XplanaZine

In this interview, the impact and implications of interface and instructional design are discussed by Roger M. Slatt, a prominent geoscientist, who develops and delivers online courses in geology and geosciences in conjunction with his research, publishing, and traditional bricks-and-mortar academic activities.
Name: Roger M. Slatt
Do you develop online courses?
Yes.

What subject matter do you prefer to work with?
Geology, mainly petroleum.

Who are the intended learners? What level are they?
Intended learners range from senior undergraduate and graduate students interested in careers in petroleum geoscience, to engineers/geophysicists/geologists who work, or may in the future work in petroleum reservoir development situations within their company. My course is offered worldwide, and I do indeed have students from many places around the world at any one time.

How do you use graphics when you design a course?
Graphics form the dominant part of my courses. The normal schedule for my main class is 14 units, one unit to be completed per week. Each unit includes a ‘lecture’, which consists of either graphics and extended caption explaining the graphic, or text with graphic links. To date, my graphics are all static, but I would like to move toward animated graphics, as the ability to explain things on a graphic is much enhanced with animation. In my course, I provide an exercise for each of the 14 lecture units. The material is given to students in graphical or excel spreadsheet form, and the student completes the exercises and must submit it electronically to me within a week. One of the interesting observations I’ve made through the years is that many online students begin submitting their exercises in a very sloppy, poor manner (scanning of a hand drawn map, or scanning of a graph, for example), but by the end of the 14 weeks, they are submitting excellent electronic reports to me. This is an added learning bonus since all of these people will have to write reports at some time, and within the petroleum (and many other) industry, electronic reports have now become the norm.
What learning objectives do your graphics serve in an online course?
The graphics are critical to the learning process. Geology is quite a ‘visual’ science, so graphics are irreplaceable. 3D graphics are also critical, because rocks and reservoirs are 3D objects, yet many people cannot think and mentally image features in 3D space; so the graphics must do it for them. Also, graphics overcome the language barrier, be it people with different cultural languages, or science and engineering people who speak the same language, but with different technical vocabularies. For online education, “a picture is worth a thousand words” is the motto.
What kind of graphical content do you use? Banners? Color-coding? Specific images? Special arrangement that displays information in a certain way on the screen?
Very basic, but definitely color coded images. Again, color is an excellent way to refer to and explain and highlight features you want someone to see—-particularly online, where you are not present to explain or to point to a feature. Color is essential to guide a reader through an explanation. My images range from outcrop pictures, to graphs, charts, and line drawings.

Please describe your philosophy of using graphics in online courses.
Stated above. In the geosciences, 3D graphics, preferably animated, are essential. Noone wants to sit at a screen and just read text. The only exception might be mathematical formulations. My philosophy evolved from watching my two sons grow up within video arcades. That generation, now in their 20’s and 30’s expect to be exposed to images for explanation. Though it is blasphemy to say that reading books and instructions is becoming outmoded, as the next one or two generations evolve, visual education is going to become dominant, and unfortunately, peoples ability to read will decline. I envision the next generation as going to bed at night with, instead of a good book, a good story as told visually on a hand-held screen (as my grandson now does with miniature video games). Actually, I am quite impressed by student’s ability to learn using visual aids instead of text. Among other benefits, they are more willing to learn from visuals than from texts.

Can a good graphic go bad? Why, when, and how might that happen?
A good graphic can go bad when there is too much material on it. For example, I know one very good scientist who crams as much material onto open space as he can; the result is a lot of difficulty understanding what he is trying to get across. Presenters of posters and oral papers at national conventions are routinely asked to keep their graphics simple because individuals cannot absorb too much at any one flash. This is why animations are so important. One can start with one simple visual, and piece-by-piece add information to the visual until the entire screen is filled, but the information has been presented in a sequential and logical fashion. In the online environment, with animation, a person can add or subtract new information onto one image at their own speed, thus enhancing learning.
How do graphics “mediate” the e-learning space? In this case, “mediate,” describes the way that graphics influence and even alter the way that learning takes place — between learners, instructors, and the content itself.
In my case, with my online course, graphics provide the mediation. It is the main way in which the learning takes place, so that the graphics must be excellent—-clear, sharp, easily read, not too cluttered, and as stated above, animated if possible. The text message must also be short and to the point (another advantage to online education compared with tradiational classroom lecturing that I have learned is that in the classroom, the lecturer can change the train of thought or ramble off onto another subject because the audience is captive; this is not true in the online environment—-the point to be made by a graphic and/or text is direct without any sidebars). I attempt with my course to make a single point with a single graphic, then move to the next graphic for one more point, etc.

Do you believe that the graphics that are used somehow influence how individual learners perceive the instructor? Do they attribute attributes of the graphics to you, your personality, your values?

I do not know for sure, but I suspect that is true. A dry, boring text may reflect a dry, boring person who compiled the text. A set of dull graphics may have the same influence. I am a big believer in colorful, animated graphics whenever possible. This is not easy to do on an online course, but for me, is a standard in in-house lectures and seminars. Animations are also useful in this regard.

How does the interface (the website, course management software, e-mail, the computer screen presentation) affect how you present yourself? What are the elements in the interface that you have to compensate for? How do you compensate for them? Please describe one such experience.
The interface is extremely important. I use a commercial company who I worked with to develop my main online course. Without that company, I would never have developed the course. They were professionals who knew the psychology of working with scientists and educators who are interested in getting their point accross to an audience, but who lack the technical skills and/or time and patience to do this for an online course (what is this HTML that everyone talks about?). In my case, I would prepare an online lesson by submitting a set of graphics by email to the company and also emailing a word document of text to go with each graphic. They would then put it into the proper format for onlilne use. If I had to do that critical step of preparing the material for online use, I would not have done it. This issue alone prevents many professors from developing online courses at their universities. Universities typically see a big cash cow in online courses——very little outlay and overhead, and lots of tuition income. However, they will not often spend the initial upfront cost to help a professor develop the course, as I indicated above. Thus, there is no incentive for the professor to revamp an existing course. The university in which I first developed my online course did provide the funds to pay the commercial company and that made the difference. University administrators who want an online program seem to think that because a professor is a good physicist (or something else), he or she can do their own course development. This attitude appears to be changing among administrations, but much too slowly, and such ’slow learning’ universities are losing out on the wave of online courses and degrees being developed and demanded by the public. In other words, the cash cow is being lost to many.

I should point out here that I do not believe the main goal of online education is or should be a cash cow. With young people becoming more visual because of the reasons cited above, they will be able to accept online education and learn from it much more easily than the generation of instructors who grew up in the traditional educational mode, and who often now are quite vocal in their condemnation of online education (though some of this condemnation stems from the fear of becoming obsolescent if one’s course can be taught online).
How do you attempt to modify the interface? How do you make it friendlier? More learner-centered? Do you design the course to build in reinforcement of elements you want to emphasize? Please describe one such experience. Tell in detail how you did it.

I have not greatly modified the interface that was originally established. This is because it was done correctly the first time by professionals. I was very fortunate in that regard. The only modification I made to my course, which still is in this form, is that I converted some lecture units from graphics with captions to text with graphics links. I do think the latter is a better means of delivery. I am preparing to update the course this summer, and hope to provide a lot of animation, but I have not found much user-friendly software to allow me to do this online.

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This interview was conducted online, with questions prepared by Susan Smith Nash, February 2004.