Instructional and Cognitive Impacts of Web‐based Education

Citation

Smith, A.G. (2002), "Instructional and Cognitive Impacts of Web‐based Education", Online Information Review, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 351-352. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2002.26.5.351.5

As teaching via the Web becomes more important at several levels of education, we need to consider whether traditional pedagogical theory applies in this new environment. Can Web‐based teaching move beyond being just an electronic version of a traditional distance learning course? How do instructors balance the ubiquity of easily available but unverifiable Web resources compared with the certainty of certified textbooks? These issues are relevant to librarians as well as to educators, since increasingly academic libraries are servicing distance initiatives that utilise Web‐based teaching and are using Web‐based teaching as a way of delivering bibliographic education.

This book is an attempt to consider issues of Web‐based education beyond the simple mechanics of placing course materials on Web sites. A range of authors has contributed papers, some from a broadly theoretical point of view, others relating specific experiences of mounting Web‐based courses. As a consequence, the book lacks an overall structure, being a collection of heterogeneous contributions, arranged by first author name. Web‐based teaching in a range of environments is described, although most are concerned with university teaching. There are papers on workplace training and school‐level teaching.

A theme of many of the papers is the need to use Web‐based teaching as a way of facilitating learning enhanced by real, collaborative problems – Bastiens describes the creation of a “virtual company” as a learning environment. This accompanies a strong emphasis on constructivist learning theory running through many of the papers. Oliver and Harrington in their paper promote the use of “authentic activities”: situated learning using single complex tasks that replicate real‐life experiences, rather than fragmented artificial exercises.

A number of the papers also address interface issues. Lockee discusses the marriage of Instructional Design theory and Human Computer Interface theory; Berry examines cognitive aspects of Web page design; and Leflore applies Gestalt theory to Web page design. The discussion of interface issues is useful background, although increasingly this is taken out of the hands of the instructor by the use of standard Web‐based learning environments such as Blackboard or WebCT. However an appreciation of HCI issues is important to the evaluation and selection of these systems.

In an interesting overview paper, Bonk et al. attempt to classify the different aspects of Web‐based teaching in a ten‐level Web integration continuum. This ranges from marketing the course to the placement of the entire course on the Web and examines Web development based within larger institutional developments. This paper provides many good examples of different ways of using the Web in teaching.

The use of Web‐based teaching makes demands on the information literacy level of both teachers and students, particularly if a constructivist approach is being followed that implies the use of the Web as a source of informational materials; Lowther et al. provide a useful paper which identifies and classifies information literacy skills for teachers and pupils. Of course, there is room to debate some of the assertions, such as Miller and Miller’s bald assertion that Web‐based instruction is considerably cheaper than traditional classroom options. Those who have invested time and resources in the development of distance teaching materials, in print or on the Web, will see this as an oversimplification.

An important part of successful Web‐based learning is encouraging students to participate – research indicates that student’s perception of learning success is positively correlated to their level of participation. Powers and Guan provide useful suggestions for encouraging participation, along with an analysis of methods of providing accessibility to online courses for people with disabilities.

Stronger editing might have prevented some faux pas, such as the “amazing statistic” that when President Clinton took office in 1993, there were only 50 pages on the Web – a statistic that those at CERN and other organisations that had already developed substantial Web sites in the early 1990s would certainly find amazing. There is a rather strange index, which would provide a useful basis for a critical exercise in back‐of‐the‐book indexing.

All the papers have extensive references, so the volume forms a resource that links to the literature both of Web‐based teaching and educational theory. Instructional and Cognitive Impacts of Web‐based Education is a rather mixed bag of resources, but anyone engaged in Web‐based teaching is likely to find useful perspectives on their work.