The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology - TOJET January 2006 ISSN: 1303-6521 Volume 5, Issue 1, Article 10

THE REALITY OF WEB-BASED INTERACTION IN AN EGYPTIAN DISTANCE EDUCATION COURSE

Alaa SADIK, Ph.D.
Lecturer in Educational Technology
Department of Curricula & Instruction
Faculty of Education, South Valley University, Qena 11183, Egypt
Home Tel: +20 96221280
Mobile: +20 103866817

alaasadik@hotmail.com

ABSTRACT

This paper reports the results of a study conducted to evaluate the reality of interaction in a web-based distance education course. The learners were Egyptian first-grade secondary school students (15-16 years old) and the learning subject is mathematics. To investigate students’ interactions via the Web, a Web-based learning environment was designed and implemented, called Wired Class, based on Willis’ (1995, 2000) R2D2 instructional design model and constructivist principles. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were used to investigate the quantity and quality of learner-learner and learner-teacher interaction based on Mason's (1991) model.

INTRODUCTION

Researchers always emphasise the importance of interaction in education (Ritchie and Newby 1989; Harris 1999). Interaction is defined as a process that happens between the learner and the learning environment, in which the learner takes a more positive role (Berge, 1997). Interactivity has been described as a key to success in traditional classrooms to enhance learning and motivate learners (Fulford and Zhang, 1993; Wagner, 1994; Flottemesch, 2000). In a distance education context, studies found that students who enrolled in programmes that support and encourage interaction have highly positive attitudes toward learning, higher levels of achievement and less dropout rates than others in one-way systems (Ritchie and Newby, 1989; Comeaux, 1999; Garrison and Shale, 1990).

Holmberg (1990) believes that the ability of the medium to conduct interaction between the tutor and students is the essential criterion in selection among distance education technologies. He pointed out that any distance education medium should be able to provide the tutor and students with means of bringing about their experience, create rapport between them and offer opportunities for discussion.

To achieve social interaction in education programmes, usually a real-time (synchronous) communication technology (e.g., telephone and video conferencing) were being used. However, with the development in communication technology (like the Internet), these kinds of interaction do not necessarily require real-time communication. Interaction can be independent of time (asynchronous), using communication tools (e.g., e-mail and discussion boards).  One of the important factors that have encouraged educators to use the Web in distance education is its ability to engage students in an interactive learning experience. The Web provides many mechanisms to facilitate dialogue between the learner and the course content and between the learner and others (Fisher, 2000).

However, implementing interactive technology, like the Web, and its components is not enough. Since distance education is characterised by the physical isolation of the learner from the tutor and peers by space and time (Rumble, 1989), it means less involvement and less possibility to ask questions. To solve these problems Trentin (2000) suggested that:

‘One of the key ingredients for raising the quality of an online course is strong interaction between the players in the process; organized in full-fledged virtual classes, the participants must obviously respect schedules and deadlines if a collaborative working strategy is to be successful’ (p. 20).

Many suggestions have been offered in the literature showing how to conduct successful interaction between learners, such as group-based collaborative projects, presentation boards and tutor questioning using interactive communication tools such as e-mail and discussion boards (Anderson, 1987; Moore, 1989). 

Reviewing the literature has shown that the Web supports two different forms of student-student and student-tutor interaction; each form can be achieved using different methods: asynchronous interaction and synchronous interaction (Huang, 2000). Asynchronous interaction is time-independent and does not require real-time dialogue. It enables the tutor and learners to send and receive messages at any time, without the need for immediate response and gives them the chance to read, reflect and do more critical thinking (Liaw and Huang, 2000).  E-mail, listservs and discussion groups, or forums, are the most common asynchronous methods used in the Internet. The distinct advantage of this type of interaction is that anyone can send a message to a group of people or read others’ participations to a discussion forum at anytime, particularly with the ‘threading’ style, which are suitable for debating more than one idea under many sub-titles. 

However, the most popular and widely used method for transmitting asynchronous information messages on the Internet is e-mail. There are many purposes for which students can use e-mail in distance education to interact with the tutor and peers. Students can send questions, submit assignments and receive evaluation results, prepare for real-time discussion, share ideas, receive materials or ask the instructor for help and receive feedback (Simpson, 2000). In addition, since e-mail is relatively cheap and simple to use, it facilitates and encourages collaborative work and exchanging of ideas and information (Stevens, 1994).

Although e-mail is the most popular and widely used method for individual asynchronous interaction, discussion boards and bulletin boards are also common group-based approach used in online learning (Carr-Chellman and Duchastel, 2000). Asynchronous interaction via discussion boards refer to ‘the posting of messages in a common area for participants to read and respond to’ (Huang, 2000, p. 42). Often, discussion boards focus on the subject matter and aim to encourage student-student dialogue and learning from others’ experiences. Berge (2000) believes that on-line discussions have the same purposes as face-to-face discussions. For example, asynchronous discussions could be used to focus attention on an issue, diagnose specific learning difficulties, encourage reflection and self-evaluation and teach via students’ answers. In addition, students can learn ‘by expressing their ideas, opinions, or solutions to others, by critiquing one another’s proposed models, and by defending or modifying their initial models’ (Oliver, 2000, p. 9).

On the other hand, synchronous interaction is similar to telephone communication or audio-video conferencing systems. Many protocols are available on the Web for conducting real-time conferencing. Internet Relay Chat (IRC), for example, enables students to discuss in a real-time status via an audio-visual window or using text. Aoki and Pogroszewski (1998) indicated that synchronous interaction has the ability to motivate learners to learn, provide feedback and support immediately and encourage student interaction. Text-based chat is a simple and popular technique for communication on the Web. It fosters immediacy and social presence, is useful for brainstorming and decision-making and helps in building a community of learners (Murphy, 1997). Developers can easily integrate chat rooms into their courses to hold conferences between students and experts, monitor students’ participation and encourage them to work collaboratively (Liaw and Huang, 2000).

However, although Web-based synchronous interaction offers a chance for real-time communication on the Web, it often requires sophisticated software and hardware to be installed, which are usually more expensive than asynchronous delivery systems. In addition, one of the critical limitations of this type of interaction is that it is restricted by time zones and students’ typing and communication skills.

Lastly, since students access Wired Class at different times during the day, the on-line students’ page presents a list of students who has logged-in to the class, with the time of logging-in/logging-out and links to those students’ personal pages. The importance of this tool is that it allows the learner to know who is on-line while he/she studying encourages students to contact each other and minimises the sense that everyone is studying alone.

PARTICIPANTS

The learners were Egyptian first-grade secondary school students (15-16 years old), assigned randomly. Random selection of students at each school was made using alphabetical menus to control threats to external validity. By using random sampling, the researcher ensured that not only students with special interest in using the Internet or who had a high level of achievement or ambition were involved in the experiment. Due to the practical circumstances of implementation, only 32 students (24 boys and 8 girls) participated in this study.

The first step in the design and development phase is to understand students’ needs, have information about their educational and cultural background and determine why they need to study at a distance. In Egypt, two types of public secondary schools are available. The first type of school is government-run and uses the Arabic language as a first language. Students at these schools study all subjects in Arabic. However, the English language is the second language. These schools account for more than 90 per cent of secondary schools in Egypt. The other type of schools, which may be government-run or private, uses the English language as a first language; therefore these schools are called ‘language schools’. Students at these schools study in English. These schools are estimated to constitute less than 10 per cent of secondary schools in Egypt.

In the present study, participants were students of the second type (language schools). Those students are a small minority and have many educational problems. For example: there is an insufficient number of well qualified teachers to teach at these language schools, particularly for vital subjects, such as mathematics and science, there is a lack of support provided to those students, as the official language of the educational authority is Arabic and most resources and well-designed instructional materials (such as broadcasting radio and television, videotape programmes and CD-ROMs) are available in Arabic.

Therefore, students wishing to develop their academic attainment and experience commonly use additional information sources, such as satellite television programmes and the Internet. Well-designed Web-based distance education programmes could be an efficient way to help those students to learn and interact with the world. Usually, language schools are well equipped with computers and the Internet to take advantage of the world-wide knowledge available in English and to interact with others around the world. Often, students at these schools have good skills and experience in using computers, WIMP-based programmes (*) and the Internet. This background is sufficient to allow them to use the Web and attend on-line classes in any subject, access remote resources and interact with others around the world using the English language.

INSTRUCTION AND TEACHING/LEARNING APPROACH

The learning subject is mathematics. This subject was chosen since it is probably the second most important subject in schools after language, important as an international language of communication and the nature of mathematics is such that it is not restricted by cultural, political or geographical boundaries like other subjects (such as languages and history). Algebra, in particular, was chosen because it is an important step in the learning of mathematics. It involves new and important concepts for studying mathematics, such as the concepts of formula, equation, function and variable. Functions, equations, co-ordinate systems and graphs are important topics in algebra in the secondary school curriculum. Linear and quadratic equations and functions, in particular, are fundamental lessons in this curriculum. Therefore, the topics, which were chosen to be learned in Wired Class, were functions and equations.

Based on the constructivist epistemology, constructivist theory seems to be the most suitable approach to design instruction for the Web. One of the key features of constructivism is that learning is not a passive operation, but a process in which learners construct their own learning. Constructivists believe that learning becomes more effective through learners’ active participation in the learning situation. In addition, social interactions between learners and the teacher and among learners themselves is a key issue in designing constructivist learning.

In the last few years, many frameworks and models have been developed and a variety of guidelines proposed for developing learning environments which support a constructivist approach. Honebein (1996) indicated that the constructivist-based learning environment is one in which the learner participates actively and on which he/she has a major impact. More recently, Nakahara (1997) has emphasised the designer’s role of challenging the learners’ thinking, active participation and social interaction to help learners to construct their own knowledge. Howe et al. (1995) suggested a constructivist-based approach for teaching and learning mathematics. This approach uses principles of co-operative and problem-centred learning. Howe et al. diagrammed the learning cycle in which learners can be involved to pass through these experience (Figure 1). Via discussion boards, viewpoints arising from the experiences need to be discussed with peers in order to be evaluated and validated.

In Wired Class, grading was based on test scores, class discussion, attendance, completion of activities and written assignments.

Figure 1: The constructivist learning cycle (adapted from Howe et al., 1995)

THE DESIGN OF INTERACTION TOOLS

To investigate students’ interactions via the Web, the need was emphasised to employ a Web-based learning environment. The design and development of the learning environment, called Wired Class, was based on Willis’ (1995, 2000) R2D2 instructional design model and constructivist principles. In the definition focus, many pre-requirements were investigated and defined, including learners’ needs, subject matter, front-analysis and technical requirements.

Constructing the learning environment required designing and developing tutorials and assessment elements, instructional support utilities, interaction tools, management and monitoring tools, help and support topics and a navigation system. The tutorial component was arranged in modules and lessons. Each lesson was arranged in a hierarchy of new concepts, examples, self-assessment, exercises, links to related Web sites and discussion areas. Management and administration tools were designed to help the on-line tutor to control/understand how the on-line class operated and to track students’ progress. The interaction components (e-mail, chat rooms and discussion boards) were designed and integrated within the learning environment to facilitate student-tutor and student-student interaction.

First, to use e-mail via Wired Class, there were two possible ways. The first was to install e-mail server software in Wired Class server to work as an independent Web-based e-mail service, taking domain name of Wired Class Web server. Although this option allows a full control over the e-mail service, it is very costly and only suitable for big organisations. The second option was to ask students who have not e-mail account to subscribe to one of the free Web-based e-mail services (like Hotmail, Yahoo, Egypt.Net, etc.). The search for the most suitable free Web-based e-mail service for Wired Class students revealed that that Egypt Network offers an appropriate service. This service was selected for many reasons:

        1.          It offers a non-restricted e-mail address: Most e-mail service providers control the way in which the user can choose his/her e-mail address. For example, Microsoft Hotmail does not allow users to use special characters, such as the point (.) and hyphen (-). However these characters are allowed in Egypt Network e-mail.

        2.          Egypt Network offers a suitable and easy to remember domain for target users using the domain <username@egypt.net>.

        3.          Most e-mail servers have a high traffic rate. However, Egypt Network is favoured only by Egyptian users, allowing it to get a relatively low traffic rate.

        4.          The e-mail server is located in Egypt, which makes access to the server faster than other world servers (such as Hotmail and Yahoo).

For these reasons, Egypt Network was chosen as the Wired Class e-mail service provider. This enables every student in the class to get an e-mail address as soon as he/she registers. To use the e-mail service, learners are asked to enter their username and password within a form located in the Wired Class site. Students can use e-mail to prepare for real-time chat, share ideas, send questions to the teacher and receive feedback. In addition, unlike other learning environments (e.g., WebCT and TopClass), students are able to contact each other within Wired Class or other people who are not members in the learning environment.

Second, although there are numerous chatting systems available which vary in their capabilities (using text, audio and video), most of them are not suitable, either technically or educationally, to the students’ level or to be hosted in Wired Class Web server. However, suitable chatting systems were found to be too expensive to be used in small-scale educational applications or at schools. For these reasons, it was necessary to design and develop a simple, and efficient, chat system for Wired Class students.

A text-based chat system was found to be the most popular type for easy and fast interaction via the Web. This kind does not require a high-speed connection or specifications or any additional software in the user’s machine except the Web browser.

Technically, conducting a chat room requires running a script in the Web server to be used by two users, or more, at the same time. The main functions of this script are receiving one participant’s inputs, using HTML form, and then forwarding them to the other participant browser who are running the same chat script. The chat system was designed as two windows in the student’s Web browser. The upper window allows the student to input his/her information and a short message. At the same time, the lower one shows students’ names and their participation.

The essential idea behind this simple design is that a CGI script handles each participant’s inputs from the upper form, saves them in a temporary text file, then forwards them (after 5 seconds for example) to the other participant’s lower window. The last task is achieved by involving the HTML command ‘refresh’ in the HTML code in the lower window. The complete CGI scripts in conjunction with HTML forms were designed and developed with students’ needs and level in mind. Additional features were added to the chat system make it easy to use and interesting. For example, the learner can establish any number of new rooms and invite others for conversation. Alternatively, others can access a room already established already by the teacher or someone else using the option ‘enter a room’.

Third, an investigation of discussion board programs available on the Web showed that using one of them in Wired Class would not be suitable to the students’ level and discussion objectives. Although these discussion boards are ‘threaded’ discussions, which are suitable for debating more than one idea or topic in the same board, the developmental testing of Wired Class showed that the thread style discussion was taught to be unfamiliar to students and it would not allow them to take advantage of many messages presented under sub-titles.  For these reasons, a simple discussion board was designed and developed for Wired Class students.

The design of the discussion board interface consists of two parts: The ‘send’ form and list of participants’ messages to the board. This design allows the learner to submit his/her message to be added below at the top of the list. So, the learner can read others’ messages to the board and compare his/her point of view against theirs. Technically, all posted messages are organised and saved in a HTML file in the Web server called a ‘discussion file’. Every ‘discussion file’ in the server has a unique name. Every time the learner executes a discussion board script in the server side, the script generates an HTML page combining the HTML form (for inputs) and the specified ‘discussion file’ to appear on the same page in the user’s browser.    

METHOD

First, to solicit students’ perceptions of ease of interaction with the tutor and peers using asynchronous and synchronous interaction tools (e-mail, discussion boards and chat), a questionnaire with closed-ended and open-ended items was constructed. The development of the students’ questionnaire was based on the four phases of development (review of the literature, establishing content validity, construct the questionnaire and establishing scale reliability).

In addition, an on-line feedback form was made available throughout the eight weeks of the field-testing, to encourage students to send their own feedback and report any problem they might encounter instantly. The importance of this evaluation form is that it provides an on-demand and easy-to-use evaluation tool to students to provide their feedback, instead of waiting until the end of the course.

Second, to investigate students’ interactions, both the quantity and quality of students’ messages was analysed. Quantitative analysis was used to calculate the number of messages and investigate by whom they were sent, time of logons and length of messages. In addition, the qualitative approach was used to analyse the discussion content according to educational criteria, to enable conclusions to be drawn about the educational value of this activity. To analyse students’ responses, a coding system was constructed based on research in computer conferencing and discussion content analysis by Mason (1991), Henri (1991), Fulford and Zhang (1993) and Berge (1997). Mason (1991), for example, suggested many questions to analyse students’ responses, for example:

·         Do they build on previous messages?

·         Do they draw on their own experience?

·         Do they refer to course materials?

·         Do they refer to relevant materials outside the course (Mason, 1991)?

However, Henri (1991) categorised and coded students’ responses in discussion boards using a more practical and comprehensive model for better understanding of the content of messages. This model highlighted five dimensions of the learning process exteriorised in students’ messages. These dimensions, their definitions and indicators to them, are shown below (Table 1).

Table 1: Henri’s analytical framework (Henri, 1991, p.125)

Considering Mason’s earlier typology and Henri’s analytical framework, on the one hand, and students’ level, the nature of the subject and the objectives of Wired Class discussion boards, on the other, these two approaches were adapted to build a new three-dimensional model. These dimensions are participation, interaction and cognition and content-related. Participation indicators provide information about the number of messages sent by students to every single discussion board, length of messages and time of posting. This information could help in identifying the type of discussion topic (e.g., low-level discussion topics, moderate-level discussion topics and high-level discussion topics) in which students are most active and clarifying the importance of on-line tutor participation in student participation.

In addition, the qualitative analysis of student-peers interaction shows how students worked together and exchanged their ideas to learn and construct their own learning. However, the cognitive and content-related dimension describes what is said about the subject and how it is said. This analysis, in relation to the cognitive tasks assigned in discussion topics, makes it possible to evaluate the level of information processing and thinking applied by learners and how this contributed to their learning.

The dimensions of this model and their indicators are shown below (Table 2). After the development of the coding system, messages were printed out and each message was divided into units of meaning. These units were analysed in the light of interaction and cognitive and content-related indicators to the answer the research question: How do students interact in the Wired Class? The results of the analysis, in conjunction with the results from the achievement test and perception questionnaire, would provide useful information about the contribution of on-line interaction to student learning and success in on-line learning.

Table 2: An analytical framework for discussion messages

RESEARCH RESULTS

·         Ease of interaction with the tutor and peers

In terms of ease of interaction with the on-line tutor and peers, a high majority of students (96.88%) indicated that they did not feel that they were isolated from the tutor during studying. In addition, 87.5% of students found the discussion boards were a very useful place for interaction and information exchange with classmates in Wired Class. However, the majority of students showed negative perceptions toward using e-mail as an individual tool for asynchronous student-student interaction. About 60% of students disagreed and strongly disagreed that e-mail is an easy way to communicate with other students in Wired Class (Table 3).

Table 3: Students’ perceptions of ease of interaction with the tutor and peers

Students’ comments implied that they did not feel much geographical isolation from the tutor due to his regular messages and they appreciated his help and support.

‘The online teacher is very good. He gives me a lot of lessons and examples and helps me to understand these lessons’.

And

‘I liked Wired Class because when I don’t understand or have a question about something I can ask Mr […]’.

In addition, students preferred discussion boards to e-mail as a course-centred interaction approach. A student expressed that:

‘I liked communication with classmates through the discussion board. It is really nice’.

                Second, feedback from a student who did not think that using e-mail is a good method for student-student interaction indicated that:

‘To contact my classmates I have to use the e-mail but only few students get into email and use it. Contacting them is very difficult’.

In addition, students showed less satisfaction with chat, as a real-time interaction tool, and the majority of them (93.75%) preferred e-mail to chat for peer-interaction and reported critical difficulties in using and communicating with others via chat rooms (Table 4).

Table 4: Students’ responses to the ease of use

In addition, students reported that:

1.                 ‘I could not participate in chat meetings because I need to type very quickly and I am not very good at spelling’.

2.                 ‘Other students couldn’t enter chat’.

3.                 ‘We were able to chat if only for a short time’.

·         Quantitative and qualitative analysis of interaction

Quantitative analysis

Wired Class records and students’ feedback revealed that conducting and facilitating synchronous interaction via chat rooms required planning and determining the time of chatting in advance using other medium, such as e-mail. However, since students are different in their abilities and rates of progress, it was difficult for many of them to manage their time to join real-time discussions about a particular topic. In addition, students could not arrange for chat sessions themselves, since they could not find peers who had time for real time conversation or who were interested in the same discussion topic.

Problems of access to chat rooms, occasional Internet connection problems and speed of conversation were very confusing to many students, according to students’ feedback and chat transcripts. One chat transcript, for example, showed that while the tutor, or a student, was asking a question and responses were scrolling-down on the screen, other students seemed to be very engaged in thinking about and typing replies to previous entries. Those students confused others and affected the flow of chat, since contributions related to different issues were being sent concurrently. 

In this chat session, the tutor sent an e-mail message to a group of twelve students asking them to join a chat room already opened by the tutor to talk about issues in functions and graphs. The tutor began by asking students to provide examples of functions. The purpose was to help students and introduce them to elementary functions, their graphs and their applications to real life situations. The chat transcript showed that only eight out of twelve students logged on and participated successfully in the conversation. In the 25 minute session, the number of messages sent by the tutor was 8 out of a total of 26 messages, representing more than 30% of the total number of messages, and only two main questions were asked.

In addition, multiple teacher’s questions and students’ responses occurred simultaneously, while the continued flow of students’ responses to previous questions might be difficult for students to understand and follow. Therefore, during the eight week course, most planned chat sessions were interrupted or cancelled and students were asked to visit discussion boards to participate in asynchronous conversations.

Since e-mail was used in personal asynchronous interaction between the tutor and students and among students, on the one hand, and since students reported significant problems of access to others via e-mail, as mentioned above, on the other hand, analysis was conducted only of students’ participations in discussion boards.

Consequently, a table representing students’ usernames, the number of messages sent by every student in every lesson and the total number of messages posted was drawn up. Using this table, it was possible to calculate the number of messages in the first module (earlier lessons) and the second module (later lessons), the number of statements in each message and the tota