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| Vol. 17, No. 4 | Sept. 25, 1997 |
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| Vol. 17, No. 4 | Sept. 25, 1997 |
This multimedia course, created by Fred Hofstetter, Instructional Technology, will be the first PBS TeleWEBcourse(TM) and is designed to use the Internet for all course activities.
Hofstetter uses the course web site to deliver the syllabus, class lectures and assignments, as well as for grading projects and communicating with his students. Course material includes a CD-Rom providing multimedia Show Me movies to assist students as they explore various web functions, including e-mail, chat rooms, listservs and search engines. Students will learn how to design and create their own multimedia web pages.
In addition, the course demonstrates the first use of Serf® (Server-Side Educational Records Facilitator), an innovative relational database developed at UD that provides a software platform for the creation, delivery and administration of Internet courses.
This user-friendly software has enormous potential for use by higher education institutions to provide support for students, instructors and administrators in multimedia web-based courses.
The alliance between PBS-a nonprofit organization that markets, licenses and distributes distance learning college credit courses worldwide to more than 400,000 students-and the University's award-winning distance learning program, represents a natural extension to provide a learning environment rich in multimedia resources and Internet services to a worldwide audience of adult students who cannot attend traditional campus-based courses.
The University has been recognized as a world leader in the use of instructional technology and serves more than 2,000 enrollments each year in its distance learning program.
The web course is currently being "field-tested" at UD, PBS' corporate offices in Washington, D.C., and at Brevard College in Florida. The course will be offered worldwide through PBS beginning in January.
Development of the web course and the Serf software has been a multidepartment team effort involving University Media Services; the Instructional Technology Center of the College of Human Resources, Education and Public Policy; and the Division of Continuing Education.
The team was led by Hofstetter, who also is creator of PODIUM, a hypermedia application generator software. He is the author of two recent texts on Multimedia Literacy and Internet Literacy.
More information on the course and Hofstetter's work is available at http://www.udel.edu/ContEd/internet_literacy.html
