Online Delivery of Materials and Methods Courses

ASC Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference
University of Cincinnati - Cincinnati, Ohio
April 6 - 9, 2005

Online Delivery of Materials and Methods Courses

Jim K. Carr, MSCS, GMB

University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Little Rock, Arkansas

Many instructors utilized the World Wide Web to supplement traditional classroom instruction. This paper concerns the development and delivery of two totally online courses offered in a baccalaureate construction management degree program. Also discussed is the development of content for the course in addition to the use of course email, discussions, assignments and online exams.

Key Words: Online, Materials and Methods, Instruction, WebCT

Introduction

The Construction Management Program at a south central university has decided to develop and deliver several introductory courses online. The faculty has several motivations for this.

Students will have the opportunity to take core classes together with the several Construction Management courses and start towards their Construction Management degree without traveling to campus.
It will also provide flexibility for schedules since the class will be offered asynchronously.
The university’s off-campus programs office will fund the development of the courses.
The off campus programs office will also provide financial incentives directly to the Construction Management program for students enrolled in the online courses.

For of these reasons an online section of Materials and Methods I was developed during the spring of 2004 and delivered to a test group of 12 students during the summer of 2004. The pilot course was slightly revised and, together with Material and Methods II, delivered during the Fall 2004 semester to the general student population.

The course is delivered via a Course Management system. The university has adopted WebCT as the course management software for the entire campus. A shell that is populated with the names of the students enrolled is developed for all courses. The faculty has the option to use this shell or not. Those wanting to use this shell may use any tool or page provided by WebCT but the instructor must provide the content.

Several of the basic WebCT tools or pages were chosen for the course. These tools provided content, assignments and facilitated communication between the faculty and the students. Additionally, a grade book to allow students a record of their grades was included.

Content

The course is divided into 5 modules, each available to the students for three weeks. During this time frame a series of 7 to 10 online lectures are available to the students. Additionally, related readings in the course text, assignments and discussion topics are available to reinforce the topics being explored. The topics are related to a single or a grouping of CSI MasterFormat Divisions. At the end of the three week period an exam is available online from Thursday to Sunday.

A series of presentations where created to provide content for the course. To do this, PowerPoint presentations utilized in the traditional classroom delivery of the course were modified. The lectures, traditionally given in a 100 minute classroom setting, are broken into small increments of content. These shortened lectures were also amended by adding more descriptors and images that represent the material being presented. The Off Campus Programs Office (OCP) acquired for the Construction Management Department a flat bed scanner, a digital camera and a digital movie camera to provide the images for the course. OCP also provided the instructor with software to assist in the editing of images and an additional flat panel monitor.

After the presentations containing between 15 and 30 slides are created an audio track is recorded to correspond with each slide. The length of the total lecture is kept under 25 minutes. This maximum time was chosen to allow the students a chance to relax and reflect on the material before proceeding to the next topic.

It takes between 4 to 6 hours to revise the presentations and record the audio tracks. The audio track is, in essence, the lecture that would be delivered in a traditional classroom setting. The PowerPoint and audio files are then delivered to a technician in the University’s Scholarly Technology and Resources (STaR) office where the staff inserted the audio track into the corresponding PowerPoint slide. The STaR technician next compresses the PowerPoint presentation with Impatica Software. Impatica for PowerPoint simply converts the PowerPoint file into a compressed format that is optimized for streaming over the Internet. The Impatica file is typically 95% smaller than the original PowerPoint file. The ‘Impaticed’ files are then uploaded to the course shell for access by the students. Even if they are using the university’s dial up network the reduction of the file size enables students to easily view the presentations.

The students can then enter the content module available for that portion of the semester and view and hear the presentations. Several of the students mentioned that this method of delivering content allowed them to replay the lectures to assure a deeper understanding of the material being presented.

The students are also provided with an outline of the lecture that could be printed out and used to follow along with the lecture. Several of the presentations also have a transcript of the lecture available to the students. This would allow an individual who has difficulty understanding the audio tracks an opportunity to read the lecture. This feature is being expanded and will, by the end of the spring of 2005, be available to most or not all of the lectures. The script feature makes the site conform to Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.

Assignments

The review of plans and specifications was incorporated into many of the traditional classroom sections of the materials and methods course. These assignments are also included in the online sections of the course. In order for this to occur a collection of electronic drawing files and specifications are available to the students. The method to do this was demonstrated at the 2004 ASC Conference by Dr. Kevin Miller of the Construction Management Department at Brigham Young University. The specifications are in a pdf format and require the computers used by the students have Adobe Acrobat Reader (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html) installed on the computers they are using. Additionally, the drawing files are in a dwf format that require the use of AutoDesk DWF Viewer (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=2787358) to be viewed. Both of these programs are available for free via downloads at the associated sites. The drawing files and specifications are provided by local architects and from Dr. Miller at BYU.

The students access the assignments from the assignment tool. After completing the assignment they upload their file containing the completed assignment into an “assignment drop box”. The syllabus requires the submission to be in a text, Microsoft Word, or WordPerfect format. This allows the instructor to open and grade the students submission then record the score and comments into fields corresponding with the assignment. The grade is then visible in the student’s grade book.

Exams

WebCT has a Quiz/Exam tool that has been incorporated into each course. Exams can be created by selecting a set of questions from a bank of questions that have been previously entered into the WebCT question database. The questions can be multiple choice, matching, calculated, short answer, or paragraph. Multiple choice questions are set with the correct answer and appropriate distracters. The question can be set to allow multiple correct answers with a percentage of the value set for the question going to each of the correct answers. The multiple choice option can be used for the creation of true-false questions. The matching field defaults to five pairs but this can be reduced or expanded to include additional matching pairs. The calculated answer questions allow for the input of mathematical formulas with random numbers inserted into various fields. This type of question was not used in these courses. The short answer question provides a text box that allows the student to insert their answer into the field. Their answer is checked against the correct answers supplied when creating the question. The answers are not case sensitive but when the test is graded by the computer, if the student’s input does not precisely match the preset value, the question is scored as an incorrect answer.

Since the tests are graded by the computer, after several of the exams numerous emails were received by the instructor inquiring why an answer they knew was correct was marked incorrect. Typically their answer was misspelled or in a form not exactly the same as the preset correct value. The instructor can override the computer generated scoring and give the student credit for their answer. To reduce the amount of inquiries, it is possible to have the computer supply a comment that states the correct answer and describes why a specific answer is correct. For example, a multiple choice question involved the calculation of a volume and one of the lengths was 12’- 9”. One of the value of one of the distracters used determined by using the value of 12.9. Several of the students inquired why the answer, using the 12.9 value was incorrect. In future exams the formula with the correct values is shown after the test is graded to give the students feedback on how the correct answer is determined.

The paragraph type question provides a text box into which the student can insert their response to an essay question. These answers are best graded by the instructor after the students have submitted their exam. The exam tool has the option to include images as a segment of the questions. This feature was used from 5 to 10 times in each of the 5 exams.

When building the exam the instructor can choose to include a set of questions from the database. The exam can be set to include the full set of questions or to randomly select a predetermined amount from the selected set of questions. Additionally the value for each type question can be set separately. This allows the instructor to give a low value to multiple choice or short answer questions while a higher value is selected for questions that require a more complicated answer.

The exams for these courses could be taken any time over a four day period. The students where not required to have any type of proctoring arranged for the exam. A maximum time of two hours was set for the first four 50 point exams and a three hour maximum was set for the 100 point final. Most of the students took the advantage of the full time, but several completed the exams in less than thirty minutes. The discrepancy in time might occur since students could use resources while take the exam. Some students might have taken the time to verify as many answers as time would allow while others chose not to do this.

Email

Communications with the students is accomplished with email as part of WebCT. Each student and faculty member has a separate account inside of each course they teach or are enrolled in. This mechanism maintains an archive of all communications related to the particular course. The students also have a drop down menu of the names of the students in the course that facilitates the communication between the students.

Discussions

Another tool that is available involves discussions. This provides a venue for the instructor or students to post a topic for discussion and allows others the ability to post comments. This threaded discussion replaces the question and answer interaction that occurs inside of the traditional classroom. Each student has an equal opportunity to post and respond to the initial statement or to topics that may be derived from comments. Several of the topics posted had a very good chain of comments posted but not every student participated in the discussion even though participation was required and accounted for ten percent of their grade.

Student Outcomes

The course management software provided tracking information about how often, and how long the students where interacting within the course. Students that regularly viewed the online lectures and submitted assignments performed in a manner similar to those in the traditional classroom setting. Table 1 shows a comparison of grades for a single semester between online and traditional delivery of these courses.

Table 1 Grade Distribution
	Materials and Methods I		Materials and Methods II
	Traditional	Online	Traditional	Online
Enrollment	26	31	21	23
C or above	19 (73%)	18 (58%)	17 (81%)	20 (87%)
D* or lower	4 (16%)	7 (23%)	2 (9.5%)	0 ( 0%)
Withdrew	3 (11%)	6 (19%)	2 (9.5%)	3 (13%)
*Students earning a D in must repeat the course


A comparison was done with the students performance on assignments and exams. This comparison, though not a scientific study, showed two things, students in the traditional classroom setting did better in Materials and Methods I but the students in the online version of Materials and Methods II performed slightly better. This could be attributed to the fact that students take Materials and Methods II are more prepared for the course. Most of the students that did not pass the course were infrequently logged into the course and did not complete a majority of the assignments and frequently did not attempt taking the online exams.

Workload

As mentioned earlier it takes from 4 to 6 hours to create and record each content module. There are about 40 content modules per course thus this part of the course development takes about 200 hours. This effort will not be needed each time the course is taught but some of the presentations will need revision or replacement. The time involved for this should equal the preparation time needed for the delivery of a traditional in class lecture. Likewise the time spent developing and revising assignments was equal to the time and effort involved in creating assignments for the traditional classroom.

Additionally, the instructor spent about an hour per day per course reviewing and correcting assignments, responding to email, and participating in discussions. This also extended into weekends, but did not require the instructor to be on campus. The instructor was actually overseas during part of the semester but was still able to interact with the students.

The Off Campus Program Office provided the Construction Management Department $4400 per course to provide extra compensation or release time for each of the courses developed in addition to the equipment previously mentioned.

In future semesters the online course will count the same as a traditionally delivered course for the teaching load of each faculty member in the department.


Conclusion

An evaluation of the course was sent to each student so they could anonymously evaluate and comment on the course. Since the university closed for the winter break just after the evaluations were due, the comments collected could not be included into this paper. However some students where contacted individually and asked their comments about the course. Those that had passing grades said they liked the format and flexibility that the online class allowed them and hoped the more courses would be offered in the future. Those that did not pass mentioned that they did not have the self motivation to go online and participate in the course. They mentioned that they needed the regiment of attending a class at an assigned time and probably would not enroll in another online class.

The department chair of the construction management program has reviewed the course materials and also had discussions with the students enrolled in the online course throughout the semester. The chair believes that the course met the goals established at the start of the project.

	The course allows for the students to have a more flexible schedule.
	Several of the students enrolled did not attend any on campus classes.
	The development of the online courses was funded by the Off Campus Programs Office.
	Funding for future development of other courses has been offered by the Off Campus Programs Office.


The chair has determined that the online versions of the courses will continue and plans on expanding the online offerings.


References

Klemm, William R. (2001). Creating Online Courses: A step by Step Guide. [WWW document]. URL http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=861

Miller, Kevin R. (2004).. Kevin R. Miller’s Home Page. [WWW document]. URL http://www.et.byu.edu/~kmiller/

Orth, Daryl L. and Jenkins, James L. Incorporating WebCT into the Construction Curriculum. Associated Schools of Construction Proceedings of the 39^th Annual Conference, April 10-12, 2003.