3.2.4 The Focus of Educational Goals of The Physical Geology Tutor
In addition to the greater level of involvement that courseware was able to support,
there were also opportunities for students to directly participate in the construction of
the PGT project, as well as most other Athena funded projects.
At the time that this research was conducted alone, there were three undergraduates working
on the project. Over the course of the project, this was a common and expected practice.
During the semester,
the undergraduates worked about 10 hours a week, and a large percentage of the content for the
project was attributed to the work the undergraduates had done, such as entering text and quiz
questions.
Beyond this untraditional opportunity for students to participate in the construction of course
materials, there was yet one more form of learner construction that was described in a document
about the PGT. In this case, Einstein, the project director
made what appears to have been an incidental, yet profound observation about how students were
included within the construction process.
In regards to the use of student feedback to improve the system he wrote, "This did not
only involve the students as users but also the students as developers"
(Einstein, 1991, p. 2-3).
In this brief statement, he pointed to a way in which incidental decisions associated
with every courseware project in this study, might have lead to subtle changes in learner
motivation that were not been consistently recognized by the educators. Requesting student
feedback, in situations where it will clearly be read and possibly incorporated, could lead
to a higher level of learner involvement with the courseware, and added motivation for students
through the rare event of being asked for their feedback about their "text". In every courseware
project in this study, formative evaluation of courseware was performed. Sometimes it was fairly
formal, while at other times it was through fairly informal "bug reports", like those by described
by Lavin in the following passage about the
TODOR project:
Lavin: The evaluation process was informal. A lot of our feeling about how things
went was very anecdotal. Students would come up after class and say "this really made a lot of sense,"
or "I didn't understand why the module did something." There is no better way to find bugs then
releasing it on a class of 80 juniors. We did get bug reports. We had an option on the modules
to send e-mail to the administrator if there was a problem. There would be 15 e-mail messages saying,
"This didn't work." (Lavin & Hopper, 1992)
While the courseware in each of these projects may have contained "bugs", comments by students
about them should be considered as important evidence that the learners chose to actively
participate in the construction process. It is possible that the formative evaluation process
itself added to a subtle level of involvement learners felt when using locally constructed computer
courseware. The following are two sample comments from the PGT formative evaluations:
The pictures need to have specific text associated to explain each individual figure.
In the cases of figures being used more than once, the text should direct the person to the feature
of the figure presently under discussion.
Why do you have to "press here to continue?" What happens if you don't?
(Kinnicutt, 1992)
In a recast notion of formative feedback about courseware, comments by students can be regarded
as positive evidence that students took the opportunity to participate in the construction of
their own materials, rather than just evidence of faulty software. It is very rare in academic
settings that students are seriously asked to provide input about their course materials so that
they can expect to see a direct and concrete impact of their input the next time the materials are used.
However, it is also the case that this result deserves further study because there is also evidence that
the positive result is highly context dependent. For example, the reaction of student's to imperfect
materials may range from frustration to enthusiasm based on variables such as expectations and technical
sophistication.