Beyond PowerPoint: A Web-Based Support of Active Learning  

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I have discovered that the more carefully I try to approach the question, "Does the use of Information Technology improve teaching and learning in my class?" the more difficult it is for me to find an adequate response.  In the brief remarks that follow, I hope to demonstrate some of the difficulties involved.

I will outline the process of integrating Information Technology in stages into a relatively large lecture class, averaging over eighty students a semester, which is part of the University Core Curriculum and in which most students enroll to fulfill a Global Studies requirement.  It has met one evening a week (6:30-9:10) for the past decade and is heavily populated by first and second year students.

Student Attitudes/Perceptions

The course had been appreciated by the students, who were not troubled by becoming more passive recipients of information. As one can see in Table 1, students generally evaluate the course highly.    Furthermore, they rate it as challenging and fair.

Table 1: Percent of Students Responding "Strongly Agree" or "Agree" to Specific Issues on Student Evaluations at the End of the Fall Semester for the Last Five Years 

During this five year period, I changed the information technologies used in the course.  At first, I emphasized power point presentations.  In the spring of 1999, I joined a small, informal group of faculty who had been experimenting with uses of web-based technology in teaching.  Peter McAllister and Bill Bauer, both in Music, ran a workshop on web-based class home pages in which I first explored exciting applications.  Michael O'Hara, in Theater, and Darrell Butler, in Psychology, shared their extensive experience with web-based applications in large lecture classes, like mine.  Susan Tancock, Jay Thompson and Kay Hodson-Carlson made available to me their successful uses of genuinely interactive applications such as chatrooms, bulletin boards and student-created active databases. These were my essential mentors in breaking down the walls of the classroom and breaking through the lethargy of learners.  The process of integrating IT during 1995 to 2000, in simplified terms, has been as follows: 

In the fall of 1999 assessment, all items related to IT used in the course showed gains on average of 13 percentage points in the pre/post-course survey.  In contrast, items related to IT not used in the class gained an average of only 1 percentage point.  Table 2 (IT used) and Table 3 (IT not used) summarize the percent of students indicating "Strongly Agree" or "Agree" on a five option rating scale. 

Table 2: Percent of Students "Agreeing" on Assessment Items about IT used in Course

Table 3: Percent of Students "Agreeing" on Assessment Items about IT not used  

As one can see in the tables above, student attitudes toward the course have either remained positive or improved yet the students have been asked to engage in more tasks and more complicated tasks (skills required for effective use of the IT in the class) over the years.

Student Activity

 The self-report of students indicates that their "effort" in the class has remained fairly steady over the years (Table 4:)

Table 4: Percent of Students Agreeing with Statement About their Effort

In the fall of 1999, students made considerable use of the class web site, with an average 3.23 hits per student per week for the seventeen-week semester. However, students report that many of these hits were for simple checks on assignments, schedules or grades rather than for research or discussion. They all participated in the (required) use of the bulletin boards, which were assigned to groups of students for two scheduled exchanges during the semester.  These discussions ranged from perfunctory to profound. If one can judge on the basis of the discourse itself, at least half of the students seem to have gained better understanding of the material from these group interactions.  Their use of the PowerPoint lectures on-line was not monitored but students who commented on IT use in the class always made very positive mention of them.  Extra credit points were made available on quizzes and tests for identification of images which students would discover only if they followed links out from the on-line lectures. In general, not more than 20-25% of the in-class quiz takers correctly identified these items either from their own general knowledge or from pursuit of the links.

During the fall 1999, students' use of the twelve self-test quizzes, attached to the on-line PowerPoint lectures, followed a recognizable pattern.  There was more use in the first half of semester than in the second, and there was heavier traffic when extra credit points were awarded for mastery.  On average only 15% of the class took the self-test quiz during any given week. However, for the two self-test quizzes carrying 5 points of extra credit if one scored 90% or better, 68% of the class tried and 76% of these succeeded, taking the quiz an average of 3.2 times. (Each quiz had ten items drawn randomly from a bank of thirty questions each time; the quizzes provided clues rather than answers when a student missed a question.)  Students who took and mastered these two self-test quizzes outscored both their classmates and students in the F'98 and S'99 classes by 10 percentage points on this material in in-class testing (Table 5).

Table 5: Average Score on in-class material Covered by Self-Quizzes

 In summary of student behavior, students perceived their "effort" much as in the past, made at least elementary use of the Web site, engaged in some discussion (when required) on assigned group bulletin boards, some (self-report) use of the on-line lectures, and made more (when rewarded) or less (when not rewarded) good use of the self-testing quizzes. Those who used the latter clearly benefited. This leads to my last point.

Student Performance

We return to the question posed at the beginning of this paper: “How has the integration of information technology affected student performance?”  If we answer this question by traditional means, such as the test scores summarized in Table 6, the answer seems to be "very little"  

Table 6: Student Performance

On the other hand, it can be seen that HOW students are learning has changed over the past five years.  They have greater access to the instructor (email) and one another (email, bulletin boards) and they take advantage of this access.  They make far greater use of web-based information and report gains of confidence in doing so.  They perform at about the same level as earlier classes (compared with fall '95 and '96) while expanding their skills and interacting more with the material (required web assignments, self-testing quizzes and bulletin boards.)  They perceive all of this as reasonable and fair, while recognizing that the course is as difficult or more so than their other courses. Furthermore, the changes have reinvigorated my teaching and enhanced my spontaneity in class. 

In short, students seem to be learning AS WELL as they have in the past while being asked to be more active in their learning and to polish a new set of skills alongside those required in the past.  Whether the time and money invested, the training and support required, justify these outcomes is a far more difficult set of questions to answer. On the other, a resounding affirmative is the only response possible to a corollary question, "Has my teaching been improved by working within a learning community of technology oriented colleagues?" They are my touchstone and support on this perilous and perplexing journey.

Critical Reviews

Critic JJ

I don't think this article is appropriate. The author has collected some interesting data but it's the same story that is recounted so often--NSDP--and the methodology seems a bit below the other NSDP reports.

Critic U

Critic ZZZ