By Allison Chisolm

Special to the Gazette

In the brave new world of teaching with the World Wide Web, it's all about connections. Teachers connect with their course material. Teachers connect with students. Students connect with course material they can see and sometimes hear, and the Web circles them back online to their classmates and teacher.

Faculty and students at Harvard find that creating and using websites for their courses offer multiple opportunities for learning, and often from unexpected sources.

Gathering the materials to create the website for his Core course on The Rome of Augustus, Richard J. Tarrant, Pope Professor of the Latin Language and Literature, found that "it made me spell out connections I'd only been making improvisationally before. I had to ask myself, 'Why was I showing this slide and at what point would it have the greatest effect?' "

Tarrant's website draws on the Web's ability to transmit images and sound as well as text. Students can view a slide shown during his lecture while hearing the excerpt of his lecture that discusses that particular image. In addition, students may elect to hear sections of The Aeneid, as read (in Latin and English) by Wendell Clausen, Pope Professor of the Latin Language and Literature Emeritus.

Listening to course material is exactly what one student needs in order to study well. "I'm an aural learner," says Valerie MacMillan '98. "Hearing the audio of Professor Tarrant's voice helps a lot."

And she finds identifying images much easier on a computer screen in her room than in the lecture hall, she says, where a balcony and taller classmates can interfere with sightlines.

If MacMillan had taken Tarrant's course before this year, her pre-Web alternative for reviewing slides shown in lectures would have been setting up a projector with a reserved carousel during regular library hours. Like many students, she says, "I study during hours the libraries are closed."

Convenient access to essential course material, some previously unavailable, is one advantage Web users have found. Another is a sense of community, albeit an electronic community, linked by its connection to a course. Many courses have discussion groups where students post questions to the professor and/or their peers, and everyone can read the answers.

The Web "opens up new avenues for students to get at primary source material they wouldn't have had access to before," says David Heitmeyer, instructional computing specialist for the sciences in the Instructional Computing Group (ICG), a part of the Computer Service for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The principal resource within FAS for assistance in teaching with technology, ICG also collaborates with the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning to help courses plan technological enhancements and find funding for them.

Constructing a course website has "many more plusses than I first realized," says Michael Flier, Oleksandr Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology, whose Core course on medieval East Slavic culture, Icon -- Ritual -- Text, posts some 425 images on the Web. In some cases, the database images are better than the original slides because, he explains, "I can access the database files from home, enhance less-than-perfect reproductions with Photoshop, and then replace the original files." He also enjoys the use of a computer in the discussion classroom that's "hot-wired" to the mainframe computer, so the teaching fellow can flip through the imagebase to illustrate a point.

Another feature of course websites is that they're not static; professors can update and revise them throughout the term as needed. "I expect students to log on to the site at least once a day," says the Graduate School of Design's George Liaropoulos-Legendre, assistant professor of architecture. He posts changing course administration details, but also offers items or resource links for his students to consider.

In a handful of courses today, students start the term with their first and only handout. That one sheet explains how to access the course information they need on the course website. The rest of the term (outside of lectures) becomes an electronic experience. These courses remain the exception at Harvard. Despite its promise as a paperless resource, the Web generally remains a supplement to traditional course lectures, section meetings, readings, and handouts.

But the Medical School (HMS) is trying to use the Web to pull together those disparate parts, and learning along the way. In one of only two or three courses to use computers extensively at the Medical School, "we initiated some Web-based resources to supplement free-standing applications," says Barry Kosofsky, assistant professor of neurology at the Medical School, assistant neurologist at MGH, and co-director of the laboratory component of the second year fall course, Human Nervous System and Behavior. They offered students a self-paced, self-administered quiz; audio versions of amphitheatre lectures illustrated with video stills; interactive electronic forums for students and teachers; and a preliminary version of an electronic syllabus that integrated lab exercises and images, and summarized documentation. All Web-based activities were optional. Reaction was mixed.

"We're the first course to do this," says Kosofsky. "We're just testing the waters, trying to use our resources to their greatest advantage." The audio transmission of lectures was "the best part of what we were doing," he said. Known as CLEAR (Course Lecture & Event Audiovisual Review), the 24-hour resource capitalized on the fact that every lecture was already being videotaped, and the audiotape was easily digitized. The only drawback was that for proprietary reasons, the lectures could only be delivered to computers connected directly to the HMS backbone, excluding the use of students' home computers for this purpose.

Forum use was far below expectations. "It should be one of the best uses of the Web," says Kosofsky, but "no one wanted to be the first on the dance floor." The volume of "hits" (people visiting the site, but not leaving messages), however, he says, indicated there were "lurkers." He plans several approaches to encourage students to log on next year.

"It was a more bountiful buffet than we needed," he says. "We continue to ask what's the most effective way to use these kinds of resources to bring the appropriate information to students."

Getting Started

As greater numbers of professors become aware of the benefits Web use offers to students and faculty alike, more want to explore this new world. "There's a vast interest," says ICG's Heitmeyer. Some 40 courses with websites are listed through the ICG directory this spring (see URL below). A year ago, there were only 15.

But before course materials go out on the Web, there's a great deal of thinking and listening to be done.

"Our most important skill has nothing to do with computers," says Paul Bergen, ICG's manager. "We're good listeners." When professors come to the ICG for assistance, he says, "we listen to their ideas and develop plausible, viable options they can assess against their teaching goals."

Despite having taught the course four times before, Tarrant learned a great deal from pulling together material for the ICG as he prepared to offer The Rome of Augustus. By the end of this term, his course website will have more than 200 slides in its image database.

"I always thought the course had an interdisciplinary nature with so much visual material," says Tarrant. "It's not just illustration but part of the primary source material. But logistically there was always a great mismatch between student access to printed material and the visual. Now the students experience more of what I had always hoped to create."

This year has been a "crash" course for both his course and the ICG, says Tarrant, in more than one way, as Tarrant's audio/image combination often crashes student computers after a few slides. Working closely with Alex Parker of the ICG, says Tarrant, "we've been learning what is generalizable." Parker has attended every lecture and occasionally polls students on the difficulties they may be experiencing with the website.

Not Just a Slideshow

The visual applications of the Web go far beyond simply digitizing slide collections. While some courses stop there, the inclusion of an image database in a course website provides the students with the means to review images seen in lectures, then test themselves by clicking off the captions accompanying them, in effect, says Flier, "turning the sequence of images into a flashcard."

At the Graduate School of Design, working with visual images on screen is a vocational necessity. Budding architects, landscape architects, and urban designers learn to model buildings, gardens, and cities using computer tools such as three-dimensional computer-aided design (CAD), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), image processing and animation software, creating on-screen models that appear to have three dimensions. In some courses, when students complete an assignment, they post them in an online "gallery" for peer review. Then they can "walk around" the structures built by fellow students through a virtual reality (VR) program.

Multidimensional models and digital galleries of student work are unique features of the GSD website, according to Stephen Ervin, head of computer resources at the GSD and lecturer in landscape architecture. But the course websites appeal to Liaropoulos-Legendre for far more practical reasons. As instructor for the introductory CAD course with large enrollments of 60 to 75 students, Liaropoulos-Legendre enjoys the fact that once students understand how to access the website, "there's no such thing as a lost assignment." And when everyone can see everyone else's homework, he says, "I encourage the collaborative and competitive aspects of their work with a hot icon." The modern day equivalent of a gold star, his graphic icon of hot flames appears next to student work he wants others to look at. One click on the icon and students can review their colleague's submission.

Completing the assignments is one thing, he notes, but "getting

one's way around our hybrid network and managing to post the assignment is an incredibly valuable skill." Being network-literate at the GSD can reduce a great deal of frustration, he adds.

At the Business School, digitized videotapes play a role in many case studies. A few have involved established websites, such as John Quelch's International Marketing Management course. But videos' enormous electronic space requirements mean that for now, they can only be seen on the computers in the school's Shad Lab, opened last fall, where some 80 terminals are equipped with a high-speed link. Previewing the videos before class enhances student preparation, says Quelch, Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing, and means professors save five to ten minutes at the start of class when they used to screen videotapes. A dedicated server in his classroom, the first at the Business School, can replay selections from the videos for review during class discussion.

Similarly, the Law School uses more stand-alone applications, rather than exploiting the Web's visual capabilities, although about one-fourth of all classes have websites. One class meeting in Legal Reasoning, run by Charles Nesson, Weld Professor of Law, asked students to review a website that showed optical illusions -- images that seemed to change as their background contexts shifted -- before a discussion of the Rodney King videotape and the way the court case changed the jury's perception of the tape.

Appropriate Technology

While the Web is an important tool for education, says George Brackett, lecturer and director, Technology in Education, at the Graduate School of Education, "I'm more interested in the potential of networks in general." In his course, Designing Educational Experiences for Networks and Webs, students learn to evaluate and produce networked resources for teaching and learning -- the process many Harvard professors and teaching fellows have just begun as the Web emerges as a viable tool to enhance student learning and their own teaching.

Not every course needs visual support. Simply establishing e-mail may be the network resource required to fulfill a course's goals. "The most vital electronic revolution that has taken place of recent date regarding teacher-student communication is electronic mail, not the Web," says David Eddy Spicer, assistant director, new media, at the Kennedy School of Government.

Transitional Period

Harvard may be wiring buildings, installing terminals, and upgrading servers in many schools, but day-to-day course administration stands at a transitional stage. Despite the growing popularity of the Web as a teaching tool, it remains just that, one tool of many available to Harvard faculty today. There's still plenty of paper in the classroom.

Any student resistance to accessing the Web for a course can be tied to time constraints. Most students are technologically adept, but are too busy to "surf" a Web page, even for a course they've enrolled in, says Andy Green '98, unless it's required. "Why read lecture notes or section assignments on the Web when I get them in class?" he asks. If a website has good information links that help with a paper, he'll take the time to explore them.

Tarrant provides his students with "gentle coercion" to visit the course website by posting the first few section assignments only on the Web.

A number of technical glitches remain to be overcome -- and the ultimate limitation is the speed of computers available to students. Sophisticated images, audio and video functions all require large amounts of memory and fast processors.

What the Future Holds -- New Applications, Finite Resources

If Harvard's computer hardware keeps pace with demands for speed and capacity, a number of future developments await. "The technology is evolving to where users can view imagery interactively," says ICG's Bergen. "Through QuickTime virtual reality, we can program in 'hot spots' where an object can be rotated or zoomed in on for a closer look."

Today, Web novices interested in using technology in their courses can access the ICG's "Instructor's Toolkit," but in the fall, the ICG hopes to offer Web authoring tools for faculty unfamiliar with HTML, the programming language currently used to create pages on the Web. A course website creator would only require the faculty member have access to the Web without further knowledge. As demands rise for ICG support, more of these self-help tools should free up staff members to work together with faculty to explore more innovative methods of integrating Harvard's computing resources and curricular goals.

After his first year of exploring and testing Web technology, Tarrant says, "Now we've got something we can play with in future years." And establish even more connections.

Anyone interested in learning more about new approaches to teaching with computers at Harvard should attend the next meeting of the Technology in Education Working Group, Wednesday, April 2, 3:30 to 5 p.m. in Science Center, Lecture Room A. Meetings rotate among schools to share information on how different schools apply technology to teaching.

Websites to visit to begin integrating the Web into the classroom include: Instructional Computing Group: http://icg.harvard.edu/ Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning: http://fas-www.harvard.edu/~bok_cen/programs/technology.html