The Teacher's Role in Moderated Online Course

Martina Holenko & Nataa Hoi-Boi Department of Information Science Faculty of Philosophy, University of Rijeka Omladinska 14, HR-51000 Rijeka, Croatia Phone: +385 51 345046 Fax: +385 51 345207 E-mail: martina_holenko@yahoo.com, natasa.hoic@ri.t-com.hr
Abstract - This paper presents The Geometer's Sketchpad moderated online course designed and realized with the AHyCo LMS at the Faculty of Philosophy in Rijeka. This online course is intended to be used by students and teachers of mathematics interested in using The Geometer's Sketchpad software. Moderated online course promotes continuous pedagogical guidance and communication between the students and the tutor. The tutor's role in the education process is not only to transfer the knowledge, but to motivate and support students in learning. Therefore, new challenges are pushed upon both the students and the tutors in an online learning environment. Learning and teaching activities during The Geometer's Sketchpad online course with the emphasis on the tutor's role are described.

Unlike the nonmoderated course, the moderated online course implies continuous communication between students and a teacher whose role is not only to transfer the knowledge, but to motivate and support students in learning and acquiring skills. Therefore, new challenges are pushed upon both students and teachers in an online environment. The moderated online courses include a time schedule for planed activities. Dates when the course starts and finishes, as well as deadlines for completing the tasks are defined. Between the deadlines, students can learn choosing time and intensity which suites them best. The teacher is there to guide and support them. Therefore, the number of students to sing up for the moderated course is limited. Optimal number is 8 to 10 (maybe 12) students per tutor [3].

I. INTRODUCTION
The process of development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), together with its usage in almost all areas of human activity, adds a completely new dimension to the role of teaching. Far different from the traditional concept, the new modern teaching does not regard students as just passive listeners of their teachers [1]. Despite the emphasis on the independent students work while learning online, there is a need for a teacher to guide and support students in such online environment. That is why greater importance is placed on moderated online courses and the new role of the teacher (tutor or mentor) in conducting these courses. In this paper we present The Geometer's Sketchpad moderated online course designed and realized with the AHyCo learning management system (LMS) at the Faculty of Philosophy in Rijeka [2]. Learning and teaching activities during The Geometer's Sketchpad online course with the emphasis on the tutor's role are described. The reminder of this paper is organized as follows: section II describes moderated online courses, section III presents tutors required knowledge and skills. The moderated online course The Geometers Sketchpad is described in section IV while section V presents some conclusions.

III. TEACHER'S KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS

The situation for the teacher in online course is significantly different from traditional classroom settings because there is no personal contact. The lack of personal contact is not crucial for successful learning since there are some other characteristic such as flexibility in access to contents, higher level of learning control, possibilities for interactive learning through discussions, project and similar activities [4]. Methods and modes of teaching are different according to two distinct environments: f2f (face-to-face) and online. However, some tasks for teachers in traditional and online classroom are the same: to define explicit educational goals, to motivate students for learning, to help and encourage them on their way to success. It is demanded for the tutor to possess pedagogical, communicational and organizational skills with high competence. One way for the teacher to become a successful online tutor is to enroll in an online course as online learner. In that way, the tutor can directly be confronted to challenges and problems his/her students will be faced with [5]. A. Design and preparations for online course Although it is not the rule, very often the tutor is also an author or designer of an online course. It is necessary to be aware that the main goal of online course is not to deliver textual materials in electronic format. The materials have to be interesting and well structured and the chosen methods of learning adjusted to diversities of future students. Learning activities have to be flexible to meet the needs of individuals. If the course is designed efficiently, students satisfaction and interest can be expected which will lead to the main purpose achievement of educational goals. As result of inappropriate design, students dissatisfaction leads to increasing drop out rate [6].

II. MODERATED ONLINE COURSES

During the online course participants online students learn independently and perform all their activities usually using Internet. In the centre of learning process is an active student who is responsible for organising his/her time, place and learning activities which are different in compare to traditional education. The quality and quantity of the support given to students in an online course depends on whether the course is moderated or not [3], [4].

Before the beginning of the course, the tutor has to create preliminary materials that will help future participants decide whether to join the course or not. If they plan to intend the course, it is necessary to introduce them to the required basic knowledge and technical preconditions for work. Instructions or help page for the students are a basic element of every online course. Well written instructions will simplify the use of materials and provide the students with the insight in working manners. Instructions should contain the learning strategies as well as the lessons' content and the navigation description. The teacher has to predict the time needed to study the lessons and to solve the tests. Also, the teacher needs to specify the methods of students knowledge testing, with detailed evaluation criteria and final grade calculation [7]. B. Communication and online discussions moderation During the course, the teacher and the students can communicate in different situations synchronously or asynchronously. At the beginning of the course, they exchange breaking the ice messages such as welcome messages, instructions or messages for introducing each other by witch teacher receives information that the students have successfully joined the course. When they begin their learning process, the tutor will band the contents, give further examples, and explain the tasks, etc. [5]. As participants of online courses have responsibility for their own learning, very significant factor for their success is motivation. Students with strong aspiration for learning are in most cases very successful, but the real challenge for the online teachers is to motivate the ones with less enthusiasm. Initiating online discussions are very useful because the students can exchange the knowledge and their experiences. While moderating online discussion, the teacher is not in the first plan but he/she directs the discussion and supports the students in expressing their ideas and attitudes. Taking part in such an activity increases understanding and improves memorising skills [4]. Throughout discussions, learning community is created. Groups of students can solve problems, analyse possible solutions, negotiate and gain knowledge. In that process, the students can help their colleagues and contribute to their learning. Thereby, the process of learning becomes more interactive [3]. The discussion starts with the teacher annunciating the theme, asking questions and giving tasks for students. Afterwards, the teacher monitors the discussion progress and directs collaborators to ensure that the debate stays on the theme. The teacher with his/her own messages encourages the students to ponder upon the theme, and to contribute and express their ideas [3]. C. Knowledge assessments Evaluation of students' knowledge is very important for both the teacher and the students not only at the end of the

course but also throughout the course. There is a need for summative and formative knowledge assessments. The summative assessment is usually carried out at the end of educational cycle such as lessons, units (module) or the entire course. A diagnostic knowledge assessment can be carried out before the course begins in order to determine the student's previous knowledge [8]. The knowledge and skills assessments can be carried out by mandatory or optional tests and/or assignments. Besides, online quizzes at the end of the units are very useful for the student's self-assessment. As a part of the summative assessment, the students send the answers of their mandatory assignment to the teacher who evaluates it and delivers the feedback to students. The final exam belongs to the obligated part of evaluation, before awarding the certificate about the successful completion of the course. If it is a qualification certificate, the final exam is carried out with supervision. Instead of the final exam, students can perform some detailed assignment [7].

IV. MODERATED ONLINE COURSE THE

GEOMETER'S SKETCHPAD A. Organisation and contents of the course This online course is intended to be used by students and teachers of mathematics interested in using The Geometer's Sketchpad software. According to the recommendations for the moderated online course, the teacher supervises and initiates students activities during this course. The Geometer's Sketchpad software is used for drawing the sketches related to mathematic, especially to plane geometric. The course includes drawing simple sketches, work with functions in square or polar coordinate system, measuring, animations and action buttons. Students can learn through examples about drawing fractals and custom tools. The course is designed and realized with the AHyCo learning management system based on adaptive hypermedia. AHyCo's Web-based learning environment allows the student to log in and study the automatic generated courseware, which can dynamically adapt according to his/her success in acquiring knowledge. The course content is divided to eight modules, each containing 3 to 23 lessons and a final test. Pictures, animations and examples are included within the lessons in order to make the understanding of contents easier for the students. At the end of every module there is a practical assignment or project. After the student has finished studying the modules lessons, he/she should take the final test. A transition to another module is possible only after the successful completion of this test. Predicted time of course length is thirty days. Estimated time for successful completion of the course is four hours of studying per week. The figure 1. presents the activities for the students during "The Geometer's Sketchpad" course.

Fig.1. Activities for students during the course

Students knowledge is evaluated at the end and during the course with different evaluation activities. If the student ends the course successfully, he or she will be able to use most of The Geometer's Sketchpad software options and functions, and get a good foundation to continue to learn independently. Students can acquire contents faster then it is planed, but not slower because there are deadlines for creating projects (practical tasks) in each module. The dates for beginning and ending of discussions are set by calendar. B. Communication with students The teacher and students communicate asynchronously using e-mail and discussion forum [9]. Before the course begins, the teacher sends information via e-mail and delivers data for LMS access (login, password) with short directions. After the course begins, all the information is announced in forum. On the first day, beside the welcome message, the plan of the course with calendar and instructions is announced. The teacher initiates virtual meeting and students introduce themselves in forum. Each student has to write a short biography and to state some reasons why he/she decided to join the course. The teacher will contact each student who fails to access the course in the first three days by e-mail. During the course, the teacher will remind the students on the deadlines set forth in calendar and correspond with students to help them solve problems via e-mail or in forum. The participants will receive an evaluation feedback by e-mail only in order to prevent other students from accessing their results. Communication between students is maintained through discussions in forum initiated by the teacher or one of the students. There are three formal discussions during the course. Each discussion lasts for one week. The students know the evaluating criteria for the discussions before the start. In

order to discus, the students are obliged to read the lessons because the discussions themes are related to their contents. The teacher starts a discussion with questions to answer or a problem to talk about. The students should send messages with answers, attitudes and thoughts but also they should comment messages sent by other students. While discussing, they have to follow the netiquette rules. Several days after the end of the discussion, the teacher sends a discussion summery. Besides taking part in the discussions initiated by the tutor, it is recommended that students initiate their own discussions associated to the course contents. In that way, they can ask others for an advice or an opinion. C. Tests and practical assignments The students have to solve a self-test or a quiz (Fig. 2) to determine the knowledge at the end of each module. The types of questions include: true/false (multiple choice question with either a true or false response), multiplechoice/single-answer (multiple choice question with one of the available choices as correct answer), and multiplechoice/multiple-answer (multiple choice question with one or more of the choices as correct answer) [9]. The main disadvantage of these types of questions is possibility of students' guessing. In order to deal with this problem, the negative score for incorrectly answered questions are introduced. If the student does not know the answer, it is better to leave the question unanswered then to choose the answer by chance [7]. Time for solving tests is limited but it is possible to solve them several times. Besides self-testing, it is necessary to pass the test because transition to another module depends on the outcome of the final test. In order to continue learning, the students' knowledge about the module should be greater then the minimum acceptable knowledge level for module defined by the teacher-author

Fig.2. AHyCo page with test analysis

At the end of the course, the students have to take the final test. Time for solving the test is limited and the students can take it only once. The students will have an access to the final test after they reach minimum acceptable knowledge level for the last module. At the end of each module, students have to create a smaller practical assignment or project, which is also a part of the knowledge evaluation. They have to create a sketch in Geometer's Sketchpad according to the given description. At the end of the course, the students have to create more detailed final sketch or project in order to practice what they have learned during the whole course. The students know the evaluation criteria (number of points) for each project and the final assignment in advance. D. Evaluation of students The feedback information or the final grade for the students is the number of collected points during the course by creating projects, solving final test and contributing to discussions. By creating the projects students can collect 75 points. Number of points for each project with criteria for scoring is specified depending on how complex the project is. The students can hand over the project only once, according to the date set in calendar and the teacher is going to review them. If a student hands over a project a few days later, the teacher will subtract

0.25 points per a day of delay (except when the deadline is postponed in arrangement with the tutor). The students should solve the final test before the date set in calendar and the maximal number of points they can earn is 15. The students can aggregate the maximum of 10 points if they contribute to the discussions. Altogether, with project, test and discussions the students should earn a minimum of 70 points (of witch a minimum of 7 points for the final test) in order to successfully pass the course. Because the students should learn functions of software and acquire drawing skills during The Geometers Sketchpad course, emphasis of evaluation is on practical assignments. In difference to theoretical questions in which teacher can test whether the students have learned purpose of using certain options or functions, with creating project the teacher can check their drawing skills and familiarity with the software. E. Course evaluation In the period from May 17th to June 16th 2006 ten students were enrolled in the course The Geometer's Sketchpad. They were mostly students of Math and Information Sciences and they have used e-mail, web and AHyCo LMS before the course. After the course, anonymous questionnaire about the students' satisfaction with the

course's content and activities as well as tutor engagement was conducted. Seven students (70%) ended the course successfully, and three students dropped out. The students who dropped out claimed to have problems with technology and a lack of time. Six out of seven students who had finished the course successfully submitted the questionnaire. Because of the small number of participants in the research who form a homogenous group, the results are not of high statistical significance and will primarily help the course author to develop the course further. As the main reason for joining the course most of the students claimed aspiration for knowledge (66%). Questionnaire result showed that all the students were satisfied with the course as a whole, contents presentation, and the teachers expertise, knowledge and communication skills and with immediate feedback. Majority of the students (83%) claimed to be satisfied with the tasks and projects at the end of each module and the same number mentioned that they liked creating the projects the most. Even though the students mentioned that the duration of the course was optimal (83%), on the question Do you think that more then four hours of work per week was necessary to successfully complete the course? the same number of them answered positive. It points on possible wrong author's prediction written in course description. The students think that the tests' questions were easy (83%), as well as the practical assignments (100%). According to the time devoted and the effort, 66% of the students think that they learned a lot, and the other that they learned enough. Majority of the students (66%) think that they would not complete the course more successfully on a classical way (in a classroom) while others could not decide. As advantage of online learning, most of the students (56%) highlighted time independence. Among problems they confronted, the students mentioned problems with technology such as problems with computer, access to the Internet or LMS (66%) and lack of time (33%). The students who completed the course successfully showed excellent results. Average result (91.64 points out of 100) shows that students were motivated for learning, especially in creating the project, which was the essential element in evaluation.

While developing the course, it is necessary to predict different background knowledge, learning styles and capabilities of participants and to arrange the contents and activities of the course according to that. Participants of online courses have to adjust to the new working methods placing the emphasis both on competence with information and communication technology, and on writing skills because it is the most common way in communication with a teacher. As the students learn independently, and should be active during the whole course, motivation is very relevant. It is important that students find the content of the course interesting and relevant to their personal development. Only then, they will learn with comprehension and aspire to their own goal. The teacher should point out possible usage of contents they learn about and encourage them to contribute to online discussions in order to gain the knowledge but also to substitute the lack of personal contact. The Moderated online course The Geometer's Sketchpad has been designed and realized with the AHyCo LMS at the Faculty of Philosophy in Rijeka. Ten students attended this course and seven of them completed it successfully. The questionnaire results showed that the students were satisfied with the course's content and activities as well as with the tutor's assistance. Moderating the online course requires a lot of time and effort. However, the students results of the course together with all the advantages of such a way of learning motivate teachers for future work and improvement. REFERENCES
[1] P. Baumgarthner, "Communication and interactions in eLearning," in Proceedings of eLearning Conference: Towards a Learning Society, Brusseles, Belgium, 2005. [2] AHyCo Home Page (in Croatian), http://AHyCo.ffri.hr/AHyCo/ [27/01/2007]. [3] G. Salmon, E-moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online 2nd Edition, London, and New York, RoutledgeFalmer, 2004. [4] T. Anderson, Teaching in an Online Learning Context. In: Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University, 2004, ttp://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/ch11.html [5] D. Caplan, The Development of Online Courses. In: Ed. Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online learning. Athabasca University. , 2004 http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/ch7.html [6] G.A. Prendergast, Keeping Online Student Drop-out Numbers Low, Global-Ed.com, 2003. http://globaled.com/articles/GerardPrendergast2003.pdf, [01/17/2005] [7] V. Mornar, N. Hoi-Boi, D. Pukljak Zokovi, Approaches to Online Testing in Web-based Educational Systems, Proceedings of EUROCON 2003, Ljubljana (Slovenia). [8] D. Baume, A Briefing on Key Concepts: formative and summative, criterion and norm-referenced assessment. (Learning and Teaching Support Network). http://www.swap.ac.uk/docs/ltsn/assess/07Keyconcepts.rtf [9] W. Horton, W. Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2000.

V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, learning and teaching activities during The Geometer's Sketchpad online course with the emphasis on the tutor's role were presented. It is hard to imagine that online education could replace entire traditional education process, especially in elementary and secondary schools, but its advantages for applying to high education and to adults education cannot be neglected. Besides education for teaching online, very useful skill of the tutor in moderating online course would be competence in teaching methods enforced in traditional education. The teacher should approach individually to each student enrolled in the course.