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Last modified 2 August 1999 // © 1998 Carolyn Gale // carolyn@relax.com

    The purpose of the workshop is to teach participants how to create online courses. A beta test of the workshop was offered in May, 1997. Four other workshops were then conducted in August and November, 1997, and March and May, 1998. Approximately 250 participants were enrolled in each offering of the workshop. The March 1998 workshop was selected for the case study due to insufficient data from the first two offerings and the fact that the May 1998 workshop was still in progress at the time of this study. This exploratory case study included first-hand observation of learner outputs and a survey of learner comments and ratings conducted following the workshop.

245 people participated in the workshop, primarily faculty from post-secondary educational institutions.

Materials

Online Workshop

    A non credit, seven week workshop was created using a web server, web authoring tool (Microsoft FrontPage), a database, and a program that interfaces the database to the Web (Cold Fusion). Allaire Forums was the tool used for threaded, web-based discussions. After registering, participants received a copy of the authoring software to be used to create their own courses.

 

Prerequisites

 

    Workshop prerequisites consisted of minimum requirements for hardware and software. Tables 4 and 5 display these minimum requirements. Participants were made aware of these prerequisites before registration. After participants registered, they were notified of three additional requirements: registration for the web conferencing system, verification of delivery of Microsoft FrontPage, and organizing existing course materials that would be made into an online course.

 

Objectives and Assignments

 

    In Part 1, students learned how to use Allaire Forums, the web conferencing system. They also rated the features of selected online courses, and discussed features on the conferencing system. In Part 2, students created their own personal web page using only a text editor. The purpose was to teach students how to write HTML code. Students began to create a course website using Microsoft FrontPage in Part 3, and continued to add features to the course in the remaining parts, with a syllabus and assignments page in Part 4, course materials in Part 5, and online discussion conference and chat system in Part 6. Strategies for managing an online course was covered in Part 7, including creating student portfolios and submitting assignments online.

    Table 6 lists the specific assignments for each part of the workshop. Certain assignments in the table are starred. These were designed for students who wanted to learn advanced concepts, and deemed optional by the workshop instructors. Students were always required to post a message in the conferencing system indicating completion of the assignment. Since students were creating different components of online courses, the indication of completion was usually a message with a hyperlink to the work completed for the assignment.

Survey

    An online survey was created by the workshop instructors and distributed to the participants one month after the course completion date. The purpose of the survey was to evaluate how satisfied the participants were with the workshop, and to find ways to improve the workshop in further sessions. Questions included basic demographics, overall satisfaction, time spent working in each section of the workshop, and specific questions that related to the factors discovered in the literature review. These specific questions covered the factors of: sense of community, time frame, credit/certification, amount of instructor intervention, organization of course materials, technology skills, and motivation for taking the workshop. Of the 245 participants, 92 completed the survey (located in Appendix A).

Procedure

    Participants voluntarily signed up for the workshop on a web site. A registration fee was charged, with a copy of the authoring software included in the cost. The workshop did not offer any certification or credit for completion, and assignments were not graded.

    Students also received two sets of usernames and passwords; one set to access the online materials, and another to access the web conferencing system.

    The workshop started on the date that a moderator would "open" the online materials for Parts 1 and 2 (i.e. make it accessible to participants). Following sections would be opened every Monday until the end of the workshop. Facilitators were assigned to shifts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and monitored the conferencing system and email to assist participants with any technical difficulties. Deadlines were not mandatory; however, students were encouraged to finish each section within the assigned week. Participants were advised to set aside 10 hours/week for workshop activities.

    The workshop was kept open approximately 2 weeks after the end date to allow participants to catch up on work. After that date, a fee was assessed to access the materials.

    At the conclusion of the workshop, a survey was sent to participants (see Appendix A). Completion of assignments was measured in two ways:

1. by inspecting each assignment submitted against a basic set of criteria. Selected assignments were also scored against a more stringent set of criteria that required every element from the assignment to be included. Appendix B presents the criteria for both sets.
2. by the survey, which was scored in two ways: the quantitative data were tabulated, and the qualitative data were separated into categories. An attempt was made to match categories that related to factors found from the literature review. A Chi-square test was used to test the importance of the relationship between completing the workshop and several possible factors (e.g., a sense of community).

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