Using The Web To Extend And Support Classroom Learning

College Student Journal, Dec, 2000 by Regina F. Bento, Alberto M. Bento

The unprecedented educational resources and possibilities open by the World Wide Web are not restricted to those faculty and students who are experts in technology or are involved in web-based courses. This article focuses on traditional classroom-based higher education and explores how it can be enhanced and supported through three major types of web usage: a) using a web browser to access materials and resources; b) using web-boards and chatrooms for interaction, and c) using familiar wordprocessing and presentation software to create and post on the web one's own documents and presentations. The article discusses the educational benefits that can be enjoyed by faculty and students in each of these three types of usage. The breadth and depth of those benefits is particularly striking in face of the simplicity of the skills required, and range from very specific instructional gains before, during and after classroom meetings to broader issues such as participation in learning communities and lifelong learning.

Introduction

Colleges and universities are being transformed by the convergence of two powerful forces: the need for lifelong learning and the technological revolution of the Internet and its graphical interface, the World Wide Web. As the body of knowledge grows at unprecedented speeds in most professional areas, students may no longer consider that they have "finished" their education by the time they graduate. If they are to remain viable in their professions, what they learned in college or graduate school is just the starting point. But for lifelong learning to be a reality, rather than a slogan, two conditions have to be present: the desire and the ability to learn. It is here that the transforming power of the Internet and the Web can be most deeply felt, by giving students both the tools and the motivation to extract knowledge from a constinuously expanding sea of information.

Faculty and students often react with ambivalence to the new technologies (Berge, 1999, Berge & Collins, 1995). On the one hand, they want to preserve the benefits associated with traditional classroom learning (Brufee, 1984; Hiltz, 1986; Hiltz, 1994; Mason, 1989). On the other hand, they may feel increasing pressure (from themselves or others) to experiment with the Internet (Dede, 1996, Russel, 1999). The tension between these two forces may lead to inactivity if faculty and students feel they do not have the time or energy to invest in learning all there is to know about technology. If faculty don't know how to program in html, and "java" is for them just a good cup of coffee, then they will just stick to the chalk and blackboard (or the marker and the whiteboard!), perhaps the good and trusted overhead projector. Students are often in a similar position, feeling that the pressures on their time and resources do not allow them to invest in buying computers and learning all there is to know about information technology (Bonk & Cummings, 1998).

The objective of this article is to discuss how faculty and students with minimal or very limited knowledge of the technology can go a long way in using the Web to extend and support classroom learning. In the same way that automobiles are sophisticated enough for us to be able to drive them without knowing much about car mechanics, the Web is sophisticated enough for us to be able to use it without knowing much about computers.

In the next sections, we will explore three major types of use of the web that only require basic skill levels and discuss how they may impact student learning.

Using a Web Browser to Access Materials and Resources

In traditional educational environments, the resources that support learning are typically in the form of printed text, such as books and articles from journals, newspapers and magazines. The material, once printed, remains static and is only revised when a subsequent edition or issue of the original source comes along. The use of such resources is further limited by considerations such as cost and convenience of access.

In contrast, the Web offers a wealth of resources that may be just a click away for anyone who can open a browser such as Netscape or Internet Explorer and access a relevant site by typing in its "address" (URL) or by conducting a simple search. For example, just by using a web browser faculty and students can have access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to academic and public libraries around the world, including the vast resources of the Library of Congress. Electronic databases, accessible on the web, facilitate efficient and effective searches through thousands of indexed sources. Many academic journals, trade magazines, newspapers and radio and TV broadcasters have full text editions available on the web, usually for free. In addition to those traditional sources, browsers also allow access to web sites dedicated to certain topics or organizations, which not only offer information but also links to other relevant sites.

Another significant way for supporting and expanding classroom learning is to use a web browser to access the web sites that a growing number of publishers are developing to support their textbooks. For example, both of the authors are using textbooks published by Prentice-Hall that offer extensive online resources for students and faculty. For each chapter in the book, the site offers interactive multiple choice quizzes, which provides feedback to students when they choose the wrong options and allows them to e-mail the results directly to the professor, in one case while in the other updates and corrections to chapters are available. The site also has Internet assignments and exercises tailored to the chapter topics, as well as online articles and current events that are continuously updated. In the instructor area of the web site, faculty may have access to all of the above, plus the instructor's manual, test bank, and downloadable PowerPoint presentations for each chapter.