Current State of Web Supported Courses in Higher Education

Abstract

The rapid integration of the Internet into higher education raises essential questions regarding its instructional usage and pedagogical potential. Currently, the most frequent usage of the web is for augmenting interaction with supporting course websites. This research aimed to identify, classify and quantify the evolving web-pedagogies used in course websites by lecturers at Tel-Aviv University. To assess this we need a classification scheme, based on four dimensions: a. content (representational structure, content type and quantity, content developer); b. activity (activity type, communication means, activity participants); c. management (communicational information, course and instructional management), and d. instructional environment (web-integration model, learning entities). This scheme is currently being implemented on a random sample of 260 websites from the academic year 2002\3. Preliminary results based on 109 courses are presented and discussed.