Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
universally accepted by students, teachers, and academic administrators (Tillett, 2000). Other
advantages are the ease with which information can be disseminated, its interactivity, its use
as a real-time communication medium, and the ability to use text, graphics, audio, and video
(Kaynama & Keesling, 2000).
There are a number of administrative tasks associated with subject coordination for
which IT solutions can be applied in the application. These include (Byrnes & Lo, 1996;
Darbyshire & Wenn, 2000):
Student enrollment : While most universities have a student enrollment system
administered at the institute level, there are often local tasks associated with enrolment,
such as user account creation and compilation of mail lists, etc. Some of these tasks
can be automated (Darbyshire & Wenn, 2000).
Assignment distribution, collection, and grading : The written assignment remains the
basic unit of assessment for the vast majority of educators, and there have been many
initiatives to computerize aspects of this task. Some of these include Submit (Hassan,
1991), NetFace (Thompson, 1988), ClassNet (Boysen & Van Gorp, 1997), and TRIX
(Byrnes & Lo, 1996).
Grades distribution and reporting : Techniques for this range from email to password
protected Web-based database lookup.
Informing all students of important notices : Notice boards and sophisticated managed
discussion facilities can be found in many systems. Examples include products such
as TopClass , Learning Space , Virtual-U , WebCT , and First Class (Landon, 1998).
Many of the tasks viewed as educational can also employ IT solutions in order to gain
perceived benefits. Some of these include: Online class discussions ; Learning ; Course
outline distribution ; Seminar notes distribution ; Answering student queries . Just how
many of these are actually implemented will relate to a number of factors, such as the amount
of face-to-face contact between lecturers and students. However, using the Internet for many
of these can address the traditional problems of students misplacing handouts and staff
running out of available copies.
Discussion management systems are being integrated into many Web-based solutions.
These are usually implemented as threaded discussions, which are easily implemented as a
series of Web pages. Other tools can include chat rooms or listserv facilities. Answering
student queries can take place in two forums, either as part of a class discussion or privately.
Private discussions online are usually best handled via an email facility, or in some instances,
store and forward messaging systems may replace email.
Implementing IT solutions to aid in the actual learning process is difficult. These can
range from Intelligent Tutoring Systems (Ritter & Koedinger, 1995; Cheikes, 1995), to
facilitated online learning (Bedore et al., 1998). However, the major use of IT solutions in the
learning process is usually a simple and straightforward use of the Web to present hypertext-
based structured material as a supplement to traditional learning.
Using Internet Technologies to Improve Efficiency and
Add Value
With the recent explosion in Internet usage, educators have been turning to the Internet
in attempts to gain benefits by the introduction of IT into the educational process. In this
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