Developing a course for online study by off-campus students requires a major change of approach to teaching and learning. This study outlines the constructivist theoretical basis and the approach to teaching applied in the development of a humanities course. The study includes analysis of the turning points in the students' learning as identified…

This paper presents the Helsinki-Lappi project (HelLa) co-run by two Finnish universities: the University of Helsinki, and the University of Lapland. The general aim of the project is to study, develop, and assess how different training programs relate to educational use of information and communication technologies (ICT). The project is expected…

The purpose of this paper is to advance the argument that universities should move toward using distance education as rapidly and as fully as possible. The paper discusses three reasons to support the proposition: (1) Technological advances have brought us to a point that most of the university curriculum can be individualized and delivered via…

This paper presents results of research on an intensive online graduate level course in Web-based instruction (WBI) delivered via the same medium. The classes, offered concurrently at the University of Memphis and at Georgia State University, provide students with experiences centered around three areas: being a student in an online environment;…

This book offers suggestions for developing well-planned and effective computer-mediated distance learning. Part 1 lays the foundation for a distance education framework. Chapter 1 explores issues involved in teaching and learning when learning moves into the online environment. Chapter 2 looks at the essence of the framework--the importance of…

This proceedings of the sixth annual Mid-South Instructional Technology Conference contains the following papers: "They're Not Just Big Kids: Motivating Adult Learners" (Karen Jarrett Thoms); "A Computer Integrated Biology Laboratory Experience" (James B. Kring); "Building Web Sites for Mathematics Courses: Some Answers to…

"Projet Mercure," or the Mercury Project, was a consortium of universities in North America that used videoconferencing to link with university classrooms in France; its purpose was to provide a new approach to teaching French language and civilization. This paper examines one such videoconference between both Austin Peay State…

This paper reports on an evaluation of InfoPoint, a centrally-managed, professionally staffed reference service available at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus Library through a variety of communication modes, including a World Wide Web form, direct e-mail, and chat and collaborative browsing. Over 400 InfoPoint users were sent a…

In January 1999, an interdisciplinary seminar of doctoral students from cognitive, educational and computational sciences was organized to study theoretical texts that might provide insight into how to support collaborative learning with perspectives-based software. The seminar uses a Web-based tool called WEBGUIDE to mediate and structure…

The GMD (German National Research Center for Information Technology) has developed the BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work) Shared Workspace system within the last four years with the goal of transforming the Web from a primarily passive information repository to an active cooperation medium. The BSCW system is a Web-based groupware tool for…

Experiences from a distance course conducted during 1996-97 for high-school teachers in Sweden and reports from other experiments have yielded the conclusion that collaborating via electronic conferencing systems demands new communication patterns. This paper uses theories about communication, group processes, and shared symbolic order and social…

This paper focuses on the rewards and pitfalls of offering an online Technology in Education program. The program structure, administrative support needs, student readiness issues, evaluation process, student benefits and concerns, logistics, technical needs, and teaching issues relating to offering an online program are presented. Concrete…

Educational research has long been conducted at a distance: both mail and telephone have successfully been used in survey research. The development of the Internet offers yet another medium over which research can be conducted. This study discusses the use of electronic mail as a vehicle for conducting educational research. It focuses particularly…

This paper examines the mechanics of argumentation, some features of computer conferencing software that might support this teaching and learning method (e.g., strategies for sharing, examining and commenting on various kinds of evidence, threading a conversation, indicating type of message, linking to outside information, highlighting new…

As a compulsory part of the study in Pedagogical Information Science at the University of Bergen and Stord/Haugesund College (Norway) during the spring term of 1999, students participated in a distributed group activity that provided experience on distributed collaboration and use of online groupware systems. The group collaboration process was…