Andy McClelland, senior lecturer, Department of Entomology

The Experience with Entomology III
My general education class called "Insects and Human Affairs- began modestly in 1986 with seven students. It grew to 119 students by 1988, and has been offered in both winter and spring quarters since 1989 with an enrollment of about 200 students per session. The submission of journals has been an integral part of class participation, providing me with excellent feedback and the students with individual comments.

Journals comprise one or more pages of handwritten personal experiences questions, philosophical statements, or stories (with some insect connections). Some students submit poems, others draw humorous cartoons in the style of Gary Larsen.

I would carry each untidy stack of journals around for a week while reading and making comments on every one, even getting through many on my Unitrans bus commutes. Some journals required urgent answers, but often were not read until too late. I transcribed the more interesting contributions onto my Macintosh and added my own, often lengthy, comments. I would craft this text into an 8-page weekly newsletter illustrated with student cartoons. The journals were returned at the end of a week, although some with my careful comments never got picked up. In five years "Dear Andy" accumulated nine volumes of about seven issues each - a total of more than 200,000 words that I had typed myself. This labor was great fun and enjoyed by all.

In addition to "Dear Andy," there were weekly, lengthy reading assignments for the discussion session. Last quarter, all of this material amounted to 120 printed pages (on 65 sheets of paper) with a print run of 220 - totaling 14,300 sheets of paper. Since ENT 111 is offered twice a year, and I teach a smaller class (ENT 153, Medical Entomology each fall that uses 2,500 sheets), my classes thus produced a grand total of over 31,000 sheets of paper a year. This volume of printed material incurred Repro Graphics and other copying charges in excess of $2,500.

A student last quarter remarked that I "cut a tree down for each class." This comment, along with the obvious need to trim costs in face of the grim budget, suggested drastic action. I had already encouraged students to submit their journals by electronic mail with a view to saving transcribing time, but the response of five out of 203 students was discouraging. Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith, one of our local pioneers in class use of e-mail and the Internet, urged me to make electronic communication compulsory for my spring quarter class. Nervously, I took the plunge into the deep end and swam.

This experience has been excitingly positive. I will never turn back and will implement the same approach for my other general education class in the fall. The commonly expressed fear that using computers will depersonalize the class is totally unfounded. My face-to-face interaction with students has not decreased; I can recognize more than half the 204 students by name, which is better than in previous classes, and I "know" even more through e-mail interaction - which can often be personal and light-hearted.

I still require three journals, one every other week, submitted by e-mail. I answer them in order of receipt, usually within hours, and have never taken longer than 24 hours to respond, except on weekends.

All entries are saved for editing into the electronic "Dear Andy." Since I only spend time typing my own words, I can share with the class and respond to far more journals than before. 'Dear Andy," renamed simply "Sharing from your journals," is posted weekly to the unmoderated newsgroup "ucd.bugnews." In addition, I post items gleaned from an entomology listserver and the Internet. I used to distribute to every student as many as ten pages each week for discussion assignments. Now, these are posted to the moderated newsgroup ucd.ent111.

At the first class meeting students received a 10-page packet that included important information about the course, plus a day-by-day calendar. This material was also posted to "Insects and Human Affairs ENT 111" on the Gopher for the campuswide information system (UCD CWIS). In the future, this packet can be reduced to a minimum. Some paper will still be necessary, such as instructions for using the computers, exams, and the student submitted term papers.

At the first class meeting, I also announced that participation in e-mail was required and that any student unwilling to use a computer should immediately drop the class. In anticipation of drops, I added 30 students from the waiting list on the first day of class. The number of drops was similar to that in previous terms and, by the fifth week, the class size was close to the room limit.

On the first three evenings of the term, I scheduled three two-hour computer workshops taught by Vicki Suter, manager of the IT Campus Access Point, in 163 Shields Library. On the second and third evenings, I took the overflow in the Hart Hall Macintosh lab. We reached about 100 students in these three evenings. The next time the class is offered, we will schedule five workshops. In the workshop, students first activated their EZ accounts, then practiced sending e-mail messages with Pine and learned to access TIN and Gopher.

The first class assignment was to send me an e-mail message, for which ten participation points were awarded. (Participation points also are given for discussion attendance and participation, journal submission, pop quizzes etc. They form the basis for 25 percent of the course grade). I acknowledged all these messages and recorded the EZ account number in the class database. When I had received messages from almost all the students, the database was sorted by EZ number to give me a directory. This directory was then e-mailed to David Arredondo of Information Technology who set up an electronic mail alias called "ent111" for the purpose of sending messages to the whole class. I use class messages to alert the class to recent postings on the newsgroups and for class events and deadlines. This rewards students who frequently check their e-mail.>[? Some of the class had initial difficulties with e-mail, but they were mostly those who chose not to attend the workshops or who had non-standard or outmoded equipment Only one student voiced a strong complaint about being required to use computers. There were a lot of complaints about TIN. These mostly resulted from a quirk in the TIN software which I understand will soon be much upgraded.

[Editor's Note: Information Technology staff are reviewing a new version of TIN (v1.11) right now.]

I would say that roughly 20 percent of the students thoroughly enjoyed the electronic aspect of the course, and about 20 percent disliked it The remainder were neutral. I find this to be no different from previous "non-electronic" quarters when about the same proportions of students were either enthusiastic or foot draggers. With few exceptions, those who complain about using e-mail and computers would have put minimal effort into the course in any case.

Potential Budgetary Savings and Paper Reduction
My classes may have used more paper than most, but if many classes went electronic the savings in paper and Repro Graphics charges would be considerable. Students can print up hard copy of much of what they receive electronically, but if it costs them they will print only what they deem necessary - which is certain to be less than the amount that formerly would have been handed out free.

Students in my class who were computer literate had used computers in other classes - the great majority (mostly seniors and juniors) had not. I believe that offering intensive workshops in the first week of a class, and demanding immediate and intensive use of the skills learned, is very effective. Students in my class quickly learned the necessary computer skills because they needed to get points and ultimately a grade. I feel that this is a more effective learning experience than taking a basic computer class as an end in itself. I myself took a workshop from Ken Weiss of Information Technology over a year ago on e-mail and using the Internet. Because I had no immediate need to use it, however, I did not gain much skill. I plan on having at least five workshops in the first week of my classes to get students "on board."

Few members of my department use e-mail and the networks, or even understand what it is. In order to move into the information age, we must involve more faculty and use information technology in far more courses. In order to achieve this end, faculty must have dear incentives to develop the use of information technology in their courses.

General education courses generally have a mandated writing requirement. I would suggest that they also have a mandated requirement of minimal computer literacy. I am doing both; it is not difficult. At present, about half the graduating students from this university are computer illiterate. This is unacceptable in this age. Most must acquire these skills later on, less easily than when they were in college. By not insisting on computer literacy, we are selling our students short.

Much effort needs to be directed toward faculty who should be given clear incentives to use e-mail and networks in the classroom. Those who develop computer skill components for the courses they teach should be rewarded. Until class use of information technology becomes the norm many students will not be motivated to acquire the necessary skills before they graduate.

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