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NSO 2006

Academic Computing Center > ACC in the News > Teaching and Learning through Technology

AUB Embraces Teaching and Learning through Technology

Source: NEWS HIGHLIGHTS, October 2007

The role of the worldwide web as a teaching tool has been expanding exponentially over the past decade. In addition to using the web as search engines that can supplement research, academic institutions, including AUB, have been increasingly relying on web-based applications for a wide range of
	Seminar highlights exponential growth of online teaching tools at AUB since 2001

academic-related activities, such as searching library databases, posting course material, conducting academic discussions or even running classes.

Over the past year, AUB has been dabbling with creating hybrid classes--that are part virtual, part conventional--with other universities in order to share expertise and enrich the classroom. Already, several video-conferencing sessions have been held, particularly in political science and international relations classes, thus bringing cultural diversity and different perspectives into class discussions. Video-conferencing has also been a valuable tool for discussing complex medical cases at the AUB Medical Center.

Moreover, students' academic life at AUB is dominated by Turnitin, a valuable online plagiarism prevention tool, which professors rely on to prove that students' work is indeed original. Since October 2004, Turnitin has analyzed over 22,000 student papers. More recently, the Department of Mechanical Engineering,
	Ghaddar: Online courses allow students to be exposed to a greater diversity of expertise

with the support of the Academic Computing Center (ACC) at AUB, organized a course on design methodology with Professor Georges Fadel from Clemson University, who ran the course online from the United States, after having visited Lebanon and AUB. The course, which was run as a pilot test, was considered "very successful," by Professor Nesreen Ghaddar, the chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department who was behind the pilot project, which was featured at a May seminar on teaching and learning with technology, organized by the ACC.

"Online courses allow us to bring expertise from abroad, at a more affordable cost," said Ghaddar. "Thus, students can be exposed to a greater diversity of expertise."

Since AUB has reinstated eight PhD programs this Fall, online courses can prove to be a valuable tool for PhD students, especially since the number of AUB faculty who are available for PhD students is still limited, added Ghaddar, noting that online courses are best suited to small classrooms--a characteristic of graduate-level and PhD-level courses.
	Fadel: Collaborating with other universities on online courses gives AUB more visibility

AUB is expecting to sign treaties with US universities, thus allowing it to take advantage of their expertise through online teaching.

"Collaborating with other universities on online courses also gives AUB the added advantage of increasing its visibility and potentially participating in collaborative research or dissertation committees," said Fadel.

Most professors who have used Moodle or WebCT in their teaching said that the systems helped enrich communication with students and offered new teaching strategies through the innovative use of a variety of digital materials, graphics and images.

WebCT and Moodle are two learning management systems

Silva: The most important thing we can do as educators is help students learn how to learn

that are ideal for creating online learning communities and for supplementing face-to-face learning.

Before 2001-02, AUB did not use either system. WebCT was introduced at AUB in 2001, to be replaced later by Moodle, at the beginning of the 2006-2007 academic year. [Moodle was the main system used in the pilot course offered by Fadel.]
Now there are 644 course sections in Moodle, the popular course management system which is currently used in over 115 countries and thousands of universities. In other words, more than 40 percent of instructors are using Moodle in more than 40 percent of their courses.

"[Using Moodle] was an unbelievably productive way of continuing class discussion outside the classroom," reported one professor. "This was the best class I ever taught, thanks in large part to the online discussion."

While discussion forums allow the classroom experience to spill over beyond the allotted time for each class, this comes at a cost to professors, who should expect to dedicate more time to their courses, noted David Standen, a visiting professor at the Olayan School of Business who taught a course on developing business plans in the spring semester. "Online teaching tools create a 24/7 learning platform," he said. "So technology does not necessarily make teaching more efficient but it definitely makes the learning experience richer."

And the learning experience is two ways. Even professors gain something from running an online course. "I sometimes had to rethink the assignments to make sure the students could digest the material," said Fadel. "But I enjoyed the challenge as much as I enjoyed the eagerness of the students. As we progressed, technology became less of an issue, but remained a constant weakness."

Following this pilot course, ACC has been continuously upgrading its technology and internet connections, which have markedly improved, according to Ghaddar.

In any case, if figures are anything to go by, then whatever weakness in the technology has not proved to be much of a deterrent, since web-based applications have definitely been gaining popularity among teachers and students, over the past few years.

"Before 2005, AUB students had never taken an online proctored exam," said Rosangela Silva, Academic Computing Center director. "Since then, 48 major online exams have been conducted, involving 1000s of students," she added.

For Silva, technology is not a goal in itself, because more often than not, the technology students will need once they hit the workplace has still not been invented. "The top 10 most demanded jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004," said Silva. "This means that we are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist. That's why the most important thing we can do as educators is help students learn how to learn."

And by expanding students' perspective and globalizing their reach, technology as a teaching tool aspires to do just that.

For more information on the Fifth Faculty Seminar go to :
http://staff.aub.edu.lb/~acc/Events/V-FacSem2007/main.html