RIchard E. Banks
Adaptive Technologist Consultant
Library Learning Center
University of Wisconsin-Stout
EASI Electronic Resource Manager rbanks@discover-net.net

Norman Coombs
Professor of History
Rochester Institute of Technology
Chair of Equal Access to Software and Information
nrcgsh@rit.edu

Abstract

E-mail is one of the oldest utilities in computer networking, and, yet, it is often neglected in discussions which focus on more glamorous system such as ftp, telnet, gopher, lynx and mosaic. However, in spite of being humble, it is one of the most powerful tools available. This presentation will demonstrate how it is being used to increase connectivity between students, teachers and administrators. It also provides a unique opportunity for colleges to provide enhanced and inexpensive access to print materials for students who are print handicapped.

Your Onramp to the Internet: The Power of Electronic Mail

Keep It Simple:

College professors and administrators have come to feel at home with the computer sitting on their desk. They use it for word processing, for storing information in a database and frequently to manipulate numbers in a spreadsheet. It is used for report writing, composing syllabi and hand-outs and to prepare articles and presentations for submission to professional societies.

Now, the push is on to connect that computer to dozens and even thousands of other computers through a maze of digital networks. Every month, newspapers, news magazines and professional journals carry one or more articles about the internet. Network enthusiasts who are cheering on this change love to talk in grand terms about the information revolution, about connectivity and overwhelm the discussion with descriptions of the bewildering possibilities. Even before the new networker starts to drown in the information overload, he or she becomes thoroughly intimidated with the maze of jargon and new systems to be mastered.

Beware of those who profit from making a subject difficult and complicated. Ever since the days of witch doctors, mystification has been a useful tool that helps a professional accumulate and maintain power. The personal computer inherently decentralizes power and users should insist that both the computer and the instructions be readily accessible, intelligible and, yes, even user friendly. In the early days of the automobile, the driver had to set levers to adjust the flow of gas and air. Some of us remember the old Motel T. Next, cars had a simple choke that required manual adjustment. Now, it is all automatic. Computer hardware and software is following a similar development, and users should demand it. Librarians help patrons to use the library independently. Computer support professionals should do the same. Frankly, in reading computer manuals, I often shake my head and wonder how is it that I was able to earn a Ph.D.? The good news is that the software is becoming easier to use, and I trust that the manuals will also become simpler to read and understand.

Using the internet, even five or ten years ago, required using arcane and unnatural command sequences. The user had to conform to the needs of the machine. Now, there are a host of access tools to help users search for materials, access distance library catalogs, explore specialized databases, etc. This presentation will skip all of them and focus on what can be done using e-mail all alone. It is the best and most simple place to start navigating the global super highway We will compare and contrast electronic and paper mail. We will discuss how e- mail can be used to increase interactions between teachers, their peers and their students both to enhance learning and to deliver instruction. The internet fosters hundreds of educationally oriented discussion lists, and we'll describe a few and how to access them. Computer mediated communication serves as an equalizer. It enables shy and inhibited persons to interact more freely. When computers are adapted with the necessary special hardware and software, they open a new world for many students and professionals with disabilities. This technology empowers and liberates such persons and opens both education and employment in exciting ways. For educators, this means being able to include special learners in a mainstream setting.

E-mail: What Is it:

What is e-mail? It is computer generated mail messages sent over a computer network to another user at another location. This may be in the next office or across an ocean. What is the internet? In one sense, there is no such thing as the internet. There are many, many local and regional computer networks in the US and a large number in other countries all around the world. Like local and regional telephone companies, these computer networks are linked one to another. The gigantic international system of linked networks is what we commonly refer to as the internet.

Computer users frequently call the US Postal System's mail delivery 'snail mail' because it is so slow and especially very slow compared with the lightning speed of electronic mail. We have all used mail for years, and, at first glance, e-mail is nothing but the same old thing being done by a computer network rather than the mailman trudging up your street. However, the speed of delivery introduces other changes into the system.

First, users like us frequently are connected with the internet several hours a day. We sometimes exchange between five and ten messages a day. I admit that when I was courting my wife, long before the personal computer, I wrote her as many as four letters a day, and it worked. No, your two authors are not conducting a courtship! But exchanging messages with such frequency is more like picking up the phone or walking in the next office to conduct business with a working colleague. Electronic mail tends to carry messages that are much shorter than paper mail and more likely dealing with only one or two immediate topics.

Second, as you might guess from the preceding remarks, the style of writing used in e-mail is frequently more informal than in print mail. Scholars who analyze writing have found that e-mail expression falls somewhere between the spoken word and the traditional written word. One of the potential problems in using e-mail is that its informal nature and its absence of other clues to shades of meaning may lead people to misunderstand each other especially to misunderstand the tone or emotive meaning of the message. This is one of the causes of 'flaming'' which is an argument usually with personal attacks carried on over a computer network. Regular e-mail users learn to express themselves carefully and try to avoid such needless conflict.

Third, because e-mail is in a digital format, it can be read and analyzed by a computer. Frequently network users send mail to a computer containing a computer command for that remote system to act upon. In most cases, the mail is sent to a computer using listserv software.

E-mail: Enhancing Interactivity in Teaching and Learning

With the soaring cost of college tuition, students are compelled to spend more and more time working. One of the losses is that they have fewer hours in which they can utilize a teacher's office hours. The number of adult learners is also growing, and they too are pressed to find a time when both they and their professor are free for consultation. Many find e-mail to be the answer. Each year as I talk to colleagues and meet faculty at conferences, the number who are making use of e-mail to increase their availability to students is growing. This is also made possible as more colleges make their computer facilities increasingly available to all students. More and more students have computers at home with modems, and they can find times, during either the day or night, when they can use e-mail to reach their professor.

Some faculty, however, avoid this new opportunity. They sit in the office with a pile of fresh, unopened mail on the desk, with a line of waiting students in the corridor, and then the phone rings with yet someone else intruding on his limited time and resources. Another source of interaction seems the last thing he or she needs. However, one of the good aspects of e-mail is that it is not intrusive. When there is a knock at the door or when the phone rings, both demand immediate action. When the computer beeps with a 'new mail' notice, it will wait till you are ready to look at it. Even then, when you read it and compose a reply, you are still in charge of how long that reply will be and how much time to allot to it. E-mail provides increased interactivity without the recipient having to give up control of his or her schedule. For this reason, some faculty find it the communication medium of choice.

Many teachers also urge students to submit their work in e-mail. For me, as a blind professor, this has the added advantage that the computer and not a person does my reading. I am now free to grade papers at my own time and not according to someone else's schedule. If the grade and comments are returned in e-mail, the paper can be graded and the results returned to the student quickly. With paper submissions, the professor usually waits till the next class meeting to return the work. Many researchers believe that quick feed-back is an important aid to learning.

E-mail: Enhancing Interaction with Professional Colleagues

Hampton Press has just released a book on computer mediated communication in education edited by Berge and Collins. The editors announced the book concept to lists of people via e-mail. They got so much useful material back that the book exploded into three volumes with some three dozen authors. The whole project was accomplished through electronic mail. Recently, with the help of AAHE, a colleague and I received a contract with Oryx Press to write a book on adaptive computing and information technology for persons with disabilities. My colleague lives in California while my home is in New York. Yes, this has long been done with traditional mail, but e-mail permits such projects to move much more rapidly.

The first article I wrote on educational uses of computing in teaching history was published by a journal put out by Digital Equipment Corporation. Just before I turned on my printer to get a copy to mail to the editor, I realized that the magazine must have an internet address. I used e-mail to submit the piece. Within fifteen minutes, I had a reply accepting the article and requesting changes. An hour later I sent it back with the editing that was requested. That same day, I got a final acceptance.

E-mail has also been closely associated with the development of electronic journals. In July of 1993, A friend asked me if I thought there was a need for a peer reviewed journal on information technology and persons with disabilities. By September, we had an international board of editors, and we sent out a call for articles. These arrived in October, were reviewed and edited during the last quarter of the year. The first issue was distributed using e-mail in January 1994. During that year, we published four issues and have distributed volume 2 number 1 already this year.

The number of things that can be jointly accomplished using e-mail is almost endless. The ability for two people thousands of miles apart to edit and exchange a document several times in one day makes it much more powerful than traditional paper mail.

E-mail: Education Discussion lists

The internet provides the mechanism for groups of people readily to share ideas with others having some common interest by the use of electronic discussion lists. There are thousands of mass mailing lists each devoted to a specific topic. They range from the obscure to the obscene. Many are devoted to sharing views and information on some aspect of education with a membership of professional educators and frequently interested students. AAHE sponsors a list called, aahesgit, which is moderated by Steve Gilbert and is devoted to a serious discussion of education and its uses or failure to use information technology. EASI (Equal Access to Software and Information) which is affiliated with AAHE sponsors discussion lists devoted to making computers and information technology more accessible to professionals and students with disabilities. One list is called 'easi' and carries general discussion on this topic. Another of EASI's lists is called 'easi-sem' and it has a special focus on making the disciplines of science, engineering and math more accessible to persons with disabilities. These three fields have very special barriers for disabled students. Operating laboratory equipment can be difficult or impossible for someone with motor impairments. Math is a highly visual language and poses unique difficulties for some learning disabled persons as well as those with visual impairments. Adaptive computer technology can narrow this gap, and the easi-sem list based on a grant from the National Science Foundation disseminates information on this topic.

Electronic discussion lists are handled by a remote computer running what is called a listserver, Mail addressed to this software, if it contains commands that the computer understands, can tell the distant computer to accomplish certain tasks. This includes joining and signing off of discussion lists, setting user options on how the software handles your mail, inquiring about files stored on that computer and even asking to have the listserver send you a file by return mail.

In interacting with a listserver, you need to remember that in some cases you want to send a command to the computer software and in other cases you want to send a mail message to all the participants subscribed to a particular discussion list. Users often get confused and end up sending the command to all the subscribers which they will find annoying. Other times, people send the mail message to the listserver in a format that tells the computer it is a computer command, but the computer doesn't make any sense out of it. This results in an error message being returned to the sender. Keeping this distinction in mind is important.

To send a command, you address your mail to the listserver software at a particular network location. The software is usually called either lisstserv or listproc, but both function in a similar way. These commands usually are requests to join the list or to drop off the list. For example, to join the AAHESGIT discussion list, you send mail to listproc@list.cren.net.

The word 'listserv' or 'listproc' tells the software that you are sending it a command. The at sign separates the name of the recipient of your mail from the network address. It is usually best to leave the subject line blank as some listserv software insists on that, and some do not. The mail message should contain one line. In this case, it would be sub aahesgit (and your name in quotes). Sometimes, you will get an automatic message in return notifying you that you have been added to the list. Other times, you will be told that the request was forwarded to the list owner.

When you want to send a message to the members of the discussion list, you address it to the list itself at the same computer address. To send mail to aahesgit, you would address it to aahesgit@list.cren.net for the listserver to process and distribute. Some lists are configured so that all mail sent to it is automatically resent to the list members. Some, like aahesgit, send the mail to a moderator who decides which messages are relevant and then forwards them.

E-mail: Delivering Instruction

While e-mail is a component in many distance learning programs that are computer based, , most rely heavily on a more sophisticated computer conference system. E-mail normally arrives in your mailbox sequentially in a single stream of information. If the class is discussing several items, this can be confusing. Having a system that organizes material by topic has some advantages. Nevertheless, e-mail is being used to deliver classes. One of its advantages is its simplicity. Another is that it is almost universally available.

Professor Richard Smith from Florida has taught a specialized course on relativity physics over the internet. Using e-mail he connected students from half a dozen universities in America and Europe. He also had the author of the textbook agree to accept questions from the class and respond to them. The content and structure meant the course was kept small and operated like a seminar. In contrast, there have been several free non-credit courses on using the internet delivered by e- mail. These were not interactive. Each of them had several hundred or a few thousand subscribers.

We became involved in using e-mail for instruction as a way to deliver training on how to make a college, school or business accessible to persons with disabilities. We had exhausted ourselves traveling around the country giving workshops to small audiences. We wanted to find some way to deliver the material without requiring the participants to travel to a distant location.

EASI in cooperation with the Rochester Institute of Technology now provides a three-week on-line workshop using e-mail on the subject of making the computing and information technology facilities of schools, colleges and businesses accessible to users with disabilities. There is a registration fee of $125 to cover RIT support and the pay to the instructors. Lessons are mailed out three times during each week, and the participants are encouraged to interact with questions and information of their own. It is an intense, interactive three -week seminar, but participants frequently say it is the most valuable seminar they have ever attended. Besides providing information and rich interaction, the workshop provides hands-on experience in navigating the internet and locating specialized materials on its topic. Members feel that they go away equipped to update their knowledge by themselves from the wealth of resources available on the internet.

The course has included participants from over twenty countries. They have been a rich variety of people ranging from computer experts, to rehabilitation engineers, to faculty, to librarians, to special education teachers and staff, to government officials and a variety of individuals with and without identifiable disabilities who wanted to know about the subject. Involving such a diverse group in a discussion in e-mail where their distinctions and ranks vanish made the sharing even more interesting and meaningful.

EASI will shortly be starting a second on-line workshop devoted to the special problems in the fields of science, engineering and math. Plans are on the boards for a third workshop devoted to making the electronic resources of libraries more universally accessible.

E-mail: enhancing interaction for users with Disabilities

The computer with special adaptive hardware and software is the most empowering and liberating technology to come along in decades for persons with disabilities. Blind users can have the computer talk to them. Persons with limited vision can also use a computer to read and write and do other tasks. Special software can enlarge the letters or pictures on the screen. Other students and professionals may have a wide spectrum of motor or mobility disabilities. A variety of adapted input devices permit them to manipulate a computer. There are modified keyboards including a one-handed keyboard. Some users hold a mouth stick in their mouth or even a pencil and press the keys with it. Some computer users input information into the computer using a sip-and-puff straw and sending morse code signals. Others use software which has an on-screen keyboard. A cursor moves across the keyboard picture on the screen. When it reaches the desired 'key', the user signals the computer to input that keystroke. The signal can be sent by a device that tracks the eye and sees which part of the screen the user stares at. A single switch device can be attached to almost any muscle, and when the user moves that muscle, a signal is sent to the computer. Finally, voice recognition systems are improving, and they let the user talk to the computer instead of using a keyboard or keyboard equivalent.

E-mail is only one new source of information that adaptive computing provides students and professionals with disabilities. People who are print handicapped have been information hungry for a long time. With the explosion of information technology, they have become some of the most enthusiastic users of the internet and other electronic information resources. For most people, the possibilities provided by e-mail and other internet tools is only a new means to get information that was already available to them. For the print handicapped, it is a new world. The ability to share in discussion lists with colleagues without needing a reader or other assistant is a freeing and exhilarating experience. Electronic journals open new worlds of learning. Exchanging written messages with someone and not having to use help to read it provides a new level of independence.

The Rochester Institute of Technology has the National Technical Institute for the Deaf on its campus and is home to several hundred hearing impaired students. When I began having my class submit their papers on e-mail, one of the first papers was from a deaf girl. This led to our exchanging two or three messages about the paper and the grade. Then, she sent mail telling me that this was the first time in her life she had been able to talk with a professor without having someone, an interpreter, in the middle. The irony is, that because I am blind, we had to transcend a double communication barrier. E-mail also provides a simple way to forward a written assignment to a student who has a print handicap. While we normally do not classify shyness as a disability, many inhibited people interact more readily and more openly using computer mediated communication than they will in person. Where there is no stage, there need be no stage fright. Similarly, when the stage is gone, some people interact differently. A colleague of mine reported having a disruptive student in a writing class. He seemed to have a need to project this persona to his peers. When the interaction moved to e-mail, the student began to do serious work.

The ways in which adaptive computer technology levels the playing field for persons with disabilities go far, far beyond e-mail and are not appropriate to discuss here. However, it is important to note that AAHE has taken a new interest in the uses of technology for persons with disabilities. EASI (Equal Access to Software and Information) has recently become affiliated with AAHE. EASI is an international, primarily volunteer, organization of adaptive computer professionals, faculty, librarians and users of adaptive technology dedicated to keeping informed on developments in that field and disseminating it to universities, schools, businesses, government and interested individuals. As a group concerned with information technology, EASI uses the internet as its primary distribution mechanism, but it also can be reached by phone and traditional, paper mail.

Special Problems in Science, Engineering and Math

First, e-mail has a problem for these disciplines. Most e-mail sends messages encodded in a simple digital form, ASCII, which cannot support many of the sophisticated symbols in these fields and will not support graphical representations. This is rapidly changing and will make e- mail more useful for messages related to these topics.

Second, going beyond e-mail to the more general problems of persons with disabilities in these fields, adapted computers are playing a significant role in providing enhanced access for students and professionals with disabilities. For the motor impaired who may not be able to manipulate laboratory equipment, it is possible to have alternate input to a computer and to have the computer manipulate the equipment. For the visually impaired and learning disabled who have problems in accessing the output from laboratory equipment, an acapted computer can be interfaced with the equipment to provide accessible output. If the equipment output is digital, it can be sent through the computer. Using a screen reader and synthesizer or screen enlarging software, these people can readily make use of this digital information.

There is even software using a variety of musical sounds that represent graphical displays on a computer screen in an audible format. The user needs training to understand the relations between the sound patterns and the visual patterns on the computer screen, but it does provide an alternate representation.

This challenging area of providing access to the tools of science, engineering and math is presently being developed at a raapid pace. EASI and AAHE haave been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to collect the most recent information on the topic and to disseminate it widely both to teachers and to potential users.

Conclusion

In closing, we want to underline two points. First, e-mail is really a power utility, and it can be used with the knowledge of very few commands. You need to know how to read, mail, send mail and reply to mail. Even the use of mail can be made confusing and bewildering. Sometimes, the best teachers are not the computer support staff. No, I don't mean that they cannot teach, but they often have a different agenda. They want to display all the different commands, the bells and whistles. They want to showcase the computer. The user wants to quickly become competent in using its main features and only learn the rest if and when they become useful to his or her needs. Look for experienced e-mail users to provide training and materials.

Second, we want faculty and administrators to become more aware and interested in the potential for including students and faculty with disabilities into full participation in education through the uses of technology. Increasingly, the computer is moving out of the computer lab and into the classrom and onto the office desks of teachers and students. Awareness of adaptive computing's uses in education must follow the computer into the classroom and office.

The problem is that many faculty actually resist including disabled students in their courses. Whether this is from fear or prejudice, the result is still to exclude them. Teachers fear they will have to lower their teaching standards. The fact is that many faculty have found they have to increase their teaching standards and, when they do so, all students benefit. When a teacher describes verbally what he is writing on the blackboard, all students report they learn more easily. When a video is captioned, hearing students score better on comprehension tests than when it is not captioned. When faculty give consideration to special learning needs of disabled students, they become more aware and conscious of what they are doing. The result is they do it better.

For information abouot EASI or to get EASI's information about adaptive computer technology, contact us at:

e-mail: easi@educom.edu Phone (714) 830-0301

EASI/AAHE
One Dupont Circle Washington, DC