Synopsis: This entire website is part of an experiment in teaching. I undertook it for both selfish reasons ( I needed the programs for my classes) and out of a belief that there are ways to take advantage of information technology to improve the ways we teach and to help students learn. However, whether or not the interactive materials available at this site actually help students to learn remains an open question that needs to be answered. On this page, I explain:
I also argue that learned societies have an important role to play in this process -- as promoters of materials and as certifiers of excellence. Much of the material here relates to what some will see as a radical plea: I make a case for using the web to share the teaching materials that many of us have developed. I argue that this will allow us to create customized sets of materials for our classes, including handouts that obviate the need for note taking. This will promote a more interactive style of teaching where we use more of the class period for discussion and for other forms of enrichment. Students should be able to gain far more from our expertise than simply through lecture-only formats. Finally, I outline my future plans for this site and issue a call for others to add to it or modify it. |
I had dual motivations with regards to the construction of this site:
Thus, I hope that it will be a good model of appropriate use of the web in teaching. Equally as important, I hope that it will lead to cooperative teaching ventures that expand the material available on the web and fill in gaps that textbooks are not able or likely to meet. Particularly with regards to cooperative teaching I decided to work on this site over an alternative (in my main area of expertise, comparative physiology) since the Animal Behavior Society has a well-established record of its members being interested in teaching and being willing to give some of their time to community efforts (press here to jump ahead to a description of my experience with my physiology site).
| "Please Don't Call me a "Web Visionary": I do not believe that computer and web-based teaching will replace classrooms, labs, textbooks and professors (especially those who believe in interacting with their students). The belief of some web shills that all practices of traditional teaching are passe seem to me to be about as well-founded as the stock values of many startup internet companies. I cannot foresee any program or hypertext in the immediate future that will begin to have the interactive power of a real person. Books didn't replace professors and classes, nor did TV classes and nor will the internet. But all of these can supplement each other and perhaps help students to learn better. |
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What has been my experience with teaching websites?
This is not my first attempt at a substantial teaching website. My main effort continues to be a site dedicated to the teaching of comparative/ecological physiology. At this site, there is a complete set of illustrated course notes, labs, questions from textbook readings, and problems (but none of it as HTML). Its purpose was also to foster the discussion-type of teaching mentioned below (jump ahead to section on discussion).
Based on the amount of use it has gotten away from Holy Cross, I cannot say that the comparative physiology site has been very successful. I know a few places where some of the materials are being used as envisioned and I have gotten some materials from other instructors. On the other hand, the most common reactions to the site when I have publicized it have ranged from indifference to frank hostility (details available on request but the low point was dealing with certain NSF officials). Much of the indifference is easy to understand -- few of us want to change how we teach, few of us are rewarded for really putting in a strong effort in our teaching, and some institutions do not have good computer facilities (see note).
As alluded to above, I undertook the game theory site partially as an experiment to see if a more interactive website (the phys. site is mainly for downloading materials) would be used at more institutions and would stimulate more interest in developing additional materials and perhaps more discussion-based teaching.
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What are the special benefits
of the materials
at this site as compared
to a textbook?
It would seem that there are very significant educational benefits that can be derived from these technologies. With respect to this website, the benefits can be divided into two types:
On the downside, the approach taken at this site has the usual high tech disadvantage-- it requires a pretty good computer and an internet connection. And some time is involved in learning how to use the site, especially the simulations (but I have tried hard to make it easy to use for anyone with familiarity with a web browser).
My main goal was to create a website that takes advantage of the recently achieved ability to seamlessly (and easily) connect the interactive components of this site: hypertext and simulations.
I believe that the simulations represent an improvement over text and lecture because they relieve the students from making a large number of laborious calculations. Textbook and lecture coverages of game theory generally do not take students beyond a few simple situations using one set of costs and benefits. This observation is not meant as damning criticism of text and lecture presentations -- there is simply not space in introductory texts or lecture time for extensive treatments with pages of explanation and calculations.
It is usually unreasonable for instructors to ask their students to calculate the evolution of a population consisting of two or three strategies over even a few generations -- there are too many repetitive, time-consuming calculations. So, while all of us have asked our students to master the basics of game theory and to understand the calculations, we have not asked them to explore what happens when benefits and costs change, payoff calculations are modified, etc. Computer simulations are excellent tools for getting around the drudgery of the calculations.
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For the Uninitiated -- What
are the Differences
in Writing Hypertext Compared
to a Textbook or Handout?
The other interactive component is the hypertext. The ability to link hypertext directly with simulations would seem to greatly enhance the value of each medium and would also seem to be a great improvement over textbooks by themselves (maybe! -- see note).
In both traditional text and hypertext, the materials should be well-organized and there should be a means for quickly finding related or review materials. Questions should be asked and answers/discussion presented. The difference is that in hypertext these facilities should be a mouse click away. It is certainly easier to continue a train of thought when we can get additional information instantaneously (instead of having to thumb a large number of pages). So, the extra work in producing hypertext primarily involves deciding:
Additionally, hypertext also allows for connections to search engines (see note on searches) and "multimedia" (see note on multimedia).
| At present this site contains no pictures or sound -- it would be wonderful to include either or both, especially in the context of a short article by someone explaining their research. |
Hypertext as Conversation: An argument can be made that the experience of using hypertext should be a bit more like having a conversation with an instructor than is possible with a traditional text. Thus, my goal was to try to write hypertext that simulates a mix of lecture and discussion. I first explain the basics, provide review and dialog (questions and some answers or even questions answered by other questions) and eventually ask questions that should take the students "beyond the basic material".
"Dissemination with Modification"
Introduction: Have you ever wished that you could customize a textbook? For instance, have you wanted to select the parts from several different texts that were germane to your course and organize them in manner consistent with how you teach? Perhaps you also wanted to modify some parts of these texts. Have you ever felt that if parts of a book were re-written, that it would be a far better text? (I am sure you feel that way about parts of this website, given my general wordiness!)
If authors place their teaching materials on a webserver and if they don't mind if others modify them (providing the usual courtesies involving credit are followed), then it should be possible for the materials to change with time (be improved). Moreover, versions can be generated that are appropriate to particular populations of students. Both of these possibilities should be very satisfying to evolutionary biologists! See the box immediately below for an example of how this could be done:
An Example of "Dissemination
with Modification" This website can be downloaded as a whole (see "Download" in the Navigator Frame). Likewise, the source code for the simulations is available. Anyone with an HTML editor is free to revise sections of this site, provided they follow certain minimal academic courtesies (see fair use page). They are then free to use the revised site on local computers, to post it on the internet, or to send the revisions to me. I have no real preference among these alternatives, except that as improvements and additions are made it would be best if some central location (such as this website) kept track of them. Old versions of materials could be replaced and archived or links to URLs with alternative versions of the materials could be added. Thus, dissemination with modification. |
Free, Customizable Materials:
Impact on Class Notes and Discussion
Now think beyond the simple desirability of a customized text or website. As more materials become available, you might be able to cut down on the amount of lecturing you do. Let's face it, much of lecture is nothing more than a process whereby (hopefully) the students transcribe (accurately) the facts and concepts you wish them to learn. Suppose that students are relieved of this task by giving them printed versions of the notes (If these are handouts, how are they notes? What do I mean by notes?).
If students have the notes and a text reading assignment, it would not be unreasonable to ask them to learn as much as they could before class. You can then turn your class period into a mix of lecture on the more difficult parts of the notes and use the remainder of the time for discussion of the material.
I have tried both approaches and although they take some getting used to, they seem to work well and certainly the students seem to express themselves better and think more. They also report having felt more involved in the course (although some inevitably are totally intimidated by the approach). In any case, such an approach allows the students to get beyond the professor who acts as little more than a talking textbook. This approach lets the students take fuller advantage of your years of learning, gets and keeps you closer to them, and helps you better understand where they are having difficulties. And you need not run every class meeting as discussion for the students to benefit.
A quick word -- my apologies to my many colleagues have been making use of these approaches for years (probably as long or longer than I have). Please do not think that I believe that I have come up with something that many others have not thought about or tried before. I'm just evangelizing. One other note -- I am definitely not advocating that we totally do away with lecturing or start acting like every thought a student has about evolution and animal behavior is as insightful and wise as that of a professor who has been a dedicated biologist for years. I am sure you have heard this ridiculous line from some of your colleagues, especially in certain areas of the humanities. If they have so little regard for their own learning and their ability to lead students, so be it although one is left to ponder their future in teaching. |
This sounds like too much work: Hold it, you say. Typing up notes (not to mention making them into hypertext) and keeping them current is a time-intensive task that few of us are willing to take on. And distribution of printed notes to students is an impossible overhead. Well, clearly the web has changed the economics of distribution (although it appears that publishers would like us to believe that it hasn't while they try to reap huge profits). The real work is the writing. I am not proposing that someone who sits down and writes a textbook i and sells it is somehow unethical. I am just saying that there are other things that all of us do in the course of teaching that can be shared with others for free.
| In fact I know of one highly successful web text book which everyone ought to at least take a look at -- Dr. Ted Radcliffe's on-line integrated pest management (IPM) textbook (hosted by the Univ. Minnesota). This text is a collaborative effort of many workers -- it is thorough and exceptionally up-to-date. |
What I propose is that those of us who have written lecture handouts and other resources share them with anyone who wants to make use of them. This way, our best ideas about how to teach move around to be tried and perhaps improved. And, we can lecture less (not never, just less) and encourage students to be more actively involved in our courses.The web provides an easy way to make materials available. More and more departments have faculty and Information Technology specialists who know how to post materials and write hypertext needed to access it (or for that matter transform the text materials to hypertext). Once these materials are made freely available, anyone can modify them for their own use and/or re-post them.
To finish this section, a short essay (or back to the frame contents):
On Sharing Teaching Materials -- For many, unfettered sharing of teaching materials is a fairly radical notion. Most of us seem to have no problem with the idea that scholarly works should be shared freely (if we forget about the amounts that some academic publishers demand to distribute our work , but that is another issue (for more about this. press here)). Yet, we put teaching materials in a different category. Perhaps that is because good texts are in obvious commercial demand. We share scholarly work because it won't fetch anything on the market; we don't share things that we might be able to sell (consider the activities of many academic chemists, IT professors, or molecular biologists). Institutional conventions build up around these observations -- rewards for preparing teaching materials are often less, not because they are not valuable or difficult to do well, but because it is assumed that the market will handle the rewards (and there is the attitude, perhaps correct, that advancing knowledge is a more important use of our time than is disseminating it). Commercial internet sites could certainly offer teaching materials a la carte. There would be many advantages of such a system -- not the least being that the authors (and publishers) would be paid for their efforts. Presumably, this would encourage them to come out with better materials (although that is no guarantee that the materials will be good -- for instance, many of the instructional computer programs I have seen were not "worth their bits"). And, undoubtedly the layouts etc. would be far more pleasing than home grown efforts like this site. I leave it to the commercial houses to see what they can come up with. However, the problem remains that with a commercial system of development and distribution , control must be maintained over materials. Thus, the material must be put into a controllable format -- books, CD, videos, recordings, etc. and ownership (copyright) must be established. These two factors prevent the materials from being readily modified by those who use them. We can and do comment on texts (often what we do in lecture) but generally we cannot modify them.
The freedom to customize materials is the strongest argument for sharing them However a "freeware" approach has the obvious weakness that no one is getting paid directly for their efforts. In addition, it requires a community effort so that no one is unduly burdened and so that ideas move around. People must be willing to allow others to modify their work and perhaps re-post it. Those who contribute must do so purely because they wish to -- and, hopefully because their institution will reward such efforts. Participants must realize that many might use what they have produced and not add anything themselves. Also, in addition to adding materials, someone must maintain the archive or at least pointers to resources as a service (this would be a good place for professional societies to step in). Thus, for freeware to work, there must be a community effort. The work is shared as are the benefits. If such an enterprise is to develop, it will be important that writers be generous and fair when it comes to giving credit. Institutions will need to see this as a valuable component of teaching and treat contributions seriously. And, some sort of professional review or certification of the larger efforts would also seem in order (the equivalent of any type of peer review). While I advocate the freeware approach, I certainly do not believe that it is likely to replace textbooks and definitely not in the near term. If this path is taken, perhaps what will happen is that outlines and discussion questions based on popular textbooks or alternative ways of explaining things in those texts (essentially what this site is) will appear and be passed around. |
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The Role of Professional Societies: Learned societies have a role to play. While the attitude of many societies towards education is that it is of secondary importance to their primary mission (the promotion of research) nevertheless education should not be the sole province of umbrella teaching groups like Project Kaleidoscope. There is much to be said for educational initiatives coming from within societies whose members teach the same types of courses.
The Animal Behavior Society (ABS) has been active in this regard and that is one of the reasons that I constructed this site: I believed that it would be well received both by the members and also I knew that there were institutional means to advertising the site (ABSNet) and maintain links to it (ABS homepage). This was not my experience with the Comparative Physiology Site where I was unable to get officers of the appropriate division to even look at the site or consider linking it to the society's homepage (to review my experience with this site, press here).
Thus, a minimal role for societies would be to provide a central listing of available materials relevant to the focus of the society so that instructors and students could easily locate them. This would need to be nothing more than a page of links that are updated as individuals inform the society about materials they have posted. For instance, ABS has a proto- version of this sort of thing.
Beyond that, societies should seriously think about getting into the business of reviewing sites, especially extensive ones. These reviews could lead to the site to being certified by the society. Alternatively, the reviews could be posted along with the society's listings of available materials. We are all aware of the amount of junk on the internet and some type of certification would be a valuable contribution by the society. A major consideration in the construction of this site was that it needed to be peer reviewed. Since there was no formal structure for such a review, I requested reviews from people with expertise in the field and whom I knew would be totally honest about the site's deficiencies (see acknowledgments). As with anything, without the help of my reviewers, this site would have been far less useful.
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What Would Indicate to me that this Website is Successful?: One reason that I have devoted as much energy and time to this game theory site as I have is that this site represents a type of experiment. These simulations and the accompanying hypertext should give students tools and some direction for their explorations of game theory. Students can be expected to thoroughly explore games in a reasonable amount of time since they have both the simulations and explanatory material at their fingertips. The standard for judging this site must be the degree to which students gain a better understanding of game theory and evolution as compared to that gained exclusively from class and textbooks.
Thus, the central questions are:
To the extent that the questions above are answered in the affirmative, this site will have been worth the effort. I welcome feedback with regards to these points, either by email or via the feedback form (see Navigation Frame); I especially welcome studies of the effectiveness of this type of teaching.
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Please contact me if you are interested in doing any of the above. Your materials do not need to reside on the www.holycross.edu server that hosts this site -- we could simply link to them. This keeps the control of your materials in your own hands.
As much as I would like to see the items above added, I plan to restrict my future efforts on this site to:
These should take advantage of my strengths. I have found writing the hypertext to be the most difficult part of this project -- not only is writing difficult for me, but it is all the harder because I have been writing outside of my specialty.
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Copyright © 1999 by Kenneth N. Prestwich
About Fair Use of these materials Last modified 2 - 22 - 99 |
End Notes
Do students learn better? There is no data that I know of that actually shows that students learn better when they use hypertext-simulation combinations as compared to or in conjunction with traditional textbooks. I would greatly appreciate such a reference (or one that shows conclusively that students do not learn well with these materials). Even more, I would appreciate the work of anyone who was interested in testing the hypothesis that this type of site really does help students significantly over the alternatives.
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About Search Engines: At present this site is small enough that it doesn't require a search engine. However, if more materials appeared here and elsewhere relating to game theory and to behavior, then such an engine would be a welcome addition and will certainly be added. Please, give me feedback if you have any thoughts about searches and this site.
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More about multimedia, especially audio, and this site: Multimedia includes computer simulations (as with this site), audio or pictures. I briefly considered and tried recording spoken answers to some questions. This audio was accessed through typical hypertext links. I thought that this would make the site more human and save some typing. I dropped the idea because:
So, for the moment, I am stuck with writing things out -- what is coded (typed and linked) is what you get -- nothing more, nothing less. One of these days improvements in the web coupled perhaps with usable artificial intelligence programs will greatly expand what can be done and the time needed to do it, but we aren't there yet.
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About the physiology site -- I am relatively certain that the lack of reception of the site does not have to do with its quality -- those who have seen it think well of it. My biggest problem is to get people to even take a look at it!
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