This paper is the intellectual property of the author(s). It was presented at EDUCAUSE '99, an EDUCAUSE conference, and is part of that conference's online proceedings. See http://www.educause.edu/copyright.html for additional copyright information.

The University of Virginia Instructional Toolkit -- Class Home Pages without Angst or HTML

Alice G. Howard
University of Virginia
Charlottesville
Virginia

The Instructional Toolkit is a Web-based application (http://toolkit.virginia.edu) that allows instructors at the University of Virginia to easily create and manage class home pages -- or to selectively use electronic features such as class e-mail lists, class rolls, anonymous course feedback, student homework submission, and final grade submission.

First used by 28 brave instructors in Spring 1996, the Toolkit has been continually enhanced with new features and modifications to existing functions -- increases in use and acceptance have been dramatic – over 1200 classes were using the Toolkit in September 1999.

Introduction

In essence, the Instructional Toolkit (http://toolkit.virginia.edu) provides two basic components to University of Virginia instructors: class home page creation tools, and electronic course management tools such as class rolls, final grade submission, and on-line ordering of textbooks. Its role in the instructional environment is as a complement or supplement to a classroom-based course – it does not provide a mechanism for delivery of a completely on-line course.

A colleague of mine, Lara Ashmore, wrote a paper (http://www.people.virginia.edu/~lha5w/toolkit_paper.html) in 1996 about the original release of the Instructional Toolkit (Toolkit) to the faculty at the University of Virginia (UVa). In that paper she devoted several paragraphs to explaining why a university might want to develop such a tool, and why an instructor might want to use it. In the fall of 1999, it seems unnecessary to have to explain the desirability of having such a tool. A number of higher education institutions have developed similar tools, some have gone on to license and distribute them, and there are also commercially developed products on the market.

Many instructors now embrace a class web page creation tool that allows them to post and distribute their syllabi, announcements, homework assignments, and some of their course content (e.g. electronic reading materials, lecture slides, graphic illustrations) in a manner that is paperless and relatively free of operating system differences and dependencies. Rather than prepare a paper-based course content packet well ahead of the semester, they can add to and adjust their materials as the semester progresses. Students are generally very enthusiastic about the convenience of accessing course-related materials from their dorm room or apartment, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

UVa’s Toolkit allows instructors to easily create and maintain class home pages (without needing to know HTML), and to use other on-line functions that are unique to the UVa environment. For example:

The Toolkit has been developed by staff in UVa’s Department of Information, Technology and Communication (ITC). Ongoing development of the Toolkit has been guided by the desires of UVa instructors and students who have been polled and interviewed about suggestions for improvements and new features, and for help in prioritizing development efforts. Within ITC, the Toolkit team (2.5 FTEs, from 5 persons) is a unique, ongoing collaboration (with members drawn from several ITC divisions – including one team member who has been telecommuting from Australia for the past 15 months) that develops, maintains, and provides most of the user support for the Toolkit.

Functionality

From the student point of view, the Toolkit offers the most centralized listing of class home pages at UVa, and provides class home pages with a consistent interface and navigation conventions. Their instructors have often provided course materials such as a syllabus and supplemental readings, and are using communication tools like class e-mail lists and on-line announcements. See examples at:

http://toolkit.virginia.edu/1999_Fall_ECON416-1

http://toolkit.virginia.edu/1999_Fall_ENTC840-1

From the instructor point of view, the Toolkit offers a mechanism for easily creating, modifying, and maintaining class web pages. It also offers options to get information (class rolls, final grades) into or out of UVa’s Student Information System, to create a class e-mail list, to review electronically submitted homework, to receive anonymous feedback from students, and to copy the contents of the class web pages from one semester to the next.

For most elements of a Toolkit class home page, instructors can choose from 3 basic methods of providing content:

Class e-mail lists are automatically created when the instructor downloads the class roll – and instructors can opt to have a log of the semester’s class e-mails as part of their class home page – some use this very much like a traditional newsgroup (without having to master newsgroup concepts).

The "administrative features" of the Toolkit do not have a corresponding entry on the class home page, but rather provide the instructor with links into other institutional resources and with other options for managing their class home page.

  1. The Security feature allows instructors to give permission to other individuals (usually graduate student TAs) to add to or modify the content of their class home page, and to give permission for Library staff to upload scanned documents into their Materials section. Instructors can also choose to password-protect their whole Toolkit class home page, or to password-protect selected parts of it (e.g. Materials for copyright purposes, the E-mail log for privacy purposes, etc.)
  2. Final grades can be submitted by uploading a file containing student IDs and their grades, or by filling in an on-line form that mimics the "bubble-in" sheet that the Registrar provides for entering final grades.
  3. There is a function that copies most of the content from one Toolkit class home page to another – this allows instructors to easily transfer their efforts from one semester to the next. And there is a command to delete the class home page altogether.

Functions that interact with other services at UVa include the textbook order form (that goes to the University Bookstore), a link to the Library’s request form to have materials scanned and uploaded, and a function that links the class home page into the Registrar’s online Course Offerings.

A recent Toolkit usage report shows that the most popular single feature is the class e-mail list (77%), followed by a syllabus (46%), then electronic materials (35%), anonymous feedback (25%), announcements (16%), related links (16%), redirection to a custom URL (16%), assignments (13%), class password protection (10%), and using "administrative features" only (9%). Historical data indicates that 10-15% of classes will use the final grade submission feature at the end of the semester.

Development and Acceptance

The initial development of the Toolkit was undertaken in 1995 when web editors and HTML converters were uncommon and many faculty were just beginning to explore the possibilities and capabilities of the Web. Hence the original goal to make the Toolkit easy to use without needing to know HTML. Ease of use, consistency, and predictability remain major guiding principles for the ongoing development of the Toolkit. At the same time other forces (primarily UVa faculty as they become bolder and more sophisticated users of the Web) push for greater flexibility, the addition of new features, and enhancements to existing features. Continuing to place a high priority on ease-of-use while also trying to accommodate users’ desires for greater functionality and flexibility has become a difficult balancing act. Some instructors would like the ability to further customize their own Toolkit class home page – with options to change the graphic appearance and to choose their own names for links. The Toolkit does not currently provide for that level of customization. All significant changes to the Toolkit system are made during the summer or between the fall and spring semesters so that the system will remain stable during the semester. Everyone with a Toolkit Instructor account is automatically on an email list that is used to provide information about future plans and imminent changes.

The Toolkit code underwent a complete rewrite in the summer of 1996, propelled by the staff’s need to make it more secure (thus allowing interactions with the Registrar’s data) and more modular for ease of maintenance and development. Several times since then we have done significant under-the-hood work to keep the Toolkit code (written in perl and running on a Sun Solaris server) current with other evolving technologies and applications. The intent has been to keep these changes invisible to Toolkit users.

Many visible changes have been made because UVa instructors have made specific suggestions to the Toolkit staff – or have found an existing feature difficult to use. Several times during the past 3 years, everyone who has a Toolkit Instructor account has been polled to see which features they would like to have added or enhanced, and to ask what their priorities are among these choices. The development of the Toolkit has been guided by these user preferences and priorities. In addition to polling and interviewing Toolkit instructors, other UVa faculty, who are renowned for the sophistication of their own class home pages, have been interviewed and asked for suggestions – the idea to add an Anonymous Feedback feature came from such a faculty model.

During the summer of 1997, three major enhancements were made to the Toolkit: the ability to download class rolls and have them automatically form the basis for a class e-mail list, the ability to upload final grades, and improvements to the Materials function. Up to that time, creating a class e-mail list (using the existing majordomo system) had been considered a major hassle by many faculty – hence the Toolkit e-mail list was designed to alleviate faculty frustration. One Chemistry professor had long lobbied for the ability to submit grades electronically – especially for very large classes where instructors were already keeping an electronic gradebook – and he became the first to help test this function in 1996-97. "Submit Final Grades" was incorporated into the Toolkit production system in Fall 1997. The Materials function was also rewritten to make it easier to use and to enable uploading of more than one file at a time (via a zip file) – the one-file-at-a-time model had been a bottleneck for some instructors.

During the past two years, some pages, lists and features have been reworked (and reworked again) to make them more logical, compact and easier to use -- and the navigation bars have been enhanced and made more consistent throughout the Toolkit. The ability to redirect all or parts of a Toolkit class home page to another URL and to incorporate (link back to) selected Toolkit features (e.g. homework submission, anonymous feedback) has increased flexibility for Toolkit users – especially for the more sophisticated and ambitious ones. On the other hand, the ability to "hide" a Toolkit class home page, allows instructors to use parts of the Toolkit (e.g. class rolls and e-mail lists, submitting final grades) without having a public class home page at all. The Toolkit provides extensive on-line Help (in the form of FAQs and how-to documents) and these have been revised and augmented as the system has evolved.

Two more significant changes were introduced in January 1999. The ability to give Library staff permission to upload scanned documents into the Materials section required a minor adjustment to the Toolkit code, but has had a large ripple effect in terms of the number of instructors using the Toolkit and in the amount of disk space they are consuming! The ability to allow students to submit their homework assignments meant a large and complex change to the Toolkit code, requiring for the first time that students get a Student Toolkit account and login before uploading their homework files – and requiring students to become familiar with how to upload files (generally they have a lot more experience in downloading them).

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Growth in the number of classes using the Toolkit has been dramatic over the past four years. (28 in Spring 96, 42 in Fall 96, 61 in Spring 97, 189 in Fall 97, 349 in Spring 98, 594 in Fall 98, 822 in Spring 99, 1299 so far in Fall 99). From talking with instructors and getting feedback from other support staff at UVa, we know that this growth is attributable to multiple factors: ease-of-use is definitely a factor; so is the enthusiasm of many instructors who proselytize among their colleagues; increasing flexibility has won over some who were skeptical in the early stages of the Toolkit; the ability to influence the development of the Toolkit is important; the consistently caring attitude of the Toolkit staff and excellent assistance given by them wins friends and converts; student expectations that their instructors will provide a class web page is a factor for some faculty and TAs; and the Toolkit’s interactions with other UVa resources (primarily with the Registrar and the Library) are critical to its success.

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The biggest increases in use of the Toolkit correspond to the introduction of two of its most popular features. The ability to have a class e-mail list automatically generated (by clicking on the link to download the class roll for the first time in a semester) was introduced right before the Fall semester of 1997. At that time, the "postmasters" within ITC who administer our majordomo lists began recommending that instructors investigate having a Toolkit class e-mail instead – and the numbers of Toolkit users increased dramatically. In the Fall of 1999, the Library discontinued their "electronic reserves" system in favor of the scan-and-upload-to-the-Toolkit service that they had pilot tested in the Spring 1999 semester – again leading to a dramatic increase in the number of Toolkit users.

Two other major enhancements to the Toolkit, electronic homework submission and electronic submission of final grades have been slower to achieve general popularity – at least in part because they appear complicated to instructors and students. The "Submit Final Grades" feature has been used for four semesters and is gaining momentum. Instructors who have used this feature have been surveyed afterwards – and their suggestions for improvements and fixes have mostly been implemented. This feature also requires an extraordinary degree of support from Toolkit staff who monitor the Toolkit email in the evenings, over weekends, and during the Christmas holiday in order to provide assistance with this time-critical process. The homework submission feature (introduced in the Spring 99 semester) is still being experimented with and assessed.

Partnerships

The emphasis on partnerships has been essential to the success of the Toolkit. Getting guidance, feedback, and suggestions from UVa faculty has been extremely valuable. Toolkit staff have good ideas and experience with instructional technology, but none of us are UVa faculty. So it is essential that we get input and "reality checks" from those who really use the Toolkit in their courses. In the process, instructors feel positive (and perhaps a sense of ownership) about being able to influence the Toolkit's evolution.

Several very popular features of the Toolkit (class rolls, class e-mail, and final grade submission) would not have been possible without the cooperation of the University's Registrar and her staff. For the Registrar, the most important considerations for the Grade Submit function were (and are) security and accuracy of grades. Her office has the highest sense of pride in their completely blemish-free record (derived from the random auditing of transcripts) -- and she wanted to keep this impeccable record. Hence the University auditors were included in the planning and review of this function. The process was tested (and debugged) with selected faculty for several semesters before being opened to any Toolkit instructor -- it still requires the instructor to sign and submit a paper form -- and the electronic results are checked visually before being accepted

During the Summer and Fall of 1998 the University Library re-evaluated their electronic course reserves service. Some ITC staff were invited to participate, and we decided to try a pilot project (during Spring 1999) that would result in instructors incorporating their "electronic course reserves materials" into their class home pages -- instead of having those materials maintained by Library staff on a Library server. At the end of that pilot test (which ended up having 275 participants instead of the 15-25 originally expected), the Library felt the service to be so successful that they moved their entire electronic reserve system to the Toolkit this Fall. Clearly the Library is providing the staff-intensive part of this service in which they scan materials for instructors and then upload them into the Materials section of a Toolkit class home page as PDF files. (During Fall 98 they processed 1,166 requests and scanned 15,985 pages -- to date in Fall 99, they have processed 3,254 requests and scanned 33,430pages.) The Toolkit code only had to be slightly modified to accommodate this new service -- although it has had a serious impact on our disk needs and on the amount of effort needed to support many new Toolkit users. During the pilot test period, we started collaborating with the Library in providing Toolkit training -- using both their electronic classroom and their faculty and graduate student e-mail lists to publicize the classes. These have proven to be a very effective means of reaching instructors -- many of our introductory classes have been over-subscribed and we've offered more than we ever had in the past. This collaboration has been very rewarding for both ITC and the Library -- and UVa instructors have a new, very popular service with the side-benefit that we often work together in solving their problems.

Current Challenges

Sometimes it's been a real scramble to anticipate and keep up with the growth and popularity of the Toolkit -- particularly in terms of hardware, disk space management, and support. In 1996-1997 the Toolkit code shared a server with some experimental applications -- after a runaway process brought the Toolkit to a halt, we concluded that it was not a felicitous combination. In the Spring of 1998 the Toolkit system (both the production system and the test system) moved to its own new server (a Sun Solaris system). In the near future we plan to move the Toolkit test system to a separate server too. Disk space started to be consumed at an alarming rate during Spring 1999 -- largely due to the Library's scan-and-upload service -- we added a 9 gigabyte drive over Spring break, and added two 18 gigabyte drives this September. We're now looking at establishing an upper limit for Toolkit disk space, on a per class, per semester basis -- probably something like 100 megabytes. A recent report showed that fewer than 20 classes (out of the more than 3000 classes that have ever used the Toolkit) actually use more than 100 megabytes. So far we have never archived "old" Toolkit class home pages to some other media or server -- but we're looking at our options in this area also.

The demand for support has definite peaks and valleys throughout the semester -- August/September and January are intensely busy, with smaller (but very time-critical) needs at the end of each semester during the final grade submit period. Much of the support for the Toolkit is delivered via e-mail -- queries are sent to

[email protected] -- all five Toolkit staff receive the email sent to this address, with one of us designated to answer it. Fortunately the requests for user support have not grown at the same rate as the use of the Toolkit -- although twice as many classes were using the Toolkit in September 1999 as were using it in September 1998, the requests for Toolkit support only increased by 35%.

The surge in putting electronic materials in PDF format in Toolkit class home pages has resulted in some frustrations in ITC and Library public lab facilities where students are trying to print massive amounts of PDF files

-- printer queues back up -- printer output gets misplaced, etc. Currently a group of ITC and Library staff are looking at the various factors that contribute to this printing bottleneck, and are hoping to find ways to alleviate this situation.

Keeping up with other evolving applications is another challenge. Currently certain sections of the Toolkit are not able to display documents created by Microsoft Office2000-to-HTML or to accommodate the new format of PowerPoint2000-to-HTML documents. We're working on these two problems, but they are neither the first nor the last of this kind.

And we are currently working on several new Toolkit functions:

When the proposal for this EDUCAUSE presentation was submitted last March, I rather naively imagined that the Toolkit would have a new graphic appearance by this October. We spent May and June working on a prototype for a "new look" (http://www.itc.virginia.edu/~krm5a/toolkit/designOne) that generally received rave reviews from those (mostly other ITC staff) we showed it to. In July we solicited feedback about the prototype from Toolkit instructors, using a web-based survey devised by our graphic designer. Results were mixed -- many were quite positive about the compactness and simplicity of the new layout -- but the color palette and new logo were not received positively enough for us to feel comfortable about adopting them. It also became apparent that UVa instructors are quite attached to the Rotunda image, the quintessential logo for the University of Virginia. So we've gone "back to the drawing board" -- and back to incorporating the Rotunda into a new "new look" (http://www.itc.virginia.edu/~krm5a/toolkit/designTwo) and now are planning to make this change in January 2000.

Lessons Learned

The theme of Educause '99 is "Celebrating New Beginnings". The introduction of the Toolkit into UVa's instructional environment in 1996 definitely marked a "New Beginning for UVa Instructors". In 1999, with the surprisingly significant level of usage (about one-third of all Fall semester classes), and the enthusiastic acceptance of the Toolkit, we certainly have something to celebrate!

Notes

Technical Requirements for Users:
Netscape version 2.0 and greater for Unix, Windows (95, 98, NT) or Mac or
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and greater for Windows (95, NT, 98) or Mac

Distribution of Code:

The Toolkit software is freely available to other universities for their own use -- with the caveat that the code is quite UVa-specific and will require a significant amount of work to fit into another environment.