All the students were required to submit a feedback form after each of the lectures. It is clear from those forms that students were initially reluctant to accept the new technology. In addition to various hardware problems, the students were not used to the format of presentation and not completely familiar with the required software.
At the end of the first Fall semester, one instructor, Dr. Namas Chandra, interviewed five students to determine their reactions to the program. One of the students felt very comfortable with the technology and did not find any difference between the lectures during which she was in the actual class room (in-class) and those in which she was in the computer lab (online). She felt that the archived lectures helped her a great deal during home works and exams. However, she accessed them only about ten times during the semester. She did find that she would rather be in-class than attend remotely.
A hearing impaired student, who was allowed to attend all lectures in the class room, found that the pace of the lecture seemed to increase with the web offering. (We believe that the increased pace is due to the prepared lecture notes). Though the archived lectures were useful, there was not sufficient time to access them. The well organized web sites were very helpful He found that the magnifier used during the lectures was distracting.
As far as the other three students were concerned, their comments were very similar. They too did not find that attending the lectures from the computer lab did drastically decrease the quality of the class. They said that it is easy to be distracted when watching a monitor, especially in a long class (eg, some classes last for 75 minutes). There were also some complaints about distractions from fellow students. The students suggested that links to additional course materials and early posting of lecture notes would be beneficial. It was the general consensus that in-class attendance provides the best experience. However, remote attendance is acceptable if the equipment works well.
It should be noted that the interviewed students may not accurately represent the average student. Some of the weaker students were invited to comment, but they failed to show up. We do know that there are some students who dislike the web experience.
During the end-of-semester graduate student survey (not conducted by us), the question was asked: "Web-based teaching is as effective as in-class teaching." The possible responses ranged from 2 (strongly agree) to -2 (strongly disagree.) There were 27 responses with an average response of -0.63. It appears that although our program can provide an acceptable substitute for live lectures, the true in-class experience remains preferable. This comes as no surprise; the objective of the program is to provide the best simulation for students that cannot actually attend locally.
As far as use of the archived lectures is concerned, analysis of the server log for a randomly chosen week near the end of the Fall semester showed that on average 5 different computer nodes per day accessed archived lectures. This does not include the lectures that were accessed using http.
Some local students also take advantage of the possibility of attending live lectures from home or from their research lab instead of from the classroom or the computer lab. Examination of the computer records at the end of the first Fall semester showed that during the last month in the analysis class, an average of three local students attended each class from a nonstandard location. This seems to depend more on the student than on whether the student is assigned to the computer lab or the classroom.