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Saturday, July 19, 2008
Syndicated RSS Feeds for Course Information Distribution - Ronald J. Glotzbach, et al; JITE
Students in higher education today are technologically savvy and expect faculty to use myriad web technologies for course delivery. This includes taking advantage of email, course web sites, and online learning communities. However, expectations now also include RSS, blogs, web-,pod-, and vod-casting, extending the classroom experience to provide active learning materials anytime, anywhere, and in multiple modalities. This contribution outlines the novel use of RSS technology for a course announcement system at Purdue University that aids IT educators without expense or significant time consumption. It begins by describing RSS technology and discussing the different possibilities for RSS within the classroom. It also describes the specific RSS application for real-time course announcements, detailing its creation and implementation. The classroom chosen for this study was one that begins to mirror the real world with its many sources of information. The addition of RSS feeds to the course website allowed the students to share information with their classmates, professor, and their real-world clients.Initial (n = 53) and secondary (n = 29) questionnaires were given to the students in order to evaluate the usefulness and effectiveness of implementing RSS feeds in the classroom. In comparing the results students showed a significant increase in perceived knowledge (p-value =0.0017) and proficiency (p-value < 0.0001) with RSS feeds and their potential to use this offered technology. The researchers also found that, although only 55.2% of users indicated using a RSS feed for other sources, 65.5% indicated using the course RSS feed, suggesting students foundvalue in the RSS technology applied inthe classroom setting.Although there was evidence that students used the course RSS feed, the ttest comparing students’ usage of RSSfeeds between the initial and secondary questionnaires failed to yield a significant result. The researchers attribute thisto a lack of a common method for allcourse announcements, ones made bystudents, professors and related third parties, to be distributed to the student.This study found that including a RSS feed as part of the course created opportunities for further research into the effective use of RSS feeds in education. For IT educators in need of a cost effective solution for disseminating course information, this approach can be implemented with minimal time or resources.
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