| Abstrakt: |
The Internet and World Wide Web provide powerful new education and information delivery capabilities which can be used to achieve educational goals. It is important to review overall trends in science teaching practice and to identify areas where network learning is likely to make strong contributions and where it may be weak. Experience gained in large introductory classes is useful in designing effective network environments. The University of California at Santa Barbara oceanography class is typical with 200-300 students per quarter (three hours of lecture, two hours of lab each week). A portion of the class focuses on learning about science by doing science. Students must pose a problem related to plate tectonics to investigate, use the Our Dynamic Planet CD-ROM to acquire data from its datasets, and write a scientific paper based on their investigation. Network technology is used extensively for homework entry, automatic grading, and student access to their grades for individual activities. A class is framed in terms of content, presence, and social context, and except for presence, network approaches can provide substantial improvements. Technology developments in peer review software and simple posting of student work to the network, combined with bulletin board, chat, and listservs, can support the development of a social context. Concludes that the success of network approaches will depend strongly on individual student capabilities, needs, and goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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