Examples of how a web site with email was used as an auxiliary information conduit in educating VET students at SIT.
Twelve TCF educators at SIT were shown how to publish on the WWW. They were provided with web space. Some of the pages that they published on the Internet are shown.
Lessons learned from the experience of being a resource person for those educators are discussed.
An attempt is made to establish IT trends. Those trends are used to predict likely VET IT requirements. In the light of experience gleaned teaching and training with the WWW, procedures are suggested that might expeditiously fulfil those requirements.
Businesses established on the www can be categorized as �new concept� or �supporting�. New concept businesses are, in general, totally new companies like amazon.com or yahoo.com. An example of a supporting www presence would be Hewlett Packard.
Consider the virtual bookstore www.amazon.com. Forecasters anticipate that Amazon will capture a significant proportion of the world book trade within the next decade. Unlike RL (Real Life) booksellers, Amazon is not a geographic entity. Customers, once familiar with the low price structure, delivery schedules and availability can be expected to maintain brand loyalty. Awareness of these possibilities has driven the value of amazon.com shares to previously inconceivable values.
Existing corporations find that a supporting web presence greatly enhances the quality and delivery of information and service. The latest ball bearing catalogues are available from www.skf.com; the latest Ferrari performance data are at www.ferrari.com. Pizzas can be ordered, accommodation leased or travel booked "on line".
The organisations that are successfully on line, whether new concept or supporting, provide the following advantages to customers:
Although many commentators believe that the dotcom market is overheated, very few doubt that Internet venture corporations have mind-boggling potential.
A group of Civil Engineers has recently assembled a comprehensive information package about their course on a framed web site. Of special interest is an adaptive teaching course for statics. This suite of programs is written in html (hypertext mark-up language). It is available to anyone at http://www.bc.sit.edu.au/statics/index.html. Presumably, those who use this software will be persuaded to pay for the qualifying examination.
Industrial Engineers at SIT have produced a multimedia instruction package on CD. The package includes video clips and voice over procedural demonstrations. This venture to explore the educational possibilities of multimedia shows promise. However, on the bandwidth conceivably available in the next few years it is unlikely that this material would be delivered on the www.
In Mechanical Engineering a study has been made of the application of more mundane Internet technologies. For the past two and a half years, web pages & email have been used to provide auxiliary class support and to deliver different gradations of flexible learning to VET students. Information published on the www included call in notices, problem solutions, notice of class examinations & laboratory classes, indicative assessment guides, sample examination papers and examination results. An e-mail response was provided to educational & administrative queries. A limited number of small group tutorials and exams, and individual tutorials and exams were organized using the www.
In the absence of this initiative some students might otherwise have been denied the opportunity of studying those subjects with "on demand" contact with a teacher. To date several score students have benefited from this initiative by attempting theoretical subjects such as Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Engineering Computing, CAD3D and Engineering Maths while obtaining various levels of Internet support.
There were two section head teachers in TCF at Ultimo; each HT supervised five full time teaching staff. Each section had four computers, printers and a scanner. All computers (except one) had WIN95 O/S and all were connected to the college network, thence connected to the Internet through a firewall. The firewall did not permit the Netscape mail composer to be used. It would greatly simplify email handling if the Netscape or IE email systems were available.
The entry level of computer literacy skills of the teachers in TCF varied widely. None of the educators revealed any web editing (html) skills. Those who had a computer on their desk had the greatest computer literacy.
An online appointment diary was used. The diary was accessed by clicking on the Greek letter sigma (Ó) in the bottom right corner of the staff web page. Information transfers developed as follows.
http://barvennon.com/~sit/mfgstaff.html
Many staff have acquired advanced html skills. Some sites contained upwards of a dozen linked html pages. Techniques for publicizing sites were explained and utilized. An inspection of the http logs some weeks later showed that several daily hits were recorded on the site.
From the rules & procedures established by SIT site management it could be inferred that management holds an image of academics publishing on their site as of a bolting horse that must be reined in. As a trainer, I found a more appropriate image of academics to be that of an apprehensive mouse that must be given free rein to obtain any movement at all.
The greatest hindrance that was found in the introduction of www publishing technology was the lack of interest in publishing. Academics are experts in their own right, and tend to deny the utility of any skill that they do not already possess. The task was not made easier by the absence of any inordinately successful application of the www to education.
Consequently, after persuading staff to �give it a go�, it was important to provide positive feedback in the form of a successfully uploaded www site. Any imposed constraints at all on style would have made the task of creating a www page very much more complex, and would have tended to diminish interest.
If management wishes to have academics utilize the www for teaching, it is recommended that the following environmental guidelines be considered.
The problem is not to achieve uniformity of output.
The problem is to produce any output at all.
| 1979 Introduction of computers | 1999 Introduction of Internet | 10 year Trend |
|---|---|---|
| Computers had been in common use for nearly two decades. | The Internet is about a decade old. Browsers are about five years old. | Hardware and software will mutate with dizzying speed. |
| The smallest computer that could be purchased was valued at several times the annual basic wage. | Anyone can buy minimal equipment required to connect to the Internet for about 2% of the basic wage. | The telephone will be absorbed into the internet browser. Access to www will become ultra cheap. |
| Educational management had a very good idea of how computers would be integrated into the curriculum. | Successful application of Internet technologies to general education has not yet been decided. | Educational planning will move from the question what to do to the question how to train staff to use IT developments on www. |
| The only practicable college system was a central mainframe computer that timeshared the demands of up to 100 users simultaneously. | Size & cost determine practicable system designs, which range from large, centralized & expensive to small, cellular & cheap. | The only practicable college system will be distributed cellular connected via Internet. Large central systems will virtually disappear. |
| Because of cost and scale considerations, systems had to be centrally planned; faculties shared the central computer. | Central purchasing lacks flexibility, costs more in capital & maintenance, produces 2-year delays introducing technology. | College planning will be concerned solely with data security across the Internet. Faculty controls purchasing decisions. |
There will ultimately be only two or three certifying organizations for each vocation. These organizations will produce marque qualifications of trusted standard, like Coca-Cola or Pepsi for soft drinks; McDonald's for Burgers.
The race has started. Microsoft and Novell have become the certifying organizations for certificates in computing. They have achieved this by publishing a syllabus and franchising a worldwide testing network. City & Guilds are paralleling that evolution. They seek trainers, and already offer franchised testing all over the world. The University of Minnesota has recently taken the first step toward becoming a worldwide agricultural university.
There is room at the top of each vocation for two or three testing authorities. Whoever captures recognition as the quality examiner will come to be the possessor of a marque that is comparable in value to the Netscape or Amazon or even Microsoft domain marques.
To paraphrase the closing comments of Clive Graham, Learn www publishing or look outside the communications industry for work!
Faculty of Industry
Studies. Sydney Institute of Technology, 13 August
1999.