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4.1 The four basic tools

1. WWW (hypertext), e.g. for:

• planning, curricula, agendas, assignments
• texts, manuals
• resources and pointers
• assignments (student productions)
• collaboration within group projects
• Email, e.g. for:
• agenda planning (teacher)
• search for information (student)
• information about updates (student, teacher)
• short comments (teacher)
• Discussion Forums, e.g. for:
• debates (about articles or themes)
• technical Q/A
• student-student help (!)

1. The MOO, e.g. for:

Short definition (see http://tecfa.unige.ch/moo/tecfamoo.html

• MOOs are text-based Virtual Environments

• Metaphor: A living evolving book with persons
• sophisticated chat, mail, forums, rooms, objects
• user programmability, integrated www servers

Our usage:

• urgent things
• co-presence (common virtual space, radio channels)
• virtual meetings
• non-intrusive (almost) real time questions/answers
• supports 1-to-1 dialogue with multiple students
• Special Java/HTML interfaces for some purposes
• Not used:
• Video-conferencing (except for demo purposes)
• (we meet our students every 5-6 weeks, so need for that is low)
• Groupware, like whiteboards, calendar tools

4.2 Problems with the "four"

• "Please send Email" does not work very well
• Typically, students hesitate to ask questions (or too late)
• Teachers are overloaded: overlook details, do not prompt
• "Use the forums"

• Need constant coaching/animation else they die out
• Students think their problem is private
• Slowness of WWW-based tools,
  features missing within standard News
• "Be on the MOO"
• Connection costs
• difficulty to find a date for large group meetings
• Not sexy enough
• No teacher animation (lack of time)
• Web pages
• updating
• structuring and navigation, meta-information, etc.
• Summary
• Students need a lot of attention
• They have a tendency to get lost (read instead of produce)
• We don't always cope with that

Build more structured activity into the virtual campus

1. Note:

Our experience hasn't been really bad, but we want to do better

• E.g. my technical Internet course (Staf-14) works all right with this approach:
• 1 exercise per period,
• grading for each, marks count for the final evaluation
• good resources on the Web (including examples)
• students have to meet requirements, but can freely choose the subject
• Auto-motivation exists for not too difficult technical subjects
  (Html, PHP, JavaScript, VRML, etc.)
• On the other hand, my Java course is rather a disaster
• I failed to check on student's work every week or so.