The problem:

A frequent complaint of on-line instructors concerns the “friction” experienced by students learning how to use an internet course. What is meant by “friction” is the difficulties in getting started with or moving smoothly through the course materials. These difficulties are created by lack of knowledge or understanding of understanding of how to use the computer, the Course Management Software, or the specific course itself.

On-line students, like classroom students, need to know what is expected in the course: how much and what to read, how many tests, what format the tests will take, what types of writing assignments are expected, and what the criteria for grading will be. Additionally, on-line students must deal with the computer interface – course navigation, access to materials, use of discussion boards, quiz taking, and how to submit written assignments. These things vary from one CMS to another and from one course to another.

This information must be communicated to students at the beginning of the semester primarily through written documents. Four years of experience has demonstrated that many students have difficulty absorbing the information and making use of it. Some students skip the syllabus and instructions and jump immediately into course work with understandable disorientation. More often students either do not comprehend or quickly forget what is written.

This is an issue both from the point of view of the on-line instructors who must spend a disproportionate percentage of their time dealing with questions about what is expected and how to use the course. And it is a problem from the point of view of students who may become so frustrated because they lack needed information that they become disengaged, back away from the course, and eventually withdraw or fail.

One solution:

 Make sure that all students are exposed to the syllabus and all important course instructions before they can attempt to tackle the actual course work.

This is not complicated to achieve in the classroom. The students are in front of you, and before they see any assignments, discussion questions, or activities, you give them the syllabus on the first day and go over it. However, in your typical on-line class, when the student first enters the course “space” or database, they have a variety of directions in which they can go. They can skip over the syllabus and instructions and go directly to the content material.

Some CMS's make it easy to limit students access to course materials, require students to follow a certain sequence of events. Both WebCT and ANGEL have this capacity. Since I use WebCT, that is what I will talk about, but I do have a handout that give step by step instructions for how to accomplish the same thing in ANGEL.

The basic idea is to create conditions such that there are only a small number of course items a student can see or do when they first access the course. In my courses on first access, students can see:

• the syllabus which deals with course requirements,
• a set of course instructions that focuses on using the WebCT software for my courses (including step by step instructions for submitting assignments, and instructions for test taking).
• the internal e-mail program to ask me questions about anything they wish.
• test link to the syllabus quiz.

A text block above the links instructs the students to read the syllabus and instructions, and to take the syllabus quiz in order to access the rest of the course materials. They are instructed that they can repeat the syllabus quiz as many times as they need. All the rest of the links in the course, to lectures, reading assignments, essays, all content, and the discussion area, are “conditional” (in WebCT jargon). They are conditional upon the student completing the syllabus test with fewer than 2 answers incorrect.When I made it “100 percent” I found that even I got frustrated and had to take the test over and over and over again, often making silly errors. By allowing a few errors, most students are able to be successful within 2 tries.

The Syllabus Quiz

I look at this quiz as a lot more than just a hurdle that students must jump over in order to proceed with the course. It is a pedagogical tool. I use the comments function on WebCT quizzes to provide feedback to reinforce desirable behaviors and attitudes. It is a tool to instruct the student on issues like plagiarism as well.

Click here to view the syllabus test, and the type of feed back a student receives for both correct and incorrect answers. This is the actual test of a student in Spring 2005 who did not do well on the first try, but was able to complete the test successfully on the second try and access the course materials.

WebCT Conditional Links

On any organizer page of WebCT, such as the homepage, any link to a page or a tool can be made conditional on another activity.

Results

Introducing the syllabus test has dramatically reduced the number of problem related e-mails and discussion postings made by students in my on-line classes. Almost all e-mails are problem oriented so simply the total number of e-mails for the first 6 weeks of the terms were counted. In the discussion area, there is a specific topic entitled “I have a problem/question” where students post problem related issues, separate from content related discussion. The number of posts in the “I have a problem/question” area were counted for the first six weeks of the terms being compared.

Comparison of Spring 2004 before the syllabus test was introduced and Fall 2004 (this term) after the syllabus test was introduced. Syllabus test was actually introduced in Summer 2004, but because of significant differences in the format and timing of summer term and Fall/Spring term, the results are not easily compared. Comparison shows a significant drop of in the numbers problem related communications.

Another concern was the number of cases of plagiarism, most apparently due to lack of understanding of what constituted plagiarism. The table shows that in the first four essays written, there were six documented cases of plagiarism in Spring 2004 (before) and none in the first four essays in the current Fall 2004 (after).

When queried, most students expressed positive feelings about the syllabus quiz. During the fall term only one student failed to understand how the process worked, and failed to complete the syllabus quiz successfully within the first seven days of the semester. The majority of students successful completed the syllabus quiz in one or two tries. The next largest group required three and four tries. Only three students required more than two tries, and one of those students accounted for almost all of the problem related e-mails. This student evidenced a literacy problem that affected all her work.

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