Abstract
Pedagogic problems in teaching Plant Pathology at the University of Helsinki are analyzed, and some solutions based on web-supported courses are suggested. In a wider perspective, web technology offers a tool for co-operation to the relatively small Plant Pathology departments in Northern European countries. Web-supported courses within the Nordic Forestry, Veterinary and Agricultural University (NOVA) or larger consortia, present an opportunity to use the limited resources efficiently. At its best, web-based instruction can help combining internationally-oriented education with maintaining scientific culture within small language groups.
Characteristics of Plant Pathology in the University of Helsinki
Plant Pathology deals with plant diseases caused by biotic and abiotic agents. The emphasis is strongly on microbial diseases of cultivated plants. At the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, approximately 3-6 students annually choose Plant Pathology as their main subject. Basic courses in Plant Pathology are attended by 15-30 students each year. Instruction is primarily given by one full professor and two research associates. A closely related subject, Forest Pathology, has a slightly lower number of students. Some common courses in Plant and Forest Pathology are organized. These two fields of science are characterized by a relatively high number of postgraduate students as compared to the number of students graduating with a Master´s degree.
Some of the students in Plant Pathology aim at an expertise in practical aspects of plant protection, while others direct their studies towards research in epidemiology or biotechnology. Thus, their previous knowledge of biological , chemical and agricultural sciences as well as their expectations of Plant Pathology courses are widely variable.
The University of Helsinki is a bilingual university, with Finnish and Swedish as its official languages. However, instruction is mainly given in Finnish, while the Swedish-speaking minority of the students have the right to take examinations in their mother tongue. In recent years, numerous courses in the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry have also been given in English. This has been motivated by a willingness to serve the growing number of foreign students, but another aim is to give the students a working knowledge of the principal language of life science.
Case: Course on diagnostic techniques
The author´s interest in using web technology as an educational tool was awakened by some practical problems in teaching a course called Diagnostic Techniques in Plant Pathology. This is a course on identifying plant pathogens by modern laboratory methods, such as immunological, chromatographic and nucleic acid -based techniques. The estimated work load for the student is 90 hours of lab work (including short lectures) and 30 hours of reading and other independent study.
The heterogeneity of students attending this course is based on several reasons. Mother tongue is one of these factors. Foreign students either enrolled in the University or coming for an academic year through ERASMUS exchange often choose this course. Therefore, an increasing proportion of the instruction and written course material has been given in English. Consequently, the course has also been made available to students of other universities participating in NOVA (Nordic Forestry, Veterinary and Agricultural University) (1). Most of the Finnish students are prepared to take courses in English, but some of them find the foreign language a hindrance to their learning. While our university has realized the importance of providing the students with abilities for international work, our responsibility to create, maintain and teach scientific Finnish language cannot be overlooked either.
Another factor of heterogeneity is the scientific background of the students. Previous studies in Microbiology, Biochemistry or Genetics are an advantage in this course. The biotechnologically-oriented students have a much stronger background in these subjects than the agronomically-oriented ones. Furthermore, the participants include both undergraduate and postgraduate students.
In addition to designing an optimal syllabus for the diverse students, the teacher faces the problem of scheduling the course satisfactorily. The NOVA students typically come to Finland to attend one course only, and for financial and academic reasons they want to minimize the length of their stay. In contrast, our own students are taking other courses simultaneously, and a very dense schedule would be problematic to them.
Electronic solutions
One obvious solution to the problems in this particular course is to restrict the common sessions to hands-on laboratory work and to minimize lecturing during these sessions. Instead, the students have to be acquainted with the relatively wide theoretical basis before starting the lab work. Printed preliminary reading would be the classical solution, but an electronic hypertext has the advantage of allowing each student to construct a personal combination of texts. Presenting the explanations of terms as hyperlinks helps the students with weaker theoretical background, while these elements will be omitted with no difficulty by students with better previous knowledge. Another category of links (categories should be visually differentiated) are the optional links leading to deeper knowledge on subjects of the student’s own interest. Since this course deals with a wide range of laboratory instruments, links to commercial sites of their manufacturers form a third category of links.
In order to solve the language problem, the hypertexts, naturally, have to be both in English and in Finnish. The option of using links to existing web documents will ease the work load of the author.
The course material could well be distributed on disks or CD-ROM, but the location of potential students in several different countries favours publishing the material on the WWW. Also, answers to many frequently asked questions, such as accommodation for NOVA students, will be most efficiently given through the web. Most importantly, interaction with the teacher through e-mail will motivate and guide the student through the theoretical part of the course.
Another means of offering “tailored teaching“ is to attach a questionnaire to the course registration form in the web. The students will be asked about their level of previous experience on each of the methods to be covered. Thereby they can, to some extent, influence the emphasis of different subjects on the course, and the teacher will also be able to place the student in an appropriate subgroup during the lab sessions.
So far, web technology has been used in this course to the extent that the students have been taught how to search for relevant information in the web, and they have also written literature summaries as HTML documents, which have been made accessible to all students through the course site. A renewed course site (2), realizing the ideas presented above, is under construction and will serve the students by September 1999, which will be the period of registration for the course. The month of October will be used for the web session, and practical lab work will take place in November and early December.
The idea, at the moment, is to use basic web authoring tools for constructing
the course site. The goal of providing each student with instruction that
meets his or her personal needs, will be attained by utilizing the basic
qualities of the WWW: hypertext structure and independence of time and
location. The utilization of special courseware, which would allow the
use of self-correcting quizzes and other automatic interactive elements
(3), may be considered for future courses. However, e-mail between students
and the teacher is probably a sufficient tool to maintain interactivity
in courses like this, which have only about ten students each year. In
fact, although web-based teaching will diminish face-to-face contact between
student and teacher, the total amount of interaction is likely to increase.
The sad truth remains that it is very difficult to activate all students
into classroom discussions, while web assignments cannot be escaped by
any (honest) student.
Prospects and restrictions of web-based teaching
The course described above, with its special characteristics, is an ideal pilot project for utilizing web technology in teaching Plant Pathology. It also seems beneficial to move parts of other courses out of the lecture room or laboratory and onto the web. Remote, asynchronous instruction would be one solution to the constant problems that our students are facing with overlapping course schedules. It is also noteworthy, that lots of pictures of pathogens and diseased plants are needed in studying Plant Pathology. Publishing the graphics in the web would not only help the students, but would also serve farmers, agricultural extension service, and students elsewhere. Examples of web-assisted courses in Plant Pathology can be found through Plant Pathology Internet Guidebook (4).
Furthermore, the University could benefit more from the docents (senior scientists listed as teachers of the University, often employed in another university or research institution) by encouraging and supporting web-assisted instruction by them. In recent years, diminishing funding has forced us to cut down on docent lectures. In the long run, remote instruction would be both cheaper for the University and more convenient for the docent.
On the other hand, it is important to keep appropriate limits to electronic instruction. In basic courses it is important to establish personal contact with new students. Also, laboratory courses aiming at skills based on a single method, such as microscopy, would not benefit from the web as much as courses with a wide theoretical basis.
The technology needed for wider web-based instruction is largely available in our University, but nonetheless, even brief information on course contents is lacking from the web in many cases (or is outdated). There is obviously a need for short courses on developing web-based teaching and authoring other web documents. Another factor keeping the web under-utilized is the quite rational allocation of working time by adademic staff in the present situation, where scientific achievements yield much more professional merit than educational development work.
Opportunities in NOVA and beyond
The Plant Pathology departments in other universities participating in NOVA operate in a similar situation, with a relatively low number of students and staff. Co-operation over the WWW would allow the departments to offer their students a wider range of courses. Furthermore, the University of Helsinki would thus be able to serve the Swedish-speaking students better, by providing easier access to courses in Swedish and other Scandinavian languages. NOVA is a relatively new organization and has not gained full speed yet; e.g. some synchronization of the academic year in different countries is needed in order to make student exchange more feasible. A wider co-operation programme, NOVABA, includes also the agricultural universities in the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania).
An organization for remote education within agricultural sciences, EVA (The European Virtual Agricultural and Veterinary Faculty) is about to start its operation (5). It will hopefully further improve the opportunities of students in small countries to study special subjects within agricultural sciences.
Besides co-organized courses, the WWW could and should be used more for the pedagogic development of university teachers, most of whom have no pedagogic education. For example, the exchange of ideas on planning lab courses could be organized as mailing lists or on-line conferencing. Already, technology for this is also offered by NOVA (6).
References
Jyri Kankila
Department of Plant Biology
P.O.Box 28
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
E-mail: jyri.kankila@helsinki.fi