Faculty flock to WebCT

3:21 p.m., Nov. 8, 2004--When Bill Saylor heard his animal and food sciences students grousing that their answers were only off by one decimal point, he decided to show them what one decimal point means to a baby chick. He crafted a hands-on class where students actually fed chickens the diets they formulated.

The students got the point, but Saylor got three to four hours of extra work tallying numbers—until last year when UD’s course management programming staff showed him how to do the same work in 10 minutes.

Saylor, an assistant professor of animal and food sciences, had more than 70 students reporting their birds’ diets on paper. “Chaos is probably a little bit too broad a term,’’ he said. “Often students would do their own thing on the forms, and we’d have to decipher it or not use their data.”

Then he sent an S.O.S. to IT-User Services. Erin Sicuranza and other course management program staffers designed an eye-catching, web-based records system complete with hat-wearing chicks. Saylor went from four hours’ work a night to 10 minutes. He says the best part is students can look at the data for the entire class on a single web form and instantly understand why one chick is plump and the next is not.
Saylor pushes a button, and he can download all the information from the student worksheets onto a master sheet.

“I just had so much fun working with those folks,’’ he said. “It was a learning experience on both sides. They got to know more about chickens and nutrition than they probably ever wanted to know, and I certainly got a great perspective on how valuable WebCT can be for us and for the students.’’

Web programming is changing the way UD does business—and delivering information in a form tech-savvy college students appreciate. From a slow start with a handful of technology-friendly professors, the use of programming is rapidly expanding, rolling out new courses, eliminating paper costs, putting quizzes online and using online demos that prove that a picture really is worth a thousand words.

The number of instructors using web-based materials to teach fall courses has increased 12-fold since 2000—from 30 to 363.

Leila Lyons, director of IT-User Services, said teachers are forming web-based discussion groups for their students, using electronic drop boxes to allow students to submit assignments online and creating online syllabi that save printing costs. She said one professor put everything online for his 800 students and was able to eliminate thousands of paper copies.

Thousands of students at other colleges and universities have signed onto a virtual microscope that IT-User Services designed for a UD biological sciences lab.

With a support staff of six professionals and three graduate students, the department has created online journals for students to record private journals for classes, a successful language tutorial program and templates that help nursing students diagnose patients’ symptoms.

Some projects cross-pollinate.

The IT support team worked with Chris Cannon, associate professor of nursing, to design a web-based version of a charting process she uses to help students track changes in patients’ health. “In the 14 years of teaching at UD, my involvement with IT and the WebCT support team has been the most helpful,’’ Cannon said.

When Saylor attended a conference with Cannon and saw her web-based charting system, he realized he could use some of her methods to help students diagnose situations in his animal science lab.

With students who have grown up with personal computers, web programs are a natural. Each year more professors ask the University’s User Services staff for help in formulating online course content.

“There’s sort of this closing gap,” Sicuranza said. “It used to be that the early adaptors were math and hard sciences professors, but now you’re seeing early adaptors in art and other areas.’’

Article by Kathy Canavan

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