DEOSNEWS Vol. 7 No. 2, ISSN 1062-9416.

Copyright 1997 DEOS - The Distance Education Online Symposium

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EDITORIAL

Providing educational access to underserved populations continues

to be one of the primary functions of distance education programs.

This issue of DEOSNEWS describes how a branch campus of the

University of Alaska is using a multimedia approach to deliver

biology courses to the place-bound residents of rural Alaskan

villages. Dennis Schall discusses the development of a

HyperCard-based biology course and of a supporting laserdisc

designed to be contextually relevant for the Eskimos of

southwestern Alaska.

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TEACHING BIOLOGY BY HYPERCARD

Dennis Schall

University of Alaska Fairbanks

Kuskokwim Campus

P.O. Box 368

Bethel, Alaska 99559

ffdgs1@aurora.alaska.edu

INTRODUCTION: THE UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS

The University of Alaska Fairbanks with its five branch campuses

serves a geographic area as large as Texas. This rural area consists

of most of the state outside the Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau

areas. The Kuskokwim Campus, located in Bethel, is one of the

branch campuses and serves the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region in

southwestern Alaska.

The School of Education and College of Rural Alaska are two units

of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The mission of the School of

Education and College of Rural Alaska, in part, is to provide access

to a bachelor's of education degree for students in rural areas of

Alaska. The Kuskokwim Campus (KUC) has a specific

commitment to provide quality distance-delivered courses to meet

the educational needs of the region. The university takes a leading

role in the development and utilization of distance-delivery

technology and participates in regional and statewide distance

education programs. The audioconference program at KUC delivers

approximately 50 developmental through graduate level courses each

semester through the telephone lines.

THE CONTEXT

The majority of the students we serve live in remote villages in rural

Alaska with limited or no access to the traditional university campus

with its face-to-face teacher-student classroom. In the villages

outside of Bethel, Yup'ik Eskimos and Athabascan Indians make up

well over 90 percent of the population. In many of the villages,

English is the second language. This is especially the case in the

coastal Yup'ik villages, where many of the elders cannot read or

write English.

The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region, a treeless tundra

encompassing an area equivalent to the state of Oregon, is located in

southwestern Alaska. Yup'ik Eskimos and Athabaskan Indians

make up about 85 percent of the 20,000 residents of the Delta. This

population resides in about 55 villages of 50 to 850 people each. It

is without doubt one of the most traditional Native American

enclaves in the United States. Most of the residents live a traditional

subsistence lifestyle of hunting, fishing, and gathering, and over 30

percent of the residents have cash incomes well below the federal

poverty level. The Yup'ik language is spoken by a vast majority of

the residents, especially those residing in villages outside of Bethel.

Bethel, with a population of over 5,000 with half Native and half

non-Native, is the metropolitan city of the region. The local TV

station, KYUK TV, broadcasts news and other programs in Yup'ik

Eskimo. There are virtually no roads in the region, and Bethel is the

service hub for the region. Travel in the region is by small bush

plane year round, snowmobiles (snowgos) in winter, and by boats

on the rivers during the short warm season.

Communications in the region is limited and expensive. The U.S.

mail delivery is entirely by small plane, weather permitting, to

villages of the region. All telephone calls between the villages and to

the rest of the world are long-distance by satellite and are costly.

The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta has a high-school graduate rate of 46

percent for individuals over 25 years of age. This compares to a

graduation rate of 82 percent for Bristol Bay, 56.4 percent for

Dillingham, and 77 percent in the Aleutians. The annual cost of

providing a high-school education to students in the region is over

$13,000 per student per year. These statistics are alarming.

The university is able to distance-deliver most of its curriculum,

including education courses, to meet the requirements of its B.Ed.

degree. The distance delivery of these courses includes

audioconference courses and some correspondence courses.

However, the core curriculum for the bachelor's degree requires

eight credits in two laboratory science courses. It is this science

laboratory requirement that is the greatest barrier to rural Alaska

students obtaining their degree. For many reasons, residents of the

Delta are place-bound to their rural villages and prefer not to move to

a small city such as Anchorage or Fairbanks for a traditional college

education.

It is in this context that I have attempted to design, develop, and

distance deliver a general biology laboratory science course for all

residents of rural Alaska, especially the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta

region.

THE GENERAL BIOLOGY COURSE

During the 1990À91 school year, I learned HyperCard and

HyperTalk as a way of developing digital instruction. At the time,

HyperCard was one of the few applications that were genuinely

multimedia (Hutchings, Hall, & Thorogood, 1994). It was relatively

easy to incorporate sounds and graphics into the stacks. Within a

few months, HyperCard supported QuickTime (TM) movies.

HyperCard's ability to link text, fields, graphics, sounds, cards, and

other stacks in a nonlinear fashion provided the learner with a new

level of control over the instructional material. This control is limited

only by the instructional design. In addition, HyperCard can also be

designed to control a laserdisc player for quality visuals.

The course was general biology (Biol. 103, Biology and Society),

which fulfilled a core requirement in the curriculum. The initial

course consisted of 11 HyperCard stacks. A "program" stack

presented an overview of the HyperCard course, directions on how

to use the stacks, and a main menu card that was linked to each of

the 10 major topic stacks. The 10 major topic stacks were: (1)

Biology Introduction, (2) Foundation of Life, (3) Organic

Chemistry, (4) Cell Structure and Function, (5) Enzymes, (6)

Biochemical Pathways, (7) DNA and Protein Synthesis, (8) Mitosis:

Cell Copying Process, (9) Meiosis: Sex Cell Formation, and (10)

Mendelian Genetics.

All 10 instructional stacks were designed with as much consistency

as possible. The first card was a title card, the second card contained

the learning objectives of that particular stack, the third card

contained a specific textbook reading assignment that corresponded

to the HyperCard stack content, and the fourth card contained an

assignment of several questions. The fifth card was the main menu.

The main content of each stack was between the main menu card and

the last card, which contained the vocabulary.

The main menu card showed the content topics of each stack.

Selecting or clicking on any topic took you directly to the content

cards of that topic. The last card of each stack was a glossary card

with relevant vocabulary and definitions. The buttons at the bottom

of the main menu card were found on all cards. These buttons let the

learner determine where they wanted to go, and were an addition to

the forward and reverse arrows found on most cards. These buttons

linked the cards and their information in a network or web fashion.

The HyperCard stacks contained many of the design features that

HyperCard and other multimedia applications incorporate. This

version of HyperCard did not support color. Some animation was

used, and the text was limited, with lots of graphics, diagrams, and

pictures. Selected terms and vocabulary were linked to the glossary

as hypertext. Sound was used very selectively due to its memory

requirements, but some difficult terms were pronounced. Extensive

use was made of pop-up fields for additional information without

cluttering individual cards. Most molecular terms such as glucose,

ATP, or pyruvic acid were linked to cards that showed their

molecular structure.

HOW IT WAS USED

In the past three years, these stacks have been used in a limited

manner. This limited use has hindered quality analysis of their

effectiveness as instructional material. The initial use of these stacks

was on a trial basis just after they were developed. The initial users

were seven students scattered in rural Alaska. The stacks served as

the main instructional format for the course content.

Audioconferences of an hour and a half per week served for

discussion of the readings, HyperCard stacks, and laboratories. The

laboratories were self-contained in a kit that I developed and

designed to complement the HyperCard stacks.

The HyperCard stacks were used a second time as a tutorial

supplement to a traditional on-campus course in Bethel. The stacks

were placed on several Macintosh (TM) computers in a computer

laboratory and in a student study area. The students were required to

do the assignment questions for each stack and turn them in. They

were free to use the stacks on their own schedule and time as

supplemental instruction to the traditional lecture.

The third use of the biology HyperCard stacks was in a format

similar to the first time. The course was sent to 10 students, with 9

finishing the course. The stacks had undergone considerable

revision, editing, and expansion of some content. The laboratory

kits also were used with very little revision.

The biology course syllabus, laboratory kit, textbook, and

HyperCard stacks were sent to the students at the beginning of the

semester. The HyperCard stacks were on five 800K disks. The

students were required to have access to and working knowledge of

a Macintosh computer with the application Hypercard.

Two different versions of the biology HyperCard stacks were

developed. These were identical in content; however, one version

(version LD) had laserdisc driver resources in it. This allowed the

user to set up and select one of several types of laserdisc players.

Buttons on the cards selected the specific relevant material on the

laserdisc. This arrangement required the student to have a laserdisc

player and Macintosh serial port cable. In this setup the HyperCard

stack (on the Macintosh) had complete control over the laserdisc

display, and the student only had to observe the video.

The laserdisc (CAV format) was developed in-house by the author

and a colleague, Dr. Barry Sponder. The title was ™Yup'ik Science,ú

and it contained many still frames of flora, fauna, habitat, and

environmental phenomena of southwestern Alaska. Video segments

of many of the Yup'ik Eskimos from KYUK TV were included,

along with transmission and some electron microscope images. The

laserdisc contained a total of 18 minutes of motion and still video.

The author scripted the biology HyperCard stacks for specific

laserdisc frames or motion segments that were contextually relevant

to the content. Some of the cards would display a certain laserdisc

frame number when the card was opened. Specific words would be

bold text or have an asterisk to indicate that they were linked text.

This allowed the stacks to be designed so that certain images were

shown regardless and other images were viewed only when the

student chose to select (click) on the text. For example, various

cellular organelles (the mitochondrion) on the HyperCard stack

would display electron micrographs of that specific organelle when

selected. In another example, the HyperCard content was about

lipids and membranes and the corresponding laserdisc material

showed some segments of seals being skinned and the layer of fat

being removed.

This combination of biology HyperCard stacks and Yup'ik Science

laserdisc has not been used in a distance education context since the

laserdisc was produced. The author has not taught the distance

delivery version of the Biology 103 course, and very few students

have access to a laserdisc player. Some of the local school districts

have the equipment, but access remains the issue for our rural

students.

Dr. Barry Willis, director of Statewide Distance Education,

University of Alaska (Willis, 1992) provided valuable formative

evaluation feedback of the HyperCard stacks during their

development. Nick Eastmond from Utah State University, an expert

in instructional design, conducted a positive summative evaluation

of the Yup'ik Science laserdisc when it was completed.

Even with carefully chosen words, it is difficult to describe the look,

feel, sound, and interactivity of the biology HyperCard stacks. If

one believes the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words,

then the biology HyperCard stacks say much and the additional

digital laserdisc images say even more.

This type of multimedia instructional material and associated

technology have opened the doors to new paradigms of teaching and

learning experiences. The HyperCard stacks provide sounds for

auditory input, especially for some of the more difficult and less

familiar terms such as "mitochondria," "phospholipid," and

"endoplasmic reticulum." It allows repetition in that certain sounds,

animations, or graphics can be heard or viewed many times. It

provides for learner control so that the learner can interact with the

content in a nonlinear fashion. But most important, this type of

instruction frees students from the time and place constraints of our

traditional learning mode. Students can use the material at 2:30 a.m.

if they wish. They can use it for 20 minutes at a time or three hours.

It is their choice; their learning is not limited to a specific instructor,

in a given classroom, at a specified time.

STUDENT ASSESSMENT

The HyperCard stacks were evaluated by biology students in two

on-campus courses, first in the fall of 1992 and again in the fall of

1995. Both were small classes of 12 to 15 students. The HyperCard

stacks were used by an audioconference biology class in the spring

of 1991 and evaluated by the students. One audioconference student

who lived in the interior of Alaska worked three-week shifts on an

oil drilling platform in Cook Inlet. He thought the flexibility and

freedom of the course structure was great. Dr. Barry Willis, an

expert in distance delivery and assessment, also evaluated the

HyperCard stacks and provided valuable formative assessment

during the final development phase.

Students were asked to identify the three general weakness of the

HyperCard program on the assessment. The main weakness noted

was the need for computer and HyperCard skills and knowledge.

Other weaknesses were the need for an exit button, more animation,

and some type of stack map or layout card.

The general strengths of the HyperCard program were clear, concise

explanations, nice graphics, and animation. The organization of and

logical progression through the content was good. The button links

and navigation through the content were not confusing. The

glossary was convenient but of minor importance to the majority of

the students. One interesting comment was that the stacks "didn't

overuse the technology." There was very little value placed on the

ability to go back for unlimited review of the material on the

student's own time schedule.

Generally, it was felt that the HyperCard stacks were not a complete

course and would be a great supplement. A textbook and reading

assignments should definitely be used with the HyperCard stacks.

The main things that students would change about the program

would be to have more audio and graphics, and to incorporate more

topics.

THE YUP'IK SCIENCE LASERDISC

The laserdisc was developed, designed, and produced with a grant

from the U.S. Department of Education. The purpose in producing

the laserdisc was to develop visual materials that were contextually

relevant for the Eskimos of southwestern Alaska. It was designed so

that the visual material could be adapted for use at levels from

kindergarten through college. The laserdisc is a combination of

video clips and still images in the CAV format where each frame can

be accessed and displayed. The laserdisc contains many slides of

birds, mammals, fish, plants, and environmental phenomena of

Alaska. There are many video segments of Yup'ik Eskimo activities,

demonstrating the technology and science that have traditionally

been part of their everyday lives, and there are graphics of villages,

runways, transportation mechanisms, and recreation. In addition, a

microscope with a video camera was used to produce many

histology slides of protista, bacteria, and types of cells. Electron

micrographs of cellular organelles were also included.

This laserdisc represents digital data that is stored permanently on

the disc. This digital material can now be reused in HyperCard

stacks as graphics or QuickTime movies and distributed in any of

the formats described above without worry of copyright

infringement.

THE FUTURE

The laboratory exercises present obstacles and barriers similar to

those described by Naber and LeBlanc (1994) and Koshy, Bonata,

and Faasalaina (1994). They require considerable time to develop,

and the laboratory kits included a number of chemicals that are

difficult to transport or ship because of current regulations. They

also present a potential danger to the student using them and to

family members or friends who may be associated with the student.

Safety is always a concern in this situation. Additionally, chemicals

degrade and make the kits useless over time. The laboratories

require a disproportionate amount of detailed instructions, because

there is no instructor close by to answer questions. Cost is also a

problem. The materials had to be cheap and most of the kit had to be

disposable. Microscopes, spectrophotometers, and other costly

laboratory equipment are just not available to the students.

A digital Protista Laboratory was developed as a self-contained

laboratory with all the microscopic images and many QuickTime

movies. This was also HyperCard-based, but with all video and

images it consumed more than 20 megabytes of space. This memory

requirement overwhelms our current ability to package and distribute

digital material in rural Alaska. However, there are possible

solutions available.

The fundamental solution to providing biology distance-delivered to

rural Alaska students is to have everything developed in digital

form. With the course as digital data, many options for distribution

are possible. It would be possible to send the entire course content

to students on a hard disk with enough megabytes to hold all the

material. Students would simply return the hard disk when they

finish the course. Another possibility would be to upload and

download the digital course with the appropriate technology such as

a satellite and conduit equipment or through the use of a bulletin

board service such as FirstClass. Both of these require that specific

equipment be in the hands of the students. The University of Alaska

Computer Network (UACN) could provide text transfer to students

with modem connections who were willing to pay toll charges to

slowly download files from the university system, but the transfer

of sound, graphic, and video data is not a reality with the current

UACN system. The sounds, graphics, and video are the

characteristics that gives the biology HyperCard its multimedia

format.

A major revision of the program is now in progress to design,

develop, and produce the biology HyperCard stacks on CD-ROM.

The stacks are being redesigned to address the weaknesses indicated

by the assessment. More sound will be incorporated into the stacks,

more graphics added, and appropriate images from the Yup'ik

laserdisc and other video sources will be included. Additional topics

will be developed and added. The CD-ROM could hold far more

data than necessary for the entire course, including laboratories, and

could easily be distributed to the students (Miller & Hamilton,

1992). This would require that students have access to a computer

with a CD-ROM drive, a reasonable requirement since CD-ROM

drives are standard components of most computer systems today.

The CD-ROM will provide the necessary memory for sound, color

graphics, and QuickTime movie clips, which was limited by the

floppy disk format. HyperCard 2.3 will be used in the redesign of

the stacks. This version of HyperCard will make the incorporation

of sound, graphics and video into the stacks much easier than in past

versions. A FirstClass (TM) bulletin board service and

audioconferences could provide for additional interaction, feedback

and, most importantly, assessment (Koshy, Bonata, and Faasalaina,

1994).

The University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Education has

committed resources to facilitate this project. The delivery of

laboratory science courses has been a major barrier to rural Alaska

students in the B.Ed. programs.

REFERENCES

Hutchings, G. A., Hall, W., & Thorogood, P. (1994). Experiences

with hypermedia in undergraduate education. Computers in

Education, 22(1/2):39-44.

Koshy, K., Bonata, J., & Faasalaina, T. (1994). Chemistry

through distance teaching A South Pacific experiment. Distance

Education, 15(2):291-299.

Miller, P. G. G., & Hamilton, N. M. (1992). Computers in

teaching and learning biology. Computers in Education,19(1/2):9-

16.

Naber, D., & LeBlanc, G. (1994). Providing a human biology

laboratory for distance learners. The American Journal of Distance

Education, 8(2):58-71.

Willis, B. (1992). Effective distance education: A primer for faculty

and administration. (Monograph Series in Distance Education No.

2.) Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Fairbanks, Center for

Cross-Cultural Studies.

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