Round Robin I: Web-Based Learning Models

• Fred Hofstetter will introduce the members of the panel, then set the conceptual tone for Round Robin I by making a brief presentation on the cognitive movement in education, explaining how the Web helps transform teaching and learning from the historically teacher-dominated perspective into a student-centered environment that encourages students to learn by constructing rather than by digesting knowledge.

• Bernard Robin will demonstrate how his College of Education is transitioning from the former lecture model into a dynamic Web-based interactive model. While this is a labor-intensive effort at the start, Dr. Robin will show templates that are being developed to make this easier for other schools to implement.

• Stephen Gilbert will present the student view of learning with the Web.  He will describe how some students at MIT submit term papers online and receive feedback via the Web.  He will further describe how Web environments are constructed and offer examples of the different roles  that the web can play in a course.

• Linda Harasim will present the Virtual University software developed at Simon Fraser with special emphasis on social interaction.

• Jacquelyn Belcher will describe how the models and strategies presented so far support the notion of perpetual learning. From her presidential perspective, Dr. Belcher will discuss how the notion of a virtual university fits into an institutional context.

• The panel will answer questions from participants attending the videoconference, both on-location in Jacksonville, and from the satellite downlink sites.

Round Robin II: Implementation Strategies and Issues

• Fred Hofstetter will present an overview of tools that any faculty member can use to get started making the transition from teacher-centered to Web-based instruction. These will include Netscape Composer, WebEdit, and the Internet Assistant for Microsoft Word, which is especially appropriate for scholars and students writing term papers. How do students find the resources needed to include in these papers? Bernard Robin addresses that next.

• Bernard Robin will describe a project at the University of Houston that is creating a Web-based archive of pictures, texts, audio, movies, databases, and tutorial materials that contributors wish to share with educators worldwide on a royalty-free basis. He will also talk about the new LYCOS Pictures & Sounds library for finding common-domain multimedia objects on the Web.

• Stephen Gilbert will describe how tools like the ones discussed so far were implemented in three different MIT courses. While the tools are great, they are also time-consuming; Steve will note some lessons learned by the faculty and provide insight on what works and what simply takes too long for today's world.

• Linda Harasim will discuss testing and evaluation issues and demonstrate how they have been addressed by the Virtual University software.

• Jacquelyn Belcher will address the critically important issues of access and equity. She will present innovative strategies that she has invented for helping equip both faculty and students to take advantage of the new technology.

• For the time remaining, the panel will answer questions from participants attending the videoconference, both on-location in Jacksonville, and from the satellite downlink sites.