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Updated 11 February 1999
*Prepared for Delivery at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Computers and Multimedia Section, Boston, MA, September 3-6, 1998. Copyright 1998 All rights reserved.
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As more courses go on-line, there is an increasing recognition of the need to push beyond the mere "Webification" of course materials. The robust capabilities of Web-based course instruction have, in most cases, been largely underutilized. In this paper we evaluate attempts to promote graduate teaching in international affairs using resources that capture the de-centering properties and the virtual presence of the World Wide Web. Specifically, we examine the effectiveness of combining interactive videoconferencing with Web-based text chat and hypertext authoring to create a new learning environment, where students in the United States collaborate with their colleagues abroad to address current policy issues. We call this new environment, "collaborative hypertext." Using written and oral evaluations, we describe the successes and failures of this learning environment from the faculty and students' point of view. By taking a look ahead to the future, our research presents some examples of how today's technology can be used to meet the promises of tomorrow's educational needs.
We have argued elsewhere that Webified courses do not effectively improve learning. By "Webify," we mean the "conversion of printed materials such as syllabi, hand-outs, and readings into basic HTML documents with little interactivity or other features which the World Wide Web is capable of supporting" (Seifert and Bonham, 1997). In our view, students do not perceive Webified course materials as enhancing their learning experience, and are not impressed or motivated by relatively simple applications of a robust medium like computer technology. Our research, based on a survey of 112 students taking Critical Issues for the United States, a multidisciplinary course designed to fulfill the social sciences component of Syracuse University's Arts and Sciences Core Curriculum, revealed that few students visited the course Web site on a regular basis and less than half of them reported using the site to explore course related ideas. In light of the low number of reported site visits, it was not surprising that "only three of the students cited materials related to the World Wide Web, or the course site specifically, as something that could have made the learning experience of the course more valuable" (Seifert and Bonham, 1997).
Recently, scholars in the field of international relations have noted the "unbundling of territoriality" in the global system. For example, Ruggie has written about a "nonterritorial 'region' in the world economy--a decentered yet integrated space-of-flows, operating in real time, which exists alongside the spaces-of-places that we call national economies" (Ruggie, 1993, p. 172). The "unbundling" has been made possible in part by computers and developments in the communications environment that favor "the complex diffusion of production of production across territorial/political boundaries by facilitating multilocational flexibility, transnational joint-ventures, and both global localization and 'local' globalization…" (Deibert, 1997, pp. 204-205).
Similarly, advances in computer and communication technology have resulted in an "unbundling of territoriality" in international affairs education. The World Wide Web, for example, creates a virtual space where distance becomes unimportant. Using computer technology in a real time format, faculty and students who have similar interests can meet each other and exchange perspectives and information in a meaningful way. Using asynchronous communication, they can also exchange messages without regard to the limitations of time and time zones. As a consequence, collaboration at a distance becomes both feasible and efficient, and students can "work without having to be in residence at a geographical or spatial site" (Landow, 1992, p. 129).
A major goal of each of these learning activities was to provide a successful virtual learning experience, or what Klass refers to as a "third stage" cybercourse. Klass (1996) analyzed 41 political science "cyberclasses" or courses with their own Web sites. He found that the typical course site was a "digital resting place for a variety of course materials that could just as easily-sometimes more easily-be distributed to students in printed format" (p. 1). Klass coded 53.7% of the sites as "first stage" cyberclasses, that is, they consisted of only a syllabus and hyperlinks to other web sites; 39.0% as "second stage" cyberclasses that included activities that were Internet dependent, such as interactive e-mail, computer assisted simulation, or role-playing exercises involving use of the Internet; and 7.3% as "third stage" offerings or virtual courses "without physical (or sometimes temporal) boundaries." While we do not advocate the use of virtual courses as a substitute for regular "in-person" classes, we do believe that virtual learning opportunities, combined with other active learning activities, provide an enhanced learning environment that expands the classroom.
Offered first in the series of workshops, the objective of this class was to "train participants in the use of computer-based (digital) tools for promoting environmental policy advocacy". The technical emphasis of the class was on PowerPoint presentations, Web publishing using HTML, and interactive videoconferencing skills. These skills were taught within the context of advocating effective environmental policies. This workshop combined hands-on technical lab sessions with role-playing exercises and discussions on presentation skills and effective Web page design. While there were no technical prerequisites for the class, students who possessed basic computer skills tended to get more out of the workshop than those who were less computer literate did. Moreover, the skills learned in this workshop could be applied in the other workshops, as well as the third learning experience, a Virtual Conference.
The focal point of PSC 651 was its course site. The PSC 651 course site provided students with a hypertext syllabus that included information about assignments, office hours, audio and video clips, and links to outside source materials. In addition, weekly video updates by the professor were posted to the course site to remind students of important dates and inform them of any new materials added to the site. The course site was closely integrated with the in-class activities to create a comprehensive whole.
In the next part of the class, we introduced the World Wide Web and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Topics covered included the history of the Internet and why it has grown exponentially, simple Web page design, technical considerations, and Internet legal issues, such as copyright, encryption, and privacy. We also did a technical demonstration, similar to the PowerPoint demonstration, on how to create a Web page using common HTML commands in an HTML editor called Webber. While students were encouraged to take advantage of the new What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) editors and conversion filters in popular software programs that require no knowledge of HTML to create a Web page, it is our view that students need to learn the basics of writing their own HTML code, so they will be empowered to either fix problems or go beyond simple conversions to create more dynamic Web sites.
We then continued our focus on the Internet by showing the students different Web-publishing techniques and taking a more in-depth look at examples of effective and ineffective uses of the Web to advocate policy positions. We also showed the students some of the most elaborate Web sites we could find as examples of what the future of the World Wide Web will hold for international relations.
In addition to covering these skills, we also introduced interactive videoconferencing. We discussed the growth of the technology and different ways it is being used in business, government, and education.
Table of Contents
Introduction
In addition to Webifying courses, academic institutions should move quickly to promote active learning. The use of case studies and role-playing simulations helps to shift responsibility for learning to students, but more can be done, especially outside of the classroom. This is particularly true in international affairs education, where the potential benefits are enormous. By taking full advantage of computer technology, educators can promote active learning through collaboration with colleagues who reside anywhere in the world.
Educational Objectives
Incidental and Contextual Learning
Independent and Active Learning
Our second objective is to promote independent and active learning by students. Both traditional lecture courses and many courses that utilize computer technology, the "Webified" courses, treat students like passive objects whose purpose is to absorb 'knowledge." Instead, we would like to transfer "to students much of the responsibility for accessing, sequencing, and deriving meaning from information" (Snyder, 1996, p. 103). Having taken this responsibility, students will move from being spectators to real involvement with their teachers, classmates, and others who share their interests. In other words, we hope to use computer technology to empower students to pursue their interests.
Collaborative Learning
Design Parameters
PSC 651 - Theories of International Relations
The first activity that was part of our strategy to advance graduate education through digital technology involved a three-credit graduate course on the theories of international relations, taught by Bonham in the fall semester. The course is a survey and critique of approaches to understanding international relations, with a focus on policy decision-making and international negotiation. Originally conceived of as a traditional "talk and chalk" class, supplemented by case studies and simulations, PSC 651 has been redesigned into an advanced second stage cyberclass. As one of the first courses most students take in the program, it serves as an opportunity to "set the tone", encourage students to become familiar with the interests of their colleagues, and fulfill our first objective, to facilitate implicit, incidental, and contextual learning. For example, the course site provides optional hyperlinks to a variety of related Web-based materials so that students can follow their own interests and not be strictly bound to the course material. By providing a common framework through lectures, readings, and active learning opportunities such as participatory case studies, simulations, and the course site, the groundwork is laid for future collaborative exercises both inside and outside the classroom.
Professional Policy Workshops
The second strategic activity involved a series of three one-credit professional policy workshops. Offered in the spring semester, these workshops were designed to fulfill our second objective to promote independent and active learning by students. Each workshop emphasized a different skill area that can be used toward the global information policy concentration of the Program. The skill areas included environmental advocacy, international economic analysis, and role-playing simulations for conflict analysis. Each workshop consisted of two all-day weekend meetings. Students worked on assignments between the workshop meetings and submitted final versions of the assignments later in the semester. For the purpose of this paper, we will concentrate on the Environmental Policy Advocacy workshop.
The Virtual Conference
The third active learning activity that involved students was a Virtual Conference with students at another university. The Virtual Conference on Challenges to Global Governance was held in the spring 1998 semester with faculty and students of the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Sweden. The purpose of the Virtual Conference was to bring together students interested in global environmental issues and multilateral peacekeeping, who would probably not otherwise come into contact with one another due to their geographic separation. Fulfilling our third objective, to promote collaborative learning, the Virtual Conference was actually the combination of three separate activities: two interactive videoconferences and a Web-based text chat session. The most technologically advanced of the three learning experiences, the Virtual Conference represented a "third stage" cyberclass that was without physical, and to a lesser extent, temporal boundaries. The Virtual Conference was not part of any formal course, but instead was offered as a voluntary enrichment activity for interested students.
Procedures
PSC 651 - Theories of International Relations
PSC 651 was the first and most traditional learning activity of our plan. The class met once a week for three hours. With over 30 students enrolled, the class could not be effectively taught as a graduate seminar. PSC 651 was thus an especially good target to be redesigned to include a number of incidental and contextual learning opportunities, both inside and outside the classroom.
Environmental Advocacy Workshop
The Virtual Conference on Challenges to Global Governance
The Virtual Conference on Challenges to Global Governance was an enrichment activity designed to promote collaborative learning. A Web site was created as a central information point between the International Relations Program of the Maxwell School and the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University. The site included video clips and transcripts of the conference activities, links to the participant schools, and discussion forums. The Virtual Conference began with an "ice-breaker" videoconference in October between the faculty of the participating universities. It was during this videoconference that the participants decided that the second videoconference should focus specifically on environmental and peacekeeping issues.
The outcome of the Virtual Conference consisted of a hypertext transcript of the videoconference and a log of the text chat, both of which were posted on the conference Web site. The transcript contained images of the participants, as well as short film clips of their contributions. In addition, comments of the participants in the videoconference were hyperlinked to related comments by the same speaker in the log of the Web-based text chat.
One of the questions asked the students how many times they visited the course site. Of the thirty-one usable responses, the majority of the students (51.6%) visited the course site 6-10 times during the semester. The mode was 10 visits. The lowest number of reported visits was three, while highest was 30. 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. 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 score of 3. There were no responses below a value of 3.
Despite these relatively high ratings, however, many of the students did not take full advantage of the course site's features. One part of the survey listed twelve items that were either part of the site or hyperlinked from it. Students were asked if they had visited that location and to rate it. The majority of the students (64.8%) visited half or fewer of the locations, while only 6.3% of the students visited ten of the locations. None of the students visited all twelve, while the most often reported number of visits was six visits. Finally, students were asked to "rate the effectiveness of this course site as compared to others you have used for other courses." Here we used a five point Likert scale. They could also respond that they never used a course site before. The majority of the students (65.5%) rated the PSC 651 course site as either more effective or much more effective than other course sites they had used. Only 6.9% of the students rated it as less effective and none rated it as much less effective. Interestingly, only 17.2% of the students stated they had never used a course site before. This would suggest that the majority of graduate students have enrolled in some form of a cyberclass (probably a non-interactive Web site, a stage one cyberclass) 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.
With the exception of one student whose response was "not sure," all of the students claimed the class was useful for their professional development. Most of the students also gave high ratings to the active learning parts of the class. On a four point scale, where 4=excellent, 3=good, 2=fair, and 1=poor, 69.2% of the students rated the hands-on lab session a value of 4, and the remaining students rated it a value of 3. Using the same four-point scale, the majority of the students rated the in-class presentation exercise a value of 4, while 30.8% of the students rated it a value of 3.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence that the students benefited and are receptive to this style of learning are the students' own words. At the end of the survey we had three open-ended questions under the heading "Suggestions for Improvement." We received several comments that support our interest in active learning and lead us to believe that the students benefited from our approach. One student responded, "This is so exciting- -we need more training classes like this." Another student, noting the technical nature of the class said, "This is an intimidating area which the instructors managed to make manageable." Finally, another student reported that, "I really enjoyed myself and felt I learned a lot." We believe that based on the high quality of the students' work and their generally positive feedback, that the workshop was a successful active learning experience, in terms of our objectives.
After giving students this experience, we attempted to provide them the tools to become more actively involved in learning by making their own digital presentations. Weekend workshops afforded training in MS PowerPoint, HTML publishing, and interactive videoconferencing, as well as the opportunity for students to showcase their presentation skills. Finally, we encouraged students to engage in collaborative learning through involvement in a Virtual Conference with faculty and graduate students in Sweden. Participants got to know each other and exchanged ideas on global environmental issues and multilateral peacekeeping problems through interactive videoconferencing. These videoconferences were followed by Web-based text chat sessions between the participants that gave them the opportunity to elaborate their earlier comments in a different digital environment.
The Virtual Conference on Challenges to Global Governance points the way to the kind of digital environment in which our current students will be working in the 21st century. They 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.
Students in PSC 651 Theories of International Relations will be the first users of MidasWeb. We will organize them into teams of collaborators based on their substantive and geographical interests. For example, one team might consist of students who are interested in global warming, while another team might include students who want to focus on the political economies of East Asia. Working with each other (and students at other universities) over the course of the semester, and perhaps their entire career in the International Relations Program, these teams of collaborators will develop their own Web sites. Before they leave the Program, students will have created a kind of virtual portfolio of documents, including hypertext and hypermedia objects, and links to relevant resources on the Web, which are
organized on the basis of their own understandings of the topic. As a result, their scholarly performance will have become "a form of continuing seminar," which is "interactive, dialogic, and self correcting" (O'Donnell, 1998, p. 136).
Barthes, R., 1979, From Work to Text, trans. J. Harari, 73-81. In J. Harari (ed.) Textual Strategies. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Bonham, G. M., V. M. Sergeev, and P. Parshin, 1997. The Limited Test-Ban Agreement: Emergence of New Knowledge Structures in International Negotiation. International Studies Quarterly 41: 215-240.
Deibert, R. J., 1997. Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia. Communication in World Order Transformation. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Der Derian, J., 1989. The Boundaries of Knowledge and Power in International Relations. In J. Der Derian and M. J. Shapiro (eds.) International/Intertextual Relations. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Derrida, J., 1973. Speech and Phenomena, trans. D. B. Allison. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Hollar, D. and L. Moffitt, 1998. Bridging the Distance: How CPAP Integrates its Ph.D. Communities Through Distance Learning. Prepared for Delivery at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Computers and Multimedia Section, Washington, DC, September 3-6.
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.
O'Donnell, J. T., 1998. Avatars of the Word. From Papyrus to Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ruggie, J. G., 1993. Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations. International Organization 47: 139-174.
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, Boston, MA, August 28-31.
Snyder, I., 1996. Hypertext. The Electronic Labyrinth. Carlton South, Australia: Melbourne University Press.
Shapiro, M. J., G. M. Bonham, and D. Heradstveit, 1988. A Discursive Practices Approach to Collective Decision-Making. International Studies Quarterly 32: 397-420.
Young, J., 1997. UCLA's Requirement of a Web Page for Every Class Spurs Debate. Chronicle of Higher Education, August 1, A21-A22.
Young, J., 1998. A Year of Web Pages for Every Course: UCLA Debates Their Value. Chronicle of Higher Education, May 15, A29.
Assessment
PSC 651 - Theories of International Relations
The objective of redesigning PSC 651 into an advanced second stage cyberclass was to facilitate implicit, incidental, and contextual learning. This was done primarily through the course site and active learning activities in class. A course evaluation and survey instrument was administered at the end of the semester. We collected completed surveys from all thirty-two students in the class, although in some cases not all of the questions were answered.
Environmental Policy Advocacy Workshop
The object of the Professional Policy Workshops was to promote independent and active learning. This was done primarily through hands-on lab sessions, demonstrations, and student presentations. A course evaluation and survey instrument was administered at the end of the second day of the weekend session to 13 students.
The Virtual Conference on Challenges to Global Governance
The objective of the Virtual Conference was to promote collaborative learning. While we were unable to conduct a more formal survey of the participants, the outcomes of the events reflect the success of the learning activity. The Virtual Conference brought together faculty and students from two universities who previously had no contact with each other. Moreover, this was not one isolated meeting, but three separate collaborative sessions that has laid the groundwork for future exchanges. The transcripts of both videoconferences and the Web-based text chat session also support the idea that collaborative learning took place. Student interaction was greater during the text chat as compared to the second videoconference. The immediacy and ability to have multiple conversations occurring at once, while at times confusing, allowed for more interactivity and for the two sides to develop a rapport with one another. The participants were able to find common ground between their differing perspectives and conduct an informative dialogue. The students engaged in a discussion on par with what might be experienced in a graduate seminar, but the benefit of having done so with people from another university on a topic of specific interest to them.
Conclusion
Summary
In order to capture some of the robust capabilities of digital technology and apply them to graduate education, we have experimented with Web-based text chat, interactive videoconferencing, and hypertext. By developing a course site for a traditional "chalk and talk" course with hyperlinks to Web resources, audio and video updates, digitized film clips of documentaries, and in-class simulation exercises, we succeeded in making it an advanced "second stage" cyberclass. Not only did this course site provide students access to more resources, but it also gave them experience within a nonlinear environment, where implicit, incidental, and contextual learning could take place.
Hypertext for Collaboration
Having met all three of our educational objectives, our next step will be to give students the opportunity to do routine work in hypertext and hypermedia in the context of a collaborative environment. Although the Web sites the students developed in the workshops contained hyperlinks, they did not utilize fully the unique properties of hypertext, such as non-linearity, de-centering, and virtual presence (Seifert and Bonham, 1997). For the most part their work still resembled single-author, linear structure monographs (O'Donnell, 1998, p. 133).
Midas-Web
Over the course of the next year, we will begin training our graduate students to use collaborative hypertext. The vehicle for this exercise will be MidasWeb. We have been selected as the beta site for MidasWeb, a Web-based environment for the organization, storage, and retrieval of hypertext documents and other objects. In the MidasWeb environment, Web site collaborators develop their own classification framework for organizing documents, enter information about the documents into forms, and then download the documents. 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.
References
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