Survey on www-based didactics

By Morten Flate Paulsen and Torstein Rekkedal

For additional information, see: http://www.nki.no/ekko/for_alle/fagartikler/icdepenn.html and http://www.nki.no/ekko/for_alle/fagartikler/icdepenn.html

This survey will focus didactics of www-based teaching and teaching techniques utilized in synchronous and asynchronous communication in courses with paced and unpaced progression.

Asynchronous communication means communication where sender and receiver are not using the medium at the same time. Unpaced progression means that students can enrol whenever they want and use the time they need to finish the course.

It is an interesting observation that:

• traditional universities tend to prefer paced progression and synchronous communication
• open universities tend to prefer unpaced progression and asynchronous communication

How will these models influence on the www-based didactics?

A teaching technique is a manner of accomplishing teaching objectives. The techniques could be organised according to the four communication paradigms which all could be accessed via a www-based user interface. First, the techniques classified as one-alone are characterised by retrieval of information from online resources and the fact that a student can perform the learning task without communication with the teacher or other students. Second, the techniques classified as one-to-one can be conducted via e-mail applications. Third, the techniques discussed as one-to-many will typically be conducted via World Wide Web, bulletin boards or distribution lists for e-mail. Finally, the techniques presented as many-to-many can be organised within computer conferencing systems, bulletin board systems, or distribution lists for e-mail. A comprehensive literature review conducted by Paulsen (1995, http://www.hs.nki.no/~morten/cmcped.htm) presented experiences from about 25 different teaching techniques as shown in the in figure 1.