Judith M. (Judy) Roberts
Présidente
Judy Roberts & Associates/Associés Inc.
Henry Cowan & Rob Pearson

The New Brunswick Educational Resource Development Pilot Project Partnership: Designing Web-based Support Materials for Schools

This paper has three objectives:

To describe an innovative partnership between the public and private sectors resulting in the development of alcohol education resource materials for 13-14 year olds;

To describe the technological infrastructure challenges of designing web-based support materials intended for widespread use in Canadian schools; and

To raise awareness of the fact that copies of the web source codes are available – at no charge - so that education and addictions stakeholders may acquire and adapt the materials to the needs of their students

Background

In June 1997, work began on the design and development of a national web site designed to improve the quality and breadth of alcohol abuse prevention education in Canadian schools. More specifically, the objective was to develop educational resource materials, in French and English, for 13-14 year olds that would support the acquisition of information, skills and attitudes on the use, misuse and abuse of alcohol.

French- and English-language teams of curriculum development specialists, in consultation with classroom teachers and students, addictions specialists and evaluators, developed a range of materials that teachers can customize to meet learning outcome objectives in their province or territory. The French-language team prepared a Tool Kit of several items from which teachers can choose in constructing their lessons. These resources have been officially approved as support materials in the Francophone sector of the public schools of New Brunswick. The English-language materials are organized into units, each of which teachers could use in a 30-minute teaching segment. They can be used as one "set" or independently, depending on individual teachers’ needs. The modules have been officially approved by the Curriculum Development Advisory Committee as a resource for the Grade 8 Health Curriculum in the Anglophone sector of the public schools of New Brunswick.

A web site has been designed to facilitate access to these materials. The primary distribution site is hosted by SchoolNet (see URLs below). However, Web source codes are available on request – at no charge - so that education and addictions stakeholders may acquire and adapt the materials to the needs of their students (see contact information below).

A classic iterative learning design approach was taken in designing the site. First, both teams completed an extensive literature review and undertook discussion group research with students, teachers and parents in New Brunswick, all of whom reacted positively to the concepts involved in the Project. Initial design concepts were reviewed by an advisory panel of teachers, addictions specialists and other stakeholders. A subsequent development phase culminated in pilot testing and revision processes throughout the spring and fall of 1999. A sequenced, phased evaluation design was developed by both teams that incorporates bench-marking student knowledge, attitudes, skills and behaviour in modified pre-and post-test or control/experimental research designs. Evaluation results indicate that Your Life: Your Choice! (and its French counterpart, Tiens-toi debout!) offers advantages over other opportunities to learn about alcohol (Hughes, 2000; Malenfant, et. al. 2000).

Functionality

Both the French and English sides of the site have sections for students, teachers and parents, as well as an Information Resource Centre and a Gallery (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Site Map

The student section contains interactive web activities such as a quiz, ideas for class projects and other activities that will help students learn about alcohol in many different ways. The teacher section describes the key learning outcomes supported by the student activities, ways to use the web and classroom activities appropriately, and alternate paper-based strategies should technical challenges limit class access to the web site. The parent section contains tips for communicating with a young teen about alcohol, directs parents to sources of information in the site and introduces other parents’ views on alcohol. The Information Resource Centre contains "library" materials that support the student, teacher and parent sections. The Gallery is a place where teachers can post examples of students’ class projects. It is also a place where teachers, students and parents can share ideas about how they have used the site. A Guided Tour and other user support materials were included in the web site to facilitate online and offline applications of the materials. No section is password protected.

The formal project partnership consisted of: McGuire Mangham Associates (Nova Scotia/British Columbia), NBTel, New Brunswick Department of Education, New Brunswick Department of Health and Community Services, Performx Inc. (Ontario/New Brunswick), Judy Roberts & Associates/Associés Inc. (Ontario), Université de Moncton and University of New Brunswick. Partnership members consulted regularly with curriculum development and addictions specialists from all provinces and territories throughout the web site development process. The project was funded by the Brewers Association of Canada.

The Design Challenge

Developing offline materials was critical to success, given the limited IT infrastructure available in many Canadian schools and the variations in student learning styles.

Research conducted in 1997, and confirmed throughout the project, indicated that close to 50% of schools were using 486 computers or less that used Level 3 browsers to access the Internet through one 28.8 Kbs modem that supported several computers in a laboratory. Most education departments and boards have policies that prohibit downloading and installing free plug-ins on school computers or creating chat places where students would be unsupervised by a teacher. SchoolNet also supported those limitations in order to be compatible with school IT environments. Moreover, health educators indicated that they may not get first priority on computer laboratory bookings and wondered how they would teach from the site if they were "bumped" at the last minute – or if a technical problem intervened.

It seems that Canadian schools are limited in their capacity to use online learning and that homes often have much better infrastructure than does the education system.

Stakeholder feedback continuously indicated that students have diverse and varied learning styles that do not always lend themselves to reading material on a website. Indeed, anecdotal comments indicated that students who were perhaps most at risk of misusing alcohol were often the ones who had significant literacy challenges.

The Solution

Two design decisions were made to address those issues. First, authoring languages were kept very basic, graphics were simple and paper-based alternatives were available for some activities: i.e., the site contains files that replicate activities such as a quiz game so that teachers can download them previous to the class, amend them as needed, print them on school letterhead as desired and be prepared should last minute scheduling or technical challenges limit the feasibility of using the web site with students. Second, ideas were always presented to support a wide variety of learning styles: e.g., inviting guest experts to the class, role playing, and/or teacher presentation of material. The site was designed to offer teachers many different ways to accomplish the intended learning objectives, thus enabling them to customize the application of the site’s ideas to their students’ needs, their own teaching style and the technological environment in their school.

Conclusion

The challenges of the digital divide and different learning styles offer opportunities to create new online learning pedagogies. Finding creative ways to design web sites that are the "sole or primary" source of learning activities for some learners yet are also "starting points for learning" for other users may well be one of the most exciting opportunities for learning and training professionals.

References

Hughes, A.S. (2000). Your Life: Your Choice! (An Educational Resource for Teaching Young Teens About Alcohol). An evaluation based on the fall 1999 field trial. Ottawa: The Brewers Association of Canada.

Malenfant, J.E.L. , LeBlanc, T.R., & LeBlanc, N. (2000). Tiens-toi debout! Évaluation d’une trousse pédagogique pour prévenir l’usage abusif et illégal de l’alcool des adolescents de 13 et 14 ans. Ottawa: The Brewers Association of Canada.

Contact Information

For more information or a copy of the final evaluation reports, please contact judyrobe@istar.ca. The resource materials can be viewed at www.schoolnet.ca/alcohol in English and www.rescol.ca/alcool in French.

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