A Newsletter Enabling Information Technologies by the IRMC IT Department

Summer 1998

Designing IRMC Distance Education Courses for our DoD Customers - Dr. Kasprzak present the latest in a series of article on this key emerging technology.

Looking Over Your Shoulder From 5000 Miles Away! - Dr. Saunders shares his experiences regarding a successful collaborative effort.

New Technology Labs and Demonstrations in the Critical Information Systems Technology (CST) Course - Learn about the latest IT developments used to support our CIO certificate program students.

By Dr. Jim Kasprzak

Granted that distance education offers some significant advantages to students and faculty alike. Granted that military personnel -- hard-charging, intelligent, focused career officers -- are intensely attracted by access to educational facilities while they are stationed in remote locations. Granted even that some see distance education as an important cost-cutting tool -- a means of downsizing educational capital plant. Granted all this, what should the role of our college be in this developing area? Certainly IRMC needs to take seriously the new electronic means of teaching. We teach the application of information technology, and now the newest information technologies are reshaping our own profession. Still, it is not entirely clear how cyberspace education media are best tailored to our senior military student population, the executive level of our programs and studies, and our interactive seminar techniques. We aren't trainers; we provide graduate education. Recognizing the potential value of the new learning environment, the IRMC conducted a one-year study of distance learning techniques and tools.

Dr. Jay Alden, Director of Distance Learning, who actually taught three IRMC Intensive Courses by electronic means over the last academic year, led the instructors. The courses were selected to represent a range of subject matter, teaching techniques, and presentational difficulty. The instructors were selected for brilliance, innovation and personal magnetism - - and a disregard for pain.

Jay taught "Measuring Results of Organizational Performance" using the IRMC web space and bulletin board software. He also conducted other experiments with synchronous chat rooms and slide graphics with voice. Jay is highly knowledgeable in DE modes and techniques, attends academic conferences on the subject, and has written a book on the tools of distance education. The course itself presents some of the core material of the College and the Information Strategies Department.

Ed Fitzpatrick taught "Information Technology Capital Planning", another of the core courses of the College, and a very topical subject. Ed has developed considerable expertise in multimedia graphics, and used e-mail, a "web repository" of information, and the IRMC web space.

He spent a great deal of time employing collaborative learning techniques: forming work groups, developing collaborative work products and using "team approaches". In this way, Ed assessed the application of electronic technologies to "executive" seminars and teaching through small group interaction. (As opposed to lectures and "training" in a subject area.)

Jim Kasprzak (me) guarded the rear. I taught the "Information Highway" course: 70% by email, with asynchronous remailing of responses to other class members; some Internet graphics; and a great deal of student use of the online resources of the Internet itself.

I taught this course twice, to see if teaching was easier the second time around. The course itself is concerned with the application of telecommunications technologies to government applications, and therefore uses demonstrations and hands-on exercises to illustrate new technology -- a topic of great interest to the Information Technology Department. ("Just exactly how DO you teach the Internet over the Internet?")

Over the course of the year, the instructors drew some conclusions and recommended future steps in the program, including purchase of several software packages. Here are some "lessons learned" and and the broad axis of our advance into cyberspace:

The book is not the same as the movie. Even if you have taught a particular course previously in a classroom environment, you may find it challenging to translate personal presence and verbal, interactive instruction into a textual presentational medium. Text has no gestures, pauses, vocal intonation or body cues. Oh sure, we have commas, ellipses... even emoticons :) with which to modulate text, and they have some uses, but they are inadequate, distracting, sometimes even unredeemingly tacky, like this: ; ) (a wink).

Instructional text online should (must?) be supplemented with extensive graphics, but up to now, the use of graphics online has been a challenge. (Before cyberteaching, all we had to do was teach from the book. Now we have to write and illustrate the book, too!) The design and preparation of sound, voice, photos, graphics files of all sorts represent a significant amount of overhead for a teacher. And considerations of technical aesthetics, new software, and the special techniques of online graphics handling don't make it any easier. Thankfully, however, graphics are becoming more standardized, new capabilities are being built into the most common software packages (like Office 97 and Netscape), and the online environment is becoming much, much easier to navigate. Be that as it may, be prepared for a job of conversion. Instructional material must be converted into something suitable for the online medium, compatible with whatever graphics and other software you and your students have, and hopefully, useable and appropriate for your students and your subject. The good news is that once the transition is made, much of the material can be reused in future classes.

A full scale teaching effort at IRMC requires some standardized organization and support for graphics and software -- a "shell" within which teachers can customize. Accordingly, the College has procured "LearningSpace", a software package for management of virtual classrooms. It runs on an IRMC server using Domino (a Lotus product) for accesss to the Internet. The software permits use of different types of browsers, graphics software, and other applications packages to be used by different teachers within the common environment. It also has useful applications in team or collaborative learning. Procurement of this package represents some institutional commitment to the Lotus/Domino/LearningSpace way of doing things, although the typical professor will only need a relatively simple "user-level" knowledge of the software. In June, ten professors, systems support and technical people attended an orientation class on LearningSpace in preparation for the new academic year.

Modes of Communication.

Different kinds of application software and different modes of communication are available for use over the Internet. None of the experimenters found it satisfactory to use just one form of communications.

Email, for example, is relatively easy to use, private, more personal than mass distribution, and it can be custom tailored. An instructor can type out five pages of general commentary -- the "school solution" -- and insert specific comments for each individual's paper. This lengthy, 'customized' feedback is very strongly appreciated by students. It has the look and feel of a personal note. This technique is useful for counseling, grading, advising, general feedback. On the other hand, email is a terribly clumsy tool for other teaching tasks. Email allows you to simultaneously transmit a lecture to a dozen (or a thousand) students at once. It also permits a dozen (or a thousand) students to send you personalized, lengthy, detailed messages. And, of course, the etiquette of the Internet is that email is answered promptly. For a professor who tries to maintain the "personal touch" with students, email teaching can be a time sink. That's not strong enough…. It can be the event horizon of a personal and professional Black Hole.

Another private, quick, but potentially time-consuming avenue of communications is the telephone. Most course request forms provide you with a work phone number for the student. This number is usually reliable, and can be used to straighten out small problems that would be solved too slowly or clumsily by email. (The form usually doesn't have an email address, and the mailing address is unreliable. Going through "official mailrooms" can delay materials for days or weeks, and it is a chore to justify priority mail services. Whenever it is possible, use electronic means to distribute readings, syllabi, etc. It will simplify your life.) The telephone also helps provide a personal touch. Students are pleasantly surprised and grateful when you call, even once during a course, just to ask, "Having any problems?" Many students feel that the electronic academic experience is a little impersonal, and the sound of a friendly voice can promote a more productive and less stressful educational experience.

Asynchronous conferences are the most common form of distance teaching technique. The instructor types out a lecture or gives an assignment, and ends the posting with a thought-provoking question. All students respond in writing, and (presumably) interact with each other. This "bulletin board" technique has long been used on the Internet, and can be very effective if monitored closely. In effect, every student writes a well-thought essay each week on a specified topic -- a fairly sophisticated and high-level teaching model. It is even better if the students continue the discussion, but not all classes are so engaged. Some students may try to address only the instructor, avoid debate, or may not even read the comments of other students. ("Hey, why make this harder than it has to be?") Other students will give minimum responses. ("I agree with John completely.") Even more so than in a physical classroom, the instructor needs to keep the debate moving and directed without being overly intrusive. LearningSpace has a full range of asynchronous text conferencing capabilities that can help you perform these functions.

Synchronous conferences ("chat sessions") are interactive, text-based sessions which are excellent for group discussions, team activities, and other forms of simultaneous group learning activities. These sessions are excellent for coordination and discussion, but all participants need to be online at the same time -- which can cause problems if students are physically located in different time zones. (Kasprzak's Law #305: "If you have 15 distance learning students, they will be located in 16 time zones.")

This activity also requires good typing skills, or the discussions will be brief, cryptic, and filled with acronyms. Because synchronous conferencing seems well suited for our type of high-level seminars and executive training, IRMC has obtained and a separate software package which uses voice interaction as well as text. ("OnLive!") In this way, we hope that even typing-challenged instructors and students will be able to interact appropriately in electronic seminars.

Finally, IRMC is obtaining a software package called "Real Publisher" which allows the instructor to broadcast audio and video files over the Internet. Real Publisher uses "streaming" technology, which means that users can play files quickly: the student doesn't have to wait until files are completely downloaded. The plugin software is free to the students and can be obtained readily over the Internet. This easy access to video technology will allow IRMC distance education professors to show films, provide voice commentary and give personal welcomes to students over the Internet. More important, it would allow the Information Technology Department to demonstrate information technology and its applications. Lengthy films will still be just as boring on the Internet as in the classroom, but short, pointed demonstrations and procedural illustrations will allow far more depth and richness to teaching technology concepts and applications in the online environment. There is some risk in using this particular software, since it is close to the technical edge, but we consider that the entire Internet is moving toward more bandwidth, more video, more sound. ASCII text is not a humanistic medium; it was a temporary expedient for communication in the early human/computer relationship. Humans aren't designed to type text; they are designed to talk and wave their hands a lot. As bandwidth and processing power become cheaper and more accessible, video and other multimedia will replace text on our PC screens. IRMC needs to get experience with video now.

The new software and hardware will be available for experimentation to all IRMC instructors through this summer and continuing throughout the next academic year. Three distance learning intensive courses were offered this year, and two or three will be added in the Fall. If yours is not one of these courses, you might want to teach a class in someone else's course, or include some distance education techniques in your own classroom. (How about putting advanced readings on the Intranet for Intensive courses?) Information technology has certainly had dramatic effects on other professions, and we can now anticipate its impacts upon our own field. It will certainly be to our advantage at IRMC to learn more about distance education, before (as George Gilder puts it) the coming of the "maelstrom of bits."

Colonel Carroll put Dr. Saunders in touch with Mr. Kit Lee, a savvy technician at Fort Shafter who would set up the GroupSystems group decision support software on their internal network and act as "technographer" for the upcoming decision sessions. Kit had no training in the software and felt uneasy about running a session with a group of USACE managers. In a couple of preliminary talks John and Kit established PC to PC contact through Microsoft's NetMeeting. This software utilizes Internet protocol (IP) addressing for establishing "Chats" and for application sharing across the Internet. Application sharing allows a participant in one location to see the exact same screen image as their sharing partner, even when thousands of miles apart. Additionally either party can operate the remote keyboard and mouse from his own mouse and keyboard. With Kit acting as the newly appointed technographer and with John "looking over his shoulder" to guide him through troublesome points, they conducted some artificial meetings.

At 9:00 Hawaiian time on May 18, 1998, Dr Saunders, with Professor Paul Flanagan's assistance, utilized NetMeeting to link 6 computers in 101 Marshall Hall directly to 6 corresponding computers in a Decision Lab in Hawaii. Utilizing NetMeeting's capability John and Paul could look directly at what the participants were doing with the GroupSystems software on their computers. John and Paul could also grab control of the Technographer station to demonstrate how to set up new users or to add items to an agenda. Both locations also had Internet based video cameras connected to allow the participants to view each other. Audio contact was conducted through regular phone lines. Although NetMeeting also has audio transfer capability, the current asynchronous limited bandwidth of the Internet limits seamless, smooth audio transmission.

Finally at 10:00, a group of managers strolled into USACE Ft Shafter's decision lab. For the next hour a meeting was conducted to both demonstrate the capability of the software and to find the highest and best uses for it at Ft Shafter. The participants were able to see the value added of the technology and find many new uses in their decision realm. With insight from the Chief of Staff and technicians at Ft Shafter and assistance from the IRM faculty, the USACE in Hawaii is well on its way to self-sufficiency in group decision support and the resultant significantly improved decision processes.

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) certificate program has blossomed. The individual courses that comprise that program have been melded together to form a comprehensive integrated program. This melding has produced some interesting changes in the CST labs and demonstrations. The first lab that has undergone extensive changes is the Computer-Supported Collaborative Work lab. Originally the lab demonstrated Lotus Notes and GroupSystems. Now in addition, the students explore avatars and meetings over the Internet.

Another demonstration, which has changed in the last months, has been the "Improvements to the User's Interface" demonstration. The students see continuous speech recognition, machine translation and even talk to a computer called "Jupiter" at MIT that tells you about the weather.

Totally new labs teach the students the basics of virtual reality and systems dynamics. Dr. Steve Knode and Dr. John Saunders have developed these new labs. Steve's lab givers the students an opportunity to learn first hand about Virtual Reality. John teaches the students difficulties of managing a software development organization.

Still more changes are on the horizon. Jack Egan and Tom Verni are developing a series of information security demonstrations. John Saunders and Paul Flanagan intend to demonstrate executive speech solution in the first quarter of the FY 99 fiscal year.

Stay tuned to keep current on these rapidly changing labs and demonstrations!

Visit us at http://www.ndu.edu/irmchp

Editor Les Pang, e-mail: pangl@ndu.edu, (202) 685-2060, http://members.aol.com/lpang10473/default.htm

Graphics Designer Jim Looney