Dr Stephen Bostock FSEDA, Keele University

Since 1995/96 I have taught The Internet and Cyberspace annually for over 300 social science and humanities undergraduates. The one-semester course is largely online using the Web and e-mail, with only one introductory lecture, weekly practicals in groups of 35 with demonstrators helping, and weekly videos. Online groupwork is part of both the content and process of the course. Assessment is includes evidence of 10 practical tasks, submitted by email, of which two relate to contributions to an asynchronous computer conference performed in groups of eight over eight course weeks. The course was designed from a specific constructivist theory and its design and initial evaluation was published in Bostock (1998). Assessed groupwork has always been the most problematical area of the course design and each year I try to improve it.

Online communications are part of the content of the course and also the norm for course processes, using group and individual e-mail, Web forms emailing myself, a course Usenet group, and IRC synchronous chat. The most significant group activity is the use of workspaces in BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work). BSCW is a Web-based conferencing system, based on a central site, that allows anyone to create private workspaces for groups invited by their e-mail addresses. Groups of about 8 students were used; smaller groups in a previous year had generated too little activity, while the whole course uses the course Usenet discussion. Each group is chosen by myself from students sharing a face-to-face practical session, and is all-male, all-female, or an even mix. This is so that I can look for gender differences. The workspaces are private to me, the group, and the senior demonstrator of the practical sessions. Generally I contribute only two messages to each workspace (there are over 40 of them).

In week four of the course, students are subscribed to BSCW and perform the first task of responding to an initial Welcome message. Their task is then and every week to add at least one message to the workspace, either a new question or an answer to, or comment on, an existing question. Some questions are provided as starting points, linked to the weekly videos ("lectures" in the timetable) which deal with an issue each week: for example, gender issues in cyberspace, the Internet and education, and art in cyberspace. Questions start a new article (thread) in the workspace discussion and answers are replies to it.

To pass the course, students need to submit the 10 tasks by e-mail, plus a final report submitted on paper (to enable its rapid marking). As the final practical task, after 8 weeks' online discussion, students are asked to submit two items from their workspace: a copy of the "outline view" showing all message titles, authors and dates, and a copy of the messages of a selected thread in which they have taken part. Both are easy to copy from BSCW. To complete this task they need to have authored at least 5 messages in the first item (the outline) and to have authored at least one message in the second item. Demonstrators (postgraduate students) mark the tasks as pass or fail. Any inadequate ones are returned to students for improvement. Demonstrators are not expected to judge the quality of discussion and, with so many students and workspaces, I cannot do so. (The grade for the whole course is based only on the final report, which is marked by myself.)

Evaluation of the course by students is done by Web form questionnaires that send data to a file for spreadsheet analysis. In some years interviews have also been held. The evaluation of online groupwork asks

• whether they prefer discussion online or face-to-face
• whether the sex of the group makes any difference, online or face-to-face
• how many group members they know to talk to face-to-face
• what they liked and disliked about using BSCW
• how they rated different online environments they used in the course.

The course has run three times since 1995/96. The philosophy of its design is described in Bostock (1997, 1998). Faced with a large student body and one tutor, an online environment was designed to encourage constructivist learning based on the principles of authentic assessment, student responsibility, generative learning activities, authentic context and cooperative support. The development process was and is incremental, which makes best use of the Web environment. The Web interface was initially restricted by the low specification of student computers, but it has been improved each year. Web forms for gathering student data and evaluations have been added. In the first course only a Usenet group was available for discussion but this was functionally limited, public, and was little used. In the second year, BSCW was introduced to create private workspaces and more functionality. Each year there is more emphasis on its use; it is used for longer in the course and with more importance for assessment.

BSCW is used from its home site in Germany. The server software is also free for installation elsewhere and my University is currently considering that option. From Germany the software has an acceptable response time and the only difficulties are in registering large numbers of students in a short period of time during their fourth practical session. The mechanism is that, through BSCW, I invite them to their workspaces using their e-mail addresses, pasted from a course register. This generates a standard e-mail to each student containing a specific URL. They paste this into a browser to generate a registration dialogue in which they choose a login name and password. They then see the workspace. Some students do not manage this procedure, and re-invitation is necessary. Also, the server cannot cope well with a class of 35 registering at once.

The course replaced an Office Automation that had lectures and a final examination. The advantages of an online course here are being able to attempt a constructivist design despite large numbers of students (370 in 1997/98.)

The course is still over-assessed and in the next run a structured activity in BSCW, taking place though most of the course, may replace the final report. This would be a similar marking load but would have to be done on-screen. One technical snag is that BSCW does not list messages in author order. Students would therefore still submit by email an outline of the workspace plus a selection of their contributions and a reflective commentary on them. Assessment would be based on the quantity and quality.

S.J.Bostock, 1997, Designing Web-Based Instruction for Active Learning, chapter 26 in Web Based Instruction, ed. Badrul Khan, published by Educational Technology Publications, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey ISBN 0-87778-297-0

S.J.Bostock, 1998, Constructivism in Mass Higher Education: a Case Study British Journal of Educational Technology 29 (3) 225-240