PLEASE NOTE: This Web page was created as a student product for the Borderlands Teleseminar. This site is no longer being actively updated. Please visit the Trans Border-Information Technology Collaborative(TBITC), or more recent Comm3459 Web sites for more information

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TELESEMINAR EVALUATION AND DOCUMENTATION


TELECONFERENCING SEMINAR:

NEW COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES AND BORDER ISSUES

SEMESTER I


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Class Description

The first semester teleconferencing seminar was an experimental course that will eventually evolve into a curriculum course for the UT El Paso and UT Austin communications departments. Our areas of concentration included border issues, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and new communications technologies. The issues were discussed via video conferencing and computer interaction, which allowed students to explore various forums for communication and idea exchanges. The physical classrooms were located in the UTA and UTEP communications buildings, and the classes also met individually, apart from the teleconferencing link. Roughly half of class time each week was spent teleconferencing and the other half in local class discussion. Unlike many teleconferencing situations, there was a full-time professor at each "end" of the class: Dr. Henry Ingle in El Paso and Dr. Fred Williams in Austin.

While many teleconferenced courses are designed to bring a lecture-format course to a remote location, this course was intended to be a true seminar format, with students in two locations having discussions and interacting as if they were in one room. In addition, an objective of the course was to use communications technologies to bring students to the site of their research; in this case, to bring students who are studying border issues at UT Austin to the El Paso-Juarez border via the teleconference and follow-up discussions on Internet with UT El Paso students.

Once the goals of the course are established, the class divides into small-group research teams. Ideally, each research team should include at least one student from Austin and one from El Paso. To see a list of the research groups this semester and find out more about them, visit the Teleseminar Home Page

Class Photo

Group Description

This group was formed with two overlapping objectives: to create a lasting record of the course which could be accessed or viewed by others after the class has ended; and to evaluate the course in terms of which uses of the technology were effective, which were not, and other recommendations for changes in the structure or format of the course. Our evaluation will be taken into consideration as future semesters of the course are designed.

Members of the group are: At UTEP, Martin Armendariz (UG), Jeff Lambert (G), Esther Peralta (UG), John Taylor (G), and Ingrid Vliet (G); At UT-A, Mary Lynn Rice-Lively (PhD) and Pam Schwartz (G).

Members of the group on the two campuses have worked together to collect and share information, and to share ideas and suggestions for our final products. We have primarily used email to communicate and share ideas in our group. We have also used some teleconference time, and early on in the semester we used a conference style newsgroup on Internet to share ideas. Regular U.S. mail has been used to share materials such as videos and photos. We have chosen to produce separate end products in El Paso and Austin, partly for ease of production and partly because we had different product ideas we wished to pursue.

Methods

We have used a variety of tools and methods to document and evaluate the class as it progresses. Our focus has been primarily on qualitative methods. With hindsight, we would undoubtedly do some things differently, but since we were involved in the whole experience as members of the class, our plans and ideas were shaped and altered as the class progressed.

Video: Much of the live video sent from Austin to El Paso and El Paso to Austin as we teleconferenced was recorded and saved, so clips can be used or tapes viewed later. In addition, John has been filming video sometimes during class in El Paso, both when we are meeting separate from Austin, and as we teleconference, to pick up some footage that the teleconference cameras do not. Students have also taken videos of the border, UTEP campus, and other places and events in El Paso and Austin which have been used in class and may be incorporated in our final products.

Surveys: Early on in the semester, a survey designed by Mary Lynn was distributed to gather baseline information about class demographics, background in technology use, information gathering preferences, and individual motivations for taking the course.

Next, a border dialogs survey using Likert scales was developed by Jeff and administered to measure attitudes about technology, border life, learning, and the classroom. This survey may be revised for use in future semesters of the course, with the vision of hindsight to correct some flaws and hone the focus.

Interviews: Individual interviews were conducted with students in both "ends" of the class to get more in-depth information. Mary Lynn conducted some informal interviews and focus groups over coffee in Austin, and later flew to El Paso to meet with a few students there. Martin designed questions and interviewed some of the students in El Paso on video. Martin's interviews were conducted to present the actual students involved in the class. Students were interviewed individually, in pairs and in work groups to show the different views on one topic or certain topics. In addition, John interviewed both professors, one in person and the other over the teleconference link. Segments of John and Martin's interviews were included in the final video project.

Journals: We were all asked to keep journals as part of the class to record our reactions to the technologies and content of the course. We have shared excerpts from our journals in class (on a purely voluntary basis), and some of us found that writing the journals helped us to sort out some thoughts about the course.

Experiences: All of us on the evaluation/documentation team are of course members of the class; our own experiences in the class throughout the semester, along with our more deliberate evaluation methods, will be used in our final recommendations to the professors about what should be kept the same or changed in future semesters of this course.

Products:

A video was produced in El Paso using video clips from the class, interviews, and other sources. The purpose of the video is to show others what this course is all about and some of the things we did this semester. We have included the narration script from the El Paso Teleseminar video. We were fortunate to have John Taylor, a video expert, acting as video producer.

We chose to write a web page rather than a more traditional term paper in order to share some of our experiences and findings with other people interested in the design or use of teleconferenced courses. Some members in our group (as well as our class as a whole) had never used World Wide Web, or even email, before this course. We all found Internet to be an essential tool for increasing communication between geographically separated class members, and Internet seemed a logical place to put information about the course.

In Austin, Pam created a multimedia product entitled "Electronic Echoes from the Border." She describes it as combining visual and text documentation of our experiences in the teleseminar. It focuses on the border aspect of the course: what borders mean, how they are crossed, and how they were described and experienced in this course.

Mary Lynn has created a web page in Austin describing her work in this course exploring the pedagogy and communication of a networked class. She is also considering using some of the ideas she has gathered from the class this semester for her doctoral dissertation.

Results:

Survey Results

Results from Mary Lynn's survey and interviews are included on her web page.

Overall Summary of Jeff's Border Dialogs Survey:
(You can also view the detailed survey results)

The UTEP students are not as technologically advanced as the UTA students, but they have the desire to learn and apply their knowledge. Since the UTEP class is comprised of undergraduates and masters level students, there naturally would be a difference between them and the all UTA graduate class, including older Ph.D. students. This is probably why the UTEP students feel intimidated and the UTA students do not. Although teleconferencing is a new learning technology, all students embrace it and feel it is a positive addition to the classroom and learning environment. But still, face-to-face communication is the preferred method of communicating. As with all students, no one wants tests, heavy lectures or strict structure, and hardly any students want their grade dependent on someone else. All students like teams and team work, as long as these teams do not affect their grade. El Paso is a conservative city, and this shows in the views of the UTEP students about the border, whereas UTA students show a more liberal view about the border, which matches the reputation of the University of Texas at Austin.

Although there are inherent differences in the classes and in the Universities, the Border Dialogs seminar was conducted in a manner that met the needs of the majority of students, providing them what they expected and giving them material and information that can be applied to other classes and future learning experiences.

Interviews

Martin's interviews of classmates in El Paso showed how they felt about the class, new technologies, border issues, and teleconferencing. Some student interviews revealed how attitudes changed from the first day of class to the last day of class. Student feedback also gave us insight into how new technologies were used and how each group used technology presented to them. Some classmates were asked how they felt about border issues and how they felt students in Austin felt about border issues. Interviews regarding teleconferencing unveiled views that showed how students felt about communicating with students from UT Austin.

Journals

We have included several journal clips here to give you an idea of some individual UTEP students' impressions of what it was like to be in this class.

Photo of students working on a web page in class

Experiences

We have written several short papers describing different aspects of the class.


Information about the El Paso/Juarez border area

MOO - A Border Space

An interesting project that some students in the class participated in was a MOO border space designed by Heather Kelley in Austin. The MOO is a text-based interactive educational site on Internet that allows participants to have real-time conversations and to interact with other 'characters' and objects on the MOO. It provided students in Austin and El Paso with a place to socialize and discuss the course, rather like you might do in the hall or at a coffee house or bar after class.

We started off with one room, a comfy meeting space for discussions, and by the end of the course some students started to help Heather build more rooms to represent aspects of the El Paso/Juarez border area. Other MOO users can visit these rooms to learn a little about El Paso and Juarez. Anyone can telnet to the MOO at moo.du.org 8888 and log on as a visitor. Read Heather's page to find out more about the MOO project and how to connect and visit the rooms we created.

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Creation Date: April 14, 1995
Last Modified:

Written by the El Paso Evaluation team: Martin Armendariz, Jeff Lambert, Esther Peralta, John Taylor, & Ingrid Vliet. Page layout and html by Ingrid Vliet.

Mail questions or comments about this page to Ingrid at ac518@rgfn.epcc.edu

Questions or comments about this course should be directed to the professors:
Dr. Fred Williams at dcal010@uts.cc.utexas.edu
Dr. Henry Ingle at htingle@mail.utep.edu