scholarly journals A Ten-Level Web Integration Continuum for Higher Education

Author(s):  
Curtis J. Bonk ◽  
Jack A. Cummings ◽  
Norika Hara ◽  
Robert B. Fischler ◽  
Sun Myung Lee

Owston (1997, p. 27) pointed out that, “Nothing before has captured the imagination and interests of educators simultaneously around the globe more than the World Wide Web.” Other scholars claim that the Web is converging with other technologies to dramatically alter most conceptions of the teaching and learning process (Bonk & Cunningham, 1998; Duffy, Dueber, & Hawley, 1998; Harasim, Hiltz, Teles, & Turoff, 1995). From every corner of one’s instruction there lurk pedagogical opportunities—new resources, partners, courses, and markets—to employ the World Wide Web as an instructional device. Nevertheless, teaching on the Web is not a simple decision since most instructors typically lack vital information about the effects of various Web tools and approaches on student learning. Of course, the dearth of such information negatively impacts the extent faculty are willing to embed Web-based learning components in their classes. What Web-related decisions do college instructors face? Dozens. Hundreds. Perhaps thousands! There are decisions about the class size, forms of assessments, amount and type of feedback, location of students, and the particular Web courseware system used. Whereas some instructors will want to start using the Web with minor adaptations to their teaching, others will feel comfortable taking extensive risks in building entire courses or programs on the Web. Where you fall in terms of your comfort level as an instructor or student will likely shift in the next few years as Web courseware stabilizes and is more widely accepted in teaching. Of course, significant changes in the Web-based instruction will require advancements in both pedagogy and technology (Bonk & Dennen, 1999). Detailed below is a ten level Web integration continuum of the pedagogical choices faculty must consider in developing Web-based course components.

Author(s):  
George D. Magoulas

Information and communication technologies have played a fundamental role in teaching and learning for many years. Technologies, such as radio and TV, were used during the 50s and 60s for delivering instructional material in audio and/or video format. More recently, the spread of computer-based educational systems has transformed the processes of teaching and learning (Squires, Conole, & Jacobs, 2000). Potential benefits to learners include richer and more effective learning resources using multimedia and a more flexible pace of learning. In the last few years, the emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) have offered users a new instructional delivery system that connects learners with educational resources and has led to a tremendous growth in Web-based instruction. Web-based instruction (WBI) can be defined as using the WWW as the medium to deliver course material, manage a course (registrations, supervision, etc.), and communicate with learners. A more elaborate definition is due to Khan (1997), who defines a Web-based instructional system (WIS) as “...a hypermedia-based instructional program which utilises the attributes and resources of the World Wide Web to create a meaningful learning environment where learning is fostered and supported.” Relan and Gillani (1997) have also provided an alternative definition that incorporates pedagogical elements by considering WBI as “...the application of a repertoire of cognitively oriented instructional strategies within a constructivist and collaborative learning environment, utilising the attributes and resources of the World Wide Web.” Nowadays, WISs can take various forms depending on the aim they serve: • Distance-learning (DL) systems’ goal is providing remote access to learning resources at a reduced cost. The concept of DL (Rowntree, 1993) is based on: (i) learning alone, or in small groups, at the learner’s pace and in their own time and place, and (ii) providing active learning rather than passive with less frequent help from a teacher. • Web-based systems, such as intelligent tutoring systems (Wenger, 1987), educational hypermedia, games and simulators (Granlund, Berglund, & Eriksson, 2000), aim at improving the learning experience by offering a high level of interactivity and exploratory activities, but require a significant amount of time for development. The inherent interactivity of this approach leads learners to analyse material at a deeper conceptual level than would normally follow from just studying the theory and generates frequently cognitive conflicts that help learners to discover their possible misunderstandings and reconstruct their own cognitive models of the task under consideration. • Electronic books provide a convenient way to structure learning materials and reach a large market (Eklund & Brusilovsky, 1999). • Providers of training aim to offer innovative educational services to organisations for workplace training and learning, such as to supplement and support training in advance of live training, update employee skills, develop new skills.


2009 ◽  
pp. 2389-2412
Author(s):  
Ying Liang

Web-based information systems (WBIS) aim to support e-business using IT, the World Wide Web, and the Internet. This chapter focuses on the Web site part of WBIS and argues why an easy-to-use and interactive Web site is critical to the success of WBIS. A dialogue act modeling approach is presented for capturing and specifying user needs for easy-to-use Web site of WBIS by WBIS analysis; for example, what users want to see on the computer screen and in which way they want to work with the system interactively. It calls such needs communicational requirements, in addition to functional and nonfunctional requirements, and builds a dialogue act model to specify them. The author hopes that development of the Web site of WBIS will be considered not only an issue in WBIS design but also an issue in WBIS analysis in WBIS development.


Author(s):  
Michael Lang

Although its conceptual origins can be traced back a few decades (Bush, 1945), it is only recently that hypermedia has become popularized, principally through its ubiquitous incarnation as the World Wide Web (WWW). In its earlier forms, the Web could only properly be regarded a primitive, constrained hypermedia implementation (Bieber & Vitali, 1997). Through the emergence in recent years of standards such as eXtensible Markup Language (XML), XLink, Document Object Model (DOM), Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) and WebDAV, as well as additional functionality provided by the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Java, plug-ins and middleware applications, the Web is now moving closer to an idealized hypermedia environment. Of course, not all hypermedia systems are Web based, nor can all Web-based systems be classified as hypermedia (see Figure 1). See the terms and definitions at the end of this article for clarification of intended meanings. The focus here shall be on hypermedia systems that are delivered and used via the platform of the WWW; that is, Web-based hypermedia systems.


Author(s):  
Ying Liang

Web-based information systems (WBIS) aim to support e-business using IT, the World Wide Web, and the Internet. This chapter focuses on the Web site part of WBIS and argues why an easy-to-use and interactive Web site is critical to the success of WBIS. A dialogue act modeling approach is presented for capturing and specifying user needs for easy-to-use Web site of WBIS by WBIS analysis; for example, what users want to see on the computer screen and in which way they want to work with the system interactively. It calls such needs communicational requirements, in addition to functional and nonfunctional requirements, and builds a dialogue act model to specify them. The author hopes that development of the Web site of WBIS will be considered not only an issue in WBIS design but also an issue in WBIS analysis in WBIS development.


Author(s):  
Jane Klobas ◽  
Stefano Renzi

As the World Wide Web has developed to be a widespread and reliable communication medium, a wide range of software and services has emerged to support teaching, learning, and collaborative work. These new software and services provide opportunities for supporting and enhancing teaching and learning strategies and practices. There are already many different types of software and services with many providers in each broad category; yet, given the rapid rate of change of the WWW, the specific nature of the software and services, the providers, and perhaps even the categories themselves, will change over time. One issue that teachers face in this new and rapidly changing environment is the choice of software and services to support their teaching and learning activities. Our goal in this chapter is to develop a model and guide for teachers who want to select software and services that support or enhance learning, and in particular collaborative learning, through the World Wide Web. We are concerned here, not with products and services that require significant investment in time, money, or technical resources, but with simple and low cost software and services that might be used in practice by teachers to support ‘every day’ teaching and learning, whether at school or on campus or by distance learning.


Author(s):  
Anthony D. Andre

This paper provides an overview of the various human factors and ergonomics (HF/E) resources on the World Wide Web (WWW). A list of the most popular and useful HF/E sites will be provided, along with several critical guidelines relevant to using the WWW. The reader will gain a clear understanding of how to find HF/E information on the Web and how to successfully use the Web towards various HF/E professional consulting activities. Finally, we consider the ergonomic implications of surfing the Web.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deepika Punj ◽  
Ashutosh Dixit

In order to manage the vast information available on web, crawler plays a significant role. The working of crawler should be optimized to get maximum and unique information from the World Wide Web. In this paper, architecture of migrating crawler is proposed which is based on URL ordering, URL scheduling and document redundancy elimination mechanism. The proposed ordering technique is based on URL structure, which plays a crucial role in utilizing the web efficiently. Scheduling ensures that URLs should go to optimum agent for downloading. To ensure this, characteristics of both agents and URLs are taken into consideration for scheduling. Duplicate documents are also removed to make the database unique. To reduce matching time, document matching is made on the basis of their Meta information only. The agents of proposed migrating crawler work more efficiently than traditional single crawler by providing ordering and scheduling of URLs.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dick

Since it was first formally proposed in 1990 (and since the first website was launched in 1991), the World Wide Web has evolved from a collection of linked hypertext documents residing on the Internet, to a "meta-medium" featuring platforms that older media have leveraged to reach their publics through alternative means. However, this pathway towards the modernization of the Web has not been entirely linear, nor will it proceed as such. Accordingly, this paper problematizes the notion of "progress" as it relates to the online realm by illuminating two distinct perspectives on the realized and proposed evolution of the Web, both of which can be grounded in the broader debate concerning technological determinism versus the social construction of technology: on the one hand, the centralized and ontology-driven shift from a human-centred "Web of Documents" to a machine-understandable "Web of Data" or "Semantic Web", which is supported by the Web's inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, and the organization he heads, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); on the other, the decentralized and folksonomy-driven mechanisms through which individuals and collectives exert control over the online environment (e.g. through the social networking applications that have come to characterize the contemporary period of "Web 2.0"). Methodologically, the above is accomplished through a sustained exploration of theory derived from communication and cultural studies, which discursively weaves these two viewpoints together with a technical history of recent W3C projects. As a case study, it is asserted that the forward slashes contained in a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) were a social construct that was eventually rendered extraneous by the end-user community. By focusing On the context of the technology itself, it is anticipated that this paper will contribute to the broader debate concerning the future of the Web and its need to move beyond a determinant "modernization paradigm" or over-arching ontology, as well as advance the potential connections that can be cultivated with cognate disciplines.


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