I Interface aspects
The site is rich but not very
user friendly
The site is rich in information: most of the pages contain
numerous links to lectures, materials; and, help references. However, it
is very easy to get lost within all this information. A greater use of
different styles, colors, images and navigation tools (menus, map of the
site, etc.) would greatly simplify and encourage visiting this site.
An interesting proposition for
collaborative teaching
There is a big interest in sharing class resources among different
universities. Presently, this site offers a good basis for such an approach.
However, as the number of users increases it will become necessary to modify
its architecture in order to offer a fast and consistent teaching collaborative
tool for professors (on-line help, newsgroups, cache, etc.).
A powerful online debate
The debate proposes some very interesting user-rights
authorization management features (different accesses for visitor, students
or professors) which enable the professor to very easily administrate and
parameterize the debates. Nevertheless, a better clarity in the display
of the overview of the debate may be obtained.
II Social aspects
Teacher's Perspective:
Encouraging computer supported
collaborative work
During an span of six academic semesters a majority of the
students 64% in average
participating in the Professionalism in Computing class debates reported
they were attracted to engaging in collaborative work activities, particularly
on-line debates.
Chosing one's work time
As debate sessions do not meet at any particular time but only
when students log on, it is easy to postpone attendance-procrastination
that can easily turn into falling seriously behind.
Tool for collaborative learning
The whiteboard-style debate presentations and discussions exemplify
a collaborative learning activity that is often difficult in large traditional
classrooms with many students but that tends to work in a virtual environment.
Mastering class material
Virtual debates often assess mastery of material by assigning
students to identify key concepts or skills in each discussion topic of
the course. Students are made partners in deciding how to resolve the issues
presented to them.
Student's Perspective
Idea of a website is preferable
to having the information provided by any other means.
This is evident because 60% of the students
admit to prefering to have to look up information anywhere on the site
rather than having to buy the book or look it up at the reserve desk.
Clumsy
In conclusion this homepage is organised very systematically,
all the goals of the student were met with the help of the resources present
on the net. But, information overload results with a sheer amount of information
available as can be seen from the survey where more than 90%
of students admit that the site is too extensive and the information
difficult to find and more than half the students admit to only
printing assignments off the site
Only 3% admit to missing out on information
on the course because they do not have access to the site.
Method of having online
debates is not motivating
This is seen from the fact that none
of the students (over the last couple of years) have liked the online debates
and rank this as the least popular part of the course.
More images on the site
Students ( about 60%) prefer
to have more images on the site to break the monotony of text and only
15% of then think that the overhead of downloading
the images offsets the advantage of having them.