Transcript IRMA2003Presentation

Web-based seminar
Pekka Makkonen
University of Jyväskylä
Information Systems Science
Finland
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Course
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An undergraduate course for the first-year
majors: Knowledge work and its tools
Themes
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Productivity of knowledge work
Analyzing individual knowledge work
Analyzing collaboration and work management
PC software as improvement of productivity
Groupware as improvement of productivity
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Why web-based seminar?
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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
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Adult education
technical infrastructure has been improved (for
example high-speed broadband connections to
the student village)
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How?
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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
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Was web-based seminar
successful?
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Evaluation
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The process of the coursework and seminar: we wanted to
know
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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
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What we got
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Differences were found by studying motivation
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Male learners
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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
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benefited more while learning analyzing work and collaboration
= learning “soft or human stuff” may be easier using a webbased seminar
Earlier we have got the same result concerning younger
learners (Proceedings of HICSS 2003)
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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.
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Research continues
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We analyze the effect of our WWW-based seminar on
the learning of the concepts of our course content
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In the course of the academic year 2001-2002 we
used SOLO taxonomy-based tests and measures to
clarify the quality of learning of those concepts
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comparing experimental group to control group
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
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