7.1 The Importance of Effective Software Environments

Effective online workshops depend upon effective software tools that enable participants to easily obtain the information they need, navigate comfortably among the different elements of the workshop, and read and contribute to the online discussions. We have reviewed a large number of software environments (see Appendix I) and have used several different approaches.

Some examples may be illustrative. Asynchronous discussion tools typically present an outline in which the subject and author of each message is listed, with the level of indentation of each item showing where it fits into the "thread" of messages: replies to message A are shown indented under message A, etc. This provides a convenient means for users to scan the list of messages and choose which ones to read.

Different tools, however, provide different capabilities that can have a major impact on how well the environment works in practice. For example, some tools, such as Lotus Notes, allow the user to open only one message at a time, rather than show an entire thread. Therefore, the user must open one message, read it, close it, return to the outline, select the next message to open, and so on. This interferes with following the flow and focusing on the information in the messages, and it makes it impossible to print a full thread to read off-line. Other tools, such as O’Reilly’s WebBoard, allow the user to open a full thread of messages with one command, so they can read or print the full sequence easily. Another example is that some software will allow a user to denote messages as already read, and will inform the user as to how many unread messages he/she has, making it easy for the user to identify and open them. In discussions that may have dozens of messages, this is a critical feature for enabling users to keep track and process new messages. While these features may seem like minor elements of software design, the better tools result in more comfortable use and more participation. Compare it, for example, to the different experiences of speaking over a clear phone line versus one with lots of delays and static.

Since the available software has continued to evolve very rapidly, reviews and analyses from as recently as several months ago can now be significantly out of date, so the key need is to understand the essential features desired in a workshop delivery environment, and then to review available systems in light of those essential features. The following is our analysis of the essential elements of a software environment to support a learning community approach to online professional development.

7.2 Presentation Capabilities

We have developed our own HTML pages for presenting information to participants within each workshop, and then linked to a discussion tool (WebBoard in our most recent workshops) for the online threaded discussions. As we explore authoring tools for online courses, we are analyzing each possibility to see whether it provides the flexibility we need while making the process of authoring a workshop simpler. Some key things we look for in these tools are the following:

The online course authoring tools we have reviewed were developed primarily for college courses, not for professional development workshops. The standard menus within these systems are likely to include labels such as "grading", "textbooks", and other elements that don’t apply to professional development workshops. In some, but not all, of these systems the options presented to participants, and the visual format in which they are presented, provide sufficient flexibility to adapt them well to formats that are appropriate for OPD.

A calendar format organizes the flow of activities in the workshop over time. Good authoring tools make it simple to create and revise a calendar. The most sophisticated ones also enable each user to have his or her own calendar and for automatic email reminders of key dates to be sent to each participant.

Participants need to be able to move easily between all the elements of the workshop. For example, in one session, a participant might first go to the workshop calendar, click a link on the calendar to go to the assignments for a specific session, then link directly to the discussion for that session. While preparing to post a message to the discussion, the participant might want to go to the workshop resources to review a reference and then bounce back to complete the posting. Well-designed systems enable rapid movement among the elements, rather than requiring that users return to a central space to move from one place to another.

In many activities, participants go to web sites outside of the workshop site to obtain readings, review educational resources, experience specific types of educational environments, and other such purposes. Therefore, the workshop delivery system needs a clear way for participants to go to other sites and then easily return to where they were in the workshop. This is best accomplished by configuring external links to open in a new browser window, while the workshop remains in the original window. This way the user can peruse the new resource as extensively as necessary, and then simply close that window, or switch back to the original window, to return to the proper place in the workshop site.

This need can also be handled through the use of frames, although this method introduces some potential problems. For example, opening another web site within a frame often obscures the fact that the web site comes from a different source, and can thus be perceived as an integral part of the workshop, or as something that is endorsed by the workshop. This is problematic when you wish participants to take objective and critical views of readings and resources. Another problem with the functionality of frames is that they hide the URL of the imbedded site, so that it is difficult to bookmark; participants may often wish to create a growing list of bookmarks to sites that they find useful, and the use of frames will inhibit this ability. Perhaps as the functionality of frames matures in new versions of HTML, these issues will be resolved.

A course delivery system needs to be able to present audio and video clips in ways that can be integrated with other materials.

7.3 Discussion/Interaction Capabilities

Since the online discussion plays such a central role in the learning community approach to OPD, we often have many and somewhat lengthy messages within a discussion for a single session. The following is to convey a sense of desirable discussion tool capabilities in general; there are lots of different ways to implement some of the features listed below.

Participants should be able to navigate through the discussion forum easily, finding what they need within the many threads and messages. Therefore the following features are needed:

Topic structure. Ability to lock in a top-level structure of the discussion, so that each session, and perhaps specific questions within sessions, can have a specific thread, and users cannot start new threads at the top level. That is, it is useful for facilitators and course designers to be able to control the structure of the discussion so that it matches the structure of the workshop and participants can link directly to the appropriate thread for a given session and question. For example, O’Reilly’s WebBoard allows board managers to place "conferences" (or discussion threads) in any order desired.

Navigation ease. Ability to navigate easily through a long discussion (e.g., collapsing or expanding headings to see only the desired level, moving between the list of titles and individual messages, and moving to the next/previous message without returning to the list).

Full text of thread. Ability to show the full text of all messages in a thread, so it can be printed and read off-line. Ideally the software should simultaneously display both the full text of all messages in a thread and the entire outline structure of the discussion board (using frames).

Read/unread. Ability to distinguish easily between read and unread messages. Ability to mark all messages in a thread as read (to catch up on a discussion) and to selectively view unread messages only.

Message views. Ability to view messages organized by thread, author, posting date, or subject.

Search options. Ability to search for messages by author, posting date, or subject. A full text search is also useful, but not essential.

Links. From within the text of any message or any related web page in the workshop site (not necessarily a message), participants should be able to link to any other message in the discussion or to the complete list of messages within a discussion. This enables facilitators to refer to messages within summaries and later sessions, and to link directly to the original messages. Likewise, participants should be able to link to the personal profile or electronic mail address of the person who posted the message.

Formatting/HTML markup. Participants should be able to include text formatting such as bold and italic and to use the full capabilities of HTML in their messages.

Edit/delete. Participants should be able to edit or delete their own prior messages. Facilitators should be able to control whether this is available in a workshop.

Links. Participants should be able to include working links to web sites in their messages (by simply typing the URL, without the need to type the HTML code for a hyperlink).

Image links. Participants should be able to imbed images in their messages.

Quoting from other messages. Participants should be able to include quotations from other messages, and to set those quotations within a special format (for example, indented format).

Spellcheck. Participants should be able to spell-check messages before posting.

Preview. Participants should be able to preview messages before posting, and return to write/edit mode to make any changes.

Anonymous posting. The discussion software should offer the option for anonymous posting. Facilitators should be able to set whether or not this option is available in a given discussion.

The discussion should provide seamless two-way integration with electronic mail. That is, participants should have the option to select a particular discussion or set of discussions for which they can receive all messages, or alternatively, replies to the messages they have posted via electronic mail. Likewise, participants should have the ability to respond to these messages via email, and have their replies appear in the proper place in the web-based discussions.

An option to receive a daily collection of new messages in one email (digest style), rather than each one separately, is also useful.

Facilitators should be able to easily send an email message to all participants, or to subgroups of participants. Participants should be able to easily send emails to the facilitators and to members of their small groups.

The following features should be feasible remotely, so that facilitators or other user-administrators can manage the discussions from their desktop computers, rather than having to work directly on the server, or send their requests to the server administrator.

Creating/removing discussions. User-administrators should be able to create/remove whole discussions and all related messages (as a unit).

Archiving discussions. User-administrators should be able to archive (remove from active use) whole discussions and all related messages (as a unit).

Editing discussion pages. User-administrators should be able to edit, using HTML or standard editing software, the graphics and text that surround the discussion, messages or message lists.

Editing/removing/moving messages. User-administrators should be able to edit/remove messages within a discussion, or move them to any other part of the discussion. (Moving messages posted in the wrong place should be doable with a simple command, rather than having to copy a message, post the copy in the correct location, and then delete the original.)

Create/remove/change users. User-administrators should be able to create/remove users, or change any of their permissions, profiles, or passwords.

Discussion options. User-administrators should be able to define, change, or revoke all options for the discussions as a whole or with regard to any single user or group of users.

Public, private, read-only. User-administrators should be able to configure discussions as public (i.e., allow guest access) or private (i.e., not allow guest access), and additionally designate whether or not a discussion is "read-only". If a discussion is read-only, then only facilitators (or others given posting authority by the user-administrator) may post messages, and participants may only view them, without adding their own replies or messages.

Email messages. User-administrators should be able to send email messages to all participants.

7.4 Data Collection

Surveys. Participants should be able to respond to questions (yes/no, multiple choice, numeric, and short answer) and view a summary of other participants’ responses. Surveys help build a sense of the participant community and provide a convenient means to obtain feedback about the workshop. Pre- and post-workshop surveys are also a core element for evaluating workshops; ideally the data collected can be easily exported to a database for analysis.

Automatic data collection from discussions. In order to address accountability needs, and to provide information for program development, access to the following is helpful:

• Number of times logged-on, number of messages opened, and number of messages posted by each participant.
• Number of messages in each thread and distribution of number of responses to posted messages (which provides a good measure of the level of interactivity in a workshop).
• Average depth of each thread and of all threads in a workshop.

Database compatibility. Administrators should be able to export the complete text of all messages into common desktop databases such as Microsoft Access (or, alternatively, to create any kind of analytic reports on the discussion messages using tools provided by the discussion software). This is particularly needed for participant accountability, which is often a concern in school districts, as well as for research on the workshops.

7.5 Look and Feel

The discussion forum should integrate seamlessly with the larger workshop web site. Workshop designers should retain control over the look-and-feel of the overall workshop site and the discussion pages.

The workshop site (including any additional discussion software or other components) should provide clear and comprehensive help for both users and administrators.

7.6 Other Valuable Features

In our work so far, we have identified a number of tools that would be valuable in encouraging collaborative work in online workshops. While forms of each of these tools exist for the web, currently they tend to be separate systems that aren’t integrated into course authoring or online discussion environments and which, in many cases, require special software.

Whiteboards enable participants to post text and graphics in a common space. The process is analogous to having a whiteboard in the front of a classroom and having students each post their own items on it, without erasing those posted by others. Current whiteboards enable a user to place text in any location and typically provide very basic graphics capabilities so that users can also draw simple shapes, add lines or arrows, etc. Most current whiteboards (aside from those included in some multi-user virtual environments, such as TAPPED IN), tend to only show the information entered by a group during a synchronous session, but do not retain this information after participants have logged out, or allow others to add to the whiteboard at different times (asynchronously).

OPD workshops would benefit from whiteboards that have a number of capabilities, including the following:

• Enabling users to post pages from other files, so, for example, a sample of a student’s work could be placed on the whiteboard and participants could add their comments about it.
• Enabling users to save whiteboard images so that they can return to them at another time - the equivalent of using large sheets of paper in a class rather than a whiteboard that is likely to be erased.
• Enabling users to contribute to a group whiteboard at different times (asynchronously).
• Integrating the whiteboard with both synchronous and asynchronous discussions, so that participants can discuss the items they are placing on the board as they would do in spoken form in a classroom.
• Providing simple structural elements, such as tables, cause-and-effect diagrams, etc., that can organize participants’ entries into a coherent form.

Concept-mapping tools enable users to enter ideas and define links between the ideas, resulting in a concept-map diagram. Most importantly, these tools enable users to easily modify their diagrams, collapse sets of concepts into single elements, and manipulate the organization of the concept map. One such tool, Inspiration, is widely used in K-12 classrooms, and also provides the capability of moving between concept map and outline formats for displaying a set of ideas and their relationships. A web-based tool with some of the capabilities of Inspiration would provide a very useful way for workshop participants to collaborate in building a visual representation of a set of ideas. We have not yet found a suitable tool for this purpose.

In face-to-face workshops, a group process is often used in which each participant writes his/her response to a question on a large post-it note, and then the group works together to define categories and organize everyone’s responses into them. To adapt this process for online use, we would need an appropriate tool that enables the visual organization and collaborative manipulation of the responses to occur asynchronously in a web-based environment.

Within some workshops, participants register as district teams. In others, groups of participants find that they have common interests and would like to collaborate on a project. And in some, the workshop designers would like to incorporate activities to be carried out by small groups, much as would be done in a face-to-face workshop. All these purposes require space and tools to support collaborative writing, peer editing, exchanging files, online discussions, and other supports for small work group collaborations.

Back to Top
Back to Table of Contents
Previous Section | Conclusion