Classrooms Using the Web

Currently, to speak of putting courses on the web, especially courses that are not structured primarily for distance-learning, means generally giving access to course descriptions and syllabi, and less often making lecture notes and assignments available online. This present state of affairs is understandable for a number of reasons: first, these web texts represent paper documents traditionally handed out to students, second, these ready-to-hand documents are easily transferred to a digital medium, and finally, indexed by these documents is a style of teacher-centered learning that is prevalent at the secondary and university levels. In sum, a predominant “vision” is to use the technology to make public the practices we have always performed without it. The course development work of Jane Leuthold and Michael Hinton are refreshing examples of challenging such norms.

Course Information:
Dr. Jane Leuthold
University of Illinois
Microeconomic Principles
Introduction to Public Finance
Taxation in Developing Economies

Summary: Professor Leuthold's students produce Web Papers rather than the more traditional short term paper. Leuthold is also using a range of web-based tools to construct particular communities and purposes for the courses she teaches.

Key Words and Phrases: audience-focused development, classroom community, interactivity, multi-media, online dialogues, resource guidance, student publication

Click here to read a review of Dr. Leuthold's work.
(Click on any of the course titles above to visit Dr. Leuthold's courses online).

Course Information:
Michael Hinton
Advanced Placement Physics
Urbana High School, Urbana Illinois

Summary: Using CyberProf, a web-based learning and communication utility, students construct physics problems for the web.

Key Words and Phrases: constructivism, disciplinary community, intelligent feedback, multi-media, online tutoring, problem-based learning, student publication

Click here to read a review of Michael Hinton's course.
(Click on his course title above to visit his course online.)

Other Valuable Links

• Large institutional projects often give one a sense of vision for what might be possible with the web as a medium and resource in K-12 education, but a vision of what the activity looks like at the level of the classroom is often missing. An effective, yet time- consuming way to capture such a vision is to visit classroom sites that have a web presence and are indexed by directories such as Web 66. One institutional project that bridges classroom and broader visions in its web representation is LDAPS, a constructivist approach to science and engineering through Lego projects.

• Perhaps the largest single collection of university courses with at least some material on the web can be found at The World Lecture Hall. The unfortunate name captures a bit of the spirit of the site, but there are some innovative pedagogical uses of the web embedded within the hundreds of courses indexed by the site.