The take up of web technology: Promoting changes in teaching staff and in the institution

From staff surveys of perceived needs and problems in both traditional teaching and in moving to use of the web, a user-centric design process for the needed specifications of the web technology was chosen. This model sees the needs, and perceptions of the potential adopters as being the primary forces that influence adoption. The adopters were identified as primarily (at this stage) the teaching staff. Adopter (staff) perceptions were then surveyed in terms of real or perceived problems firstly in existing traditional teaching delivery (in the broadest sense, not restricted to the lecture room) and secondly in moving to web based teaching.

From these surveys, the major perceived problems by staff (in general, not just the "innovators") lay in administration support and in general communications with the institution (rating higher than the perception of a need to use new technologies) and in moving to the web, in the learning of web technologies and utilising their legacy material.

A detailed specifications for an integrated administration/teaching web based information system was then developed as an incremental set of requirements. This included, from the beginning, a full and automatic integration with the university student enrolment, staff, subject and courses databases. An examination of commercial teaching web based teaching delivery products did not satisfy this degree of infrastructure support and integration.

To test the theoretical models, an in house product was designed, and starting with a bare bones pilot study in the second semester 1998, a major trial in the first semester 1999, and then open availability for all staff for the second half of 1999. The functionality has been increased with the specifications coming from staff feedback to include all forms of static material, including external web sites, online quizzes, discussion groups, online mark book, various forms of student online assignment submission and a variety of messaging.

In addition, by addressing the perceived needs of the institution, the administration infrastructure has now increased to include online tutorial registrations across for all subjects across the campus, full integration with the timetabling systems, examination and results systems and various administration Intranet functions.

By the second semester 1999, there were over 200 online subjects (about 4,500 students). With the integration of other administrative functions such as online access to subject grades and online tutorial registrations, by the start of the year 2000, there has been access by over 8,000 students and almost all teaching staff to some function of the system.

This paper discusses the theoretical basis, the implementation methodology and the adoption results of this project and highlights some of the strengths and weakness of the presented models and practices for the rapid adoption of web technologies in teaching and the promotion of changes in the institutional and teaching environment.