The e-learning system named ‘eCampus’ in Chungbuk National University(CBNU) was reformed by the Center for Teaching & Learning(CTL) last month.
  The eCampus is a kind of system which can give services about lectures both on-line and off-line. It was introduced for improvement in 2011. The reformed eCampus reflects the opinions of students and teaching staffs based on the survey about the user rate. According to the result of the survey, many students wanted to make functions such as mobile services, group management and activities, content sharing with other systems and sending text messages. Also, it included making schedule management and chat rooms. The CTL has tried to reflect it on the list of requirements among many people’s needs by bringing the ‘Blackboard’ System. The Blackboard System has lots of functions that can allow users to share the notices and the teaching materials of lectures with each other in real time. If you use the eCampus, you don’t have to worry about making an appointment for a makeup lesson or gathering. Also, you don’t need to ask teaching assistants and professors about managing credits because you can check them through text messages. The online schedule and classes on the bulletin board can be used on both a computer and a mobile phone. Currently, the Blackboard System is an educational system that is used in 5,000 universities including Harvard, MIT, and Stanford University.
  However, many students don’t know about the fact of this situation. A student named Choi Ji-hoon(’12, Dept. of Astronomy and Space Science) said, “I know what the eCampus is, but I rarely use it because many professors who are in my department tend to share teaching materials through e-mail. For such a reason as mentioned, I think I am unfamiliar with the eCampus.” According to a survey about the eCampus, about 55% of students among the students who participated in survey know what the eCampus is, but they don’t use it. About 20% students don’t even know that the eCampus exists. A CTL staff member said, “The CTL has tried to teach professors to increase the user rate and will try to increase the frequency of education. Also, we will make manuals for the eCampus and hand them out, and we will add support by assigning helpers and sharing data to them.”
  The CTL struggles to overcome this problem. How much can they influence the quality of the lectures? Let’s analyze the survey based on the opinions of students. Most of the answers were “The professor keeps their own teaching style. It is to share the lecture material through e-mail and give notices about lectures.” Some of the answers were “The professor says that it is difficult to use the eCampus.”  Professor Rhi Seok-ho(School of Mechanical Engineering) said, “The eCampus is inconvenient to use because of the complex user interface(UI), and it is too slow to upload data. It takes so much time to use.” Also, a few people said, “Sometimes, the server of the eCampus is unstable to use on an Android operating system.” It would not be easy to increase the user rate more.
  On the other hand, there is a department that uses the eCampus a lot. A student named An Sang-hee(’15, Masters of Business information Administration) said, “Many professors in my department use the eCampus when they hand over reports to me because it is easy to upload data and they don’t have to talk about the report again. Even when a professor doesn’t know how to use the eCampus, students say that they want to use the eCampus in a class. In this case, the CTL is widening the range of education to students by gathering the opinions of students in a survey.
  The reformed eCampus has been used just for 2 months, so we can’t estimate whether it is better or not. Let’s take a look at other cases. In America, it is a really influential and educational system in universities. In a blog that shares information about schools, they tend to say that the students have to know the Blackboard system before admission into a school. Also, according to Chungang Newspaper that was published by Chungang University, we can communicate together through the Blackboard System and get feedback immediately, so we are satisfied by using it.
  People are still divided over the eCampus, but people look forward to it being used more frequently.

By Lee Min-kyo
mk36@cbnu.ac.kr