Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education 14th Conference March 24-30, 2003 Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Students' Reactions and Evaluation of A Course Management Tool GETA

Shigeru Narita*,　 Kohji Shino** and 　Madhumita Bhattacharya***

Hyogo University of Teacher Education

naritas*, shino**, mita***@ceser.hyogo-u.ac.jp

Abstract: Commercialized e-learning systems provide many course managerial functionalities.　 However, they are usually not cost-effective in the departmental use of a small college. Authors have developed a low-cost and easy-to-use Web-based system tool called GETA. This tool is intended to encourage collaborative studies and self-paced individual learning as well. Students’ evaluation of GETA are discussed in this paper.

Introduction

The establishment of e-learning systems within academic institutions is rapidly advancing in US, Canada, and European countries. However, the e-learning practices at Japanese colleges and universities are not as mature as we would expect in regard to effective solutions, user satisfaction and learning outcomes.　 In fact, many users and instructors in the higher education institutions are looking for customized solutions.

In the teacher education programs of Hyogo University of Teacher Education, commercially available collaboration tool was implemented in order to provide a pilot e-learning system capable to support the delivery of preservice training programs, covering topics such as media and computer literacy, teaching practicum and basic statistics. We have now used most popular e-learning platforms such as Japanese versions of WebCT, WebClass, and Cybozu.

Having and maintaining technology-enabled colleges is desirable but not difficulty-free.　 Glennan and Melmed (2000) explore three key challenges linked to technology and education: financing, teacher training, and the availability of meaningful educational software.　 The financial issue is, at least, two folds: colleges need initial monetary investments to become adequately technology-oriented and enabled, and then they need funds to maintain and upgrade their technological investments appropriately.

Teacher training is a major issue, as without educators to teach and guide in the use of technology, having technology-enabled colleges is meaningless.　 Thus, preservice teachers need effective technology training in their preparatory education.　 At the same time, practicing teachers need plentiful access to professional development regarding the latest technology.　 Again, funding becomes an issue with which colleges and schools must contend.

Disadvantages of Commercial Groupware

At the pilot run of e-learning system, a number of students enrolled in the preservice teacher training classes hosted on the WebCT server.　 On the basis of students' responses of an e-learning survey, we have come to some critical findings (Narita & Shino, 2000).

First, it was evident that there is a need of simplifying the functionalities of the system.　 The limitation of the e-learning platform to support novice students' communication than sequential browsing of learning was a major disadvantage of WebCT. 　Too much functionalities made students frustrated.　 Those students are teacher-to-be and, in the school they do not need high functionalities in facilitating children's learning.　

Second, apart from instructor's perspective a major obstacle in acquiring the system was its price. It is a challenging task to convince administrators of a Japanese college to buy the package of $20,000 for one year license.

Third, the absence of learning templates or content templates in Japanese proves to be a lack of learning orientation for the WebCT platform.

In addition, colleges need to explore the available educational groupware to ensure they are making the right choices for their requirements.　 Groupware manufacturers, in their bids to make money, often fail to focus on making productive content software which would be useful to educators.　

Development of GETA

The course management and collaboration tool called GETA simply pursues to answer the questions raised in the previous section.　 GETA has a low-cost technique that can identify collaboration-specific usability problems.　 The overall objective is to justify the necessary components of the GETA system that will be able to support the development of teacher education environments. Such a tool will be able to support training departments, faculty and staff, distance learning programs, school teachers, home schooling, etc.

The functions of GETA follow:

(1) User authentication and password change

(2) Record of user access history

(3) Access record check by user

(4) Message display in a study group of a designer

(5) Discussion board for all users

(6) Quiz and self-test

(7) File transfer

(8) Access to study contents, and

(9) Html conversion of text, Word files, et al.

Evaluation of GETA

Fifty-three junior students at Hyogo used GETA in the media education lab for four weeks. The results of the instruction using GETA are presented in 　Figure 1, 2 and 3. We evaluated GETA relative to whether it supported providing customized and powerful learning settings, building a community of learners, the degree to which it helped us create a forum for dialogue, and the quality of discussion that occurred in the class. Students' evaluation highlights several positive outcomes associated with the groupware to build on class discussions and also addresses the problems.

Conclusion

The underlying idea of the development effort is to create a low-cost and collaborative learning settings for instructors and students. We have challenged the common idea that supply and demand makes the public and business markets generally more desirable to manufacturers than the educational market. We understand that the need to improve GETA of user-interface features regarding better collaborative communication among instructors and students.

References

Glennan, T.K., & Melmed, A.　 (2000). Challenges of Creating a Nation of Technology-Enabled Schools.　 In The Jossey-Bass Reader on Technology and Learning (pp. 48-79).　 San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Narita, S. & Shino, K.(2000). Evaluation of Asynchronous Online Discussion Pedagogies in the Web-Based Instructions in Teacher Education Institution. Proceedings of Japan Society for Educational Technology Annual Conference.