Managing quality assurance, technical support and online infrastructure in a central support unit: The WISE experience.

This paper was presented at the 2nd Annual WebCT International Conference and was awarded one of the best five papers of the conference.

 

Lynnae Rankine (lead author)

Online Learning Resource Developer and WebCT Administrator
Web Interactive Study Environment (WISE) part of the Flexible Learning Unit
University of Western Sydney (UWS) Australia.
Email l.rankine@uws.edu.au

Stephen Sheely

WebShell Coordinator, WISE.

Deborah Veness

Manager
Flexible Learning Unit
University of Western Sydney (UWS) Australia.

Abstract

The current climate of tertiary education is changing and a cultural shift is occurring. Online teaching, once the isolated domain of a curious few is now considered a mainstream operation of most universities. At the University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury in New South Wales, Australia, the concept of online teaching is encapsulated in WISE, the Web Interactive Study Environment.

WISE is a holistic pedagogical endeavour, combining elements of quality assurance, technical support and online infrastructure. It is designed as a framework through which staff construct partial or total online learning environments. WISE uses a dedicated server and WebCT as its core software.

The user-friendly interface and support mechanisms of WISE has dual importance: (i) it allows staff and students to focus on teaching and learning rather than technical issues of coding, delivery and maintenance, (ii) ensures the reputation of the institution is enhanced as a quality provider of flexible education.

There is a need to balance the tension between institutional requirements and the freedom of individual academic staff to manage their teaching materials and environment. WISE manages this balance by adopting a symbiotic relationship with all stakeholders in the educational environment.

Furthermore, a model has been developed using elements of text-based distance education paradigms and software development practice. This model is a step-by-step process of evaluating online learning packages prior to release to students and utilises 'precincts' as the mechanism to implement quality assurance techniques.

The focus of the paper will include this model as well as the responsibilities associated with a central support unit such as WISE. It will deal with the genesis issues and ongoing management, and the implications and outcomes for institutional mainstreaming of online teaching and learning. Lynnae Rankine (Lead Author) Deborah Veness, Stephen Sheely

Introduction

A cultural shift is occurring in tertiary education. Online teaching is no longer limited to the isolated efforts from individual academic (faculty) staff. It is rapidly becoming a centrally coordinated and supported (mainstream) operation of most universities. 

As this shift occurs, there is an accompanying change in the issues and problems that need to be addressed. The primary issues for online teaching and learning are no longer centred on the design of specific software to deal with particular educational objectives. Increasingly the concerns surrounding the wide spread adoption and use of a new technology and a new teaching medium are becoming the central focus.

These concerns are in turn influenced by a number of external forces. Predominant amongst these, is the growing demand for universities to function with reduced resources. (Ryan 1998) The tertiary education sector in Australia is being forced by Government policy to do “more with less”.  Public funding is being withdrawn and competitiveness between institutions for student places has become more aggressive. In this climate, universities have seen online education as a cost effective way to reach a large number of students, and so the move to online education has been rapid. (Flew 1998, Thomas 1998, West 1998)

With life-long learning programs encouraging more students to attend University and return in the future, the impact on resources is significant. Already academic staff/student ratios are in decline and, if student numbers increase as a consequence of the increased accessibility provided by online subjects and courses, this trend could continue and accelerate. The pressure on academic staff to provide high quality outputs with smaller inputs is unrelenting.

The reaction to this pressure at an institutional level is usually one of two extremes.  One approach is a co-ordinated interventionist manifest of policies and regulations designed to limit academic activity and channel it into predetermined paths to prevent duplication, waste or costly experimentation. (Fox 1999)  At the other extreme is an ad hoc “hands-off” approach in which the institution provides the basics for academic staff to work in the new environment but relies on their enthusiasm (and unpaid overtime) to develop pockets of innovation to maximum effect. (Bacisch & Ash 1999, Taylor 1996)

The development at the University of Western Sydney  (UWS) of the Web Interactive Study Environment (WISE) is a compromise between these two extremes. The aim of WISE is to create an environment for academic staff to develop online teaching processes and materials which will enrich the learning experience of their students.  Underlying this aim is the view that the focus for academic staff should not be how to build a web-based tool for teaching online, but how best can they use web-based tools (WebCT) for teaching online and thereby develop their own pedagogical innovations.  The system must also be transparent to students, so that the new environment doesn’t distract from their learning.

To empower academic staff with the skills to develop online teaching and learning, WISE staff provide training, educational support and technical assistance on a scheduled or on-call basis.  This empowerment facilitates academic freedom, and the individual maintains intellectual and creative ownership of the content and pedagogy. At the same time the university maintains quality assurance over the standard of online teaching processes and materials.  As a compromise between the two extremes of typical institutional approaches, the approach adopted by WISE is a co-ordinated one emphasising support for teaching innovation as required.

  

Mainstreaming

Mainstreaming the necessary infrastructure development to support online education provides economies of scale which may in part provide the “savings” being demanded of tertiary institutions.  Such economies of scale are achievable in the considerable financial and staffing investment that is required for a university to go online. This includes: purchasing or leasing a large server for the online subjects and courses, purchasing licence fees for software, performing regular maintenance (such as backups), providing ongoing maintenance contracts on the hardware and software, providing appropriate training for academic staff and the management of help-desk for student enquiries and problems.  (Alexander et al 1998)

These substantial infrastructure investments would be much larger if undertaken in an ad hoc or unco-ordinated way than in a centralised co-ordinated approach. (Housego 1998). The server can be managed centrally, regularly maintained with data backed up daily and if a problem occurs someone is on hand to fix it. An appropriate licence fee can be negotiated because the number of accounts can be estimated, while calls for help from students are managed at one place (so they don’t have to remember multiple email addresses or phone numbers for different subjects).  There are also savings associated with central academic and educational design support, but these are not addressed in detail in this paper.

However, in setting up a central unit to maintain functionality of software and hardware systems, and co-ordinating the support systems, an institution may be perceived as veering toward the interventionist end of the spectrum. The online teaching system may be seen as a bureaucratic imposition and encounter resistance or even hostility from teaching staff who may fear the loss of their academic freedom, integrity, and ownership of their own teaching.

Nevertheless, there are also institutional requirements as well, with accountability for quality teaching paramount.  Consequently quality assurance principles must be an integral part of mainstreaming.  The university should ensure online teaching materials, published as they are and distributed under the university’s brand-name, are consistently of high quality.

In establishing WISE, it was explicitly recognised that these, apparently competing sets of stakeholder requirements, be balanced carefully against each other. From the outset it was intended that the WISE team operate, and be seen to operate, in a support role to academic staff teaching online.  Support is always available through on-call assistance, mailing list discussion group, weekly workgroups and training sessions[cw1] 

Models

Quality Assurance is the one area that the difference between the interventionist and the ad hoc approaches becomes most pronounced.

The interventionist approach seeks total institutional control over the teaching output. Examples are the industrialised model of distance education materials production (Dhubarrylall 1999) and, more recently, the corporatised online universities which arrange for the production of standardised study materials by professional authors for teaching staff to mediate with students (Bagdon 1999).

In the ad hoc approach, the institution takes little responsibility for the quality of the finished product.  Instead academic staff are given the software with which to build their subjects and have little input into what they build. Whilst this approach is often adopted in the name of fostering creativity or innovation or at least not interfering with academic freedom, it also often removes vital support as well as the parameters for quality.

WISE attempts to avoid the pitfalls of both approaches by drawing on models from the realms of publishing and software development. 

The underlying principle of teamwork by specialists in the publishing sector appealed to WISE.  Construction of the final product, for example a text book, is possible through the involvement of the writer, graphic designer, editor, desktop publisher, printer, binder and so on.  Similarly, WISE incorporates this teamwork approach into the support structures provided. Appropriate expertise such as educational designers to assist the instructor in developing content, and technical assistance to assist in the realization of teaching creativity (example, desktop video-conferencing or streaming video clips) are all called upon.

In the area of software development, critical to the information technology industry, a product is developed with input from specialists and becomes a working prototype.  Before the product is released, it must go through a rigorous testing process to detect errors, trial usability and robustness of features.  This quality assurance process was also incorporated into the WISE model.

The Precincts:

For hardware, WISE uses a SUN Enterprise Server 450, Solaris 7.0 as the operating system, with four precincts (ports) dedicated to WebCT software:

Live Precinct
(9000 port on server)

This is the only licenced precinct with WebCT (it’s the only area where students have access to the online subjects).   The online packages here meet the expected standards and use as many of the WebCT tools as appropriate.

 

 

Test Precinct
(9002 port on server)

* Once a subject has been developed and ready for release to students, it is moved temporarily to the Test precinct for rigorous quality testing.

 * This means all tools, links, and images/icons associated with the online subject are tested for functionality. Academics are assisted by the WISE team to make the necessary amendments required before the subject goes ‘live’. 

 * The online subject can only go to the Live Precinct when it has been rigorously tested (more than once if necessary) to ensure that it is as robust as possible.

 Note:  this precinct operates as the quality assurance mechanism; subjects which do not meet the expected standards are not permitted to move unchanged to the Live Precinct.

 

 

Development Precinct
(9001 port on server)

* This precinct is where staff develop new online learning packages or work on revised / new editions of learning packages.

* To assist in the creation of subject content pages, staff can use Dreamweaver, Word, Netscape Composer or Frontpage to generate the HTML pages. However, the Frontpage interface, developed at University of North Texas, works nicely with the Development Precinct, so the content pages constructed by the academic are automatically uploaded into the respective online subject in WebCT.

 

Playground Precinct
(9003 port on server)

* This is a stand-alone precinct on the server and is primarily available for academic staff who want to try out a particular Web course tool or combination or tools without jeopardising the work they’ve done an online subject (Development Precinct).

 

Templates:

At UWS there are three main types of WebCT based templates available: 

Type C: minimalist packages, which provide several WebCT communication tools for student use, but which contain no course content or legacy materials (such as PowerPoint slides, word processed documents, etc)

Type B: transitional packages which make full use of existing course content/legacy material including PDF files, HTML pages, word-processed lecture notes, PowerPoint presentations, and anything else academic staff  have been using to teach with, but which may not have been designed specifically to make best use of the WebCT tools.

This type of package is unlikely to replace face-to-face classes or be delivered completely online.  However, it is a useful resource to support traditional teaching, both face-to-face and distance.  Eventually it is planned that these packages will be replaced by Type A packages, which have been specifically designed for online teaching.

Type A: ‘fully developed or stand-alone’ packages.  These are the packages which have been created from the ground-up, by academic staff working alongside WISE staff over several months to construct online learning packages which incorporate innovative teaching and learning strategies.

All three templates include links to resources such as library, user guides for studying online, WebCT user guides, study skills information, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) and so on.

The quality assurance process takes minimal time for Type C packages however a little more time is needed to test the Type B and Type A packages as these tend to be more complex. 

Testing is treated as a ‘debugging’ process in which glitches in the online subject, which would impair its functionality, useability or effectiveness, are identified and discussed with the academic designing the subject (designer).  The process involves WISE staff providing the necessary support and advice to assist the designer. This ensures the designer maintains control and ownership throughout the process and as a consequence remains committed to it. This situation is at risk if the online subject disappears into a black box process and comes out fixed, possibly bearing no resemblance to the original product.

We encourage academic staff to view the development and release of their online subject as akin to publishing, and to exercise a corresponding degree of care in all steps of the development, test and teaching process.  This requires a shift in behaviour patterns for many academic staff with considerably more effort going into the planning and development stages of an online subject or course, than might normally be the case.

This focus on the development and planning of subjects is an essential part of the WISE process and provides a number of benefits. The focus:

A possible sub-level benefit is that academic staff may begin to exercise this degree of preparation to those aspects of their teaching which are not online.  

 

Testing matrix:

Typical features

Checking

Internal links

all the links work, go where they should (eg, glossary definitions)

External links

all the links work, go where they should and don’t breach copyright

Look and feel

text can be read easily, navigation clear

Content pages

logic between content pages clear, images and tables visible

Downloads

download times for multimedia or dense images, usability of attachments (checking version compatibility)

Student resources

links to library, computer lab information, WebCT.com, workshop information, help-desk details, online user guide information.

 

The results of the testing process are discussed with the designer and any changes are then made in their presence.  The subject is then ready to go ‘live’.  Undertaking this process ensures that WISE is seen as assisting academic staff in producing the best possible online learning packages, and enhancing the skills of the academic in the new environment.

 

When a subject goes ‘live’, a copy of the online subject remains in development so the designer can make enhancements and changes for the next release to students.  The live version is released to students for the duration of the teaching session and then archived onto CD Rom.  The next time the subject is to be offered, or a new academic staff member is assigned to teach, the majority of the content is available and can be 'tweaked' without major headache.

 

While the subject is live, the designer uses the dynamic tools (bulletin board, calendar, chat rooms, presentation etc) to add extra material whilst leaving the static tools (content pages) unchanged. Changes can be made to the next edition of the subject in development.  This approach ensures flexibility of the learning for the students, as they move through the material in their own way and time, and must be able to trust that the material is not going to change constantly.

 

 

Support mechanisms

Technically focussed support is provided in a variety of ways; a weekly workgroup, mailing list, on-call assistance and training sessions.  Pedagogical support and advice has not been fully implemented in WISE.

 

Weekly workgroup's: a two hour hands-on session where academic staff can have educational assistance, technical support, see demonstrations of new tools or teaching strategies. Alternatively, they can simply use the time to develop their online subject in a collaborative environment.  These meetings provide a regular opportunity for solving problems and an encouraging a community and collaborative approach across disciplines. 

 

When the weekly workgroup is not meeting, information and support is available through a mailing list discussion group.

 

Help-desk support has been developed as a central point of contact by email, phone and fax to assist academic staff and students in accessing and using web-based tools in their online subjects.

Training for first year, or new students.  At the start of the teaching period, a series of introductory workshops (approx. one hour) are scheduled for new students and incorporated into tutorial or lecture time.  Topics covered during these workshops include logging in, using WebCT and where to get help.

Training for academic staff.  A series of introductory workshops are held during semester where academic staff access an online subject from a students' perspective using communication tools, and other WebCT tools such as quiz.  Following this they access as a grader and then they are shown designer view.  There are more detailed workshops which cover educational uses of various web-based tools and building online materials in WebCT.  There are also specific workshops that are tailored for particular disciplines (example, Masters program in Financial Planning, and Masters program in Chaos and Complexity).

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

WebCT provides the integrated suite of tools in which online subjects are created and WISE is the process by which quality online learning materials are developed and managed. 

 

As a central support unit, WISE must maintain flexibility to adapt to meet the changing needs of the stakeholders.  The primary benefits are two fold: (i) that it allows academic staff and students to focus on the teaching and learning rather than the technical issues of coding, delivery and maintenance; and (ii) ensures the reputation of the institution is enhanced as a quality provider of flexible education.

 

The success of WISE in encouraging academic staff to embrace teaching and learning online with WebCT lies in the formative and developmental processes.  This is achieved through construction of online educational environments rather than an imposed, punitive and rigid approach.  Academic staff retain ownership of their content, support is at hand when they need it, student enquiries can be handled centrally, and quality assurance remains transparent in the whole process.

 

Academic staff who choose not to use WebCT as the infrastructure to build their online subject are able to use another package, however support from WISE is not available.  Hence, the University of Western Sydney uses WebCT as it’s chosen software to deliver quality online learning packages.

 

 

References

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