Derek S. Reveron, Virtual Teaching Assistant
 reveron@usna.edu

Abstract

The Internet has been hailed by many as the key to success in the 21st century.  President Clinton has made access to the Internet a priority of his administration and local school principals are reallocating their budgets to allow their students to surf the web.  The overwhelming confidence policymakers have for the Internet is based on the assumption that the Internet can and will be used to advance knowledge through data sharing, information availability, and facilitate classroom discussions.  Despite this confidence, very little is known about how the Internet and the worldwide web are used in the classroom.  This paper will explore how students use the worldwide web in an academic environment. At bottom, this paper offers political science teachers an analysis of Internet use, and strategies for incorporating the worldwide web into the classroom.   This paper relies on original data collected over a two-year period of internet usage (over 140,000 hits) in political science courses.

Introduction

Education has been promised the benefits of technology three times before in this century.  However, each time, the motion picture, radio, and television failed to deliver on their promises to help students learn twice as much in the same time and with the same effort (Oppenheimer, 1997). Despite the obvious failures of early technology to improve education, the country has again turned to a technological solution to increase learning.

Since the election of President Clinton, the “web” and the information superhighway have gained national prominence.  It is widely thought that the “information superhighway” is the road to success in the twenty-first century. In the last decade, billions of dollars turned a Defense Department research project into the technological phenomenon of our time. The Internet is the symbol of this already declared prosperity and enlightenment in the information age.  Email, newsgroups, and the worldwide web (www) are touted as technological innovations that will revolutionize commerce, culture, and education.   Despite warnings from the past and little empirical support, government, school administrators and teachers have willingly embarked on the “information superhighway.” Though it is generally assumed that Internet technologies can be integrated into the classroom, little research has been conducted on how the web is actually used in a classroom environment.  To gauge the overall impact of Internet technologies, I report the results of using the worldwide web and a newsgroup for political science courses over an eighteen-month period. 

Accommodation through Technology

Given the wide access to the Internet at home and on campus, I use the world-wide web to accommodate students' needs.  Using my personal web page, I post class materials, including grades, lecture notes, and class assignments on the Internet and instructed students to check the site frequently.   The worldwide web site was designed to assist students who traveled the farthest distances or whose outside commitments presented serious burdens on their participation.  I found the web provided students the materials they needed, and more importantly, when they needed it.  To gauge the value of web materials, I measured usage of my worldwide web site over an eighteen-month period.  The results of which will be soon explored.

And to overcome the inherent problems of having discussion in a large class with 160 students, I required student participation on a newsgroup.  The newsgroup, open to only students enrolled in the course, gave students an opportunity to communicate with each other.  Students were required to post to the newsgroup twice per week for eleven weeks during the semester.  Posts could be questions, responses to other students’ questions, or targeted comments about politics.  If volume is any measure of success, then the newsgroup can be considered successful.  By the end of the semester, there were over 4200 posts or nearly 700 more than the expected 3520 posts from 160 students posting twice per week for eleven weeks.  The average number of posts (24) by participating students exceeded my expectations.

The World-Wide Web and the Classroom

In the last five years, the number of web pages has skyrocketed.  As of January 2000, there are over 72 million internet domain hosts (Internet Software Consortium 2000).  The web is used for commerce, information delivery, and entertainment.  Additionally, the web has penetrated academia and is frequently used by instructors of many disciplines.  For example, art historians use the web to “display” historical works of art or political scientists use the web to “distribute” oral arguments of the Supreme Court, run simulations of the prisoner’s dilemma, and serve as a resource for data. 

 I use the web as a “virtual teaching assistant” who is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  At their convenience, students can access their grades, download lecture notes, and review the course schedule.  Additionally, students can obtain course syllabi, assignments, and the resources to complete classroom assignments.  Because the worldwide web is public, my homepage can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

Web Page Basics

When one considers the unlimited potential of the web, it is a daunting task to create a personal homepage.  Generally speaking, a good web page limits file sizes by excluding unnecessary graphics to maximize access times, provides a straight forward layout that is easy to navigate, and offers the audience something useful, and hopefully unique.  Because the web is a dynamic medium, my webpage has evolved during the  years.  At first, the page contained some basic biographical information, course outlines, and relevant links.  Today, my web page stores my curriculum vitae, an on-line application for a special course I teach, and comprehensive assignments and resources to complete the assignments.  My web page is slowly shaping up to be a personal library where I am curator, exhibitor, and archivist. 

My web page is arranged into four areas: personal information, course information, on-line resources, and communication.  Personal information is designed to give students an idea of who their instructor is.  The personal information includes curriculum vitae, a set of teaching evaluations, and my teaching philosophy.  Course information contains course syllabi, assignments, class notes, and grades.  On-line resources are an abbreviated list of resources designed to complete course assignments.  I found this section especially beneficial because I could list web sites as direct references for a particular assignment.  The final section of the page consisted of a mechanism to communicate with students.  The communication section contained a web-based form mail system that allowed students to email me directly over the web without having to log into their computer accounts.  In the future, this section will contain an "announcements" section that will contain important class announcements.   

  Web Statistics

Because I want my web page to be tailored to my audience, I monitor access to files on my page.  Web servers maintain a log of all accesses. All one needs to do is find the records for the page of interest, and aggregate the data. This can be done once a day, which results in interesting data on the number of hits per day, which files got hit, and from which domains the accesses originated.   The computer center at UIC adapted wwwstat, written by Roy Fielding, at UC Irvine to accomplish the easy compilation of web statistics. Webstat is a program that automatically analyzes the http logs, and generates reports of the accesses to web pages. Because webstat is placed in the top directory of the set of web directories, it provides a report for that directory and all subdirectories. 

Webstat is run automatically when once a day, the system finds a .webstat file, runs the analysis, and leaves the report in an html "current" file. When webstat finds an existing report file the next day, it automatically updates the "current" file, thereby extending the report for another day.  On the last day of the month, webstat renames the "current" file to a report for that particular month.  Presented below, is data collected over a eighteen-month period (September, 1997 through May 1998; and September, 1998-May 1999) at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

 Web Statistics and Analysis

During the 1997-8 period, an average of 456 files were transmitted daily, while during the 1998-9 period, an average of 82 files were transmitted.  The difference between the two years reflects the differences in class sizes in 1997-8, 500 students used the web page, while in 1998-9, only 50 students did.  When translated into a monthly rate, there where 13,683 hits per month in 1997-8 and 2,454 hits in 1998-9.  In real terms, this means the web page answered students’ questions 140,000 times during two academic years.  As one would expect, usage of the web peaked near assignment due dates and scheduled exams.  Figures 1a and 1b depict average daily file requests.  In 1997-8, with the exception of September and October, average daily usage is stable at approximately 465 requests per day.  December's requests are low due to the holiday break that occurred after the first week of the month. During 1998-9, the average daily requests were more stable.  A preliminary hypothesis to explain the differences in average daily requests relates to the percentage of non-local users of the web page. 

Though the overwhelming majority of requests originated from the resident domain (uic), 22% of access requests originated from outside of the university in 1997-8, while nearly 43% originated from outside of the university in 1998-9.  The dramatic difference of non-resident users likely reflects frustrations with limited access to the university server, and the reduced cost of commercial internet service providers.

In addition to commercial internet service providers (13%, 21%), there was surprisingly a number of hits from international domains (less than 1%) (UK, South Africa, UAE, and others), hits from governmental and military domains (1%), and hits from non-profit organizations (6%).  Not only students used my web page, but others outside of the university interested in my site’s content.

As table one depicts, web materials that were directly relevant to the course such as course information (75%) were most widely used.  Course information consisted of syllabi, assignments, lecture notes, practice exams and grades.  Resources and personal information were visited as frequently as each other (10%). Course resources consisted of a guide to writing and Internet political resources, while personal information included course evaluations, my curriculum vitae, and my teaching philosophy.  At first glance instructor-student communication accounts for only 5%, however, it must be remembered that this is communication through the worldwide web.  The contact variable does not include email sent directly to the instructor. 

A more detailed analysis of the course resources on the web page, revealed that lecture notes are the most accessed class resource (39%), while grades are the second most accessed (23%).  Further, assignments accounted for 22% of the hits, and students needing another syllabus accessed course materials 16% of the time.  In retrospect, the results are not very surprising. Students use the website to answer the age old questions in the classroom: “What did I miss?”; What grade did I get on the exam?”; and “What’s the homework?”  See Table two. 

Newsgroup Data and Analysis

In addition to the world wide web, another widely used medium on the Internet is the newsgroup.  A newsgroup is an on-line topic-oriented discussion group. At this writing, there are over 7,000 active newsgroups on the Internet.  Newsgroups range in topics from groups centered on the computer profession (.comp) to groups that discuss recreation (.rec) and social groups (.soc) and groups that exist for courses (.class).  Participants post messages, questions, or comments to a newsgroup to which others respond.  Unlike "chat rooms," newsgroup posts are not real time.  Posts remain on servers for at least thirty days and allow anyone to respond to the posts. 

The newsgroup is especially useful in large lecture courses.  In a course with over 160 students, comprehensive discussion is not feasible.  Because the course did not offer small discussion sections and I want to encourage discussion in my classes, the newsgroup was the only alternative available to me. 

All students were required to participate in the newsgroup throughout the semester.  All newsgroup posts are non-anonymous, which facilitated grading.   As a general rule, students were required to post to the newsgroup twice per week.  Though I did not specify the types of posts, students generally commented about topics from the course, items of political interest from the media, or news from around campus.  On the newsgroup, students frequently raised points from lecture and discussed them with their classmates.  Additionally, news events or other interesting items were posted to the newsgroup.  Generally, students were polite on the newsgroup; however, one student was especially discourteous to others.  While affirming the discourteous student's right to free speech on the Internet, the discourteous student was reminded that the rules of the classroom apply to the newsgroup.  Plainly, things that wouldn't be said in the classroom shouldn't be said in the newsgroup.

Despite technological challenges for some students, the newsgroup was quite active.  Out of 180 registered students, 138 students (77%) participated regularly.  The rate at which students participated widely varied from one  to 147 posts. On average, students posted 24 times during the semester.  Though students did not receive credit for posts over 24, many students exceeded the minimum.  This suggests that the newsgroup was fun and interesting enough for students who were shut out from participating in class.

Student comments suggest that the newsgroup was beneficial.  Many students were grateful they had an opportunity to discuss issues and engage other students on political topics.  It seems that the newsgroup broke through the isolation created by large lecture-based courses.  The newsgroup was especially valuable to the student who is afraid to speak in public.  It seems the keyboard provided adequate expression for the shy voice.  As discussed above, discourtesy can result from students’ increased confidence behind the keyboard. Like many things on the Internet, the students found the anarchic nature of the newsgroup frustrating. They felt, too often, that uninteresting topics dominated discussions. 

 Conclusions and Recommendations for Future Research

The research suggests that teaching in an urban environment presents challenges.  Included in these are the problems created when students commute long distances, when students work long hours outside of school, and when students must balance family obligations with classroom responsibilities.  Though the challenges are many, they are not insurmountable.  The web and the newsgroup proved to be effective means to encourage participation and interest in the course.

With the audience in mind, I improved my effectiveness as an instructor by using Internet technologies. I use the Internet throughout the course to communicate with students, to provide students with a virtual teaching assistant 24 hours day, and to facilitate discussion of political topics by using a newsgroup.  My analysis suggests that students use a course web page for traditional reasons: what they missed in class, what will be on the exam, and what they scored on an exam.  Only a small percentage of the students used the course web page as a gateway to political science resources.

The inquiry suffers from certain limitations, which I hope to address in future research.  First, I need a more thorough measure of each of the variables discussed in this study.  As discussed above, it took several permutations of the web page before I was happy with its current format.  To get a better understanding of how students use a course web page, it would be important to have a stable web page design over time.  Second, I would like to have more data on students’ computer habits.  Namely, how much time students spend on the web, how they use the web outside of the course, and their perceptions of the web.  Third, I would like to have correlations between grades and student use of the web in the classroom.   Finally, I would have liked to have a better measure of quality concerning the newsgroup. I can not say whether the 4,200 posts were thoughtful and insightful comments.  Though not done here, network analysis can measure both the quality and nature of discussion on a newsgroup.  I am particularly interested in the extent to which students communicate with one another.  Analysis of newsgroups “threads” can provide such data.

Bibliography

Bailey, Martha.  1995.  "USENET Discussion Groups in Political Science Courses." PS December 1995, 721-722.

Ball, William J.  1995.  "Using the Internet as a Teaching Tool: Why Wait Any Longer?"  PS December, 1995, 718-720.

Chronicle of Higher Education, August 29, 1997; http://thisIek.chronicle.com/.almanac/.links.html, visited March 17, 1998.  

Harknett, Richard J. and Craig T. Cobane.  1997.  "Introducing Instructional Technology to International Relations."  PS September 1997, 496-500.

Internet Software Consortium (http://www.isc.org/)

Lugar, Stan and William Scheuerman.  1993.  “Teaching American Government”.  PS December, 1993, 749-753.

Luna, Carl J. and Joe Mac McKenzie.  1997.  "Beyond the Chalkboard: Multimedia Sources for Instruction in Political Science."  PS September, 1997, 60-68.

Oppenheimer, Todd.  1997.  “The Computer Delusion.”  The Atlantic Monthly.  July, 1997, 45-65.

Reveron, Derek S. and Brian C. White.  1998.  Connections in the Classroom: Teaching 101 in an Urban Environment.  Paper presented at the 54^th Midwest Political Science Association Meeting, Chicago, Illinois.  April 24, 1998.

UIC Student Data Book: 1993-1997.  1997.  Data Resources and Institutional Analysis.  The University of Illinois at Chicago.

Derek S. Reveron
U.S. Naval Academy
Political Science Department
589 McNair Road
Annapolis, MD 21402
 reveron@usna.edu