Facing an increasing student to faculty ratio in first year courses, the Department of Mathematics has taken a novel approach to the implementation of these materials. In the Fall Semester of 1997, the department opened the Math Emporium - a learning center equipped with over 200 Mac/PC workstations that provide online support for instruction and evaluation (online quizzes). Additionally, much of the information found at the Emporium can be retrieved by any computer with Internet access.
The Linear Algebra Group, dubbed "Cyber1114" by its project leader have created an interactive, web-based system that uses the Internet in four ways. First, there is an HTML homepage for all sections of the course. Each professor can then link his or her own class site to the homepage so that he or she can post announcements and other information for a particular section. The hompage includes general information about the course, help with using the on-line materials, the syllabus for all sections (including access to grades), and links to individual sections, the Math Department, the Honor Code, and additional software.
Secondly, the Cyber1114 site is used to provide online access to an electronic version of the traditional text book; an e-Text. The e-Text is still very much in development and will not be covered by this project analysis, but it does have some promising features. Not only does it provide a free copy of the course text, it can be linked directly (and is in some cases) to the practice quizzes. The intention is that when a student doesn't know how to answer a question for an online quiz, he or she can link directly back to the specific section in the e-Text that covers the particular topic being tested.
The online quizzes are the third way in which the site is used. Each section contains access to a "practice quiz" and a "final quiz". Final quizzes can only be accessed from the Emporium and both require PID's and passwords. (Only practice quizzes are covered in this project and further use of the term "quiz" or "quizzes" assumes "practice quizzes".) Quizzes have an interface that is distinct and separate from the standard browser used to access the site (see also "A Look at Quizzes"). Quizzes are presented with a mixture of true/false, multiple choice, and fill-in-the-blank questions that are answered via mouse clicks and keyboard entries.
The fourth way the Cyber1114 Group uses its site is to provide on-line
tutorials that follow along with lectures and sections in the text.
These tutorials, referred to as "Presentations", are the major focus of this
analysis. Ultimately the visionaries of the Cyber1114 see a system quite
like the one Dr. John M. Carroll described as a failure in his book
Making Use: Scenario-Based Design (in press). Audio and streamed video
may soon be incorporated into the system, but for now, Presentations serve
to deliver animated examples and additional explanation of the complex
problems studied in the course. The Presentations are not presumed to take
the place of a the instructor and the chalkboard, but rather to provide a
simulation of the instructor and the chalkboard for when the student is not
in the classroom.