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Redesigning the Persistent Issues in History Network (PIHnet) Online Forum and Journal to Promote Interaction and Reflection

Posted on: Tuesday, 3 January 2006, 03:02 CST

By Hur, Jung Won; Tan, Ashley; Brush, Thomas; Saye, John; Chen, Lixin

The Persistent Issues in History Network, or PIHnet (http:// www.pihnet.org), is an online teacher community that promotes problem-based historical inquiry (PBHI). The members of PIHnet include K-12 teachers and teacher educators from across the United States. PIHnet provides multimedia resources, model lessons based on the PBHI approach and authoring tools that support development of new PBHI units. The PIHnet online forum, moderated by experienced PIHnet teachers (mentors), allows member teachers to share resources, critique activities and discuss successes and challenges of implementing PBHI units.

The PIHNet design team conducted an online survey augmented by face-to-face interviews with PIHnet members to investigate their experiences with the forum with the goal of improving the collaboration and discussion tools available within the forum. The online survey included 35 items: 10 items focusing on demographic information such as age and teaching experience, 20 Likert-type items dealing with participants' beliefs regarding the usefulness of the forum tools and barriers to utilizing the tools and five open- ended questions designed to explore participants' reasons for using (or not using) the forum tools and recommendation for improvement. The online survey was distributed through a commercial online survey tool, and 10 teachers responded to the survey (a 55% response rate).

Table 1. Summary of the top four usability issues with the PIHnet forum

To gain in-depth insight into use of the forum tools, face-to- face interviews were conducted with each of the 10 respondents after the completion of the online survey. In addition, data from observations of user posting patterns were analyzed to make more precise decisions regarding improvements to the forum tools.

Based on the findings from the survey, interviews and observations, we recently redesigned the PIHnet forum and developed a new journal tool. The new online forum tool was designed to help all users utilize the tool easily and efficiently regardless of their level of technical skills. The journal tool not only supports reflective teaching practice, but also helps mentors provide private feedback to each teacher.

This article briefly describes the findings from our study of potential usability issues within the forum tool and explains our strategies to make the forum tool more usable, effective and helpful. The rationale for the development of the journal tool and decisions on the interface design and embedded features were also described.

User experiences with the PIHnet online forum

The PIHnet online forum played an important role in facilitating communication between teachers and teachers, and teachers and PIHnet mentors. All participants reported that they found the forum tool to be valuable in helping them develop history or social studies lessons. Each teacher posted a new teaching unit before they implemented it and received feedback from their peers and PIHnet mentors. They were satisfied that the forum allowed them to validate their design decisions and to make revisions before they implemented their lessons in their classes. However, they also identified structural and visual organization issues that prevented an optimal user experience (Table 1).

Modifications to the PIHnet forum

Problem 1: Difficulty determining which forum area to post to

The original PIHnet forum was divided into three sections: reflection, discussion and self-introduction. The reflection section had five sub-sections in which teachers posted their reflections about history or their PBHI activity descriptions. The discussion section contained five sub-sections for the PIH members to post technical and curriculum issues, discuss special topics and provide feedback to other teachers regarding teacher-designed activities. Teachers were encouraged to introduce themselves through the self- introduction forum. Furthermore, users needed to take at least five steps to access the forum: 1) log in to PIHnet, 2) select the forum tool, 3) select a forum section, 4) choose a specific sub-section and 5) post a new message. Data from the observations of user posting patterns revealed that newcomers were especially confused by these multiple steps and sometimes ended up posting in the wrong area.

Figure 1. New forum interface for text entry and file attachments

Solution to problem 1

We decided that the new forum should be specifically designed to assist teachers with the design, development and implementation of PIH activities. We removed the self-introduction section because participants have already met one another at a two-week PIHnet workshop that focused on creating and implementing PBHI units. In addition, the new forum was designed to have not only a single section, but also to include all discussion topics on one page. This modification reduced the number of forum posting steps to three: 1) log in to PIHnet, 2) select the forum tool and 3) post a new message.

Problem 2: Unfamiliarity with forum tool

Although forums are fairly common on the web, some users were still not familiar with the tool. However, our survey data revealed that all users were familiar with email.

Solution to problem 2

We created a simple tool for message entry that simulates an email interface (Figure 1). The new interface has two text entry boxes (subject and message) and two function buttons. The observations of use of the forum tool revealed that the majority of users did not attach files. However, we believed that the file attachment function might be useful for some members and future users. Consequently, the file attachment function is hidden from view, yet it may be toggled into view by clicking the "Add Attachments" link.

Figure 2. . New forum interface for text entry and file attachments

Problem 3: Difficulty reading new messages

Another difficulty users had with the old PIHnet forum tool was that they could not determine the content of a posting from the subject line. The technical limitation was that subject lines were too brief to be explicit about the content. In addition, users replied to messages and left the original subject line intact even when the nature of the message had changed. This made the content of the reply even more difficult to recognize.

Solution to problem 3

The new forum was designed to show the first 50 words of the content by default (Figure 2) so that users could easily identify content by skimming through the postings. A toggle function was included also to allow users to select either a full postings view or title-only view. To prevent replicated subject headers, the new forum requires users to type in a title each time they post or reply.

The new PIHnet journal

There were two main reasons why we created the journal tool. Firstly, some teachers expressed the need to post messages that could be seen only by the teacher and mentor, not by other teachers. This would allow the teachers who were reticent to share their ideas with everyone in the community to post messages somewhat privately. It also permits a teacher and a mentor to interact at a more personal level. Secondly, the two principal investigators of PIHnet had envisioned a personal space for teachers to reflect as they planned, implemented and evaluated their own PBHI lesson units. This task had previously been completed by teachers using the forum tool, but their forum postings were available to all members of the PIHnet community.

Design considerations

The journal was modeled on the design of current weblogs. Design decisions were based on features already available in public blogging services like Blogger.com and LiveJournal.com. We hoped this strategy would allow users to bring their prior knowledge into play and therefore to save us time on usability testing.

PIHnet unique journal features

The common features of the journal include the date/ time stamp, subject header, journal entry, links to archived entries, number of comments and link to comments. The more unique features of the PIHnet journal are the ability to show or hide comments and the ability to make an entry private (the default setting) or shared in a discussion area (Figure 3).

The design rationales for toggling comments (show/ hide) were to minimize screen clutter and to allow the user to stay on the same page to read comments. The rationale for the shared entry function was to give teachers the option to make an entry in the journal and post a copy of that entry conveniently to the discussion forum.

The PIHnet journal differs from most blogs in that access is restricted to members of PIHnet. This feature was included to ensure a safe and supportive environment for reflection.

Conclusion

In order to make PIHnet forum more usable and useful, we recently redesigned the forum tool based on findings from a survey, interviews and observations of user posting patterns. We also developed a journal tool to assist teachers with their personal reflection.

Interviews with four users showed that the new forum was easy to use and effectively helped them communicate with other members. We are still developing the journal tool, so user experiences with the new journal tool have not been investigated yet. We will continue to improve the tools based on critical feedback from actual users.

Figure \1. PIHnet journal interface: read mode (left) and write mode (right).

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Gina Dysard for making survey and interview data readily available, and Ugur Kale and Xiaojing Liu for their contributions to the design of the forum and the journal tools.

Jung Won Hur is a doctoral student of instructional systems technology at Indiana University Bloomington. Her current research interests include technology integration in K-12 environments, online teacher education and development of online tools for teachers and students.

Ashley Tan is a doctoral candidate of instructional systems technology at Indiana University Bloomington. His primary research examines the practice and effectiveness of reflective blagging in teacher education. His side interests include the critical development of instructional strategies and pedagogy that accompany wireless internet technologies and interface and activity design to promote interaction and collaboration between learners.

Thomas Brush is associate professor of instructional systems technology at Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests focus on integrating technology into teaching, and designing technology-supported environments to promote higher-order thinking in students. He serves as the co-project director for the Persistent Issues in History Network.

John Saye is professor of social science education at Auburn University. His research interests focus on the design and implementation of problem-based curriculum in history and civic education and the development of technology-supported environments to support higher-order thinking. He serves as the co-project director for the Persistent Issues in History Network

Lixin Chen is a web programmer for the Persistent Issues in History Network. He holds a Masters degree in computer science from Indiana University.

Copyright Association for Educational Communications & Technology Nov/Dec 2005

Source: TechTrends

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