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Kathleen Gray*; Michael Nott; Glen Evans
Melbourne Institute of Technology
k.gray@rmit.edu.auThis Web presentation offers insights into what works in an on-line university subject; why teachers and learners think so; and how their ideas provide the materials for constructing models of 'virtual' subject education.
This presentation is based on research in progress which uses constructivist educational theory to explain how university educators go about transforming the subjects which they offer, as they move from traditional to 'virtual' teaching and learning.
This research project focusses on a case study which traces the development, over a 12-month period, of a Web-based version of an introductory environmental science elective for undergraduates. It takes a qualitative approach to gathering and analysing descriptive data from a ten-person teaching team (which includes the principal researcher) and approximately 150 students.
The Web presentation has an experiential angle. Web users may observe and participate in aspects of an on-line subject alongside enrolled summer session students who are actually studying it at the same time as the ASCILITE conference is under way.
The presentation also provides access to evaluative data. Web users may sample and search through some of the comments which have been made by teachers and learners engaged in the development of the on-line subject during 1997, and which are being used to inform the continuing process of subject design.
As well, the presentation encourages reflection on the theoretical perspectives from which 'virtual' education may be viewed. A range of ideas about the purpose of education, the potential of new technology and the nature of subject knowledge are emerging from the comments of the teachers and learners involved. Web users may try combining and recombining these ideas, to construct their own models of 'virtual' subject education.
Finally, Web users are encouraged to contribute their models to the Web site, and thereby become collaborators in this research project.
This page maintained by Rod Kevill. (Last updated: Monday, 1 December 1997)
NOTE: The page was created by an automated process from the emailed abstract and may vary slightly in formatting and layout from the author's original.