abstract
teld stands for “teaching by examples and learning by doing”. it unifies what have been widely known as case method (cm), problem-base learning (pbl), and project-based learning (pbl) in business, medical, and engineering education respectively. two key premises of successful teld are student participation and collaboration during the teld process. it is usually resource-intensive to accomplish these two premises. the number of tutors required to facilitate seminars and workshops within small groups is obviously greater than that of teachers to give formal lectures to large classes. this requirement restricts the adoption of the teld method in educational establishments where resources are increasingly stretched already. the teld courseware engine has been developed with an intention to overcome this limitation to some extent. as a virtual study room, teld provides facilities for the groups and teams to plan their learning activities, to indicate the roles and responsibilities of team members, and to indicate when and what individual members should do and how they should integrate their findings through teamwork in the form of workshops or meetings. this paper discusses and explains these teld online facilities for enabling student involvement and collaboration.
keywords: case method, teaching by examples, learning by doing, problem-based learning, project-based learning, online courseware.
1. introduction
teld stands for “teaching by examples and learning by doing”. teld represents a teaching and learning method that unifies what have been widely known as case method (cm), problem-base learning (pbl), and project-based learning (pbl) in business, medical, and engineering education respectively. for example, the case method (cm) has been adopted by a vast number of business programs all over the world since its formal introduction at the harvard business school in 1900s (barnes et al, 1994; erskine et al, 1998). likewise, the problem-based learning (pbl) method has been widely practised by leading medical schools in the world since it was formally introduced at the mcmaster university faculty of health sciences in 1920s (http://edweb.sdsu.edu/clrit/learningtree/; /foundation/pbl/). it is until recent years when case method, and problem-/project- based learning (pbl) are no longer the preserves where they were originally introduced. they have been widely promoted across a wide range of disciplines.
whatever the term is used to describe these methods, the essence is to extensively use real and/or hypothetical problems, examples, and case studies in the course of teaching and learning. teld (teaching by examples and learning by doing) captures this essence and therefore unifies these different terms. for this reason, cm, pbl, and teld are used interchangeably throughout this paper. teld emphasizes the balance between the knowledge acquisition and skill development. that is, knowledge is most effectively acquired in the context in which it is discovered. “teaching by examples” provides such a context of problem-based learning. in addition, skills are most efficiently developed during the process by which a practical problem is solved. “learning by doing” creates such a problem-solving process.
among the many premises of the teld method, student participation and collaboration in the teaching and learning process are key to the success. cooperative learning (cl) encourages students to learn from each other in addition to class contact with the tutors. this method has a number of advantages in engineering education (johnson, 1999; johnson and johnson, 1988; mourtos, 1997). for example, cl results in greater efforts to learn, a greater understanding of technical information, and a greater independent ability to perform job functions. the method promotes higher achievements, development of critical thinking and reasoning, positive attitudes towards learning, interpersonal skills, and self-confidence.
the teld method emphasizes the balance between collaborative, individual and competitive learning. when a project is assigned to a team, the members must collaborate in order to complete the project to a good standard. the project is broken down into smaller work packages or activities and the activities are in turn allocated to individual team members. individual contributions resulted from activities are integrated to form the overall solution to the entire project. towards the end of the project, a peer assessment is carried out to indicate the degrees of individual contributions to the project among the team members. this element of competitive learning is essential to distinguish the academic achievements of individual members.
it is widely accepted that student involvement and collaboration are more effective and efficient within small groups than in large classes. naturally, small groups demand more involvement and supervision from the tutors. this requirement of intensive resources cannot usually be met in many educational establishments where resources are limited and stretched already. the lack of resources is one of the main factors that restrict the adoption of the teld methodology, despite all the advantages.
one of the possible solutions is to exploit the latest technology. the web technology is economical and effective. the web is playing increasingly important roles in the delivery of curriculum materials and operation of course activities. the authors have developed an online courseware engine, namely teld, over the world wide web to support the teld methodology (huang et al, 2000a). the teld engine combines the four functions of the courseware search engine, the courseware web server/host, the virtual classroom, and the virtual study room. this paper focuses on explaining how students and tutors participate and collaborate in teaching and learning activities with teld virtual classroom and study room.
section 2 will present a brief overview of the teld as both a contemporary teaching and learning method and an online search engine and host of cases on the world wide web (web). section 3 discusses various teld online facilities for the delivery of curriculum materials, and operation and conduct of the lectures, guided workshops, and self-centred learning activities. some of the observations are made based on our initial experience to conclude the paper.
figure 1 teld overview.
2. overview of the teld.net courseware engine
teld not only unifies the case method and problem/project-based learning method but also represents a web-based online courseware engine as a computer system on the internet. after our initial efforts, the prototype teld system has been developed. figure 1 shows a general scenario where teld is used to support faculty and student users. the teld courseware engine combines the following four key functions into one framework:
· firstly, teld represents a teaching and learning method that unifies a number of contemporary methods such as problem-based learning (pbl) in medical education, project-based learning (pbl) in engineering education, and case method (cm) in business education.
· secondly, teld serves as a web server for hosting teaching and learning materials especially based on the teld method. a variety of online facilities are provided for editing and uploading course materials such as syllabus, schedule, curriculum, examples of case study, exercises of mini-project, assessments.
· thirdly, teld is a courseware search engine where educators are able to register their course materials and search for materials suitable for a particular course. in contrast with general-purpose search engines, teld is set up for the special purpose of education. therefore, the time and efforts spent on surfing are expected to be reduced dramatically.
· finally, teld is an online virtual study room and classroom for electronic delivery of electronic curriculum materials.
2.1 teld as a teaching and learning method
teld stands for teaching by examples and learning by doing. it reflects an ancient confucius education philosophy, “i hear and i forget. i see and i remember. i do and i understand”. teld exactly reflects this ancient philosophy in modern education within a technology-intensive environment. “teaching by examples” allows the students to “see and then remember”.
“learning by doing” allows students to “do and then understand”.
teld is a method that has widely been used by a number of leading universities in delivering a variety of subjects and courses, with a number of variations. examples, case studies and projects play an important role in teld. the case method (cm) has been adopted by a vast number of business programs all over the world since its formal introduction at the harvard business school in 1900s (barnes et al, 1994; erskine et al, 1998). likewise, the problem-based learning (pbl) method has been widely practised by leading medical schools in the world since it was formally introduced at the mcmaster university faculty of health sciences in 1920s (http://edweb.sdsu.edu/clrit/; /foundation/pbl/).
it is until recent years when case method, and problem-/project- based learning (pbl) are no longer the preserves where they were originally introduced. they have been widely promoted across a wide range of disciplines. whatever the term is used to describe these methods, the essence is to extensively use real and/or hypothetical problems, examples, and case studies in the course of teaching and learning. teld captures this essence and therefore unifies these different terms. for this reason, cm, pbl, and teld are used interchangeably throughout this paper.
like pbl and case method, teld strongly emphasizes self-centred learning by students themselves. this generally works well for senior students at year two and three or above, but proves a big challenge for first-year students. teld balances this by providing clear guidance from the tutors/teachers so that the students know what they are doing and where they are getting and how to some extent. such a balance between the knowledge acquisition and skill development is a major strength of teld. that is, knowledge is most effectively acquired in the context in which it is discovered. “teaching by examples” provides such a context of problem-based learning. in addition, skills are most efficiently developed during the process by which a practical problem is solved. “learning by doing” creates such a problem-solving process.
2.2 courseware web host
the world wide web (or web/www) has become increasingly popular for tutors to provide their teaching and learning materials on the internet. one of the most significant advantages of doing this is that students are able to access the materials anywhere and anytime on the internet. it is now a straightforward practice to set up a personal computer as a web server to host the course web pages. besides, most universities and organisations provide web hosts for individual course web pages/sites. for example, the teaching development grants (tdg) from the hong kong university grant committee have supported a number of large projects for developing web sites and pages for various subjects such as civil and construction engineering, biodiversity, industrial engineering, etc.
in addition, there are commercial courseware hosts such as webct (/). these systems have been specially developed to host course materials from lecture notes to assessment quizzes. many useful tools such as syllabus tool, online chat tool, course forum, etc. are provided.
although the results from these hkugc dtg projects have been impressive and commercial systems such as webct provide great convenience, they all suffer from a common weakness. that is, they do not explicitly support any contemporary teaching and learning methods such as pbl or case method or teld method.
on the other hand, cases are at present published and available from various sources depending on the subjects. ecch (european case clearing house) (http://www.ecch.cranfield.ac.uk/) and hbs (harvard business school) (http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/home.html) are the two centres for distributing hundreds and hundreds of business cases around the world. these cases are not readily available from the internet even with subscription.
the above analyses highlight a gap between the current use of the web technology in education and the contemporary teaching and learning method. the teld courseware engine aims to fill this gap by providing a web host for teld-based materials.
2.3 courseware search engine
there is no doubt that a rich set of teaching and learning materials exists on the internet all over the world. the remaining question is how to find the most appropriate materials on the web. one solution is to use search engines. most of the search engines are for general purposes at present. they are not specifically developed for teaching and learning materials. therefore, it is extremely time-consuming to surf for the most relevant materials by using keyword searches. the resulting list is usually very long and includes many irrelevant items. this often puts off tutors and students.
there seems to be the need for a special-purpose search engine for teaching and learning materials. in fact, the united states national science foundation has established a coalition of educational and industrial partners. this coalition has developed a national database, called needs – the national engineering education delivery system (/), to make product development and design cases available to educators, students, and practitioner engineers. the needs engine has expanded into other subjects and disciplines such as chemistry. this kind of search engine is expected to play an effective role in teaching and learning.
teld is yet another search engine with similar purpose. however, teld is a search engine mainly devised for the teaching and learning materials hosted by itself although outside materials may also be included.
2.4 virtual classroom and study room
teld can be virtually considered as an online class or study room where tutors and students can look at the teaching and learning materials provided by the teld courseware engine and more importantly, discuss relevant questions. teld provides a rich set of facilities to facilitate studies within and outside the classes. for this reason, teld can be considered as a virtual study/class room where tutors and students archive and fetch materials, ask and answer questions, and exchange comments on relevant points. some of these functionalities are summarized as follows:
· course syllabus. teld is an online courseware web server that hosts multiple courses. facilities are provided for registered teachers and organisations to create new courses and define their syllabus in teld. this leads to a community of teachers and learners who share the resources in the course library.
· case management. cases are the basic constructs of teld. they form what is called the case library. as a search engine, teld supports teachers to find teaching and learning materials most relevant to his/her course(s) and topics. cases can be adopted/adapted as teaching examples or learning (assessment) exercises.
· assessments. teachers use teld to prepare both formative (discussion questions as homework) and summative assessments (comprehensive exercises often in groups). students submit their answers online onto teld database. online marking and commenting by tutors are supported.
· feedback and students-teachers interactions. course forum and questionnaires are some of the common methods to obtain student feedback on the course delivery. emails and online chatting are often useful interaction and communication tools.
· teaching and learning planning. facilities are provided for teachers to schedule their lectures, discussions, homework, and exercises. similar facilities are also provided for students. most significant is the facilities for students to organize their group work or meetings.
2.5 teld constructsthe teld courseware engine uses a number of specific terms or constructs in building up the backend database and the front-end user interfaces. a course is defined by its syllabus and is scheduled by a number of lessons/sessions in a semester or equivalent. a lesson is related to a case or certain part (called “sections” in teld) of a case. therefore, the concept of cases is the most fundamental building blocks of the teld data constructs.
a case is usually dedicated to one key theme/topic in a course syllabus. in order to cover the entire syllabus of a course, several cases may be needed. these cases may be closely coupled with each other logically or may be simply loosely put together. in teld, these cases used for the same course constitute what is called a “curriculum”.
three basic constructs have now been mentioned, i.e. course syllabus, curriculum and schedule. the syllabus specifies what themes of topics of a subject should be taught/covered in a course. the curriculum specifies the content materials, i.e. cases in teld, with which topics/themes are discussed. the schedule specifies when and how long the topic/theme should be discussed with the assigned content materials. readers may have different interpretations for these terms. however, they are used with the above specific meanings in the teld data model.
figure 2 many faces of teld constructs.
cases and curricula have different names when they are used for teaching and learning. when a case is used by the tutor to teach a course, it is called an example. when a case is used by the students to learn a theme/topic of the course (as part of the summative assessment), it is called an exercise.
likewise, when a curriculum is used for teaching, it is called a case study (which consists of multiple examples). when a curriculum is used for summative assessment, it is called a project or mini-project (which consists of multiple exercises).
