Developing converged learning environments for on and off campus students using the WWW

Abstract

One of the promises of the use of new technologies in university education has been the convergence of on and off-campus teaching and learning. Technology has been mooted as the means by which students who study a subject away from the campus can join the learning space with their on-campus colleagues. To date, there are few examples of how the convergence might be achieved. This paper describes a project at Edith Cowan University that is exploring ways in which innovative forms of learning supported by computer-mediated communications can realise this promise. The majority of the projects describing CMC as a learning support in university have focused on particular communication styles such as discussion groups, interactive chat rooms, bulletin boards and document sharing. In the majority of the settings, the learning environments have tended to be characterised by the repeated and consistent use of a small numbers of communication applications. The Collaborative World Wide Web Environment Support System (CWEST) project at Edith Cowan University is looking to create more diverse forms of usage for curriculum applications. It is an instructional support tool that will facilitate the implementation of a variety of WWW-based collaborative learning activities. It is intended that CWEST will enable customised collaborative WWW learning environments to be created quickly and efficiently. CWEST is planned to provide a series of templates of collaborative WWW-based learning activities and a means for a teacher to choose a template and to enter the customised details to create customised WWW pages and associated CGI scripts to support the planned activity. This paper describes the forms of converged learning environment being explored and the planned functionality of the CWEST system needed to support this. The paper also describes outcomes from preliminary explorations of use of the various collaborative learning spaces in online settings where both on-campus and off-campus students have shared a common learning space