Teaching technology.

MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY has a long tradition of distance education, and during the last five years, I have taught the history of Canada, the North Atlantic World and Newfoundland for the Division of Continuing Education. These courses were originally intended to serve students who do not have access to the campus, and they were designed with the assumption that students would only have access to material which I provided. Course manuals, readings and texts are provided to the students through Canada Post, and, increasingly, electronic means of communication are used to add an interactive component. The development of web-based distance education courses, and the incorporation of the world wide web into the classroom as a source and pedagogical adjunct, have been greeted with either fear or hyperbole by many teachers. Neither reaction is entirely rational. As a pedagogical tool, the web offers challenges, but each challenge is an opportunity. I would not characterize what I do as “distance education” in the sense of a university-based instructor bringing a course to rural students. Sixty per cent of the students in my courses reside in St. John’s and for a variety of reasons choose to take courses in this format. Most students choose distance education courses due to the flexibility of the format (students with jobs and families) and because such courses do not require interaction with peers or instructors. Sixty-two per cent of these students first enrolled at Memorial more than six years earlier, and they are also more likely to have part-time status. While students living far from the campus are more likely to be younger, they nonetheless have some compelling reasons to not be on campus. Needless to say, the high cost of a university education encourages students to study part-time. While student motives for enrolling in a course that is taught in an alternative to classroom format vary widely, my experience has shown that a large market exists for the flexible non-classroom course, even though they are pedagogically inferior in many respects. On the whole, while students have succeeded in correspondence courses, there is an inherent lack of interaction. Students feel cut off from any contact, and opportunities are restricted for instructors to assist students having difficulties with the material. Often problems do not become apparent until students submit work, at which point it is too late to do anything to address their difficulties. Memorial has long attempted to resolve this weakness through teleconference sessions. The instructor and groups of students go to designated sites and through the use of speakers and microphones have a conference call. But high student numbers, different time zones and availability of the teleconference sites limit the effectiveness of teleconferencing. The proliferation of access to the internet offers an alternative method to make distance teaching more interactive. Web-based courses provide a feasible method of adding interaction between student and instructor and between students themselves. The pool of available students remains, at the moment, slightly smaller for web-based courses. A recent survey of distance education students at Memorial found that approximately 55 per cent had access to the internet. Only a portion of those, of course, would be comfortable enough with the technology to want to take on a course that is effectively an experiment in new methods of delivery. I will give a brief description of a simple web-based course for those who are not