Web assisted teaching: an undergraduate experience

The emergence of the Internet has created a number of claims as to the future of education and the possibility of dramatically changing the way in which education is delivered. Much of the attention has focussed on the adoption of teaching methods that are solely web-based. We set out to incorporate web-based teaching as support for more traditional teaching methods to improve the learning outcomes for students. This first step into web-based teaching was developed to harness the benefits of web-based teaching tools without supplanting traditional teaching methods. The aim of this paper is to report our experience with web-assisted teaching in two undergraduate courses, Accounting Information Systems and Management Accounting Services, during 2000. The paper evaluates the approach taken and proposes a tentative framework for developing future web-assisted teaching applications. We believe that web-assisted and web-based teaching are inevitable outcomes of the telecommunications and computer revolution and that academics cannot afford to become isolated from the on-line world. A considered approach is needed to ensure the integration of web-based features into the overall structure of a course. The components of the course material and the learning experiences students are exposed to need to be structured and delivered in a way that ensures they support student learning rather than replacing one form of learning with another. Therefore a careful consideration of the structure, content, level of detail and time of delivery needs to be integrated to create a course structure that provides a range of student learning experiences that are complimentary rather than competing. The feedback was positive from both extramural (distance) and internal students, demonstrating to us that web sites can be used as an effective teaching tool in support of more traditional teaching methods as well as a tool for distance education. The ability to harness the positives of the web in conjunction with more traditional teaching modes is one that should not be overlooked in the move to adopt web based instruction methods. Web-based teaching need not be seen as an all or nothing divide but can be used as a useful way of improving the range and type of learning experiences open to students. The Web challenges traditional methods and thinking but it also provides tools to develop innovative solutions to both distance and on campus learning. Further research is needed to determine how we can best meet the needs of our students while maintaining high quality learning outcomes

Designs on the Web: A case study of online learning for design students

The De Montfort University Electronic Campus initiative started in September 1999. Web‐based learning resources and support have been provided for over 3,000 students via a portfolio of thirty projects ranging across all levels of the university and within every faculty. This paper focuses on one aspect of this initiative: the development of online teaching and learning materials to support first‐year IT modules for students of art and design. An undergraduate module has been converted from traditional, face‐to‐face, delivery to a hybrid combination of Web‐based and studio‐based work in accordance with Laurillard's conversational framework. In the first year of use all the new material has been made available on a pilot basis to a group of 440 students in parallel with conventional lectures and seminars. All the students have had access to the online resources; some students have used them, but some have not. Data on student expectations collected prior to starting on the module are compared with student feedback gathered at the end of the module and student performance data across the two mode's of presentation are compared to establish the relative effectiveness of each approach. In addition the paper reviews the resource implications of developing, delivering and supporting online learning and discusses some of the barriers to implementation that were encountered and overcome

Towards engineering ontologies for cognitive profiling of agents on the semantic web

Research shows that most agent-based collaborations suffer from lack of flexibility. This is due to the fact that most agent-based applications assume pre-defined knowledge of agents’ capabilities and/or neglect basic cognitive and interactional requirements in multi-agent collaboration. The highlight of this paper is that it brings cognitive models (inspired from cognitive sciences and HCI) proposing architectural and knowledge-based requirements for agents to structure ontological models for cognitive profiling in order to increase cognitive awareness between themselves, which in turn promotes flexibility, reusability and predictability of agent behavior; thus contributing towards minimizing cognitive overload incurred on humans. The semantic web is used as an action mediating space, where shared knowledge base in the form of ontological models provides affordances for improving cognitive awareness

Is E-learning replacing the traditional lecture?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review some of the learning technologies associated with teaching and learning in Higher Education (HE). It looks at E-learning and Information Technology (IT) as tools for replacing the traditional learning experience in HE, i.e. the ‘chalk and talk’ lecture and seminar. HE is on the threshold of being transformed through the application of learning technologies. Are we on the brink of a new way of learning in HE after a tried and tested formula over eight hundred years? Design/methodology/approach – Adopting a case based approach, the fieldwork for this research took place at two UK Higher Education Institutes (HEI’s). A number of units that included IT based learning were identified. All units included a web site that was aimed at supporting students’ learning. The data was collected through unstructured discussion with the lecturer and a questionnaire to students. Findings – This paper considers and highlights the key findings from the sample linking them to the literature with the purpose of testing the aim/title of this paper. Evidence suggested the implications for HEI’s are they cannot assume that presenting new technologies automatically makes their institutions “youth friendly”; this new generation would like to see some concrete benefits of technology. Originality/value – From this small-scale investigation this paper attempts to investigate which direction the threshold may go. There has been eight hundred years of learning in the UK, is this generation wanting a new chapter. Evidence from this research suggests not, it will only play a bit part. They can help free up time in order to engage and support students in new and interesting ways

A learning experience in the fields of economics and business: creation of student-managed inter-university virtual networks

With this article we shall describe the learning experience carried out by our students in the fields of Economics and Business at the Universities of Huelva and University of Seville within an active- and cooperative-learning framework involving creation of virtual networks between our students and others who were attending diverse universities in Spain and abroad, thus allowing us to strengthen interactions and information exchanges among students, also allowing them to apprehend on their own the characteristics of economic and business and entrepreneuring realities in which they are immersed and, very specially, the use of virtual communities in the Internet

General Practitioners' perceptions of the route to evidence-based medicine: a questionnaire survey

Objectives: To determine the attitude of general practitioners towards evidence based medicine and their related educational needs. Design: A questionnaire study of general practitioners. Setting: General practice in the former Wessex region, England. Subjects: Randomly selected sample of 25% of all general practitioners (452), of whom 302 replied. Main outcome measures: Respondents' attitude towards evidence based medicine, ability to access and interpret evidence, perceived barriers to practising evidence based medicine, and best method of moving from opinion based to evidence based medicine. Results: Respondents mainly welcomed evidence based medicine and agreed that its practice improves patient care. They had a low level of awareness of extracting journals, review publications, and databases (only 40% knew of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews), and, even if aware, many did not use them. In their surgeries 20% had access to bibliographic databases and 17% to the world wide web. Most had some understanding of the technical terms used. The major perceived barrier to practising evidence based medicine was lack of personal time. Respondents thought the most appropriate way to move towards evidence based general practice was by using evidence based guidelines or proposals developed by colleagues. Conclusion: Promoting and improving access to summaries of evidence, rather than teaching all general practitioners literature searching and critical appraisal, would be the more appropriate method of encouraging evidence based general practice. General practitioners who are skilled in accessing and interpreting evidence should be encouraged to develop local evidence based guidelines and advice

Using Shared Workspaces in Higher Education

We evaluate the use of BSCW shared workspaces in higher education by means of a comparison of seven courses in which this environment was used. We identify a number of different functions for which the BSCW environment has been used and discuss the relative success of these functions across the cases. In addition, we evaluate the cases with the 4E model of Collis et al. (2000) which predicts the chances of acceptance of ICT in an educational setting. Effectiveness for the given task appears to be a prime success factor for using ICT. But an effective tool may fail due to other factors like ease of use and organisational, socialcultural or technological obstacles. The particular strength of a shared workspace, for which BSCW is most effective and efficient, is providing a repository for objects of collaborative work. Other types of usage showed mixed results. In the future we expect that learning takes place in an integrated, open ICT environment in which different kinds of tools are available for different purposes and users can switch between tools as appropriate. We could observe this in several of the case studies, where non-use of BSCW did not mean that a particular task was not performed, but, on the contrary, a more efficient solution for the same function was available. Shared workspaces have proven to be highly useful, but it seems advisable that their purpose be limited to what they were originally designed for

From Multi-User Virtual Environment to 3D Virtual Learning Environment

While digital virtual worlds have been used in education for a number of years, advances in the capabilities and spread of technology have fed a recent boom in interest in massively multi‐user 3D virtual worlds for entertainment, and this in turn has led to a surge of interest in their educational applications. In this paper we briefly review the use of virtual worlds for education, from informal learning to formal instruction, and consider what is required to turn a virtual world from a Multi‐User Virtual Environment into a fully fledged 3D Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). In this we focus on the development of Sloodle – a system which integrates the popular 3D virtual world of Second Life with the open‐source VLE Moodle. Our intent is not simply to provide additional learning support features for Second Life, but to study more generally the ways in which integrated virtual environments can benefit teaching and learning, and this is the focus of our closing discussion

A case study of campus‐based flexible learning using the World Wide Web and computer conferencing

This paper explores the use of the World Wide Web (WWW) integrated with computer conferencing as a teaching and learning tool. The aim of the study described was to evaluate the effectiveness of the use of online materials designed in a flexible learning format and integrated with a computer conference. It was hoped that this would create additional opportunity for group discourse between campus‐based students. The paper is divided in the following way: a discussion of the context to new developments in teaching and learning is followed by an introduction to the case study. Finally the findings of the case study are discussed with reference to research from the field of collaborative systems (Orlikowski, 1992; Grudin, 1994) as a framework for reflection. Some tentative conclusions are made for future work

Enterprise portals: addressing the organisational and individual perspectives of information systems

Enterprise portals are being viewed as the next generation application platform of choice, offering benefits over both client/server and thin client arrangements. By providing a mediating layer between the information applications and resources of the organisation and the individuals using them, enterprise portals appear to provide a unique context to allow both the organisational and individual perspectives of information systems to be addressed. This study seeks to examine these often competing perspectives of information systems by using an exploratory empirical survey to investigate the actual deployment of enterprise portals within a range of different organisations. It is found that both the individual and organisational benefits that enterprise portals can offer appear to have been recognised, and coherent sets of services addressing each of these perspectives are being developed. Consistent with diffusion and acceptance of technology models, organisations appear to be commencing their portal developments with services that will ensure utilisation by individuals, and are subsequently seeking to realise organisational level benefits