Teaching, Learning and the World-Wide Web

One way of thinking about using the World-Wide Web for supporting teaching and learning is simply to transfer aspects of one’s normal practice as a teacher onto the medium of the Web. So, for example, at the most basic level, course notes, lecture notes and administrative details can simply be posted on the Web. However at a more complex and interactive level (and likely a more valuable level), relevant Web-based resources can be linked to course notes and lecture notes; discussion groups can be set up using Web-based conferencing software; students can be required to produce assignments on the Web; and multimedia simulations can be made available via the Web. In all these instances, by using the Web as a delivery/communication method, teachers make it easier for learners to gain flexible access to learning opportunities and resources, but the standard processes of teaching and learning in higher education remain the same. From this perspective, teachers continue to direct what is to be taught, in what sequence, and how. The ‘content’ of learning remains under the teacher’s control.

Exploration of the use of the Web for teaching and learning has, however, prompted alternative ways of viewing the teaching and learning process. One of these is the idea of distributed learning (Graves, 1994).

The problems of increasing student numbers and decreasing resources usually result in suggestions of distance learning/teaching as a possible solution where the student can be seen to be ‘anywhere’. DeLong (1995) however proposes Graves’ idea of distributed learning as an alternative to this perspective:

By contrast, distributed learning says that information can be anywhere and that the teacher and students can find and use it to create and transmit knowledge in non-traditional and arguably better ways (and, no, the students and teachers need not be in the same physical location, but that is secondary and may even be irrelevant.) Explosive growth of the web is the breakthrough that makes distributed learning possible.

From this perspective, the role of the lecturer is no longer to transmit knowledge (this would be available from a range of resources, including the web), the role of the lecturer is rather to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge by teaching discernment, i.e. to teach students to think so that they can select the most valid, appropriate and relevant resources for their learning.

• DeLong, S.E. (1995). The Shroud of Lecturing. First Monday. <http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_5/delong/index.html>
• "Towards a Distributed Learning Infrastructure." In The Canadian Multimedia Conference Proceedings (Calgary, 1994), edited by L. Katz, M. Mayo and B. Richardson, 157-9. Calgary: University of Calgary, 1994.