Discussions
4.5 Findings related to how Learners responded to the on-line presentation of subject matter
Assistance given by the Instructor
Although it was against the rules to offer assistance to students while they were working on the OLDEC, the Instructor had to intervene, at times when it was found that the students were making blatant errors.
Unsupervised sessions
When students used the laboratory after hours to practice on the OLDEC, the Instructor was not present to control the environment to simulate a distance education scenario, and face-to-face communication could have occurred.
Interaction during feedback sessions
Once a week, one session was dedicated to interviewing students to gain feedback on the course.
4.5 Findings related to how Learners responded to the on-line presentation of
why one should not use all uppercase letters when typing out messages. It was not mentioned to the student that, using all capital letters was the equivalent of "shouting"
Ambiguity
It was found that in certain instances, students were confused with ambiguous statements. For Example instead of giving the instruction "click on home" the instruction "go to home" was given which could have implied that the student was required to go back to the home page.
Content errors
It was found that in some instances there were spelling and grammatical errors in the content. In a few instances there were technical errors. For example, when one was giving instructions on "how to access e-mail", some of the instructions were insufficient or incorrect. This tended to confuse and annoy students.
Incorrect sequence of lessons
It was found that in one instance, the lesson on "e-mail" should have come after the lesson on "web-browsers", since knowledge of web-browsers were necessary in accessing web-based e-mail.
Lack of focus
It was found that when students were presented with large amounts of content, they were overwhelmed (Information overload) and found it difficult to identify content that was important for assessment purposes. The Instructor failed to indicate to students what was relevant for the test.
Insufficient development of critical thinking skills
In a traditional classroom setup, students are not normally given an opportunity to consult their notes when taking assessments. In an on-line distance education scenario
students will have access to the content while taking assessments (the equivalent of
"open-book" examinations), resulting in test questions being made more complex, requiring students to apply their critical and analytical skills. The Instructor did not encourage students to engage with the content in a critical manner, eventually preparing them for " open-book" assessments.
Failure to adapt content to the language level of students
It was found that in some instances, the Instructor copied whole chunks of content from web sites on the Internet and directly imported it into the OLDEC web pages.
The Instructor did not modify the language and complexity level in any way to suit the needs of the students, resulting in confusion among students.
Failure to acknowledge copyrighted content
It was found that in certain instances, where content was imported from other web sites on the Internet, no copyright acknowledgements, citations or reference information was provided
Lack of sufficient computer literacy
Although most students completed End-User Computing, a pre-requisite subject for the OLDEC, some of them had problems accomplishing simple tasks, like double - clicking on icons. It was therefore wrongly assumed that all students had the necessary computer skills such as keyboarding skills, operating system procedures, and knowledge of web browser features. Students were asked whether they had enough background information and computer literacy given to them in first year to handle this course. 83% of the responses were "no" and 17% were "yes".
Insufficient time allocation
Most students complained that the forty-minutes allocated for each lesson was not sufficient to complete the lesson. The Instructor found it difficult to gauge the amount
of content that needed to be put into a lesson, smce students' abilities varied so widely.
Problems adapting to on-line content
Students had problems adapting to this new method of content delivery (viewing infommtion on the screen). Students found it difficult to adapt to studying from the computer without having the content in their note- books or textbooks. Some students even went to the extent of copying all the contents from their computer screens into their notebooks. Students had to be reminded that the content was to be made available to them during the assessments.
Students were asked what were their expenences m a "Normal Traditional Classroom" and a "Virtual Classroom". The following is a summary of their expenences.
• One can obtain much more information from the Internet than from a textbook.
• If you have a problem, one can get a solution quicker from the lecturer than from the computer.
• The computers are not available to us after hours and at home, but textbooks are for revision and memorizing.
• During classroom lectures, we are given exercises to do to measure our progress, but with the on-line system we were not given tasks because we don't have access to computers at home, so we cannot gauge our progress.
• In the classroom if you miss out a certain point, you can ask the lecturer at the same time, thus getting immediate feedback.
The use of OBE principles proved to be advantageous
OBE principles were used in the design of the content. It was found that this had positive effects. By stating the broad overall and specific outcomes prior to each lesson, students were informed from the outset on what skills, competencies, knowledge and values they were expected to achieve after completing each lesson. By
specifying the assessment criteria pnor to attempting the lesson, students were motivated, since they knew what was expected of them during the assessment tasks.
The need for preparing lessons in advance
It was found that some students after completing the tasks scheduled for the day, experimented with other parts of the system. Therefore one had to prepare a few lessons in advance to cater for those students that worked at an accelerated pace.
The need for making content portable
Although some students had after- hours access to computers with Browser software, not all of them had Internet facilities to gain access to the OLDEC. There was therefore a need for facilities for students to save the web pages on diskette or CD - re-writable media, thus allowing them the opportunity to view the OLD EC offline.
4.6 Finding related to how learners went about performing research using