responded that their knowledge about media had increased, and 60% stated that their skills in Web page construction had increased as well. Over 95% of professors predicted they will continue to use CEIBA in the future. Of the 620 professors who used CEIBA in spring 2007, about 16% were new users of CEIBA, about 55% had one to three years of experience, about 22% had four to six years of experience, and only 6% had over six years of experience.

Function avoidance. Many of the CEIBA functions are designed to increase student interaction with professors and other students. The table on the preceding page lists the frequency of the usage of interactive functions. Many professors reported that they did not use interactive functions. The results showed the functions that provide information about the course were used by over 90% of the professors who participated in the survey. About 85% to 90% of the responding professors used group email and announcement boards to disseminate information. On the other hand, functions that encourage interaction and sharing were not used as often. About 65% of professors never used chat rooms, homework sharing, or voting functions.

 

CONCLUSION

As the case of the NTU illustrates, it is possible to increase LMS usage by professors from all disciplines. The survey results confirmed previous studies that showed the most frequently used functions are not necessarily the technically advanced ones [ 1, 7, 11]. Rather, the functions critical to providing course information for faculty and students are used the most. As Laurillard indicated [ 8], university courses are still dominated by lecturing or information giving. However, instructive design, inclusive design, and personnel support for systems like CEIBA can increase users among both faculty and students.

More recent development of LMS also tends to focus on more diverse design and personalized services [ 4, 5]. Given the positive response from the NTU professors, one can see that it is possible to design an LMS to meet the needs of faculty members without extensive computer skills. CEIBA attracted large number of professors from arts and humanities, and was widely used across departments and colleges at NTU.

Teaching is a complicated process. Instructional support requires software designers to consider a fuller scope of instructional process. As Boyd pointed out [ 2], interaction and thus the cultivation of community is crucial in sustaining and expanding a professor’s academic life. As much as interaction is essential

in F2F instruction, it should be carefully fostered in Web-based instruction. Therefore, building interaction in class would require a lot more work than to incorporate interaction tools in a system. An instructionally supportive LMS must build on the faculty’s understanding and knowledge of instruction.

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HSIU-PING YUEH ( [e-mail]) is the associate director for the Center of Teaching and Learning Development, and an associate professor at the Department of Agricultural Extension at the National Taiwan University.

SHIHKUAN HSU ( [e-mail]) is an associate professor at the Center for Teacher Education at National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.

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