Web Assisted Learning Via Online Course Supplements

In many courses, supplemental materials might be made available to the student to assist learning. These include, but are not limited to: printed lecture notes, audio and video files of lectures, homework hints, homework solutions, worked example problems, sample tests and computer code to implement or demonstrate some theory learned. An efficient means to distribute these materials to the students is via the world-wide-web. Our premise is that these documents are dynamic in nature—they are developed and modified as the semester progresses. Therefore, it is not ideal to simply keep a repository of dozens of files at an internet site. A mechanism must be in place to track the dynamic nature of the documents. This paper describes an internet-based course-supplement management system that we have developed. Each student may log into the system by providing his or her student ID and password. The site keeps a data-base to annotate files with a description and to log all download activity for each student. (The student access log also enables assessment: “Which students are downloading files?”, “Are they doing so in a timely manner?”, “Is it helping test scores?”) When the student logs on, the system labels each file as being “not yet downloaded”, “updated since last download” or “unchanged since last download” with respect to the student querying the site. In this paper, we describe the system’s operation from both the student and instructor point of view, including securely adding and validating new users, logging in, retrieving files, adding files to the data-base and modifying files already present. We have found this system to be very convenient for students and very easy to use for the instructor. Supplements that might not otherwise be made available to the student (for security purposes or because the instructor is unwilling or unable to generate the required html code) assist learning and provide additional insight through extra examples and clarifications. I. Project Objectives It is our premise that students in any class might benefit from electronic course supplements such as: printed lecture notes, audio or video files of lectures, homework hints, homework solutions, worked example problems, sample tests and computer code to implement or demonstrate some theory learned. An efficient means to distribute these supplements is via the internet. The innovation described in this paper is the result of a project with three main objectives: 1. Develop standards of style and format for on-line course supplements and for the parts of the course web-site documenting the supplements; Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright c © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education P ge 8.288.1 2. Develop simple implementation means whereby the instructor may add supplemental materials to the course web-site (without compromising security or utility); and 3. Develop automatic evaluation means to determine if the on-line course supplements assist student learning. These three aspects are described in the following sections.