Andrew Dillon (adillon@juliet.ucs.indiana.edu)
Fri, 2 Apr 1999 12:59:54 -0500
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 12:59:54 -0500 From: Andrew Dillon <adillon@juliet.ucs.indiana.edu> Subject: Re: IFETS-DISCUSS Digest - 1 Apr 1999 to 2 Apr 1999
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>Used as a tool for teaching, Internet has a great advantage in providing
>students with real learning environment and rich learning resources.
>
>Roughly speaking, teachers can guide students to do two different kinds of
>acvitivities on Internet:
>1.Phase One: students learn how to search information available on Internet
>and use it for their own study and research;
>2.Phase Two: publish their own materials on the Web.
>
>Melissa Liu
Hi Melissa
I suppose (hope?) I am not alone in wondering exactly what real learning is
occuring in such a scenario? It seems again and again I hear arguments that
equate accessing information (which the Web can really enable) with
learning. I really worry about this type of argument. If I teach nuclear
physics, it is entirely possible to teach students to search for info on
this subject and to mark their summary of it up for 'publishing' on the
web....but will they learn anything about nuclear physics in the process of
doing this? Perhaps incidently but certainly not systematically. You
mention students using the information they find on the web in their own
research, but this part is independent of the web is it not?
While I am happy to view the web as a resource, I despair of the idea that
access to data is sufficient for learning to occur. If you examine all the
experimental findings on hypermedia that we have accumulated over the last
decade, it is clear that this assumption is all too often made and has an
all too often predictable outcome.
The Web is not a panacea, no more than standalone hypertext was, or
whatever else came before that. What is required, I believe, is the
harnessing of the technologies power to augment the invariants of human
learning and cognition. Access is not enough.
Andrew Dillon
Indiana University
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