Because many different images and preconceptions come to mind when one envisions a classroom, this section makes explicit our definitions and descriptions of a typical classroom environment. While much of this may seem obvious, we feel that before we describe the tools and services eClass provides, we need to define precisely the underlying classroom model and the assumptions that eClass was built upon.
6.2.1 Roles
We have defined three roles in our classroom environment: instructor, student, and outsider. The tools and services of eClass support each role to some degree. A student is any person who wants or is required to learn or study a topic of information and is paying an institution or instructor to teach them about the topic.
An instructor is the person who is charged with the task of sharing or giving information about the topic. An outsider is any person who has an interest in what is being taught, but is not paying for the information or would not otherwise be considered a student at the time the information was taught.
6.2.2 Situation
A topic is defined as a collection of knowledge about a particular subject. Topics can be broken down into smaller segments where each segment is discussed in a lecture. A single lecture may cover many segments, or one segment may span many lectures. A lecture is a meeting where at least one instructor and two or more students come together in a scheduled location at regular intervals for dissemination of knowledge from the instructor(s) to the students or, in some cases,
from students to students. A course is thus a collection of these lectures over a period of time and the classroom is simply the location where lectures are taught.
6.2.3 Tools
Both the instructor and students use tools in the classroom to help them with their roles. Two of the most familiar items in the classroom are chalk/markers and the chalkboardlwhiteboard. It is hard to imagine a classroom where the instructor does not have some large markable surface to display infOlmation. Slowly, these surfaces are becoming electronic, but whatever the technology used, each classroom typically has a large surface where the instructor can write information for the students.
Oftentimes, an instructor has too much information to write during class, or needs to display intricate drawings or photos where physically drawing the information is impossible. In this case, acetate slides and an overhead projector are commonly used. Here, the instructor can write on the projected slides to further explain key points. In some modem classrooms, overhead cameras and television sets are used to achieve the same purpose. Recently, instructors have started using presentation software (such as Microsoft PowerPoint®) to prepare their lectures. During class, a computer with a projected display is used to give the lecture. In all cases, the instructor is using some tool to prepare materials in advance for use in class in order to save time during the lecture.
In classrooms equipped with networked computers and projected displays, some instructors have taken to using the Web as an instructional tool. Essentially this is the same as an overhead projector, but with no marking capabilities. Instructors can use the Web to show either prepared presentations or information created by other people, or in some cases, other students.
The students have traditionally had access to only a few tools to help them learn the material presented in a lecture. Some instructors prepare handouts of their prepared material either before or after the lecture. Paper and pen are the icons of any student and a strong note-taking ability is often the mark of a successful student. Audio recordings are sometimes permitted, but using the audio to study from is often hard enough that it is not worth the effort.
6.2.4 Tasks and Activities
After identifying the tools of the classroom, we are now ready to identify the activities that make use of them. The instructor has one main objective - to disseminate knowledge among the students and assess if they have learned it. The instructor has many common activities for doing this: lecturing, meeting with students outside of class time, and assessing performance on assignments (such as projects and homework) and tests.
78 The Digital University - Building a Learning Community Homework assigned during a lecture typically consists of work done outside of class designed to reinforce the topic taught in lecture. Projects are typically more lengthy assignments, usually done in teams, and extending for the duration of several lectures. Projects are designed to show competency in several lecture topics, the ability to work as a team, and the ability to integrate knowledge from different subjects.
Tests are the familiar assessment method bemoaned by many students. They are designed to show a comprehensive knowledge over an entire course's worth of material. Tests are the most common method of determining grades, and passing tests is usually a student's main motivation for the class.
Students are also charged with other tasks in the classroom. The most obvious ones are attending the class, taking notes during the class, and studying after the class.
Many instructors also insist on discussion from the students and, via assignments, that they review their notes outside of class.
6.2.5 What eClass Supports, and the Assumptions eClass Makes
eClass assumes, not unreasonably, that a course and all of its lectures take place in only one classroom throughout the semester. With a little manual effort, our software supports courses that consist of two or more classrooms. eClass can also support a lecture (but not very well) given in two different locations if it is given in two parts. We attempted to use eClass with lectures that take place in more than two locations at the same time and were met with mixed success. eClass was not designed to support distributed lectures and the amount of manual effort required to "force" the system to fit this model made it clear that eClass was not a good solution for distributed classes.
We do not assume that the students or instructor of a course are the only people who will access the online notes. We have discovered that access to captured materials can also aid other instructors teaching a course that was previously taught by a different instructor. eClass helps instructors prepare for a new lecture on a topic already discussed by allowing them to see the materials used in class and how they were presented. Students of other courses and outsiders often look at the online notes for a captured class in which they were not emolled. The system supports in some way access from instructors and non-students, but our intent was to provide an access service for the actual students of the course.
We do not mean to imply that eClass directly supports all of the roles, tools, and tasks specified above. Recall that the main goal of eClass was to build a classroom that could take quality notes for the students emolled in a course. In trying to meet this goal, we have noticed our system being used in ways we did not predict. For example, professors have had open-note tests using eClass and have created class projects that require the use of eClass to build publicly critiqued artefacts. In most of these cases, we then refined our system to facilitate and encourage this
eClass 79 unexpected behavior. This has resulted (for better or worse) in eClass being used to some extent to support the people and activities described above.