Apologies for cross posting
Please forward it to whoever may be interested
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New formal discussion is starting on 31 August in IFETS forum on the topic:
"Does the web offer solution to many old problems but create new ones in turn?"
Moderator: Ashok Patel
Director, CAL Research & Software Engineering Centre, United Kingdom
Summariser: Samantha Hobbs
Lecturer, Open University, United Kingdom
(Pre-discussion summary below)
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* Pre-discussion summary
"Does the web offer solution to many old problems but create new ones in turn?"
The Web technology offers a relatively standard user interface through
the Web Browser. It has multi-media capabilities and can communicate
with the user through multiple channels of communication. It is link
based and therefore has a flexible structure enabling subsequent addition
or deletion of material much less painful than the 'hard-coded' programs.
With increasing support for interaction through scripting and programming
languages, it is possible to add the 'intelligence' so that we can now
start designing Web-Based ITS (Intelligent Tutoring Systems).
It can now be considered quite possible, excepting problems of intellectual
property and payments, that with appropriate authoring shell and indexing
mechanism, teachers across the globe can co-operate in incrementally
building/revising/updating tutoring material to cover all the possible
parts of the curriculum. It is also possible, that the web will follow
the 'printed book' so that one or more author/s might cover a range of
topics in a webbook (as opposed to textbook and where 'book' represents
an organised collection of learning resources) and the teachers would
recommend the webbook that has a teaching approach which matches with
their own teaching style. Unlike a printed textbook, the digital webbook
has the flexibility of carrying different sets of links, so that, say,
depending on the index you choose, you might get a top-down or bottom-up
perspective, holistic or serialist approach to material presentation etc.
In short. standardised interface, multiple channels of communication,
flexible structure, ease of amendment, possibility of division of
labour ... the benefits of web technology surely overcomes many of the
old problems. But before we are seduced by this very enticing technology,
we should think about the new set of problems it might bring with it.
The forum is invited to discuss whether the web technology has indeed
solved or offers better mechanism to solve any of the old problems and
what are the new problems that the web technology is likely to bring
with it.