Alaa Sadik, Institute for Learning, University of Hull, UK, a.m.sadik@educ.hull.ac.uk
Wired Class [HREF1] is a Web-based learning environment for teaching students at a distance. It was designed and developed as a part of the author's Ph.D. project (1998-2001). Wired Class includes a maths course (two modules) for secondary school students (14-17 years) in which students have an active role in conducting and suggesting learning activities. Each module takes a constructivist approach, building on first principles rather than the more behaviourist approach, which predominates across the Web.
Wired Class attempting to reduce the transactional distance of the learner, which has been achieved through the e-mail, discussion boards, live tutor support. Many dynamic tools were designed to encourage students to publish their course-related work, participate in discussion boards and chat sessions, build and host their own Web pages, work as independent learners or as a team work, interact with the on-line tutor or with themselves. Asynchronous as well as synchronous communication techniques were used to facilitate interaction and enrich the learning activities.
In designing Wired Class, principles of constructivist instructional strategies and the Willis' R2D2 model (Willis, 1995) were considered as the main guide to design, develop and evaluate Wired Class. Designing, developing and evaluation of Wired Class were achieved through three stages. These stages are summarised as shown in Table (1) below.
Table (1): Designing, developing and evaluation of Wired Class
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Front-end analysis Learners analysis • Learners' needs Defining the subject content and the learning objectives • Defining the learning subject The teaching/learning approach. Defining the requirements of the learning environment on the Web Defining the technical requirements Software• HTML authoring tools Defining users' requirements |
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Selection of development environment. Media and format selection. Designing and developing the components of Wired Class • Management component Designing and organising the whole environment Using the environment • General design Uploading the site to the Web server Developmental testing of Wired Class • Expert appraisal Field testing of Wired Class • Students use |
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Final packaging and adoption |
The purpose of the definition focus was defining the educational and technical requirements and the basic needs were needed to begin in the design and development stage. These requirements were the main aim of the programme, learners' characteristics, the subject and its nature, learning objectives, the appropriate teaching and learning methods of the subject and software and hardware that wide be needed for developing and using the programme.
The principles and objectives of designing constructivist-based learning environments can be represented in a framework as shown in Figure (1). This framework suggests that the learner needs to pass through five stages (steps) of cognitive activities gradually to construct his/her experience. As shown in the figure, these stages (e.g., practising) are arranged from bottom to top; each step can be achieved by involving the learner in many jobs or tasks (e.g., self test questions, exercises, visiting Web links and discussion boards).
The process of getting experience in Wired Class mainly relies on the principles and objectives of the constructivist approach (e.g., active participation and social interaction) as wheels. These principles and objectives can be achieved using the interactive nature of the Web (e.g., using synchronous and asynchronous interaction and hypermedia elements). This framework was considered as a guide in developing the components of Wired Class, subject content, learning activities and learners' roles.
Figure (1): Constructivist-based approach for designing Web-based learning
Considering the earlier framework (Figure 1) and principles of adapting instruction for the Web, designing a Web-based learning environment requires involving many components. The main components were needed to be involved in Wired Class can be categorised as follows:
The design and development focus has four main components: media and format selection, selection of development environment, product design and development and evaluation strategy. Each of these components in addition to other components was needed to design and development for the Web as suggested in Table (1).
The effectiveness of Wired Class is not tutor-independent but it depends on the ability of the tutoring and support team to provide effective, flexible and well designed instruction. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation approaches were implemented to evaluate the progress and analyse the outputs (cost-benefit) of students to know to what extent they were succeeded and satisfied.
Willis, J. (1995). A Recursive, Reflective Instructional Design Model Based on Constructivist &endash;Interpretivist Theory. Educational Technology, 35(6), 5-22.
HREF1 http://w134.loten.hull .ac.uk/wiredclass/
Alaa Sadik © 2000. The author assigns to the University of New Brunswick and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The author also grants a non-exclusive licence to the University of New Brunswick to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web.