1) Consider, as a teacher, making up a homepage with questions to be explored. One's first reaction might be that this is simply an on-line version of the old 'handout' approach - hand out the questions and have the students fill in the answers. As a response to this, I want to encourage you to, at all costs, AVOID THIS!!! Do not turn the computer into a more expensive medium for doing the same old stuff. Too much so called educational software is simply 'electronic page turning'. If the use of the computer, or any other piece of technology, does not add something to or change something in the way material is taught, DON'T USE IT!!!
Having said that, let me point out the advantages of having your questions on-line. First, you may discover that as the faster students reach a question (or whatever you you have) the wording is confusing or the question should/could be expanded or .... If the assignment is on-line you can make immediate changes and avoid the hassle of interrupting all the students, having them find the location of the changes etc. I especially use this for assignments that span days or weeks. Corrections, hints, new ideas can be added as necessary. (For paper based assignments, email can be used as a vehicle for announcing such corrections etc. )
Second, when students are absent there is no need to store a set of back handouts. It becomes the student's responsibility to go out to the pre-established location and find the material.
2) Consider havng the students put their answers on-line. This can take many forms. For example, if the question is open ended and/or somewhat complex, the process of finding an 'answer' can be set-up as an on-line brainstorming session. This type of discussion can be especially effective if done anonymously. (There is evidence ("Key to the Information Highway", Marcia C. Linn, in Communications of the ACM, April 1996, Vol. 39, No 4, pages 34, 35) that some students who are normally quiet, especially females, will contribute more when allowed to do so anonymously.) Later, one can require all students to submit their 'final opinion', based on all their research and the discussion. This last material could, if desired, be graded.
Whether the discussion takes place over a few days or over a longer period of time the use of anonymous discussion allows the teacher to get into the 'fray' without being 'the authority'. His or her voice is just another among many and, as reported in the reference sited above, students will discuss teacher contributions more when they are anonymous.
Email and/or a web page can also be a way for a teacher to react to a discussion after the class period is finished. I often find myself tempted to shut down class discussion a few minutes early to allow time for a summing up and to point out any errors, omissions etc. To the extend that this isn't unnecessary presumption on my part, it can be done more effectively as a presonal comment on-line. Students get all the time they need in class, my reflection can be more carefully thought out, and students can both more leisurely react to my reflections and respond. If the teacher wants, the student response - both to the class discussion and the teacher's response - can be an assignment - either on or off-line.
If the topic/assignment is a long term one, students can be required to submit weekly (or whatever time frame works best) on-line 'journal' entries. The Computer Science faculty at Highlands have used this both in technical and non-technical courses with some success. This works best if students are given well structured guidance: how to write an entry, specific questions to respond to, or a specific class discussion to expand on. I personally have found that students will react more strongly on-line themselves to my on-line comments even if they are not anonymous.
3)Major aspects of individual and group-oriented, research assignments can be done on-line. In the same issue of the Communications of the ACM cited above, the article "The Collaboratory Notebook" (page 32) as well as in the article already cited provide examples of this based on the notion of 'scaffolding', or 'scaffolded knowledge' - an approach combining real world type problems as assignments with a framework or set of supports so students do not get lost in the solution process. Both the examples discuss specialized software.
1) The Learning Through Collaborative Visualization (CoVis) Project
2) KIE
Specialized software to support scaffolding etc would be nice but it is not needed. Once students know how to create simple web pages, they can create pages that model whatever research or writing process one desires - especially if the teacher provides on-line or paper-based guidance. For example, the "The Collaboratory Notebook" article discusses the use of a web of pages to present the steps in an individual's or team's process of scientific inquiry. There would be separate pages for the research question, conjectures, research plans, evidence for and against various conjectures, and even conclusions. Students working on different projects could see each others efforts, ask questions, challenge conjectures, make suggestions, and maybe see connections to their own efforts -either in terms of how to use the model of scientific inquiry or in terms of lines of evidence. Weaker students have models for their own efforts and teachers can provide more immediate feedback by viewing the web pages when time permits.
Students can also develop on-line presentations of topics and in the process create a medium for other students to explore the material. Anyone who has tried to create a set of web pages for some subject discovers that the real work is not so much in finding the pages as in organizing them and providing text to surround, structure and logically connect the links. It is much the same process one goes through to write a good paper except that students can more easily create a 'work' filled with knowledge. The trick here is to make sure that the students' work is not simply a collection of unexamined links. The assignment must make it clear that the students are making their own contribution - what has been referred to as the 'contribute and reference' model. It is up to the teacher to decide what he or she wants - an electronic paper with links as 'footnotes', an annoted set of links, a study guide with links, or any one of hundreds of other forms.
These are my thoughts for now. I welcome your additions. Please send them to:
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