Vol. 18, No. 26	April 8, 1999

Students get a jump start on the superhighway

The Department of Communication is offering a new course that teaches students how to use the Internet by requiring that they use it.

Comm 367 is a self-paced, hands-on, how-to course done on the student's time by accessing a website called Serf. When the one-credit pass/fail course premiered in the fall of 1998, 102 students enrolled. The course isn't taught in the spring, but in the fall of 1999, it will be required.

John A. Courtright and Elizabeth M. Perse, communication, began designing the course when they realized a significant number of students have had little or no experience using the web but will be required to do so for upper division classes.

"We created 'Electronic Communication Skills 367' to ensure that students have the Internet skills they need for the future," Courtright said.

Except for the first session, there are no classes to attend. The instructions that allow a student to learn Internet techniques are on each assignment page and if a student is having trouble with a lesson, the professors are just a link away.

The course begins at <http//udserf.udel.edu>, the Serf website.

To get started, a student needs a University computer account, a computer, a browser like Netscape or Internet Explorer and a user name and password.

Once logged on, students reach the first or preamble page entitled, "Communicating Online." It has all of the information relevant to taking the course, including links to Courtright and Perse.

Students will learn how to understand Internet addresses, what browsers are and how to customize their own, how to create bookmarks, how to work with windows and web pages, how to use e-mail, how to do searches and file transfers and how to use listservs and newsgroups.

The "next" button takes the user through the course. Students get their grades for each assignment by clicking on the "grades" button. Because the course is self-paced, a student can follow the course assignment schedule or do the assignments when he or she chooses.

Courtright and Perse had collaborated on a "how to use the Internet" textbook entitled, Communicating Online: A Guide to the Internet, so, it didn't take much tweaking to adapt the book to the Net through the Serf program. Serf, an acronym for "server-side educational records facilitator," also is a product of the University, created by Fred T. Hofstetter, education and Instructional Technology Center.

"We wanted our freshman students to have Internet skills for their upper division courses, but we needed a way to do it that wouldn't tie-up a computer lab with 102 communication students. So, we decided to use the web to teach the course. It was a wonderful merger of technology and necessity," Courtright said.

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