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Systems for WWW-Based Course Support:
Technical, Pedagogical, and Institutional Options
Sunday, June 20th
WWW site for the Seminar:
http://education2.edte.utwente.nl/edmedia.nsf/framesform
| What? | Course-support sites are WWW environments designed to support courses in higher education, offering a variety of features related to information, communication, extra course resources, interaction and participation, and course management. Systems for such course-support sites integrate a database with a WWW server and tools for the instructors, and provide a common environment for the sites in a department or faculty. Some systems are now commercially available (such as Lotus Learning Space) or available on license (such as WebCT); others are locally developed or developed by consortia. |
| Why such systems? | Increasingly, instructors want to support their courses with a WWW site, but do not want to design and develop such sites themselves. Also, institutions have difficulty supporting and maintaining a variety of individual course sites. Students want to have a consistent way to access the WWW sites for their various courses. Students, instructors and system managers want WWW-based course resources to be maintained in a common database, so that they can be more easily accessed, reused, managed, and integrated. Thus systems for such integrated course-support sites are being adopted by many institutions. But what system should be chosen? What issues need to be considered? What are the major options? What are evaluation criteria for making a choice? |
| Goals |
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| Who Should Attend? |
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| Product | In addition to the personal benefits that individuals will gain from the seminar, the seminar will also be the basis for a special issue of the International Journal of Educational Telecommunications. Participants will receive draft articles for this special issue prepared by the systems specialists participating in the seminar, and will have the opportunity to contribute to issue-oriented articles which will be based on ideas and concerns discussed in the breakout groups during the seminar. |
| Seminar leader: | Betty Collis, Professor, Tele-Learning, Faculty of Educational Science and Technology Senior Researcher, Centre for Telematics and Information Technology (CTIT) University of Twente, The Netherlands |
| Schedule: | The seminar takes place on Sunday, June 20, 1999 |
8:30-9:00 | Sign-in and coffee |
9:00-9:15 | Introductory remarks: What are systems for WWW-based course support, and what are major issues and options associated with such systems? Betty Collis |
9:15-12:00 (including a coffee pause) | Presentations and demonstrations by (approximately 5) educational specialists associated with leading systems, each following the outline: (a) Description of the system, key features, costs (b) Pedogogical models and implications for the teaching and learning process in the institution (c) Usage experiences and evaluation results from instructors, learners, and those involved with educational and technical support |
12:00-1:00 | Lunch |
1:00-3:30 (including coffee) | Participation in one of the following breakout groups:
Each breakout group will be lead by an expert, who will prepare an initial set of issues for discussion. How to carry out formative evaluation and evaluate impact will be topics in each of the breakout groups. |
3:30-4:30 | Panel discussion. Breakout group leaders will present the major ideas from their groups, with further discussion from all participants. In addition, emerging and future trends will be highlighted. |
| Follow-up | Within two months, breakout group leaders will produce articles for the special issue of the International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, based on the issues emerging as most relevant during the seminar. Seminar participants will receive a complimentary copy of the special issue. |
| To participate? | The registration for this 1-day seminar is $165. Fee includes beverage breaks and lunch. |