DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 408 971 IR 018 384

AUTHOR Burton, TerryTITLE Visual Literacy and Just-In-Time-Training: Enabling Learners

through Technology.PUB DATE Jan 97NOTE 8p.; In: VisionQuest: Journeys toward Visual Literacy.

Selected Readings from the Annual Conference of theInternational Visual Literacy Association (28th, Cheyenne,Wyoming, October, 1996); see IR 018 353.

PUB TYPE Reports - Descriptive (141) -- Speeches/Meeting Papers (150)EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS Authoring Aids (Programming); *Computer Assisted

Instruction; Computer Graphics; Computer Software Selection;Computer System Design; Courseware; Delivery Systems;Educational Needs; Engineering Drawing; Higher Education;*Instructional Design; Instructional Development;Instructional Materials; Internet; *Systems Approach; VisualLearning; *Visual Literacy; *World Wide Web

IDENTIFIERS *Course Development; *Just in Time Systems; PurdueUniversity IN; Technology Integration

ABSTRACTQuality education is often impeded by lack of instructor

time and by a failure to provide instruction that is individualized and atthe point of need. Integration technology into course development canalleviate these problems, but only if the technology is easy to learn andsupports a systems approach. In implementing a Web-based Technical Sketchingcourse at Purdue University (Indiana), a systems approach was used to design,develop, and distribute the electronic course materials. The four-partsystems model includes people, environment, processes, and technology. Thefirst step is to identify the participants in the system; in this case,students and instructors are the receivers (customers) of the developmenteffort. The environment consists of traditional sketching tools and accessWeb-enabled computers for the customers. Processes relative to the sketchingcourse content include psychomotor, affective, and cognitive knowledgeactivities. Technology manifests itself in the form of Web-enabled computers,browser software, and printers for instructors and students. The coursedeveloper needs supporting electronic data files, HTML translation software,image mapping software, ftp software, and other specialty software. Thecombination of Microsoft NT or Windows 95 and the Web authoring aid FrontPageprovides the technology components necessary to create and distributeWeb-based instructional materials. The next step is for course developers tocreate and distribute customized learning environments that are visually richand dynamic. A proposed "Just-In,:Time-Training" (JITT) system would involvean Internet component comprised of user information services, a privateintranet for class-specific information like grades and personal data, and adevelopment area where the project testing and experimentation would reside.(AEF)

Visual Literacy And Just-In-Time-Training:Enabling Learners Through Technology

by Terry Burton

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONOfficeolEducatiomIllesmchandlWrovemerd

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC)

This document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or organizationoriginating it.Minor changes have been made toimprove reproduction quality.

Points of view or opinions stated in thisdocument do not necessarily representofficial OERI position or policy.

AbstractIt is extensively documented that the best time to provide information is when the learner is

prepared and/or in need of receiving it. Until recently, the ability of educators to provide dynamiccustomized information that is timely and efficient has been limited or non-existent. With thecreation of an electronic communication infrastructure and the development of affordable computertechnology, course developers and administrators now have at their disposal a unique tool set toaccomplish what the author calls Just-In-Time-Training (J111).

Introduction"Better to be at the bottom of the rightmountain, than halfway up the wrongmountain" unknown

Traditional education systems rely little onstudent input regarding the quantity, qualityor sequence of course content. Lectures, labsand demonstrations are prepared and deliveredby faculty in a prescriptive linear fashion.Learners are not allowed to customize thecontent. Therefore, content may not be basedon real needs, but rather on perceived ones.Granted, an instructor is the individual whoshould be perceiving student needs andtranslating it into course content.Unfortunately, but necessarily so, instructorscreate material that targets the general studentpopulation. They can not compensate or allowfor the extremes of the learner abilitycontinuum.

Disregard of the needs of the learnerimpedes efficient effective learning.Typically, educational environments are basedon the needs of the institution. Faculty, staff,legislative and administrative agendas appearto have a significant effect on the developmentand deployment of relevant learningenvironments.

From an instructor's point of view, the onemajor constant that impedes quality educationis time. Instructors need time to spend withindividual students, and time to gather extramaterials in support of the process, thereby,

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developing more flexible learningenvironments.

Allowing for individual learner needs isextremely important. The reality is that thereis a limited amount of time to do it in. It wouldbe nice if educators could provide learningexperiences that were easily customized to theneeds of individuals. This would consist ofenvironments in which students could takeresponsibility for learning. The authorcontends that technology can provide theinfrastructure needed to enable this type ofsituation.

Educators can use new tools to be verycreative and proactive in designing anddelivering instruction. It is time to use them toachieve efficient and effective learning. It istime to take time to create and distributecustomized learning environments that canprovide visually rich and dynamic learningopportunities.

TechnologyWhen education course content developers

have the tools to create an electronicclassroom, they will become the facilitators oflarge dynamic forms of information. Presentlythe opposite is usually true. The overhead oflearning and implementing new technologyinto a course is often counter productive. Itoften demands too much time, is complicatedand tends to creates large backlogs of pressingwork that are nearly impossible complete.This is why it is important for educators to be

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RESOURCESINFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC)."

very cautious in their selection and utilizationof available technology.

Being an educator in technical and computergraphics, the author has developed a verysimplified approach to qualifying the validityand usefulness of a technology.Basically, there are three questions to answer.

1. How difficult is the new technology tolearn?

2. How much data does the softwarerequire to be useful?

3. Does the hardware and software supporta system approach (Burton, 1995)

solution to document creation andmanagement?

The learning curve for some hardware andsoftware seems to be beyond the ability ofmost educational practitioners. After all, whyis the Macintosh computer and its software sosuccessful in education? Simply because it iseasy to learn and use. Apple understood earlythat the way to create useful tools was to makethem easy to use. PCs have since adopted thissame philosophy with the advent of MicrosoftWindows operating systems (OS) and morerecently the easy to use GUI of Microsoft NTOS.

Until recently, the basic underlyingcomputer technology for the Internet was theUNIX OS. Those educators with UNIXknowledge were able to use it for developingand delivering Internet based education. Thecompetitive playing field of educationalproducts development was skewed towardthese people.

UNIX systems require understanding andmanagement skills that are not typical of mosteducators. With WIN95 and NT 4.0 fromMicrosoft (MS), the playing field is beginningto level. UNIX machine manufacturers aretrying to maintain their market share againstthe easy to use and almost as powerful, NTmachines. The technology is migrating to theeducation profession masses. From thisperspective, it appears that NT certainlydeserves the time needed to learn and use it.

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With the appearance of NT and WIN95there is a logical migration for most of thedata that has been created using Microsoftproducts. The idea of not having to re-keyneeded files to run on the World Wide Web(WWW), coupled with the recent Microsoftrelease of Front Page, will permit functionallycomputer literate people to create andmaintain a WWW site. This seems to set thestage for a relatively easy migration to NT orWIN95 systems.

Mac users -have the same file creation andportability options within their OS withproducts like Adobe Pagemill and others.However, they do not appear to have a singlesolution to creating, editing and maintaining aweb server that approaches the simplicity andease of use that MS FrontPage offers. Notonly can a PC user create and edit HTMLdocuments, they can test- and integrate theminto their personal Internet server.

The combination of MS NT or WIN95 andFrontPage, with the ability to import usableexisting electronic curriculum content,provides the technology components necessaryto create and distribute WWW basedinstructional materials. Previously, mosteducational content developers have had to useothers to test and maintain their web materials.

Stimulus and responseUnlike most states, Indiana does not have a

network of state supported local communitycolleges. Instead, the two major universitiesmaintain regional campuses. These regionalcampus programs are intended to be identicalwith the ones at the main campus. The intentis to provide seamless integration of studentsparticipating in a two year regional degreeprogram and give them the opportunity tofinish a four year degree on the main campus.From a financial point of view, this systemmakes a lot of sense. However, from acurriculum administration point of view, it

creates tremendous time overhead for

instructors.Each department at the main campus is

responsible for developing and delivering

specific course content to the regional

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campuses. Each course coordinator isrequired to distribute course materials toregional campus counterparts. The intent is tomake sure that the content and sequence of thecourse is consistent with the main campusoffering. Obviously, this situation createsoverhead for the course coordinators.

Numerous questions and concerns from theregional sites is very time consuming. Astraw-poll in the School of Technology (SOT)at Purdue University revealed that mostfaculty are concerned about the current systemand its imposition on them. It is generallyagreed that the intended regional campusprocess has merit. Unfortunately, there is notenough time. With current faculty teachingand research loads, it is almost impossible toprovide the kind of guidance necessary to besuccessful within the existing process.

An obvious solution to the dilemma is to usethe Internet as a means to provide access tothe course information. With the emergenceof the World Wide Web (WWW) and its userfriendly graphical browsers, it seemed thetechnical possibility of delivering the kind ofinformation required had arrived.Unfortunately, the limitations of the HypertextMarkup Language (HTML), ComputerGraphics Interface (CGI) language andexisting hardware were deterrents to asuccessful solution.

Regardless of the deterrents, when comparedto the existing frustrations of administering theregional campus courses, it was time toattempt to use the WWW as a possiblesolution. The author's TG 105 TechnicalSketching course, within the Department ofTechnical Graphics (TG) Curriculum, offeredat numerous regional campuses, was selectedas the first course to be placed on the WWW.This implementation consisted of using asystem approach to designing, developing anddistributing the electronic course materials(Figure 1). In this instance the model isapplied to students, instructors and coursedeveloper.

The first step is to identify the people whoare participants within the system. Anysuccessful project should start by defining the

intended audience. In this case, the studentsand instructors of TG 105 are the receivers(customers) of the development effort.

The course developer needs programmers,system administrators and graphics specialiststo enable creation and migration of materialsto the WWW.

Figure 1System Model

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The environment consists of traditionalsketching tools and access to WWW enabledcomputers for the customers. Also, the coursedeveloper needs a production environment thatwill enable the creation of WWW compatiblematerials.

Processes relative to the sketching coursecontent include psychomotor, affective andcognitive knowledge activities. The customersare responsible for traditional course content.Basically this consists of improving sketchingskills and mastering the concepts that are thefoundation of technical graphics.

The developer needs to be project managerfor the development support team during theproduction process. Much like a businessendeavor, work orders, work logs, deadlines,critical paths and other activities needed toplan and monitor a project are critical to itssuccess.

Technology manifests itself in the form ofWWW computers, browser software andprinters for instructors and students. Thecourse developer needs supporting electronicdata files, HTML translation software, imagemapping software, ftp software, WWWserver, and other specialty software to besuccessful.

The product of the initial electroniccurriculum effort is located on the WWW at

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URL http ://tec h. purdue. edu/tg/cou rse/tg105.To date it is very successful. The author hasnot had a single e-mail or phone call

concerning the content or delivery of thecourse.

As successful as the initial WWW effort is

there is still significant room for improvement.Two comments are worthy to note. First, itrequired over two hundred hours to developand deploy the course. Much of this time wasconsumed in the production of needed uniqueor translation of non-compatible data. Second,the technical difficulties were very annoyingand time consuming. Dealing with the

development of the SOT WWW serverinfrastructure and finding usable software thatwas compatible with the author's abilities wasdifficult.

An initial assessment of the WWWdevelopment experience was that it took toolong. Compared to previous time expendituresfor regional campus course administrativeactivities, the electronic version took threetimes longer.

Thankfully, the evolving dynamic nature oftechnology came to the rescue. Morepowerful computers, friendly graphic userinterfaces (GUI), data exchange speed

enhancements and significant automatic easyto use WWW programming tools now make it

possible to more easily and quickly create,distribute and maintain curriculum materials.The significant contributor to the new

development environment is MS Front Page.TG now maintains many of its courses on

line at the Uniform Resource Locator (URL),http://tech.purdue.eduitg/courses/.

Front PageIt is not the purpose of this paper to

promote a single vendor or software.However, the preliminary indications are thatthe significance of Front Page to educationalmaterials developers, with average technicalability, warrants some discussion.

Most experienced educators are adverse tothe impositions placed on them by emergingtechnology. Their stress, identified as techno-stress (Burton 1990), can usually be attributed

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to a failure to recognize the impact a newtechnology will have. Microsoft, in its

continuing battle to define and promote thefrontier of the Internet, created and freelydistributed a new product called Front Page.From this author's perspective, their effort tocreate a non-techno-stress Internet

development tool is proving very successfuland timely.

Front Page is, according to M. Mathews(1996) in his book Web Publishing withMicrosoft Front Page, "...a very easy-to-use,full featured set of tools for the expertcreation, delivery, and maintenance of websites. And Front Page does this in aWYSIWYG environment..." In short,technically challenged individuals now have atool to create and maintain a rather elaborateweb presence. Frames, discussion groups,easily created links, the removal of hardHTML coding and an easy to use GUI are justa few of its many attributes.

FrontPage can be downloaded from the MShome page at http://microsoft.com/sitebuilder.The software automatically downloads andconfigures on your machine at the appropriateprompts. There is a tutorial application within

the software that is easy to use. The ultimatesignificance of FrontPage to the educationalcommunity is hard to predict. Realizing thepotential that this software possesses will be acreative enjoyable endeavor. If control of thedevelopment and distribution environment is

the issue, then FrontPage solves it.

IndustryTo attain the vision of a truly dynamic

virtual classroom, the author visualizes

another attribute that is needed in WWWdevelopmental efforts. That is the creation of

intelligent student oriented documents. It isperceived that a database populated with

discrete information that is capable of creating

dynamic documents, at the request of students,

is needed.During the past four years, the author has

designed and implemented numerous

technology rich systems that are being used to

provide virtual visual information to

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customers. They consist of unique softwareproducts and visual libraries that provide theuser on demand dynamic documentation. Allof these systems focus on the lowest commondenominator of PC technology.

Much like the previous discussion of thetypical educator's limited technical envelope,these systems are designed for processfunctionally literate people that do not havethe time or experience to use most industrycommunication technology products. Theyare not required to learn cryptic commands toget information. Workers can customizedocuments based on needs. Using themetaphor of the industrial Just-In-Time (JIT)processes, which provide only the materialsand equipment necessary to perform a specifictask, the dynamic on demand documentationsystem created by the author is called Just-In-Time Training (Jill').

The Next StepAdmittedly, HTML pages allow for

hypertext links that provide avenues to morespecific information. This information couldbe classified as a dynamic activity. Thereality is that the links simply load onto thecomputer another static HTML document.Static, in this instance, refers to the pre-configured nature of most HTML and not theanimation components of some pages.Although the later is dynamic in that it isanimated, it is not dynamic in regard to itsability to change with different peopleaccessing it.

Also, experience shows that most hypertextlinks tend to provide too many options anddeter the focus of the inquiry. That is, whenan inquiry is made to find information, it is notuncommon for the inquirer to wander off tosome distant insignificant information. This iswhat is typically referred to as web suiting.Surfmg the web is supposed to be a structuredactivity with a focus and goal. The reality,based on observations, tends to indicate thatthe original focus of a request becomesminimized when web surfing.

It seems that the WWW experience needsone more vital component. A component that

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attempts to prevent aimless wandering andprovides a dynamic page assembly thatincludes information in a usable form. Not aseries of URLs, but an assembly ofinformation that appears to have some form ofintelligence. It is proposed that thiscustomization occur in the form of databaseactivities similar to the previous industrialexamples.

The dynamics of this new learnerenvironment lie not only in the ability of thedatabase engine to-retrieve documents relativeto the request, but to also provide only theamount of information needed to perform thetask., i.e. JITT. This suggests that a record ofstudent performance and abilities has abearing on the quantity and type ofinformation that the student receives. Bylogging on to a URL, the learner would bringall of their attributes with them. Previousclass performance, academic history, readingability levels, IQ, interests or any relative datadeemed significant by the instructor to bettercustomize the information. That is not to saythat the learner could not access otherinformation. Just that the results of therequest would better fit the learner's abilitiesand needs.

Concurrent with a customized amount ofdata there would be a tendency to provide asmuch graphic visual information as possible.Since graphic information provides fasterinterpretation and comprehension, an attemptwould be made to alleviate language andability levels within the dynamic compositedocuments. This movement from text baseddocuments is relative to the author's previousindustrial observations and preliminary datathat indicates a sixty-two percent taskcomprehension time savings for workers usingdynamic documents over traditionaldocuments (Burton, 1995).

System AttributesA proposed dynamic JITT system would

consist of an Internet (public area), Intranet(private area) and a Development area(Figure 2).

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The Internet component is comprised ofuser information services. With a typicalWWW look and feel, this accessible area isthe final display area of dynamic data for thelearner.

This site keeps track of user input andmovement. It collects data from the user forthe Intranet database. This data helps createthe customized intelligence of the Internetdisplay.

In the dynamic Internet, students can enterdiscussion areas, review syllabi, see studentwork examples, submit their work for posting,look at grades, read or print course materialwhile viewing customized information for theirdevelopmental needs.

Residing behind a firewall and not

accessible from the Internet , the Intranet iswhere sensitive documents, programs andprogram links reside. It is the repository of alarge amount of data required for the successof the dynamic Internet experience. This areaincludes grade lists, class rosters, and othercumulative data that provides a profile of theuser.

The Development area is where the projecttesting and other not ready for releasecomponents reside. Much like software alphaand beta versions, data in this area is highlyproprietary and accessible only to the projectmanagers and developers. This is a place toexperiment and test ideas. Because of itsrather volatile nature, the development area isisolated from the other areas.

Figure 2Proposed Dynamic Web

Intranet

SummaryThe original intent of this paper was to

present a current system that the author wasusing to create and distribute WWW coursematerials. But true to its continuing expansivenature, technology imposed heavily on theoriginal concept. The issues and solutions thathave transpired since the abstract for thispaper was written have been significant. Inshort, the need and desire to further developthe original process proved to be unwarranted.

The original course materials aremetamorphosing into a more significant andrelative JITT product. As mentioned earlier,the current project can be observed in theauthor's personal URL at Purdue,http://knoy329.tg.purdue.ecluitg105. Use the"Cuss-n-Discus" hypertext link on the TG 105home page to submit comments about the site.This is a closely monitored area so inquirieswill receive an immediate response.

The obvious migration of the graphicemphasis in this proposed strategy is to usethe Virtual Reality Markup Language(VRML). VRML is another powerfulemerging tool that should further enhance thelearner's experience. Purdue University TGProfessor Dennis Short has a VRML samplerunning at http://knoy.337.tg.purdue.edu.

Dynamic JITT learning environments,

delivered over the WWW, will have a

significant impact on future education. Theywill provide learners with customized virtuallearning that facilitates efficient utilization oftime resources. The cumulative effect will bethe expansion of student visual literacy. Thedynamic JITT abilities will help reduce theinadequacies of traditional educational contentdelivery.

Now is an exciting time for educators andcontent developers. The opportunities arereal. Motivated visionary developers aremoving into an area that may prove to be the

next frontier for education.Technology has, and is, fulfilling its

obligation to make the development anddistribution of relevant course materials less

difficult. All that is required of today's

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educators is a commitment of resources forparticipation.

References

Burton, T. L., (1995, October). Attainingvisual literacy using simplified graphics inindustry.

Paper presented at the International VisualLiteracy Association Conference, Chicago, IL.

Burton, T. L., (1990). Coping with techno-stress in technical graphics. AmericanSociety for Engineering EducationEngineering Design Graphics Division:Proceedings. 47-53.

Mathews, M. (1996). Web publishing withmicrosoft frontpage. Berklye, CA: Osborne

McGraw-Hill.

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