EDUCATION FOR INFORMATION SOCIETY: AN ATTEMPT FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF RIJEKA (CROATIA)
Nataša Hoiæ-Božiæ, Jasna Krstoviæ & Jasminka Lediæ
University of Rijeka, Faculty of Education
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Abstract: This paper presents an attempt in education for information society at the University of Rijeka Faculty of Education. The idea that rooted this project is that change in content, but in methods as well, have to be obtained in order to prepare the students for the information age. The simplicity of HTML for development of hypermedia applications allows that students not only learn hypermedia and searching the WWW, but also that theythemselves create their own projects. In this study students with no prior experience with Internet and hypermedia were introduced to elementary hypermedia concept and how to design hypermedia applications for World Wide Web. The study focused not on the content of the projects, but more on the design and presentation on a computer using hypermedia elements and HTML.
1. Introduction
Education, being one of the most important factors responsible for development, need to meet - if not lead - changes that distinguish industrial from information age. To do it successfully, it is not enough to change the content of teaching: we need to make fundamental changes that greatly concern the methods of teaching. Although it is necessary that the change in content and in methods of teaching affect every level of education, it is especially important that the transformation occurs at the universities. And - since the transfer of new experience is one of the very important elements in promoting new methods of teaching - we consider that special attention should be put in teachers education, to assure the transfer of new methods in the schools.
Traditional methods of education, where the teacher gives a lecture to a large group of students and gets feedback by a series of simplistic standardized tests, need to be changed. This kind of teaching is often unsuccessful because students have no interest in most of the material presented and because this method does not pay enough attention to how much material each individual has absorbed, understood, and retained. The students must become involved in the entire teaching process through experiments or seminars, for example. In addition to teaching methods, technology used in classroom is also important. New technologies in hardware and software areas have caused a certain shift in computer use from a boring tutor to a knowledgeable mentor, specially the hypermedia technologies involving interactivity and networking - Internet (Barker&Tucker, 1990; Carvin, 1995; Hoiæ-Božiæ & Mezak, 1996; Szuprowicz, 1992; Wray et al., 1994).
Moreover, what is even more important is to follow the markers which distinguish industrial age and information age in educational domena. Industrial age, among others, require co-operative relationship, initiative, diversity and customization. This has to serve as basis for a new paradigm in education. Educational process needs changes that would bring it closer to today's information era.
Still, computer technology, and especially networking, multimedia and mobility, can enhance educational process in schools and corporations only if used correctly - in itself, the technology is neither good nor bad. To achieve improvement through the use of computer technology, it is necessary to educate teachers, develop appropriate learning materials, and introduce new learning models. In information society, traditional learning is slow and expensive. The new technologies need to be complemented with modern teaching practices where a teacher is a coach to students and helps them learn using their own methods not only to find information, but also to analyze it, and turn it into knowledge.
Computers are not used in educational reform to replace the role of the teacher, instead, the computer must be recognized as an effective teaching tool which assists the educator. Software offers individualized learning to the students and lets teachers concentrate on interaction and individualized assistance. In this way computer technology becomes a complementary tool to the more traditional educational elements in which the teacher has a primary role. In true interaction it is understood that a student, to a certain degree, changes the learning process which interchanges the roles of a student and a teacher.
Students of the 21st century will have to learn the art of research as a part of their elementary education. Therefore, both teaching and research will be integrated in the learning environment. To achieve this goal, new technology such as multimedia, communications, intelligent agents, distributed processes, simulations, etc., are needed.
Especially, interactive learning and teaching by means of multimedia offers possibilities for students to transform into active participants through the use of hypermedia courseware - software for learning - that they navigate in accordance with their own talents and interests. The highest level of interactivity is achieved through students' participation in the very process of developing hypermedia application supplementing the previously learned content (Barker&Tucker, 1990).
Today, beside courseware in traditional "stand-alone" form on CD, the distribution is more and more common over computer networks (Internet). A particular role in this process has the World Wide Web. Web site can look like a page of some multimedia document on a CD-ROM, but it additionally offers a connection with computers throughout the world, thus creating a new dimension of cyberspace (Carvin, 1995).
2. Applications of World Wide Web in Education
The World Wide Web gives users a simple way of accessing an immense quantity of information. It was primarily developed out of a need to share technical and corporate information at colleges, universities and research institutions, but it was quickly shown that it could be used in education. But, it is still not sufficiently used in teaching and learning activities, especially in Croatia where very few primary or secondary schools have access to the Internet.
The WWW can be understood as a "driving force", or "catalizer" (Web66, 1995), that would introduce the Internet to the schools and universities since to use it can be easily learned by students with no prior knowledge about computers. The WWW can be viewed as a source of edutainment that is effective in the entertainment side because most students are highly motivated to use the Web.
Main advantages of the WWW, that make it attractive for use in education are the Web's ease of use, the hypertext/hypermedia capability, the WWW networked basis, availability of client and server software for different platforms (mostly free of charge for non-commercial use), simplicity of HTML, and availability of free editing tools. Recently, in addition to the above characteristics, we have interactivity through the use of fill-out forms, Java programming language and VRML. Harris (1995) points out that the most important characteristic of the WWW as a learning tool is its publishing capability.
In spite of all positive aspects of the WWW, one needs to keep in mind possible negative effects of the WWW. Due to a multitude of contents offered on the Web today, without a guidance to specific learning domains, a student can get lost in the "webspace" by finding pages that are interesting and entertaining, but do not contribute to learning.For this reason, it is important to stress the role of a teacher who directs students in using the WWW, but also encourages individuality in their work.To help teacher in this role, there are different search tools that help in finding information, or in information navigation.
Because of the organization of the WWW as a network service which works under the client - server model, the Web is not only network service for searching and retrieving information but also for publishing information on Internet. This yields two basic models of use of the WWW in education: information gathering, and publishing.
A combination of both these ways has proved to be most successful: students are supposed to gather information by themselves and synthesize them in a manner resembling seminar papers, only they are no more in a “paper” form but in the form of created hypermedia application in HTML for publishing on a WWW server. If these documents are formatted as instructional hypermedia packages, they can serve other students for learning the subject, as well as examples for creating individual projects (Harris, 1995; Ibrahim & Franklin, 1995; Maurer & Scherbakov, 1996).
This way of teaching has not yet been established in Croatian schools, where computers are used rarely, except in subjects related to computer science. We hope that this will be changed in the near future and that hypermedia technologies will prevail in the majority of the teaching processes. This is the reason that especially student teachers should be prepared to work with hypermedia technologies and Internet, especially WWW.
3. Experience from the Education with Hypermedia at the University of Rijeka (Croatia)
In countries throughout the world new methods and means are used to improve education. In particular, in developed countries special attention is being paid to the role of computer technology in this process. Under consideration is the planned introduction of computer technology in education - not only in schools and universities, but also in corporations and homes. Beside these global projects at government levels, there is a multitude of smaller projects involving often introduction of individual technologies, such as digital video, distance learning, multimedia, and networking, in individual schools and universities. While in some countries these efforts are strategically planned, in others, such projects represent isolated initiatives and modest attempts which merely have a goal to build computer infrastructure and give schools and universities access to the Internet.
This kind of situation is in Croatia, where there are still no projects for introduction of hypermedia and networking technology in education at the government level. Currently underway is the preliminary phase, which would enable the development of the computer infrastructure and give Internet access to universities and schools via the Croatian Academic and Research Network (CARNet), an academic and research part of the Internet in Croatia. Basic objectives of CARNet are: development and support to computer and information infrastructure of the scientific and academic community in the Republic of Croatia, implementation and support to the latest computer communication and information technologies (IT) and systems, experimental application of IT in various fields, popularization and promotion of the mass use of IT in different fields of activity such as tourism, medicine, librarianship, culture, education (CARNet, 1996).
A more modest is the research titled Innovations in Computer Assisted Education conducted from 1990-1996 at the Faculty of Education in Rijeka. The project involved researching information technologies that would have a large impact on the use of computers in education. Of particular interest was the research in hypertext, hypertext databases and hypermedia.
In the context of the project the computer science students, as future teachers in schools, were introduced to potentials of hypermedia not only as users, but also as authors. At first only graduation theses were involved (hypermedia applications in HyperCard and Supercard on Macintosh and in Toolbook on PC/Windows platform). With the new equipment (PC 586 classroom connected to Internet), the work has proceeded in the context of the Seminar. The content was extended with an on-line hypermedia - the World Wide Web.
The students involved had had no previous experience in the hypermedia, either as users or authors, and they had carried out their seminar papers using HTML and the Netscape Navigator. They were introduced to elementary hypermedia concept and how to design hypermedia applications, by creating their own project on the topic of culture, tourism, and attractions of their regions. This study focused not on the content of the projects, but more on the design and presentation on a computer using hypermedia elements. HTML was chosen for its simplicity and availability, and compared to readily available authoring tool Asymetrix Toolbook, because it is a networked hypermedia service, so the students' projects could be made available to all that have access to the Internet.
4. Students’ Works
Since those students had had little-to-no exposure to hypermedia before the class began, they were introduced to the basics of off-line and on-line hypermedia, especially the role of hypermedia in education. The work began after a short introduction to WWW, HTML and Netscape with examples of hypermedia applications.
The introductory content was organized in two ways: the students were exposed to the content through the lectures, but the content was also offered in a form of on-line courseware created in HTML, which also served as an example for HTML application. In addition, as a prototype according which students continued their working, the application Artistic Monuments of Istria was created, providing example for students. Also before designing the document, the students were introduced to the production phases in developing hypermedia application and were taught how to organize hypermedia documents to be more legible and interactive to the end-users.
Afterwards the students had to choose the topics of application and whether to work in a group or alone. Since the students were exposed to hypermedia for the first time, we suggested creating a smaller project - up to 10 HTML documents. The concept of the project was that the applications could be enlarged in the future. While designing and developing the prototype on the paper the students had to work out what the users would see and hear on each page (screen), choose what media elements would be included and their schedule in the application. Such a prototype was a combination of words and sketches for every screen image, sound and navigational choice, text contents, animation, video, button shapes, responses and all the details of the project. The next step was collecting the text data. In determining the amount of text the students had to strike a balance between text and other media elements to achieve the quality of the hypermedia application. Other media elements used in the application were mostly images: scanned photographs or graphics designed in paint or draw programs. Some students opted for shorter video sequences. After collecting the text to be incorporated into the application, structuring the information and determining the links for connecting the data, the students had to tag the document. Most of them chose direct entering of tags into the text using a simple editor Notepad for Windows. A few of them decided for HTML editor Netscape Navigator Gold as the auxiliary coding tool.
Finally the students had to test their products. It is the process that starts already during the development of application and makes one sure that all the media elements will work together correctly. The application was tested on different systems (different screen resolutions, different CPU), on various platforms (Windows, Mac, UNIX) and with different client programs (Mosaic, Lynx, Netscape 2.0, Netscape Navigator Gold 3.0).
Having passed the off-line testing, the application were also tested on-line after having been placed on the Web server (
During the analysis and evaluation of the students' work, we had to find out how to compare and evaluate applications, due to various topics, structures and aesthetic took. The evaluation primarily considered design (expressing the idea), structure, clarity, legibility and easy interaction (navigation) of the application.
Most students have performed their hypermedia projects successfully, considering their inexperience in hypermedia even as users. The simplicity of offered authoring tool, i.e., HTML language for creating hypermedia applications similar to books, contributed also to the success of their work. Evaluation showed that interactivity was properly implemented, all works had the title page, index page created mostly as contents page, and help page with user guides. The number of other pages varied from one work to another, together with the media elements used. Most works were categorized as educational applications on subjects concerning culture, arts or tourism related to the city of Rijeka and the local district area. Thus, various applications were made: Poreè once and now, Rijeka, Crikvenica, Ecology in the District Primorsko-goranska, The Port of Rijeka, Expedition Arctic-Antarctic, The Rijeka Carnival, St. Vitus' Church, White-headed Vulture (Hoiæ-Božiæ & Mezak, 1996).
5. Conclusion
Computer technology, and especially interactive networking multimedia, can enhance educational process.To achieve such improvement, it is necessary not only to introduce new learning models, but to educate teachers and develop appropriate software for learning.The new technologies need to be complemented with modern teaching practices where a teacher is a coach to students and helps them learn using their own methods, and to successfully transform information into knowledge.
Of equal importance in education is also the concept of authoring as an effective learning tool enabling students to create their own hypermedia application and learn certain units from the process. It is therefore of particular importance to teach students who intend to become school teachers not only to use but how to develop hypermedia applications.