Session 2

How can ideas about active learning and problem solving be translated into Web instructional materials?

This is THE question. One thing must be clear: clicking through pages, scrolling along reams of text, or surfing without reason is NOT active learning.

The key is that students must be doing something that is purposeful and which leads them to think and construct new understandings and skills.

How is technology being used to teach now? The 1996 national survey of information technology in higher education found these results:

Percentages of College Courses Using Information Technology

multimedia	11%
e-mail	25%
presentation handouts	28%
commercial courseware	19%
CD ROM materials	9%
computer simulations	14%
computer/lab classrooms	24%
WWW-based resources	9%

There are many ways that the web supports active learning. Here is a list suggested by Kozma and Johnston 1991:

• Enabling active engagement in construction of knowledge
• Making available real world situations
• Providing representations in multiple modalities (3D, auditory, graphic, text)
• Drilling students on basic concepts to reach mastery
• Facilitating collaboratibe activity among students
• Seeing interconnections among concepts through hypertext
• Learning to use the tools of scholarship
• Simulating laboratory/field work

  An interesting activity for you might be to surf a variety of geography web sites to seek examples of each of these types of sites. In addition, this list may serve as a framework by which we can analyze what is missing within the realm of geography web materials.

  Conceptual Models for Web Design

  Research suggests there are several successful models for web design. They include cognitive flexibility theory, anchored instruction, and case-based learning environments.

  Each of these models is slightly different but they share a number of similarities:

  Each provides a purpose for student work. Students answer questions, solve problems, analyze cases, develop a point of view.

  Each engages learners in meaningful (meaning-making) activity.

  Each provides stucture to student interaction.

  Each uses multiple representations or employs a variety of perspectives on and about the content.

  Each is embedded in a real, authentic context.

  Each links concepts in a way that helps students develop their own schema.

  References

  Khan, B.H.(ed) 1997. Web-based instruction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.

  Kozma, R.B., and J. Johnston. 1991. The technological revolution comes to the classroom. Change 23(1):10-23.

  Theory in Practice on line database for education http://www.gwu.edu/~tip/