INTRODUCTION
'Distance education' connotes a variety of new aspects of the delivery of instruction. Students have the choice of paced vs. non-paced courses, continuous vs. fixed times of enrolment, and print vs. electronic media (among a variety of other choices). The logistics of distance education are compounded by the increasing complexity of types of enrolment, methods of delivery, and mediums of presentation. Thus, many institutions either steer clear of distance delivery or utilize only a simplified version because of the perceived difficulty of management and the resultant increased costs. At Athabasca University we have found that a large student enrolment (10,000 students enroll and begin a course at any time during the year, complete the course at their own pace, and have the courses delivered to them in a variety of ways) is not only a manageable situation but one that maintains high standards of instruction.
This has not always been the case. In 1984 we were fast approaching an unmanageable volume of paper records and an inability to determine the progress of individual students in a timely manner. We had begun to approach the limits of our student monitoring system which kept track of student progress within a course. It was clear that we had to move to a more advanced technology. It was soon apparent that the resultant product would be different than automated student record systems at other institutions in that our system would have to allow for asynchronous enrolments and self-pacing.
Automating student monitoring was a challenging prospect given Athabasca's unique delivery system. Distance education implies that there is no face-to-face interaction among the teacher and the students. The student progresses through the course in relative isolation. Most of our courses utilize print-based material packages that have been developed through an extensive instructional design and production process. These packages are mailed to the student. The materials are directly supported by tutors who, via free telephone access, act as instructors, answering questions, administering quizzes, grading exams, and providing feedback on student performance. In addition, the students use the mail to submit paper assignments and receive feedback. Exams are usually administered at centers near the student. Thus, while there is considerable instructional support for the student, there are also numerous potential delays in the system which can render the supports instructionally useless. It was our goal to devel
op a system that would not only make the record system more efficient and effective, but also be instructionally useful in the delivery of the courses.
THE PROBLEM
The Student Monitoring System (SMS) at Athabasca University (AU) is an ongoing effort to solve the problems of tracking student performance in a distance education environment. The design of SMS had to take into account:
- An open enrolment policy
A student may start a course at any time, and get a three month extension beyond the normal six months allowed for completion.
- A two-tier instructor system
A 'telephone tutor' administers quizzes, offers help by voice telephone contact, and monitors progress in the course. A 'coordinator' is responsible for overall management of the course without having contact with individual students.
- A wide variety of marking and grading algorithms across various courses
- A widely dispersed faculty
Tutors are spread throughout the province of Alberta. Coordinators are located at the University in Athabasca, 100 miles north of Edmonton.
- Slow and unresponsive data communications.
THE SOLUTION
In the fall of 1984 we decided to implement an experimental SMS on microcomputers using dBASE II, since these were the only computer resources available to us. The data input to this system, dubbed TRAC-II (for TRACking students in Base II), were the monthly reports mailed in by the tutors. The output was a set of reports for coordinators, tutors, and deans, plus extensive query facilities for coordinators and secretaries.
AU students progress through courses at their own pace. However tutors monitor progress and encourage students to keep to an agreed upon schedule. Part of the reason for developing TRAC-II was to give tutors and coordinators a way of tracking students in a timely fashion so that rational decisions could be made regarding instructional strategies to maximize student 'success'. Also, information about student performance would allow the University to concentrate its resources on those students who would most benefit from them.
A student has a start-date and a contract-date (the date the student must finish the course in order to get credit). For a three-credit course the contract-date is six months after the start date, but can change when the student is granted an extension. While this flexibility makes Athabasca University attractive to many students, the resultant asynchronous progress of students through a course makes a monitoring system difficult to implement.
Despite these logistical difficulties, the microcomputer implementation of student monitoring served the needs of coordinators quite well. However, there are three distinct views of the database: the coordinators, the institutions and the tutors. The coordinator views the data at the course level, the tutor views a subset of students within a course and the institute views students across a number of courses. While the micro student monitoring system was adequate for the coordinators it was not sufficient for the needs of the institution or the tutors. The tutors had no direct input nor access to the database. The institutional uses of the database were cumbersome. (Each course was essentially a separate entity, kept on separate diskettes or on distinct directories on a hard disk. Courses were spread over a number of micros.) As new computing resources became available, planning on a broader system started.
In the fall of 1985 the University installed a VAX 11/785 running Ultrix (DEC's version of UNIX) for use by the academic community. TRAC-II has been reimplemented using the INFORMIX database management system and called TRIX (Tracking students on unIX). TRIX has a global data base for institutional purposes, tutor interface for direct data input with report facilities, and an expanded set of facilities for all users. All students in all courses are now being tracked by TRIX, and 60 tutors out of 200 have been equipped with terminals, modems, and printers for use at home.
An Overview of the Capabilities of TRIX
- TRIX keeps track of:
- all assignment and exam dates and grades.
- all appropriate registry date (start date. contract date, tutor assignment, changes in status, etc.)
- student demographic data
- tutor-student contacts
- TRIX calculates important monitoring data:
- weighted average
- total days in course
- last completed assignment
- number of days since last assignment was completed
- whether or not the student is ahead or behind a set schedule of completion. This schedule is based on the entire contract period (i.e. 6 mos. or 12 mos.) and thus, if a student falls behind this schedule, it becomes increasingly likely that he or she will not finish the course within the contract period.
- TRIX calculates several potential problem indicators (the criterion for each of these problem indicators can be adjusted individually for each course):
- student is failing behind schedule more than (X) days
- student's contract date is within (X) days.
- student's weighted average is below (X) %.
- last tutor contact was more than (X) days ago.
- student has been in course for (X) days and completed no assignments (i.e. student is a Non-start).
- TRIX produces a variety of reports such as:
- course lists (for the whole course or for each tutor)
- problem report (based on 3 above, produced for each tutor)
- assignment and exam grades for all students. Also averages for each assignment and exam are listed for each tutor block and for the entire course.
- tutor summary data
- a specific student record.
- TRIX also archives all students who are no longer active.
The TRIX Tutor Pilot Project
Athabasca University has funded a project to put 60 tutors on-line to the central computer, covering 21 courses from several content areas, and involving 10 coordinators. Figure 1 shows the configuration of the project, and Figure 2 shows the distribution of terminals and microcomputers. The tutor pilot project was designed to test the viability of having tutors directly enter data into and receive reports from TRIX.
Along with the TRIX system, tutors are able to access an electronic conferencing system (CoSy). This system allows all users to participate in conferences and to set up their own conferences. It also allows electronic mail between all users. One conference has been set up specifically for tutors to provide feedback on TRIX and the home use of terminals/computers by tutors. We have found that this feedback and an intensive hands-on training session are critical to the tutors efficient use of the system.
Tutors have access to the system in evenings (after 4:30pm) and weekends. Originally it was envisioned that tutors would access the system for 5-15 minutes at the beginning of their tutor night to print off desired reports. Then they would leave the system. They would access the system again after the end of their tutor period to enter student contacts and assignments that occured in that session. However, it has already been noticed that many tutors sign on to TRIX at odd times during the night and on the weekend to use the conferencing system and explore the capabilities of TRIX.
Benefits of the Solution
It is assumed the TRIX SMS will yield a number of concrete (easily quantifiable) and abstract (less easily quantifiable) benefits to Athabasca University.
Concrete Benefits
- Reduce secretarial workload for student monitoring freeing time for other duties.
- Reduce tutorial services' mailing costs.
- Reduce tutor paper-related workload freeing up their time for more interaction with students.
- Reduce tutor-Athabasca phone costs.
Abstract Benefits
- Produce timely reports for coordinators for better course management.
- Produce timely reports for tutors for better management of their own time.
- Produce timely reports for tutors for better student management (intervention).
- Enhance feedback to students.
- Enhance communications among tutors, coordinators and other Athabasca University staff.
From the institution's viewpoint for the first time accurate and meaningful statistics across courses will be available. The efficiency of tutors and coordinators can be assessed, and avenues of improvement in course design and delivery opened up.
Evaluation of the Solution
The Centre for Distance Education Research at Athabasca has initiated an evaluation of TRIX, especially the Tutor Pilot project.
The tutor pilot involves tutors from the following areas: Humanities (English), Sciences (Computing Science, Geology, Mathematics), Social Sciences (Psychology), and Administrative Studies (Accounting, Computer Applications for Business, Communications). These reflect both large courses (maximum concrete benefits), different coordinators, different secretaries, and varied course structure and content.
The evaluation procedure will measure impact on:
- student performance,
- tutor performance,
- tutor workload,
- secretarial workload,
- tutorial services mail and phone costs,
- system technical functionality (security, reliability, responsiveness etc.),
- networking and computing facilities.
This is an extensive project and will involve the following respondents: course coordinators, secretarial staff, tutors, Tutorial Services, Academic computing, Computing Services. The evaluation should be complete in September, 1987.
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