IRMA Web-based seminar Pekka Makkonen University of Jyväskylä Information Systems Science Finland
IRMA Course An undergraduate course for the first-year majors: Knowledge work and its tools Themes Productivity of knowledge work Analyzing individual knowledge work Analyzing collaboration and work management PC software as improvement of productivity Groupware as improvement of productivity
IRMA Why web-based seminar? increased amount of information systems education as well as students at universities-> impossibility to organize conventional seminars Need for more flexibility because of heterogeneity of the students Adult education technical infrastructure has been improved (for example high-speed broadband connections to the student village)
IRMA How? Web CT and its presentations feature Working in small groups (3 to 5 students) dealing with one typical knowledge work profession (lawyer, teacher, etc.) Presentations were put in each group’s separate workspace on the web Other groups commented on the outcomes Control groups to compare the value
IRMA Was web-based seminar successful? Evaluation The process of the coursework and seminar: we wanted to know 1) how the WWW-based coursework affected motivation to learn different themes of a knowledge work course, and 2) how the WWW-based coursework affected different skills from the perspective of goals of the course. In this paper we are interested in adult learners: whether our web-based seminar helped adult learners or not The data was collected by administering questionnaires
IRMA What we got Differences were found by studying motivation Male learners were more motivated in the learning of productivity issues related to PC software and groupware =learning “hard matters” may be easier using a web-based seminar Earlier we have got the same result concerning older learners (Proceedings of HICSS 2003) Female learners benefited more while learning analyzing work and collaboration = learning “soft or human stuff” may be easier using a web- based seminar Earlier we have got the same result concerning younger learners (Proceedings of HICSS 2003)
IRMA Some technical points Personal thoughts Prefer HTML format Avoid use of subfolders Think about differences of browsers As a teacher do not use all the features of a learning environment: think about your pedagogical design first. For example, the Web CT includes a lot of features: only some of them may be suitable for one course. This means that as a teacher you should choose the features used from the perspective of your own pedagogical view.
IRMA Research continues We analyze the effect of our WWW-based seminar on the learning of the concepts of our course content comparing experimental group to control group In the course of the academic year we used SOLO taxonomy-based tests and measures to clarify the quality of learning of those concepts Tests included pre- and post treatments. In each test respondents produced 15 definitions of randomly selected concepts comparing experimental group to control group These results will be published