohesive and better organized. They tended to take greater advantage of the technology and produced more creative portfolios. For example, the foreign policy group decided to create an "experience" instead of a "resource destination." They designed a crisis simulation that the viewer can participate in. The sustainable development group followed the majority of the groups in creating a "resource destination," but unlike some of the other groups, made extensive use of graphics and inter-linked the documents in their portfolio. On the whole it appears there was closer collaboration within the topically-defined groups as compared to the geographically-defined groups.
There are many factors that could have affected the outcome of the projects, including the role played by the group coordinators, the level of computer skills of the group members, and how broadly the group category was defined. One factor that does not appear to have had an effect was the group size. Most of the groups had four to six members. However, both the smallest group, sustainable development, with only three members, and the largest group, East Asia, with eight members, produced some of the better portfolios.
On December 10, 1998, all eight MidasWeb teams made presentations of their site porfolios. Here is an example of one of those presentations, which was made by the Sustainable Development Team. The team's MSPowerPoint slides are available in both the original format (804KB) and HTML format (305KB). In addition, here are some video and audio excerpts from that presentation:
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As we indicated above, the activities described here are part of a continually evolving strategy to facilitate a contextual, collaborative active learning environment. In previous research we found support for our hypothesis that "students do not view 'Webified' course materials as enhancing their learning experience" (Seifert and Bonham 1997). Consequently, assessing the value and effectiveness of these activities represents an important part of our efforts to change the way international relations is taught. For this project, we administered three questionnaires to the students in PSC 651 during the fall 1998 semester.
We utilized a before and after design in an attempt to identify changes in indicators related to our three objectives. The first questionnaire served to collect background information while the other questionnaires each had specific questions related to our three objectives. One important limitation of the study is that the results are self-reported by the students. We do not really know how well the students integrated the material. This highlights a major drawback of performing research in this area. There is a lack of hard evidence and good methodological tools that capture the data we need to better assess the value of information technology in higher education.
The first questionnaire, which we will refer to as the Pre-MidasWeb Questionnaire, was administered during the first class meeting. It was designed to assess the students' computer skills and inventory their topical and geographical interests in international relations. The latter information was used to divide the students into groups of people with similar interests. The former information was used to gauge how much training the students would need to successfully use MidasWeb. The second questionnaire , which we will refer to as the PSC 651 Course Site Questionnaire, was administered during the last regular class meeting. It was designed to assess how the students utilized the PSC 651 course site. The third questionnaire, which we will refer to as the Post-MidasWeb Questionnaire, was administered after the students presented their Midas portfolios, during a special evening session, held a few days after the last regular class meeting. The results of these questionnaires are reported below.
There were two items in
this instrument that are of particular interest. The first item involves the students'
overall "comfort level" with computers. Using a five point Likert scale where
1=Very Uncomfortable and 5=Very Comfortable, the students were asked to rate their comfort
level using computers. The results, shown in Figure 1, showed that 21% of the students rated
themselves as a two on a five point comfort level scale but that none rated themselves as
a one. Twenty-nine percent rated themselves as a three while half of the students (50%)
rated themselves a four or five on a five point comfort scale. We asked this question
again in the Post-MidasWeb Questionnaire and found that overall, the students' comfort
level with computers had increased markedly over the semester. At the end of the semester,
the results showed that only 10.5% of the students rated themselves as a two, while 55.3%
rated themselves as a four or five on a five point scale, shown in Figure 2. The issue of students' comfort level with
computers relates directly to our second objective, encouraging active and independent
learning. By providing the opportunity to learn more advanced computer skills, students
become empowered and have fewer obstacles to actively pursue research interests on their
own.
The second questionnaire item focused on the students' knowledge/experience using Microsoft Word. We asked this question because we felt that the skills required to use Word closely mirrored those necessary to effectively participate in the MidasWeb project. In the Pre-MidasWeb Questionnaire students were asked to rate their level of knowledge/experience using Word as either beginner, moderate, or expert. The results, shown in Figure 3, showed that only 2% rated themselves at the beginner level. The majority (62%) rated themselves at the moderate level while 36% rated themselves at the expert level. We asked a very similar question in the Post-MidasWeb Questionnaire in which the students' were asked to rate their overall comfort using Microsoft Word on a five point Likert scale where 1=low and 5=high. The results, shown in Figure 4, showed that none of the students rated themselves a one or two on a five point comfort scale, while the majority (65.8%) rated themselves as a five on a five point comfort scale using Word. While the students undoubtedly used computers, and especially Microsoft Word, to write term papers and other assignments from other classes, we feel that the computer-intense nature of the MidasWeb project, which required the students to learn skills not normally used in other classes, such as HTML editing, document formatting, and graphics editing, was probably a significant factor in their improved comfort with computers and Word.
The PSC 651 Course Site Questionnaire asked several questions regarding the students' use of the course site. In the results reported below, we compare the fall 1998 responses with the responses from the fall 1997 class, which did not have the opportunity to use MidasWeb. For the fall 1998 class that used MidasWeb, we collected completed survey instruments from forty students, although in some cases not all of the questions were answered. One of the questions asked the students how many times they visited the course site. Of the thirty-six usable responses, the majority of the students (63.7%) visited the course site sixteen times or more during the semester, shown in Figure 5. The mode was 20 visits. The lowest number of reported visits was three, while the highest was 60. This compares with the fall 1997 class in which the majority of the students (51.6%) visited the course site only 6-10 times during the semester, with a mode of ten and a high of 30 visits shown in Figure 6.
A related question asked the students to rate the course site as a whole, using a scale of 1-5, where 1=poor and 5=excellent. The overwhelming majority of the students were very positive about the course site. Just over half of the students (51.4%) assigned the site a value of 4 while nearly one-third (31.4%) assigned it a value of 5. In contrast, 11.4% of the students rated the site with a value of 3, and 5.7% rated the site with a value of 2. There were no responses below a value of 2. These results were very similar to the results of the fall 1997 class. In that group, half of the students (50%) assigned the site a value of 4 while one-third (33.3%) assigned it a value of 5. The remaining students rated the site with a value of 3.
Another section of the survey instrument measured to what degree the students took advantage of the course site's features. Here we listed fifteen hypermedia resources that were either part of the site or hyperlinked from it. These hypermedia resources included digitized recordings of President Johnson's discussions about the Vietnam War, made available on The Challenges of Democracy textbook Website, short digitized clips from a documentary video, The Missiles of October, and transcripts from an interview with Daniel Ellsberg conducted by Harry Kreisler as part of his Conversations with History series. Students were asked if they had visited the resource and to rate it. The majority of the students (67.5%) visited seven or more of the locations. One of the students visited all fifteen, while the most often reported number of visits was nine. These data reflect a noticeable increase over the fall 1997 class where the majority of the students (64.8%) visited six or fewer of the locations, none had visited all of the locations, and the mode was six.
These results lend support to our position that hypermedia facilitates incidental and contextual learning. Many of the students took the opportunity to explore the hyperlinked resources within the context of the course. Their responses indicated the students found the site to be a useful resource both quantitatively and qualitatively. The relatively high number of visits per student suggests that the site served as at least one jumping point in an array of resources to explore various materials. Although we could not track the paths the students followed, it is unlikely they would repeatedly visit a site that was an informational dead end.
Finally, students were asked to "rate the effectiveness of this course site compared to others you have used for other courses." Here we used a five point Likert scale where 1=Much more effective and 5=Much less effective. They could also respond that they never used a course site before. Of the students who had used a course site before, the majority (68.9%) rated the PSC 651 course site as either more effective or much more effective than other course sites they had used. Only 6.8% of the students rated it as less effective or much less effective. One-quarter (25.6% ) of the students stated they had never used a course site before. Although this is an increase from the 17.2% of the fall 1997 class, this would suggest that the majority of graduate students have enrolled in some form of a cyberclass (probably a "Webified" course) during their academic careers. These findings provide further support for our earlier work that showed students are more engaged by interactive course sites than "Webified" course materials.
Students expressed less support for another measure of learning: only 44.7% chose the two highest values in response to a question about "thinking about their subject along interdisciplinary lines."
An analysis of the data from the Post-MidasWeb questionnaire suggests that a sizable majority of the students felt that their participation in the exercise helped them to follow their own interests in the subject matter and engage in independent and active learning. For example, when asked to what extent their search for information was guided by their own interests, 79.0% of the students responded by choosing either 4 or 5, the two highest values on the scale. Furthermore, almost two-thirds of the students indicated that they were actively involved in the MidasWeb exercise: 73.7% chose the two highest values, 4 or 5, when asked to what extent the experience was "personally involving, and 70.2 % indicated that they were "deeply involved in the MidasWeb experience."
The ratings of students on two measures of independent learning were not quite as high. 55.2% chose the two highest categories in response to a question about the extent to which MidasWeb "empowered" them with respect to their subject matter. Similarly, 50.0% of the students used the top two values to indicate that the MidasWeb experience required them to "take responsibility for deriving meaning" from the information that they obtained.
The questions on
collaborative learning suggest that students preferred to work on MidasWeb in a group
environment, rather than alone, and that their search for information was substantially
collaborative in nature. When asked whether they would have preferred to work "with a
team of classmates," rather than "alone," 71.0% indicated a strong
preference for group collaboration. Furthermore, 68.4% responded to a question about the
extent to which they "worked closely with the other people on [their] MidasWeb
team" by choosing the top two values, 4 or 5. When asked about the extent to which
they worked with other classmates, who were not members of their team, however, only 36.9%
selected the top two values. Only a few of the students (7.9%) indicated that they worked
extensively on MidasWeb with "people living outside of Syracuse." Finally, there
is strong evidence that the search behavior of the students was influenced by the
collaborative nature of the MidasWeb exercise. When asked the extent to which their search
for information was guided by "the interests of your team," 69.4% responded in
terms of the top two values, 4 and 5.
A correlational analysis of the Post-MidasWeb Questionnaire reveals some of the dynamics of the MidasWeb experience. A critical factor for the students was the extent to which their team leader, the MidasWeb coordinator, facilitated group activities. Almost half of the students (48.6%) rated their coordinator in the top two categories with respect to group coordination. Those who had effective team coordinators, as measured by this question, were more likely to have a positive and meaningful experience with the MidasWeb exercise. For example, we found a positive relationship between the extent to which the coordinator facilitated group activities and personal involvement in MidasWeb activities (Kendal's Tau-b = .21, ns) [Note that Chi Square significance levels are being reported for informational purposes, only.] The effectiveness of the team coordinator was also related to the learning measures: search for information guided by own interests (Kendal's Tau-b = .30, ns); thinking about subject matter along interdisciplinary lines (Kendal's Tau-b = .16, ns); and working closely with others (Kendal's Tau-b = .29 ns). For a summary of the results of the correlational analysis, see Appendix C.
Another factor that was related to the success of the MidasWeb exercise was the extent to which the search for information was guided by the interest of the student. This measure was related to the effectiveness of the group coordinator (see above), but more importantly, it was strongly related to the learning measures: taking responsibility for deriving meaning from the information obtained (Kendal's Tau-b = .14, p less than .05); going deeper into the subject matter (Kendal's Tau-b = .30, p less than .01); exploring the context (historical and unique circumstances) of the subject matter (Kendal's Tau-b = .22, ns); integrating information about the subject matter (Kendal's Tau-b = .23, p less than .05); and thinking about the subject matter along interdisciplinary lines (Kendal's Tau-b = .13, less than .01).
Not surprisingly, given the relationships described above, personal involvement in the MidasWeb exercise, which was related to the effectiveness of the team coordinator (see above), was also highly related to the learning outcomes: taking responsibility for deriving meaning from the information obtained (Kendal's Tau-b = .28, ns); becoming empowered with respect to the subject matter (Kendal's Tau-b = .33, ns); going deeper into the subject matter (Kendal's Tau-b = .30, p less than .01); exploring the context (historical and unique circumstances) of the subject matter (Kendal's Tau-b = .22, p less than .05); and integrating information about the subject matter (Kendal's Tau-b = .23, p less than .05).
What emerges from this correlational analysis, then is the following pattern. Students who have effective group coordinators worked closely with others, but were also able to search pursue their own interests in the subject matter, which enhanced their ability to engage in incidental and contextual learning, independent and active learning, and collaborative learning. Effective group coordination also made the MidasWeb experience more personally rewarding, which in turn, enhanced their ability to engage in student-centered learning.
While there has been discussion about how hypertext will contribute to theory building and the advancement of political understanding (Calise and Lowi 1998), the disruptive and transformative potential of collaborative hypertext in classroom teaching has not been fully explored (Snyder 1996). To further that effort, we divided students into teams and trained them in the use of MidasWeb, a Web-based environment for the organization, storage, and retrieval of hypertext documents and images. Then, over the course of a semester, the teams of students developed their own conceptual frameworks for organizing documents that they either created or download from the Web.
A survey of the students who participated in MidasWeb suggested that the exercise did disrupt traditional relationship between teacher and student and create a student-oriented learning environment. The more students became personally involved in the MidasWeb exercise, the more they felt empowered with respect the subject matter and took responsibility for deriving meaning from the information that they had obtained. In addition, the experience encouraged them to employ strategies of incidental and contextual learning and to think about the subject matter across interdisciplinary lines. Because the MidasWeb exercise was structured as a group activity, the effectiveness of the team coordinators had an impact on the success of the teams as well as the nature of the learning experience of the individuals who were involved.
Although the MidasWeb
exercise was a successful application of digital technology to classroom learning, it was
not a resounding success, because the impact on the students in the course was not
uniform. While a substantial majority of them found MidasWeb to be very involving and
moved toward student-centered learning, approximately one-third of them did not benefit
fully from the exercise. Some of these students did not benefit because they were
relatively unfamiliar with computers and applications of computer technology. We found,
for example, a positive relationship between personal involvement in the MidasWeb exercise
and the degree of "overall comfort " using computers (Kendal's Tau-b = .19, ns),
as well as "overall comfort" using MSWord (Kendal's Tau-b = .27, ns). This
result suggests that in the future, we should spend more time training students in basic
computer skills and work processing applications, prior to introducing them to MidasWeb.
Many students had also found that MidasWeb was difficult to use. In response to a question about the extent to which "technical problems" detracted from the objectives of MidasWeb, 81.6% of the students indicated high agreement (values 4 or 5 on the five-point scale). Among the problems they cited was the opinion that MidasWeb was not a true hypertext environment, because it did not permit the author of a document to make links easily between documents in the MidasWeb site. They also found MidasWeb to have a very rigid structure, since it was difficult to make changes in the conceptual framework, or even replace a document using the same file name.
While MidasWeb is a step in the right direction, it needs to be made more user friendly and supplemented with other tools for promoting the use of collaborative hypertext. We hope that future users of hypertext for collaboration will find it easier to work with their classmates, as well as people around the world through software that would include electronic forums, text chat, and audio/video conferencing. A fully integrated system would will not only permit people to see each others documents, but also to work on them, together, simultaneously in the spirit of true global collaboration.
Return to Table of ContentsAarseth, Espen J., 1997. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Barthes, R., 1975. The Pleasure of Text. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Noonday.
Calise, Mauro and Theodore J. Lowi, 1998. HYPERPOLITICS: Using Hypertext for Developing and Teaching Key Concepts in Political Science. Prepared for Delivery at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Computers and Multimedia Section, Washington, DC, September 3-6.
Deibert, R. J., 1997. Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia. Communication in World Order Transformation. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Klass, G., 1996. A Survey of Political Science Cyberclasses. Prepared for Delivery at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Computers and Multimedia Section, San Francisco, August 30.
Landow, George P., 1992. Hypertext. The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore, MD and London, UK: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Seifert, J. W. and G. M. Bonham, 1997.
Using the World Wide Web: Expanding the Classroom or a Virtual Distraction? Prepared for Delivery at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Computers and Multimedia Section, Washington, DC, August 28-31.Seifert, J. W. and G. M. Bonham, 1998. Advancing Education Through Digital Technology: Text Chat, Video-Conferencing, and Hypertext. Prepared for Delivery at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Computers and Multimedia Section, Boston, MA, September 3-6.
Snyder, I., 1996. Hypertext. The Electronic Labyrinth. Carlton South, Australia: Melbourne University Press.
1
Klass 1996 defines a second-stage cyberclass as one that includes activities that are Internet dependent, such as interactive e-mail, computer assisted simulation, or role-playing exercises involving the use of the Internet, p. 1.
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