Technology in the classroom is changing the way faculties instruct and students learn. Understanding how faculty members perceive and use technology for learning is important for improving the educational process because instructor perceptions can potentially be a hindrance to the use and implementation of technology. This paper describes the results of a survey that investigated faculty Internet usage for instructional purposes as well as their perceptions of courseware management and Web‐publishing tools. The survey targeted a random sample of engineering faculty at ABET‐accredited universities. The survey results show that while many faculty members are using both Web‐publishing tools and courseware management tools for delivering educational content, they use these tools for only a small subset of pedagogical activities.
The Instructional Objective Writing Assistant (IOWA) is a simple online knowledge-based system that serves to help instructors write good course objectives. Instructional objectives are important for a number of different reasons and yet objectives are often not written, written incorrectly, or incompletely written. Instructors can use IOWA to solve the problems of absent, incorrect and incomplete objectives. Most objectives are incorrect in that they are usually written in a form that cannot be observed or measured, thus making it impossible to determine whether or not the objectives have been met. The IOWA web site contains instructions and suggestions on how to write objectives that are observable and measurable. A set of objectives is incomplete i f it doesn't include objectives for all levels of thinking or ifthe objectives are focused on levels of thinking that are not appropriate for the course. The knowledge-based system, which is written in Java and posted as an applet on the IOWA web site, can help to correct this problem. The program asks the instructor questions about the course for which objectives are to be written and then returns a graph, based on the input of the instructor, that shows which levels of cognition should be focused on when writing objectives. The instructor then uses this graph, along with the suggestions, instructions, hints and examples provided on the rest of the web site, to write objectives that are correct and complete. This paper will present the motivation for creating IOWA, the knowledge upon which IOWA is based, how IOWA works, and initial resultsfrom the use of IOWA.perform and that the instructor can observe. If the action is performed appropriately, then the objective has been met.For illustration, consider the following examples, noting the differences between the two: Example 1: At the end of this course in Engineering Graphics, the student will know how to use a computeraided-design software package.Example 2: At the end of this course in Engineering Graphics, the student will be able to draw a multi-view representation of a solid object using a computer-aideddesign software package.The second example is more effective because the objective is clear and specific. The second objective is an activity that can actually be observed and assessed. A professor can hand the student a solid object and ask the student to draw a multi-view representation of the object using a specific piece of software. f the student can perform the task, the objective is met. On the other hand, it is impossible to determine whether or not the first objective has been achieved. Whose standards of 'knowledge' must the student live up to in order to prove that helshe does in fact 'know how to use a computer-aided-design software package?' The first example is more of a broad statement of what is expected of the students and thus is a goal rather than an objective.
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