- One interface - If you learn your browser, you've learned all the technology you need to know.
- It's ubiquitous - Web browsers are everywhere, at home, at school, at the library, soon you probably can find them in your mall (of course for a price ;-) ).
- It's easier to get feedback - If you are watching a videotape of presentation, you often can't contact the person who made the speech, but with the Web and email you can!
- Dyanmic/User Controlled - It's possible to make self-learning possible with a few hyperlinks or some other simple coding. This way you can can move ahead if you are familiar with the material, while at other times it's easy to go back and review.
- When the professors and students learn to take advantage of the strengths that the Internet offers, in particular the Web and email, then distributed learning will really take off.
- Check out these two Web sites to keep up to date on what's going on with the Web and Distance Learning at UNT:
The Web and Distributed Learning
By Mark Wilcox, UNT Web Administrator (mewilcox@unt.edu)
The World Wide Web will be a cornerstone
of the distributed learning environment at UNT. The Web may not replace
the traditional classroom or lecture environment anytime soon but
it will enhance it.
We already have several courses that disseminate
class information via the Web. You can see a listing at
http://www.unt.edu/teachtech/webcourses.htm.
The variety of information that these course pages provides range
from just the course syllabus to the entire class content.
They are just a taste of what the Web and
the Web at UNT has to offer for future education endeavors. The near
future (e.g. spring - fall 98) will provide more substantial
course materials to go along with the course syllabi that is the most
prevalent form of distributed learning content. A growing number of
professors are beginning to put their existing PowerPoint presentations
on the Web in a format that is viewable by any browser. With the introduction
of Question Mark software we can now offer on-line testing over the
Web (either for self-testing or for class tests). The Web Conferencing
System is beginning to get more use and after another facelift that
occurred over the Christmas break, it should provide even more functionality.
In the longer term there are a number of
technologies that should show up. The most interesting technology
is probably streaming media. This includes both audio and video. Streaming
media is a new delivery technology made popular by the RealMedia company
with their RealAudio and RealVideo products. These products would
enable professors to deliver their lectures over the Web instead of
through a traditional videoconference. The JAVA programming language
is already providing some interesting opportunities at other places
on the Net for education and it soon should rear its head here at
UNT.
What both professors and students should
keep in mind is that the Web and the Internet have good and bad aspects.
One bad thing about the Web, at least right now, is that all the multimedia
stuff users want can be delivered in other means and with better quality.
Also, keeping track of what's real and isn't real on the
Net can be a problem. However, the Internet does provide several good
options over traditional distributed learning technologies:
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