Survey of Network Training Materials and Assessment of Requirements Reports ITTI Network Training Materials Project Computing Service University of Newcastle upon Tyne January 1993 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Background to Survey 1.1 Collection of network training materials 1 1.2 Types of network training material 2 Survey results 2.1 Survey results - UK 2.1.1 Reference guides 2.1.1.1 Reference guides - general users 2.1.1.2 Reference guides - specific users 2.1.1.3 Reference guides - specific services 2.1.2 Training material 2.1.2.1 Training material - general 2.1.2.2 Training material - specific services 2.1.2.3 Training material - specific users 2.1.2.4 Libraries and training 2.1.3 Supplementary materials 2.1.4 Format of materials 2.2 Survey results - United States 2.3 Survey results - Europe 2.4 Survey results - Australia 3 ASSESSMENT OF REQUIREMENTS 3.1 General network training materials 3.2 Case study 3.3 Subject-related training 3.4 Format 3.5. Archiving 4 Summary Survey of Training Materials: Report 1 Background to Survey The aim of the Network Training Materials Project is to develop a set of training materials to facilitate the provision of network training by UK university user support staff, and also to provide some materials for self-paced learning by end-users. These materials will be adaptable to different local computing environments, to different subject interests, and to varying levels of user expertise. They will also cater for a variety of training situations, such as stand-up presentations with live or simulated demonstrations of networked services, hands-on workshops, and independent learning by users. The approach of the Project in this task has been to draw on already existing training material wherever possible, thus optimising the investment that the community has already made in this area, and enabling the Project to be more ambitious in developing training materials than would otherwise be the case. 1.1 Collection of network training materials The first stage of the Network Training Materials Project, therefore, has included collecting and examining currently available network training materials in order to identify material which might be incorporated, adapted or otherwise built on, for inclusion in the Network Training Pack. Requests for existing material were sent out through the Project's own electronic mailing list, itti-networks, which was announced and promoted widely. Requests were also made through other established lists, such as the UK Mailbase training group of lists, WG-ISUS, and the US list - nettrain. Requests were sent to university computing centres, to bulletin boards and conferences, and appropriate mailing lists were monitored for information on training materials. At the end of Phase 1 of the Project, a fair number of network training documents have been collected, providing the Project with an overview of the range of training which is currently being offered, as well as with potentially useful material for adaptation and inclusion in its Training Pack. 1.2 Types of network training material For analysing the survey results, it is useful to group the different types of network training material. Material collected falls into a few broad classes. A) Reference guides - These explain the basics of the topic, provide definitions, give command sequences, etc. B) Training materials - These guide the user through the topic, or direct the learning process in a systematic way. C) Supplementary information - Information which may be useful and interesting but which is not, in practice, essential. Although 'training material' is the main focus of interest in this Project, 'reference guides' and 'supplementary information' are also of interest. They will in many cases provide the raw material for the development of training material, and may also serve as backup documentation. 2 Survey results 'Training material', as defined above, is only a minor proportion of what was collected. More abundant are reference guides of various sorts - handbooks, leaflets and reference cards and the like. Most include instructions and commands specific to the local system/s. There are a fair number of reference guides which deal with networking comprehensively, while 'training' material, on the other hand, is usually associated with a specific course, user group or service. A few examples of self-teaching material take a general approach. The class, 'supplementary information' includes the 'optional extras' of network training and documentation. 2.1 Survey results - UK >From the UK, the great bulk of the material collected was of the 'reference guide' type. 2.1.1 Reference guides 2.1.1.1 Reference guides - general users Guides on network services and/or specific network facilities such as file transfer or e-mail have been produced by the universities of Aberdeen, Central Lancashire, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Stirling and Ulster. These guides usually include basic explanations of the facilities offered by the network, cover essential procedural aspects of networking (commands etc.), and most give details of a selection of (usually UK) network services, e.g. NISS (National Information on Software and Services), HENSA (Higher Education National Software Archive), BIDS (Bath ISI Data Service), etc. Only a couple of the more recently written items include a mention of networked information retrieval (NIR) tools. All include instruction specific to local systems, though often this is minimal. It is noteworthy that most authors have tried to keep the language as non technical as possible. The ultimate general reference document for technical accuracy is the Joint Network Team's JANET Starter Pack and also its JANET Starter Card. The Starter Pack is intended as a reference guide for computing service staff to consult or adapt for their own local documentation and its influence is obvious in some of the guides produced. It is not intended for end-users, being rather technical in emphasis, and with much information only relevant to computing service staff. Included with general reference guides is one of the rare examples of UK material in non-traditional format. This is the JANET Hypercard Tour, an interactive hypercard-based guide to the JANET network, in form derivative of the US Internet Tour from the NSF Network Service Centre, but in content intended to replicate interactively the JANET Starter Pack. The JANET product is, at this stage (Jan. 1993) still in the beta stage and not generally available, but still provides the Project with a useful example of disk-based material on the network. 2.1.1.2 Reference guides - specific users There are some examples of reference guides for specific user groups, namely the Royal Greenwich Observatory's "Electronic Mail Directory" written for astronomers, Project Jupiter's "Guide for Libraries on JANET", and specialist reference cards, one for social scientists put out by the ESRC (Economic & Social Research Council) for social scientists, and one for librarians issued by JUGL (JANET User Group for Libraries). With the current NISP (Networked Information Services Project) project and its support for non-traditional user groups, we can expect to see more of this class of material. 2.1.1.3 Reference guides - specific services Many of the JANET services provide documentation for users. For example NISP/Mailbase maintains an impressive body of on-line and paper documentation on the Mailbase service. NISS have pocket guides about NISS-BB, NISSPAC, NISS and the NISS Gateway. BIDS also has a pocket User Guide. BIRON (Bibliographic Information Retrieval ON-line - the ESRC Data Archive) produces a User Guide booklet, and Lancaster University have produced one for the National Public Domain Software Archive (now HENSA). 2.1.2 Training material Only a small amount of training material written for users in general was made available. Mostly, it was focused either on a specific network service, or a specific group of trainees. 2.1.2.1 Training material - general The few examples of general use training material produced by computing services were self-instructional material. Sheffield have produced course notes and exercises on using electronic mail and on network services on JANET, while Newcastle Computing Service have a printed guide for new users to work through, with hands-on examples. 2.1.2.2 Training material - specific services The service-specific material collected provides some useful prototypes for future training materials. Material includes the Mailbase Tutorial for the On-line Service and the the BIDS (Bath/ISI Data Service) Instruction Pack. The Mailbase Tutorial is a self-teaching guide, on paper, with work-through examples using the Mailbase on-line interactive service. The BIDS Instruction Pack provides a comprehensive set of materials for training sessions on the BIDS/ISI service. It covers different levels of searching, includes notes for presenters, OHP masters, handout masters, and a training disk with sample database. It provides the Project with an excellent model of multi format, multi-purpose training material. It is complemented by a Self-Help Guide booklet designed around a series of typical questions about using the BIDS service. 2.1.2.3 Training material - specific users Trainee-specific material included the sets of workshop exercises from NISP - one set prepared for a workshop for COSINE group leaders, the other for the JUGL conference. There were a number of other instances of training material aimed at library groups, such as the workshop material for library staff from Liverpool and from Northumbria, the Project Jupiter Training Pack, and tutorial material on bibliographic searching on the network from Southampton. 2.1.2.4 Libraries and training It is worth noting that while computing user support staff play a major role in the field of network training, the degree of library participation both in delivery and uptake of training is considerable and may well increase as librarians take a more active interest in promoting awareness of networked resources. Librarians maintain a high profile as network users through the representations of JUGL, one of the few JANET user groups apart from the regional groups. Members of JUGL have offered network training to ad hoc library groups for the last six years, work which was carried on later in a more formal capacity by its brainchild, Project Jupiter, set up to provide network training for librarians on a national scale. For all these reasons, it is not surprising that the libraries should feature to some extent in a survey related to network training. 2.1.3 Supplementary materials Notable examples amongst the material seen were the articles for the Kings College newsletter dealing with broad networking topics such as protocols and standards, intended more for the interested user than for someone seeking basic guidance. Resource guides, also, can properly be seen as supplementary material. One well-established and maintained resource guide is the University of Sussex's library on-line catalogues list. A recent entrant is the list of on-line information systems from the University of East Anglia, being updated monthly and accessible on the NISS bulletin board. There do not, as yet, appear to be many UK subject resource guides generally available, but as librarians and subject specialists begin to realise the potential of the network as a source of information, we may expect to see more of this type of 'added value' material appearing. 2.1.4 Format of materials The dominant format for UK network training and reference material is paper, with electronic availability being provided, if at all, as an afterthought. This Project has initiated the on-line placement of a number of items made available to it in the itti-networks directory on Mailbase. A few files can also be found on BUBL (Bulletin Board for Libraries). Paper-based material includes spiral-bound booklets, leaflets, reference cards, loose-leaf sheets in a ring binder, and some of the training materials include OHP masters intending for copying. Only a few items, the JANET Hypercard Tour, the astronomers' e-mail guide, and the BIDS Instruction Pack, are made available in the first place in formats other than paper, and in the case of the BIDS Instruction Pack, the disk which contains the mini ISI database for workshop use is a minor part of the paper whole . The astronomers guide is primarily available electronically over the network as a LateX file, but is intended to be printed out. The JANET Hypercard Tour is the one true example of non-traditional format, and at this stage (Jan.1993) even that is not generally available. Altogether, UK network training materials are fairly traditional in format. 2.2 Survey results - United States Network training appears to play a much larger part in the US than it has so far done in the UK and a substantial number of network training materials have been collected by the Project. In the spirit of sharing, a large number of training documents are made available by trainers in ftp directories. Announcements are sent to the relevant mailing lists, e.g. net-train, and other trainers are free to pick up this material and adapt it to suit their own site. Currently there is also a good stock of published literature to back up training programmes. Some of notable recent titles include Zen and the Art of the Internet, 2nd ed. (Kehoe), Crossing the Internet Threshold (Tennant, Ober, Lipow), Hitchhikers' Guide to the Internet (Krol), Ecolinking (Rittner), Whole Internet User's Guide and catalog (Krol ), Internet Primer (Lane and Summerhill), Internet Guide for New Users (Dern), Internet companion (LaQuey.). Some new journals on networking have also started publication (Electronic Networking). Some wide-scale impetus has been given to network training through a number of notable training events, such as the NSFNet seminars and workshops at Merit, the three day event at the CECC (California Educational Computing Consortium) Computing workshops '91 ("Mining the Internet"), the one day workshop "Beyond the Walls" at Syracuse University, and a couple of internationally subscribed e-mail courses ("Navigating the Internet"). There is also a willingness to apply imaginative new approaches to training. The use of competition and quiz as training tools has had some recent popularity. These methods can be used in workshops e.g. Mining the Internet at CECC '91, a prototype of a board game - "The LAN That Time Forgot" at the Net '92 conference in Washington D, and also lend themselves well to electronic mail distribution. The series of Internet Hunts (Rick Gates' list of quiz questions solved by using the network) beginning late 1992 is an example of the format. Notable in the body of US material is the use of metaphor to explain the Internet, for instance the Internet is represented as the ocean on which the user may take a cruise, or as a building in which there are different rooms for different purposes, as a mine from which valuable nuggets may be extracted. Also notable in comparison with the UK is the abundance of resource lists, such as the substantial Internet Resource Guide, lists by John December and Dana Noonan (NNews, sponsored by Metronet), NYSERNet "New User's Guide". Some resource lists are updated regularly and have become standard source material for network training, e.g. the weekly list by Scott Yanoff. Lists of subject resources are also being made available, e.g. Not Just Cows (agriculture), and special lists such as of library OPACs (St. George, Barron) and electronic mailing lists (Kovacs). The US material surveyed includes some good examples of training with formats other than printed documents. These include a video illustrating a case study of network use by a hypothetical professor of English literature whose specialist area of study is the works of Lewis Carroll (Beyond the Walls). The idea of an illustrative case study as part of a training package is an excellent one and could well be adopted for the Project's Training Pack. Another notable US model is the animation package, the Cruise of the Internet from Merit - now available for both PC and Apple Mac, and also available in Spanish as El Cruso. This interactive colour package shows an attractively presented sample of each of the major network facilities (e-mail, telnet, ftp, and NIR tools) with illustrations of network services to which they give access. It can be used as a visual complement to presentations, or by the user as self-paced learning. The Hypercard Tour of the Internet gives a hypertext exploration of Internet services and is also a suitable tool for self-paced learning by the individual user. 2.3 Survey results - Europe The RARE Technical Report "User Support and Information Services in the RARE Community" (Ed. Jill Foster, 1st ed. March 1992) gives details of user support, documentation and training within each European country. What it indicates is that most countries provide network user guides, usually in their own language only. Only a small number of European materials was collected by the Project. One of these was the beautifully produced Spanish network guide (Servicio de Informacion y Atencion a Usuarios) and the other was the very comprehensive and well written SURFnet Guide. The European directory service -Paradise - provides good high standard documentation (in English), and the European information service, CONCISE, does likewise. Another example of the use of video was a European product - the COSINE (Co-operation for Open Systems Interconnection Networking in Europe) training video. This short promotional video, developed with Macromind Director, conveys the message about COSINE through animation. 2.4 Survey results - Australia The Project was fortunate to be able to exchange information and collect training materials from Australian trainers at first hand. What was apparent was that the network training scene there was very active in some areas, and a lot of good training material had been, and was being, produced. Some of this training material is being made available on-line in the network training archives at Murdoch University and the Australian National University. The Queensland University of Technology and AARNet have produced a detailed and well-written information booklet on using the network, in both Unix and Vax/VMS versions. The University of Newcastle have produced a booklet to complement their training sessions, with substantial emphasis on hands-on experience of network services. This booklet also is available in operating-system-specific editions. A key influence in the current active Australian programme of network training has been the series of workshops given by the AARNet Project Team from the University of Newcastle Library at a number of universities in the eastern states. This team have made their PC-based slideshow which accompanies their presentations freely available to other trainers. It is available for retrieval in the Murdoch archive. Some subject based programmes of training have been developed. For instance, at Newcastle, training specifically for medics has been organised and the accompanying documentation has been made available to the Project. The University of Technology, Sydney, have produced material for each of the one-day training workshops for the schools of architecture, computing science, education, nursing therapeutics, and the library. The material includes subject tailored lists of network resources. Training material encompasses tools such as Gopher and WAIS. In contrast to the UK, most of the Australian materials included a section on Usenet News. 3 ASSESSMENT OF REQUIREMENTS 3.1 General network training materials One of the major gaps observed in this survey of training materials relates to general network training material produced in the UK. Coverage in this area is very scanty (see 2.1.2.1) at present, so it is appropriate that most of the planned components of the Training Pack should be general training materials on network use, covering the major facilities such as file transfer, e-mail, remote login - with illustration of the services to which they give access. It is notable that most of the UK materials seen, perhaps because of their age, do not deal with the new Networked Information Retrieval (NIR) tools. The Training Pack should certainly correct this deficiency. Taken overall, the survey has shown that there is a considerable body of general reference material to draw on in writing the training material. It provides the Project with what is in effect a reference library of materials on the full range of networking topics. The database of training materials assembled by the Project (using FileMaker Pro on an Apple Mac) will allow for retrieval by subject and other manipulations. While the general material may well be purpose-written for the Training Pack, there is considerable scope for absorbing existing materials which deal with specific services, e.g. material on BIDS, Mailbase, BIRON, HENSA, etc. Also, some of the material for specific groups of users could be absorbed into general training material - the NISP workshop exercises are a case in point. 3.2 Case study All the feedback which the Project has had suggests that motivational tools such as illustrative case studies, are a desirable element in training. The video "Beyond the Walls" is an example of such a case study, but because of its strong U.S. and BITNET bias, is not particularly suitable for use in training of JANET users. This raises the question of producing a similar UK video. This Project's initial budget did not allow for video production, but should extra funding become available, it is recommended that such a production be investigated as a first priority. 3.3 Subject-related training Also relevant to motivation is the use of subject-related training. The most notable development of user-specific training seen was in Australia. Training materials frequently included subject-based lists of resources. To enable trainers to compile these for themselves and to allow adaptation of general training materials for specific disciplines should be provided for in the Training Pack. As NIR tools increase in sophistication, users and trainers will be able to discover subject-specific resources more easily, and the Training Pack may well be able to take advantage of these developments. 3.4 Format Format of materials should provide for a variety of training situations, from stand-up presentation to self-instruction. These will include OHP masters, disk-based storyboard shows, presentation notes for trainers, handouts for trainees, back-up reference documentation, workshop exercises, computer-based training material. Attractive presentation is considered an important factor in motivation, particular for inexperienced and naive users. The Cruise of the Internet provides an example of one option which could be explored in preparing visual complements to presentations. At the very least, well designed and graphically illustrated slides should be available. As well as self-paced paper-based materials, we would also look closely at the two Hypercard Tours as possible models for our own materials. 3.5. Archiving As much as possible of the materials in the Training Pack should be made available on-line. At this stage, the itti-networks directory provides an obvious site for this repository. The Project has been collaborating with De Stanton at the Murdoch University Library, where the experimental gopher lists a Network Training Materials option, with sub-options for Australia and the UK (itti-networks directory). Both archives are likely to use the same cataloguing system for listings. The Project has been collaborating with TopNode in the US on working out a standard fields list, and this is likely to be adopted by Murdoch also. 4 Summary The survey has provided a useful overview of the types of training materials available, has suggested directions for content and format which the Project might adopt in preparing its own training materials, and in some cases, has shown the Project the traps which it must avoid falling into. These relate to style of presentation, use of language, consistency of format with content, and content itself - particularly related to the expectations and requirements of users. The Training Pack must therefore seek to adopt the best, avoid the worst, and maintain a consistent and clear style of presentation, which is adaptable to subject specific and level-specific needs. Above all, it needs to keep the broad objectives of the training in mind, viz. to enable users to use the network, to give them the information they will need for effective use, and to show them how using the network will benefit them. Margaret Isaacs Project Officer 25 Jan. 1993