ENGAGING STUDENTS BY USING INTERNET TRICKS  

ABSTRACT

The use of a World-Wide-Web site to publish a course syllabus has now become common. In this paper, some features that can be incorporated into the Web site are discussed. These new features are designed to engage students in the ongoing activity of the course.

INTRODUCTION

The goals of this paper are threefold: (1) to stimulate additional interest in using the Internet to augment course instruction, (2) to share my ideas for using the Internet and generate some new ideas, and (3) to share my experience over the past year with using this technology. Using the Web to support course instruction is possibly the most significant new technology to become available over the past decade. The technology is widely available and inexpensive due to the common use of Web browsers such as Netscape.

The technology gives the instructor the ability to easily share information with students and solicit feedback and opinions from students. The technology allows a dynamic environment to be created where the instructor and student communicate frequently. If the application is designed properly, the instructor can efficiently solicit ongoing information from students, thus developing an in-depth knowledge of how each student is progressing in the class. Many examples are available from my site at http://jacobs.indiana.edu.

In the remaining part of this section, items that can be included by using hyperlinks and simple CGI scripts are listed. More complex items that require CGI programming are covered in subsequent sections.

Other than the actual schedule of topics, the idea is to add information to the site that will help students prepare for a session or generate additional interest in a topic. Global e-mail messages are used to inform the class of significant changes in information on the Web site. The following are items suggested for inclusion in a course syllabus published on the Web:

Hyperlinks to the instructor’s web site, and e-mail address should be included with an online course description, course policies, and grading criteria.

Anonymous course feedback button allows the student to post an anonymous message to the instructor at any time.

Course seating chart with student e-mail addresses facilitates the exchange of information between students and the instructor.

Internet plant tours and links to relevant company and professional organization Web sites are provided for each topic. The idea is to show the relevance of a topic by showing that the company actually exists or that the concept is used in the real world. For example, for the Shouldice Hospital Case, http://www.shouldice.com can be referenced.

On-line articles from such sources as Business Week (http://www.businessweek.com), The Economist (http://www.economist.com), Harvard Business Review (http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu), and Wall Street Journal (http://wsj.com) should be included.

Project ideas and open discussion items can be posted and immediately shared with other students in the class.

Spreadsheets and PowerPoint slide buttons can be used for downloading these items directly from the Web site.

Session evaluation buttons provide quick anonymous feedback on each class session.

CLASS VOTING

One of the more exciting applications involves class voting. Using voting forms made available through the Web site can engage students in classroom activities. The voting form is an HTML page designed with select questions that relate directly to the topic of the day. The questions can be combinations of the following types: simple yes/no (true/false), multiple choice, fill-in the blank, open-ended discussion. These questions can be used together with a set of more comprehensive discussion questions included with the assignment. Students are instructed to complete the questionnaire by a specified time prior to the class (I suggest midnight the evening before the class).

Questions posed should relate to key discussion items that will be covered in the class. If a case is being discussed the student may, for example, be required to decide between a set of alternatives, a question can be constructed to ask what the student thinks should be done. The idea is to force the student to take a stand on the issue.

Questions can be constructed to relate to key transition points in the class. What, for example, is the most important criterion? What was your solution to the problem? What approach did you use to solve the problem? What is the most important assumption made in the analysis presented in the case? By augmenting a set of discussion questions, these on-line questions are used to set up key jumping off points for the class. (See examples of voting forms in http://www.pom.edu/p304F97 and http://www.pom.edu/p561.)

A key to success in using voting is to construct questions where a number of the answers are plausible, depending on the student’s assumptions or approach. It’s important to try to not embarrass students through their answer to a question. Rather, a constructive, learning and sharing environment needs to be nurtured.

Student responses to the questions are captured in a text file that can be accessed by the instructor. It is important that the students cannot see each other’s answers to the questions and that the student be identified in the text file. This text file includes for each "vote" the student’s name, the date and time of the vote, followed by answers to each question. Although, I have not done this, a computer program or spreadsheet could be constructed to generate statistics on the answers to the questions.

Answers from each student are recorded on a seating chart and simple summary statistics are calculated for the class. From these data, it is easy to develop a strategy for running the actual class. I determine whom I will call on first for each major class segment prior to the session and which students I will use to explain minority and majority opinions.

Having this type of data changes the dynamics of the class. Once students realize you are going to use the data in running the class, they take their votes seriously. They will come to class prepared and will be able to defend their opinion. Class preparation no longer is an issue. In addition, my experience has been that virtually 100% of the class actually votes. (I do make this required to get "participation" credit.)

Using voting not only results in the students being more prepared for class, but I am also better able to manage the class session. I can more precisely direct how each classroom discussion develops using the information on how each student is thinking. Actually, this often results in a more efficient (quicker) class. Further, there is a diagnostic aspect by being able to see how well the class actually understands a particular item, based on their initial responses.

PRACTICE EXAMS

Web pages can be easily constructed for true/false and multiple choice exams. The student simply completes the practice exam by selecting the various buttons on the form. The exam is submitted to the server which scores the exam and gives instant feedback on questions answered. Students are enthusiastic about this type of Web page capability. They like the instant feedback and they like seeing questions that are like those that will be on the exam.

There is a hidden benefit to doing this, though, providing some thought has been put into how the exams are processed by the Web server. In my case, I have generated a text file with a line that corresponds to each time the exam is taken. This file contains the time the exam was taken and the numbers corresponding to the questions that were incorrectly answered. Using these data, I can diagnose how well the students are preparing for the exam. In addition, by knowing what questions are being missed, I know (1) student weaknesses, (2) problems with my teaching, and (3) poor questions. This is useful in preparing for the final review session prior to the exam.

DIRECT LOADING OF FILES

An additional useful capability is to allow students to upload files directly to the Web server. These files might be word processing files, spreadsheets, or model files for software such as Process Charter (a flowcharting and simulation package). Having this capability eliminates the difficult task of reading floppy disks. Further, students seem to greatly prefer this to printing hard copy of text files. One potential problem is the risk of a virus being uploaded to the server. In my case, a virus scanning program automatically checks each uploaded file as it is received.

INTERACTIVE INTERNET GAMES (THE BEER DISTRIBUTION GAME)

I have recently developed an Internet version of the Beer Distribution Game (see [1] for complete details on the manual version of the game). This is a game where teams of students take on the roles of retailer, local wholesaler, regional distributor, and factory in a beer distribution network. Students running each position in the supply chain must make decisions concerning how much to ship downstream in the network, and how much to order upstream. In the case of the factory, they must decide how much to ship to the distributor, and how much to make. Of course, they cannot ship any more than they currently have on hand. Retail demand is externally generated (a demand stream file is used), and the retailer tries to meet this demand. The game is designed to demonstrate the dynamics of how such a system operates.

In the original version, the game is played on a large playing surface constructed by the students using paper tablecloths. Chips are used to represent the flow of beer through each position, and cards are used to transmit orders to the upstream entity. The students are asked to not communicate with one another, except through the cards and the movement of chips. As the game is played, students are asked to track their inventory position (cases of beer), units ordered, and units shipped. Costs are incurred based on inventory level and backorders.

Playing the manual version of the game takes three 1¼-hour sessions. In the first session, the game is explained, the board set up, and a few practice periods are run. The second class is taken up with actually playing the game for 30-40 simulated weeks. Students are then asked to tabulate results, and the final class is used for sharing results and debriefing what happened. The exercise is a sure winner, but it does take significant class time.

In the Internet version of the game, all of the tedious preparation work and analysis is eliminated. In this version, students work at a PC attached to the Internet and running a browser (having all of the students a single room is most convenient). They play the game by completing a form designed to accept the ordering and shipping decisions. A specially designed server program keeps track of the game (multiple teams can be run simultaneously) and provides the players with status information (text and graphics) on demand.

Using this automated version, I have been able to explain the game, and play 30 weeks in an hour. This allows a 10-15 minute debriefing period in an 1¼-hour class. Statistics and graphs are automatically prepared. A big advantage of the Internet version is that the student teams cannot make mistakes in analyzing results, which can be a major problem with the manual version.

I currently play the game two times as part of my Supply Chain Management class. The first time, at the beginning of the semester, the game is played with no cooperation between positions in the supply chain (just as the original version). The second time, later in the semester, the teams are allowed to design a system for playing the game. Their system can use whatever information is available. An exciting competition can be generated between the teams.

I believe that the Internet version of the Beer Game represents a whole new class of exercises that can be used to demonstrate many concepts. Actually playing the game by completing forms presented from a Web browser, and soliciting information from a database accessed from the browser, closely simulates how these students will actually work in the future. Many students are interested in learning how the Web programs are set up.

HOW DO YOU DO THIS STUFF?

What I have described here is just the tip-of-the-iceberg. Many new and innovative things can be done using the Internet to support instruction. Getting into this is a matter of starting small and then building up your course Web site. Start with putting your syllabus on the Web. Include a few hyperlinks to relevant Web sites. I would suggest that you use current versions of Microsoft Word or WordPerfect to design your initial Web page (syllabus). Both of these packages have the ability to save pages in HTML format and to insert hyperlinks.

To do the voting, you will need to learn about HTML forms and simple CGI scripts which are described in Chapters 21 and 23 of [2]. File uploads are described in Chapter 15. Microsoft FrontPage 97 can also be used to easily create these forms.

The interactive game is more complicated and makes use of CGI programming using Visual BASIC and JAVA (Pearl or C might be used). A good introduction to this is [3].

I have found it convenient to run a Web server on the computer in my office. This greatly speeds access to your syllabus and the processing of forms, since the computer is essentially dedicated to serving your classes. I have found that I do not notice the server running in the background in normal use of the PC (a 166 mhz Pentium w/ 32M memory). A book that describes setting up your own Web site is [4].

REFERENCES

1. Heineke, J. and L. Meile, Games and Exercises for Operations Management, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1995.

2. Using HTML (Special Edition), Indianapolis: Que Corporation, 1996.

3. Web Programming with Visual BASIC, Indianapolis: Sam Publishing, 1996.

4. Running a Perfect Web Site, Indianapolis: Que Corporation, 1995.

Special thanks to Doug Blocher, John Muth, and Jim Patterson for their comments on a draft of this paper.