The University of Pennsylvania's Online Computing Magazine
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February 1994 - Volume 10:4 [Printout | Contents | Search ]
By Celeste R. Stewart Time. There never seems to be enough. Each day brings more information, additional opportunities, new results, and better technologies--requiring each of us to work smarter and more efficiently to keep up. Dr. John Abercrombie, Senior Director of Educational Technology Services in SAS Computing, is well aware of time and its importance to faculty: "The central problem we all face, especially dealing with faculty education, is the question of time." Faculty, he notes, have a limited amount of time to keep abreast of current data in their field or to explore new areas of research--let alone time to improve their technical skills in using digital technology. How can faculty use this time efficiently? Dr. Abercrombie, along with colleagues Chris Hiester and Mike Nenashev, thought that it would be only logical to provide a technological solution. The result? Penn's first electronic mail seminar designed for faculty education. E-mail seminars are becoming popular on the Internet. Unlike electronic discussion groups, which can be diverse in their subject matter and purpose (colleagues discuss an array of topics, post jobs, announce conferences, and the like), e-mail seminars are courses taught online. Participants are expected to preregister, they receive a syllabus outlining the course topic and objectives, and yes, they may even be assigned homework. You may have heard of, or possibly were one of the subscribers to, "Navigating the Internet: Let's Go Gopherin'"--an e-mail seminar recently offered to the Internet community. "Gopherin'" enrolled 17,769 participants from 54 countries. The seminar consisted of 22 lessons-- one each day--and focused on how to use the network navigation tool Gopher and Gopher's companion search utility, Veronica. Ironically, because of the enormous enrollment, participants were initially asked to refrain from sending questions via e-mail. Abercrombie's e-mail seminar, "Communication Beyond E-Mail: Introduction to the Internet," is markedly different in size, audience, and scope. The seminar has been offered twice, but the more recent version, given last December, was limited to only 100 participants in order to promote "classroom" interaction and was targeted primarily for faculty, with some graduate and undergraduate student participation (80 people enrolled). Lessons were announced every three days via e-mail. Realizing that the course required means of explanation in addition to electronic mail, Abercrombie also integrated other media into the seminar. Each participant received a general textbook on the Internet, a suggested reading list, the PennNet PassPort (which provides a Penn perspective on the Internet), and the Gopher software appropriate for the participant's computing environment (Macintosh or Windows). Computing support was provided as needed--including help in setting up software. Prior to the course, Abercrombie, Hiester, and Nenashev had contacted participants to assess their level of knowledge about, and experience in using, the Internet. This assessment, says Abercrombie, along with lessons learned from the first offering of the seminar, helped him "fine tune" the course. As a result, the last offering featured a reduction in the amount of information provided at one time, "chunking" of information according to subject knowledge and expertise, and a shortening of the course length from four months to two months.
Internet-style research effciencyHow does "Introduction to the Internet" help faculty become more efficient researchers? The Internet can be viewed as a huge library of resources, and as Hiester points out, "Everyone in academia knows that everyone is using it [the Internet] and your academic survival depends on whoever has access to the information for doing research." But the trouble, says Abercrombie, is that "there's no catalog system and generally people don't know about search strategies to find these resources." Without a search strategy, countless hours can be lost wading through the Internet trying to find resources.Thus, the seminar focuses on how to use information retrieval tools available on the Internet, such as FTP, Telnet, Archie, Whois, MUD Gopher, Veronica, and the Mosaic software for the World-Wide Web (WWW). The Primary emphasis, however, is on Gopher and WWW, because they represent very distint ways in which information can be organized on the Internet and therefore require different search strategies, and because most of the other popular information retrieval tools are embedded within them. Gopher is a simple and linear menuing system for organizing, finding, and retrieving Internet resources. Its companion search utility, Veronica, alleviates much of the tedium involved in this approach to information organization. The WWW system can organize information in menus (and Gopher resources are accessible from within WWW, just as WWW services are accessible from within Gopher) but it also enables hypertext links between and within documents--ideal for use with information that lends itself to "chunking."
Teaching methodologyTeaching faculty members how to use Internet tools isn't Abercrombie's only motivation for offering this seminar: "There is a real need for faculty and students to experience first-hand the implosion of information on the Internet--because it illustrates fundamental issues--that we must return to the problems of methodology. Soon, everyone will have easy access to information. Tons of information. Millions of megabits of information. But what does it mean? How do you sort it out, organize, and structure it?" Such questions, says Abercrombie, speak to the mission of the University itself: "A fundamental goal of a university education is to improve one's methodologies for research." And he hopes, through his seminar, to encourage more faculty discussion about methodology and less about information.Abercrombie's own experience with the Internet has renewed his concern for methodology and had an impact on his teaching: "One thing I think I have begun to emphasize more and more is the quality of presentation that students have to make. The fact is that information is easier to acquire, but its meaning is more difficult to perceive. I try to emphasize that structure, organization, and the attempt to understand is more important than voluminous amounts of information."
What's next?In addition to helping faculty use Internet tools more efficiently and encouraging a dialog about teaching methodology, e-mail seminars can promote timely discussions about new developments and changes in technology that affect the University. "Publishers," says Abercrombie, "are very worried about the future of printed publications. Are there going to be printed publications? Are we just going to have electronic publications? How is information going to be distributed in the electronic age? These are fundamental questions that will have to be resolved very quickly. And actually, the technology is pushing that change." Abercrombie hopes to offer (in the spring) an e-mail seminar on electronic publishing to SAS faculty. The electronic publishing seminar will focus on how those changes will affect scholars at the University and how they can remain at the cutting edge of these changes.The future Abercrombie acknowledges that there is still a lot to learn about using e-mail seminars in terms of instructional and curriculum development strategies and opportunities. "We're sort of new at this and there aren't many people who have been doing this." Although he stresses that e-mail seminars are not the only resource for faculty education they do provide an effective way for faculty to exchange information resources, to share new approaches to information, to collaborate on research findings, and to explore the impact of new technologies. Because of these benefits, Abercrombie expects that e- mail seminars will offer new opportunities not only for faculty education but for student education as well. Within four to five years he envisions that Penn will offer credited e-mail seminars for students, understanding, however, that these seminars will have more personal contact than is offered today. In the future, e-mail seminars may play an important role in helping universities extend educational resources and opportunities as well as develop specialized programs that serve or supplement undergraduate and graduate educational needs.
CELESTE R. STEWART is a Senior Technical Writer for ISC Communications Group. Sidebar: Online Details Some of the material for Dr. Abercrombie's e-mail seminar "Communication Beyond E-Mail: Introduction to the Internet" is available online. Use Telnet, a Gopher client, or a WWW client such as NCSA Mosaic to access the material.
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