The Online Learning and Teaching Environment WebTycho -
Features, Capabilities and Limits
Olaf Zawacki
Introduction
As described by Bernath and Rubin in chapter one of this volume the Virtual Seminars were delivered in a rather simple online learning environment. HyperNews is a threaded computer conferencing system that was supplemented by a website to structure and manage the seminars, to post announcements, to provide links to readings and to introduce the course leaders, visiting experts, and participants.
When the decision was made to launch a formal graduate Master's program issues of assessment and therefore security came in. Furthermore, the web-based delivery system needs to be scalable and supported by a service infrastructure that ensures a technical robust and reliable system. It was decided to use WebTycho, UMUC's home-grown web-based delivery system, as the platform to run the Online Master of Distance Education (OMDE) program.
1994 was the first year in which UMUC offered online courses. At this time there were not many outside products. So UMUC has developed an own platform which is now called WebTycho. The application is based on Lotus Notes and Domino. At the end of 2001 the online enrollments exceeded 60,000 (Allen 2001). UMUC maintains replicating servers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. WebTycho is used for undergraduate and graduate programs in a distance teaching mode as well as for web-enhanced face-to-face teaching. Online support services like submitting or receiving grades online rather than by mail are appreciated by on-campus students and faculty as well.
By and large, every sophisticated online learning and teaching environment provides three different kinds of tools: content presentation and information tools, communication tools, and assessment and monitoring tools. This chapter seeks to briefly examine the features, capabilities, and limits of these tools in WebTycho. The analysis is supported by online teaching and learning experiences of the author in other environments like Lotus LearningSpace, TopClass, and FirstClass. The Center for Distance Education at Oldenburg University uses Lotus LearningSpace (which is a Lotus Notes application as well) for online tutoring to support students of the FernUniversität in Hagen (c.f. Bernath 1997).
Lotus Notes/Domino
WebTycho is a web-application developed with Lotus Notes and Domino which is a set of software programs designed to enable groups of people to work together efficiently. Such a software is called "groupware". The programs are "a powerful set of tools for gathering, organizing, and disseminating information. They are an e-mail system, a system of discussion forums, an information repository, a group project tracking system, a business process automation system, a knowledge management tool, and a Web application system" (Burke & Calabria, p. 9). Since most of these features are needed in a web-based learning and teaching system, Lotus Notes/Domino is therefore best suited to develop such an environment with it. The system allows to define different roles with different rights and responsibilities like students, faculty, visitors or teaching assistants. Privacy makes possible confidential grading of assignments and group work.
All documents are saved in Notes databases. In fact each course in the OMDE program is a database. Notes databases can be full text indexed to enable full text search. Regrettably, this is not the case in WebTycho. It would be very helpful to have full text search available in the conferences with sometimes hundreds of messages. Class members could search with their own keywords and could easily relocate messages.
WebTycho Overview
Figure one provides an overview of the welcome page in WebTycho. The screen is deviled into four parts: a header menu on the upper right, the faculty area on the upper left, the class menu on the left and the main frame that displays the content.
Figure 1: Overview of the WebTycho screen
The Header Area provides a list of all enrolled classes to switch from one class to another, a menu to change class preferences (e.g. to enable the spell checker or text formatting editor) and most importantly access to UMUC's online library with full-text searchable databases and journals. Furthermore, class members can contact WebTycho technical support via the Help Menu.
The Faculty Area displays the class code and the name of the responsible faculty member. Clicking on "Bios" takes students to pages where faculty and teaching assistants may introduce themselves with text, a link to a personal web page, and/or a photograph.
The Class Menu is the main navigational element in WebTycho. It provides access to all content, communication and assessment tools.
Content Presentation and Information Tools
The first page of a course is the announcements page (c.f. figure 1). Only faculty members are allowed to edit this page. Teaching assistants do not have the right to post announcements which is sometimes impractical.
The Syllabus Area provides information about the overall course structure, i.e. course goals and objectives, the course outline, required readings, grading information and a course schedule with important dates.
Under Course Content faculty can make available course materials such as readings, mini lectures, links to websites or entire web-based training like in the New and Emerging Media in Distance Education course with multimedia elements and selftests. Copyright cleared material is posted under Reserved Readings by UMUC's library.
In the Webliography all class members can post relevant links with short descriptions of the respective website. Often an impressive list of links is produced at the end of a course.
The emphasis in the OMDE is placed on discussion activities. Introductions to the topics as starting points for the discussion are composed as main topics in the conferences (see below).
A very useful tool is the Class Import function to reuse content. Faculty who have taught past classes may import selected materials into the new class, which is in fact an empty template at the beginning of the term. Content, conferences, study groups, webliography, and syllabus are available for import in the Faculty Center.
Communication Tools
WebTycho provides asynchronous as well as synchronous communication tools. In most cases asynchronous computer conferences are used for discussion. However, members of study groups sometimes use the chat function to agree quickly on division of work or just for socializing. The Class Members list shows all e-mail addresses so that private mail can be sent.
Faculty are able to create as much asynchronous conferences as necessary, e.g. a Café for separating social conversation from content related discussion and conferences for each module in the course. This is an advantage compared with the Notes-based Lotus LearningSpace environment that provides only a single "Course Room" where all class discussions take place.
Messages in the conferences are displayed in a thread, i.e. in a hierarchical view that shows the responses and response-to-response documents indented under the main topic to show how the descendents relate to the main topic in a discussion. All contributions in a conference can be sorted by subject (this is the default view), by author or date created.
Lotus Notes supports 32 levels in a thread. Since UMUC seeks to envision the "interactive model" of online teaching (Allen 2001), it is a bit odd that WebTycho does only support three levels! According to SchWeber's "WebTycho Model"[1] we only have (main) topics, responses and asides in WebTycho conferences (figure 2). This model is too narrow for the OMDE that emphasizes discussion activities. Often it is very difficult to figure out who refers to whom in a lively discussion when all contributions on the third level, i.e. responses to asides, are not indented anymore (c.f. Hülsmann's contribution on conversation patterns in this volume).
The subject header field in the form for composing responses and asides inherits the header from the parent document. However, this should be a mandatory blank field so that class members are forced to think about meaningful subject headers. This would make navigation through the conferences easier.
Figure 2: WebTycho Class Conference Model (taken from SchWeber)
Text in WebTycho Text Boxes can be formatted with HTML. Those who do not have HTML skills may enable a text formatting editor under Account Preferences in the Header Menu.
In addition to the public conferences faculty may create study group areas. The instructor is allowed to see all study group areas but students only have access to the group they are assigned to. Each group has their own asynchronous conference as well as a synchronous chat function available. Furthermore, group members can work on a collaborative document, i.e. a student can create a text and all other group members have the right to edit it.
Assessment and Monitoring Tools
The assignment area is of course a confidential area. Students only see their own assignments and grades. All assignments are posted to the faculty's assignments folder, grades are saved in a Grade Book.
There are some features available to track student's performance in the course, i.e. conference statistics and personal portfolios with all contributions from the respective student, word counts etc. However, these figures say nothing about the quality of learning. Students must prove that they have achieved the goals of the course in essay-type assignments that are graded by the faculty.
A very useful tool to identify "invisible students" (c.f. Michael Beaudoin's chapter in this volume) or non-starters would be a login statistic that reveals those students who only read other class members' contributions but do not "actively" participate in the conferences. Regrettably, this is not available in WebTycho.
Conclusion
WebTycho is a very sophisticated and comfortable online learning and teaching environment. A few things could be improved or added:
- WebTycho should support complete threading in the conferences, not just three levels.
- Subject header fields in forms for posting contributions to the conferences should not inherit the header from the parent document.
- Full text search should be enabled.
- A login statistic should be added to identify "invisible students".
- A new role of a Course Manager with extended rights (post announcements, manage conferences and study groups), something between a teaching assistant and faculty member, should be introduced to reduce faculty's workload.
It cannot be too difficult to implement these features since the power for this comes with Lotus Notes and Domino.
References
Allen, N. H. (2001). Lessons Learned on the Road to the Virtual University. Continuing Higher Education Review, 65, 60-73.
Bernath, U. (1997). Virtual Tutoring - A New Approach Challenging Future Developments in Distance Education. Paper presented at the International Conference for Managers of EuroStudyCentres, Helsinki.
Burke, D., & Clabria, J. (1999). Lotus Notes and Domino R5 Development. Indianapolis, Indiana: Sams Publishing.
SchWeber, C. (1999). WebTycho Model. Retrieved December 27, 2001, from the World Wide Web:
[1] [accessed December 27, 2001]