Implementing Innovative Teaching Across the Faculty via the WWW

From the mass media to the scholarly press, a common theme in the last several years has been that educational practice must change. Learning must become more learner-centered; educational offerings must be more flexible, more individualized; teachers must move from being “sages on the stage” to “guides on the side” with new roles such as “learning facilitators and knowledge brokers” (Tuckett, Jones, & Thomas, 1997). In addition, higher education in particular must become more responsive to the needs of lifelong learning, but probably within the constraints of less funding. And just, changes in teaching and instructional practice are notoriously difficult. Various reasons for the as-yet limited impact of ICT on educational change in higher education are well known: research, not instructional innovation, is what is valued in terms of quantifiable indicators of scientific productivity; output financing discourages risk-taking in instructional practices; the relative autonomy of instructors, of departments, of faculties, and of universities with respect to educational practice means economies of scale and critical masses of experience do not develop; the time and effort investment required of the instructor who wishes to implement ICT into his instructor practice are not only high, but frequently lead to negative experiences. Student course-evaluation forms, for example, rarely present choices relating to qualities such as “effort spent by the instructor to innovate” or “willingness of the instructor to use ICT to change his instructional approach”. Instead, the instructor is rewarded for qualities such as being “well prepared” and “clear”, qualities which are easier to convey when teaching in a traditional way with well-used materials than when grappling with the frustrations of unfamiliar ICT use.