Jan. 3, 2000
Contact: Chris Curran
513-556-1806
chris.curran@uc.edu

GE FUND GRANT LAUNCHES THREE-YEAR STUDY
INTO BEST USES OF INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY

Cincinnati -- From Web-based courses to interactive teleconferencing and streaming video over the Internet, new instructional technology can be very impressive and awe-inspiring. But a basic question has yet to be answered. Does anyone learn anything? A three-year, $450,000 grant from the GE Fund will help the UC College of Engineering find the most effective ways to use the new technologies.

"Everyone's using technology and Internet, but no one's really thought about how effective the technologies are," said Roy Eckart, associate dean of engineering. "The point is..do students learn from any of this? It's all out there, but are they learning?"

The educational research project is officially known as "The General Electric Learning Excellence Program." It is directed by a core team consisting of Eckart, Virginia Elkins, Eugene Rutz, Jim Wade, Catherine Rafter, and Ali Houshmand. Eckart believes it will have an enormous impact on engineering education. "We'll significantly change how we educate students."

The core team will work with Manfred Wolfram and other faculty in CCM's electronic media division and Fred Siff, vice president for information technologies and the Office of Information Technologies. With their assistance, the engineering faculty will test three different technologies: Web-based instruction, interactive teleconferencing, and streaming video. A standard lecture class will serve as the control class.

Most important, the faculty will examine the impact of different learning styles. "We were interested in how different learning styles interact with these different technologies," explained Eckart. "What type of student learns best from the Internet? What type of student learns best from video conferencing or streaming video?"

At the start of the course, students will take two basic tests, the Learning Style Inventory and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tests. Then, researchers will measure how well each technology works with different types of student learning. The core team believes that some students prefer Web-based courses which allow them to preview material before class and work independently while other learning styles do better with the instant feedback from teleconferencing.

As for Eckart, he said he wished that streaming video would have been available in his undergraduate days. "Streaming video appeals to me, because I can remember seeing these long equations. You get stuck on one term, and suddenly the instructor is a couple of boards ahead of you. With streaming video, you can replay the lecture until you understand it. For me, that would have tremendous value."

In fact, with streaming video, the entire course can be put on a dedicated server so students can review material or peek ahead to see what's going to be covered in the remaining weeks of the course.

Another important aspect of the project is the special media training provided by CCM faculty. Professors Manfred Wolfram, Tom Streeter and Kevin Burke each conducted video training workshops to show engineering faculty how to be more effective "on the air."

"These people are experts in how you appear on video," said Eckart. "Apparently there's a difference in how you come across in interactive video and streaming video. We learned a lot."

The final course development will take place during winter quarter, then in the spring, six different sections of "Mechanics I" will be offered. Two will be offered at Wright State through interactive video. Four sections will be offered at UC, including the control section using traditional "chalk and talk" low-tech methods.

In the second year of the project, researchers will conduct a similar study for the "Basic Strengths of Materials" courses and begin to look at how the technologies can work together in "Mechanics I."

Eckart expects that a combination of technologies will probably turn out to be the most effective; however, he admits students might one day find a course catalog with different course sections geared toward different learning styles.

"That's the really exciting part. We really don't know where we're headed," said Eckart who believes this will be the most comprehensive study ever of distance learning technology in engineering education.