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Multimedia Presentations Workshop

ASSESSING ATTITUDES TO ELECTRONIC LECTURES

4. STUDENT OPINION

In order to gauge students' opinions on our electronic lecture material (and this approach to teaching), two basic evaluative studies were undertaken. These studies were intended to assess student's attitudes and reactions to the use of the resources within two different contextual settings: (1) lecture mode and (2) self-study mode. Each of these studies is briefly described below.

Study 1: Lecture Presentation Mode

This investigation involved asking the lecturer responsible for the HCI course to deliver some of his lectures using the electronic course materials. After the lectures the group of students involved were given a questionnaire to complete (N=3 1; 52% return). This contained 10 questions which were intended to solicit their opinions and views on: the quality of the presentations; the quality of the resources employed; and the potential of this approach to teaching.

Study 2: Private Self-Study Mode

For this investigation the augmented electronic lectures were mounted on a server within a local area network. Students were then invited to access this material using PC-based computer terminals that were located at various points within the campus and remote to it. At the end of their evaluation of the material the students were asked to complete a questionnaire containing 38 questions (N=63; 100% return). The questions were organised into five basic sections that dealt with: the quality of the on- line lectures; their ease of use; the quality of the augmentation material; the potential of the electronic lectures as a learning resource; and details of the respondent.

Main Findings

When the questionnaires from the above studies were returned the data they contained was transferred to a spreadsheet package and analysed. A detailed discussion of the results is presented elsewhere (Barker, 1996b). Essentially, in both studies, students were very supportive of this approach to teaching - provided that copies of the materials would be made available to them. 61% of the lecture group (Study 1) stated that they would prefer this approach to the use of overhead transparencies. A similar percentage thought that electronic lectures were a much more effective way of presenting course material. Interestingly, given the choice between having paper-based and electronic copies of the materials, the majority of the students (77%) showed a preference for paper-based copies compared to the 26% who would have preferred disk copies.

5. CONCLUSION

Despite their pedagogic shortcomings, lectures offer a cost-effective way to teach large groups of campus-based students. By using computer-based methods to support lecturing processes, the quality of lectures can be improved. Furthermore, through the use of appropriately designed augmentation processes many of their limitations and shortcomings can be overcome. Undoubtedly, electronic lectures that are made accessible through the Internet and the World-Wide Web will form an important building block for the development of courses that are to be delivered through any future virtual university facility.

6. REFERENCES

Anderson, T.J., (1995). The Microsoft PowerPoint Approach to Electronic Lectures, paper presented at the Association for Learning Technology Annual Conference, ALT- C '95, The Open University, Milton Keynes, September 11-13th.

Barker, P.G., (1990). Designing Interactive Learning Systems, Educational and Training Technolov International, 27(2), 125-145.

Barker, P.G., (1993). Exploring Hypermedia, Kogan Page, London, UK.

Barker, P.G., (1994). Designing Interactive Learning, 1-30 (chapter 1) in Design and Production of Multimedia and Simulation-based Learning Material, edited by T. de Jong and L. Sarti, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

Barker, P.G., (1995). Interface Design for Learning, 3-18 in Computer-Based Learning in Science, Proceedings of the International Conference CBLIS '95, 30th June - 4th July, Opava, Czech Republic, edited by G.M. Chapman, Open Education & Sciences, Opava, Czech Republic.

Barker, P.G., (1996a). Tools to Support Electronic Lectures, to appear in Aspects of Educational Technology - Volume XXIX: Implementing Flexible Learning, edited by C. Bell and A. Trott, Kogan Page, London.

Barker, P.G., (1996b). Making a Case for Electronic Lectures, Working Paper, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, University of Teesside, Cleveland, UK.

Barker, P.G., Banerji, A.K., Richards, S. and Tan, C.M., (199Sa). A Global Performance Support System for Students and Staff, Innovations in Education and Training International, 32(1), 35-44.

Barker, P.G., Beacham, N., Hudson, S.R.G. and Tan, C.M., (1995b). Dacument Handling in an Electronic OASIS, The New Review of Document and Text Management, Volume 1, 1-17.

Benest, I.D. and Hague, A.C., (1993). The Online Lecture Concept, 440-448 in 'Computer Assisted Learning in Science', Proceedings ofthe International Conference on Computer-Based Learning in Science, 18-21 December, 1993, Edited by P.M. Nobar and W. Kainz, Technical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.

Busbridge, S., (1995). Electronic Course Delivery, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK.

Grace, R., (1994). Using PowerPoint 4 for Windows, Que Corporation, Indianapolis, IN, USA.

Hofstetter. F.T., (1995). Multimedia Literacy, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, USA.

Jacobs, G., (1994). Educational Technology and the Traditional Lecture, ALT-J: The Journal of the Association for Learning Technology, 2(1), 2-3.

Kowalewski, S., (1995). End-User Interfaces to Electronic Books, BSc Computer Science Dissertation, School of Computing and Mathematics, University of Teesside, Cleveland, UK.


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