Motet as an Educational Tool

There is no more important use for interactive, Web-based software than in the service of education.

Most educators today realize the great potential the Internet holds for education. It can facilitate more direct contact among students and teachers. It can also create resources for a broader geographical base of students and allow for more flexible structuring of the time frames in which lectures and labs, as well as instructor office hours, may occur.

The issue that arises in making productive use of this powerful tool is the time investment needed to learn and use command line interfaces and to build Web pages. Most instructors are simply too busy to manage Web pages, newsgroups and email, in addition to the other work that goes into teaching. The solution is a program that handles the complexities, bringing educators back to the domain of getting information to students. Motet does this and more.

We have researched the current ways in which educators are using the World Wide Web. Typically, instructors are putting a syllabus, a course outline, lecture notes, assignments, and solution sets online for student access. These are items that should be easy to copy and paste from a word processing document to the final page. However, many instructors simply do not have the time to learn Hypertext Markup Language and then write scripts and links for multiple Web pages. With Motet, they can simply cut and paste into the conference for that class. Each of the above items--for example, the syllabus--naturally lends itself to a topic area. The instructor can give each its own separate Motet topic.

Motet's fully graphical interface and browser compatibility make it accessible to a variety of Internet users, from novice to expert. Motet is intuitively designed, and comes with full online documentation, including context sensitive "help" files where users can point and click on any feature they wish to master. This means that the job of teaching students how to use Motet will fall on Motet, not on teachers. The information students need is easy to find. We have found through testing that users typically pick up all of Motet's basic functions and navigation techniques in one or two sittings.

Motet creates a natural place for students to ask questions of the instructor, affording the instructor the luxury of the time it sometimes takes for a thoughtful response. The instructor can create a topic for questions and answers. Each Motet participant may include his email address in his Motet biography, so there is the additional possibility of more private, one-on-one discussion in email if needed. Further, students can confer on various points of interest from lectures and labs in their own Motet topic, without having to arrange to get together in study groups--a daunting task in itself!

Motet makes linking to other resources on the Web simple and direct. Include the URL of the site you wish to link to, and Motet creates the link automatically. Also, links within Motet are simple and straightforward, affording easy access to information posted elsewhere in the topic, in the conference, or in another conference.

While instructors hold classes in some conferences, faculty members and administrators may join in other conferences to discuss any range of topics, from evaluations to tool development. This makes Motet useful on an administrative level as well as the instructional level.

Another administrative point is that of security. Motet operates on a password system--no one can gain access to your conferences without the required username and password. This means that no one can come along and post in a class discussion without being a member of that class. Also, unlike many of the classes we have seen on the Web so far, classes that use Motet's password protection will prevent outsiders from taking a free class, should they happen to find it. While this may not currently be a great concern, we believe that it will become one, as more schools make use of the Internet, more people get online, and search engines become more powerful.

The World Wide Web is rapidly becoming a part of everyone's life. Educators and students are among those who stand to gain the most from this rich and versatile medium. Educational intstitutions are already finding that the Web can be a tremendous aid to teaching, but they need better tools for many-to-many interaction. Conferencing makes the Web not just a place to visit, but a place to meet, share ideas, learn, and teach. With its rich set of features, intuitive design, and complete documentation, Motet makes conferencing powerful and easy to use.