51. An Evaluation of the Use of Internet Sources as a Basis for Geography Coursework
- Author
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John Grattan, Adrian Holmes, Rewi M. Newnham, Adam Gardner, and Anne E. Mather
- Subjects
Higher education ,Multimedia ,business.industry ,Teaching method ,Geography, Planning and Development ,Internet privacy ,Computer-Assisted Instruction ,computer.software_genre ,Electronic mail ,Education ,Coursework ,ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION ,The Internet ,Computer-mediated communication ,Psychology ,business ,computer ,Utilization - Abstract
Use of the Internet is proliferating rapidly, with mounting speculation as to the practical applications for teaching in higher (and other sectors of) education, yet few published or evaluated case studies are available. This paper explores the use of Internet sources on geography courses. For various academic, logistic and philosophical reasons that are discussed, students were not given full access to the Internet, but were exposed to a variety of current Internet-sourced material downloaded onto a network fileserver, and encouraged to communicate internally and externally using electronic mail. This procedure maintained some of the vitality and stimulation of open access to the Internet, whilst providing some control over potential dangers inherent in this untested teaching medium. Evaluations of the student coursework performance on, and perception of, courses involving the Internet indicate no significant impairment in either during the first staging of the course, but substantial improvemen...
- Published
- 1998