Johan van der Veen

Building on learner contributions: a web-supported pedagogic strategy

Since 1997, the authors have been involved with the increasingly widespread use of a Web-based course-management system called TeleTOP not only in their own university but also in other universities and training settings. The implementation of TeleTOP was accompanied with an emphasis on a pedagogy that was new to almost all of the instructors involved: that of shifting the focus in a course from the presentation of content to the facilitation of learners making contributions to the course TeleTOP environment, contributions that serve as subsequent learning resources for others in the same course and can be re-used as resources in other versions of the courses and other settings. This article describes the theoretical basis for the approach, illustrates how the pedagogy works in practice and gives some of the results. Construire à partir des apports des apprenants: une stratégie pédagogique par Internet. Depuis 1997, nous avons été impliqués, de plus en plus, dans lutilisation dun système de cours appelé TeleTOP, non seulement dans notre université mais aussi dans dautres établissements de formation. Nous avons implanté TeleTOP grâce à une pédagogie nouvelle aux yeux de la plupart des enseignants: celle consistant à passer de la simple présentation du cours à la possibilité pour létudiant de participer à lélaboration même du cours TeleTOP. Ces contributions ont pu être utiles à dautres étudiants mais ont aussi pu servir à lélaboration dautres versions de cours. Dans cet article, nous décrivons les bases théoriques de notre approche, nous montrons comment cette pédagogie fonctionne dans la pratique, et donnons quelques résultats. Das Einbauen von Anfängerbeiträgen: Eine Web-basierte pädagogische Strategie. Seit 1997 sind wir mit der zunehmend verbreiteten Verwendung eines Web-basierten Kursmanagementsystems, genannt: TeleTOP, befasst , nicht nur in unserer eigenen Universität, sondern auch an anderen Universitäten und Ausbildungsstätten. Wir haben die Einführung von TeleTOP schwerpunktmäßig mit einer Pädagogik begleitet, die fast allen betroffenen Ausbildern neu war: nämlich, dass im Laufe eines Lehrgangs der Fokus von der Darstellung des Inhalts zur Möglichkeit, über Eigenbeiträge der Lerner selbst Kursmaterial zu TeleTOP hinzuzufügen, das anschließend für andere Kursteilnehmer oder auch für andere Kurse als Lernressource wieder genutzt werden kann, gerichtet wird. In diesem Artikel beschreiben wir die theoretische Basis für unseren Ansatz, erläutern, wie die Pädagogik in der Praxis funktioniert, und teilen einige unserer Ergebnisse mit.

Theory repositories via the Web for problem-based learning

This paper describes a series of experiments conducted at the School of Management Studies at the University of Twente designed to improve students’ concentration on the theoretical study materials in a particular course. In 1997 a problem-based learning approach was introduced into a course on organization theory. After the first year it was apparent that acquisition and application of the theoretical principles of the course by student groups was below expectation. In an attempt to remedy this problem, a Web–based collaborative work environment was introduced in 1998 with the intention of encouraging students to read relevant theoretical material and also to reflect more on what they had read, via writing notes about the materials and making these available to others in their group. The collection of reflective documents is called a “theory repository” (King & Star, 1990). In addition to hosting a theory repository, the collaborative work environment was designed to control the flow of work and to enforce rules for groups’ access to the output of other groups, based on their own performance. Further changes were made after the evaluation of the 1998 cycle and a third version of the course was run and evaluated in 1999. A description of the educational setting and of the Web–based collaborative work environment and its theory repository is presented. The three editions of the course are described and the evaluation results over the period 1997-1999 are presented and discussed. The extent to which the discipline of reading improved is evaluated, as are the effects on insight into theory. The evaluation shows that the technical realization works well, but uptake of the instructional tasks for reflection only takes place if these tasks are perceived by the students as being pertinent to their performance in terms of assessment in the course.

Using workflow for projects in higher education

The WWW is increasingly used as a medium to support education and training. A course at the University of Twente in which groups of students collaborate in the design and production of multimedia instructional materials has now been supported by a website since 1995. Workflow was integrated with other components in the website to investigate whether workflow can help instructors and students to have a better overview of group progress. Our evaluation shows that the introduction of workflow does provide added value. Another outcome of the experiment is that the transfer of a business application (workflow) into the educational domain has highlighted some differences and similarities between educational and business processes. This article explores some of these issues as highlighted by the application of workflow in education.