At Pace University, an Introduction to Computing course (CIS101) has been a core requirement for all of its students for the past 20 years. Up until the Fall 2002 semester, CIS101 was offered strictly in a traditional face-to-face format. Today - after two pilot runs during the 2002-2003 academic year - CIS101 is offered strictly in a blended learning format.

The piloted Spring 2003 semester consisted of 18 sections taught in a blended format. From Fall 2003 though Spring 2004, all CIS101 sections (the average number of sections it offers per academic year is 100) were taught in a blended format. About 35 faculty teach CIS101 sections per academic year, and about 80 percent of these faculty are adjuncts.

In its pre-blended form, the three-credit, 14-week CIS101 course was comprised of a two-hour faculty-led lecture to 72 students, plus a two-hour break-out lab divided into three groups that were each taught by a graduate-student teaching assistant. In its new blended form, this same course now consists of a two-hour lab taught by the course faculty member to a class no larger than 28 students, plus one-hour of content delivered online. Since going to blended, graduate-student teaching assistants are no longer used for CIS101.

The development of this conversion was accomplished over a period of about eight months by a team of three educators from Pace University’s School of Computer Science and Information Systems: Information Systems Professor Catherine Dwyer, Chair of Technology Systems Nancy Hale and Associate Dean of Technology Systems David Sachs. A consultant assisted with designing some of the course materials for the Blackboard course management system used by Pace. "We worked like maniacs from February through September," says Dwyer.

Sachs explains that during the conversion process they (Dwyer, Hale and Sachs) came to the conclusion that the original face-to-face model was backwards. They started with the notion that having a large number of students in a lecture hall with one faculty member is not the most effective way to teach. "That never made sense to me - it is one-way directional information," Sachs says. "We were also finding that there was an interesting disconnect. You had professors who truthfully did not get to know their students very well because of the large lecture format. The people who did get to know the students well were the teaching assistants (because the labs were divided into smaller groups of 24 to 28 students). "To counter this outcome, the face-to-face model was flipped and, as already noted, the large lecture was eliminated; the faculty took over the smaller, hands-on, more-intimate labs; the teaching assistants were released; and the remainder of the course was held online.

In CIS101 students learn about the structure of the Internet by developing their own Web sites in HTML; they are exposed to fundamental programming concepts using JavaScript; they are introduced to computer hardware and software concepts; and they learn how to use computer applications - in particular, Microsoft Excel.

Dwyer says the course can be considered an extension of Pace University’s history as a school that was born during the early 1900s in downtown Manhattan as a secretarial and accountant training grounds that served much of the New York City financial district. "There has always been a very strong and practical business-oriented bent to Pace, and we are one of the only schools in the country to require a computing course of every undergraduate," says Dwyer, adding that CIS101 is "a great service to the school with a lot of stakeholders." In short, due to the growth of Internet usage and the ever increasing ways that people use computer technology, in general, CIS101 has increasingly become a vital part of the entire Pace University educational system, which is comprised of six campuses in metro and suburban New York City.

Sachs says the course serves a number of Pace University constituents. For example, the Lubin School of Business wants their students to understand MS Excel. The Dyson College of Arts and Sciences wants their students to be computer literate. The School of Computer Science and Information Systems believes that CIS101 is a great introduction to the world of computing and information technology. Also, from the overall Pace University perspective, CIS101 is an effective may of introducing students to what it’s like to learn online.

Dwyer explains that after "everyone was on board with the idea of having the instructor meet with students inside a computer classroom instead of a lecture hall, the challenge became what to put in the classroom and what to put online."

The online portion of the class is quite extensive, with students required to read out of four textbooks and supplemental materials (including PowerPoint presentations), take weekly quizzes online and actively participate in a variety of discussion forums.

The discussion forum topics can address a wide variety of themes, such as the social impact of technology; ethical issues related to Internet usage; software pirating; how to evaluate information over the Internet and be a smart information consumer; as well as some of the more technical issues, such as operating systems and utility software; what makes a good Web site; and discussions about creating tables in HTML.

One interesting take on a discussion topic is titled "Dean for a Day," where students are asked to role model as a university Dean for Internet Policy who has been asked to reply to the Motion Picture Association’s and Recording Industry Association’s demands that the university shut down access to file downloading. The discussion squares off on an important file-sharing and privacy-rights debate. One of the questions for discussion is: "Will you turn over students’ names and shut off their connections, or is another internal policy better for your school?"

The on-campus labs also cover a lot of ground, with students first being introduced to how to use Blackboard and then jumping into MS Excel tutorials for the first four weeks, then four weeks of Internet programming with HTML followed by four weeks of learning JavaScript. An in-class exam is conducted during week 13, and students present much of the material they produced over the entire semester on week 14.

Of course, faculty training is another important part of the big picture of how Pace University converted a core face-to-face course to a blended format. "We invest heavily both from a time and financial standpoint in training faculty, " says CIS101 Coordinator and Professor Jonathan Hill. "We take them through a process so that they understand what will make them most effective in teaching online."

One important part of that process is a faculty resources Web site on Blackboard that is the hub of 18 hours of online work requested of new faculty in order to get them well organized with the day-to-day management of a blended course, as well as to get them started on some of the more critical aspects of teaching online, such as how to create meaningful, thought-provoking topics for discussion board forums and how to communicate effectively online. A host of important course materials are also provided on the faculty resources site available to all CIS101 faculty, including weekly PowerPoint slides, homework and assignment solutions, exam materials, sample assignments, and HTML and JavaScript resources. Additionally, all new faculty are asked to physically take 12-hours of instruction and lab experience covered in a classroom setting over two days. "We don’t make them sign a contract to do all this (new faculty training)," says Hill, "but if they want to be here, there is a huge correlation in order to get them up to speed with the course materials and to be successful. We have found that they really need to go through the entire process."

So, how have the students reacted to being force-fed a blended learning course? According to Sachs, feedback from the students, which is being collected extensively through evaluations three times during each semester, is overall very positive, but he would not refer to this as a "slam dunk. I would not tell you that it is perfect." For example, student comments have ranged from "the course was very informative, but the work load was too much for an entry level course" to "the course is too general to be of any help," and "less work would be greatly appreciated for the non wealthy - I have a full-time job." One student was very skeptical about the online part of the course but eventually found it to be a very positive experience. Another student said, "I’m learning so much more than I ever expected. The course includes skills that are really useful in a practical way. I can’t wait to make my own Web site."

"Some of the students in this day and age come in and they probably already know a lot of the content in CIS101, but for an awful lot of students this is brand new information. Many of them have never taken anything online," Sachs says. Many of these students prefer learning in a classroom as opposed to learning online. Nonetheless, Sachs adds, "it is very clear that online education is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the university’s life."

Pace University
www.pace.edu

Pace University School of Computer Science and Information Systems
http://csis.pace.edu/csis/index.html