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12 Teaching And Learning On WWW

Although WWW was initially used as a distributed multimedia system techniques such as CGI scripts meant that interaction could be built into WWW applications. Much of the interest in the WWW within the academic community is based on its potential for developing distributed teaching and learning software rather than simply delivering information.

Examples of Teaching And Learning On WWW

An early example of a distributed multimedia teaching prototype was developed by Ben Whitaker, School of Chemistry, University of Leeds in 1993. As can be seen in Figure 12-1 this prototype is a simple hypertext application. It is of interest because it illustrates how distributed teaching applications can be developed.


Figure 12-1 Early Example Of A Distributed Multimedia Teaching Application.

A more sophisticated teaching application was developed by the School of Chemistry in conjunction with Imperial College. The example illustrated in Figure 12-2 makes use of a chemistry MIME type.


Figure 12-2 Using a MIME Chemistry Type.

In this example the WWW client is configured to associate the MIME type with the RasMol program. For example in NCSA Mosaic For X the line:

chemical/x-pdb; rasmol %s

is included in the .mailcap file. When a URL with the extension .pdb is selected the file will be downloaded and the Rasmol program launched, as illustrated in Figure 12-2.

Further information on this project is available at the URL http://chem.leeds.ac.uk/Project/MIME.html

The Globewide Network Academy (GNA) is a consortium of educational and research organisations. Its mission is to provide a central organisation in which students, teachers, scholars and researchers can meet and interact. Further information about GNA is available at the URL http://uu-gna.mit.edu:8001/uu-gna/

Mark Cox, Department of Industrial Technology, University of Bradford presented a paper at the Mosaic and the Web conference on Robotic Telescopes: An Interactive Exhibit on the Web. This paper is available at the URL http://www.eia.brad.ac.uk/mark/wwwf94/wwwf94.html

Mark also has a collection of pointers to hardware control services over the Web which is available at the URL http://www.eia.brad.ac.uk/mark/fave-inter.html

A Virtual Frog Dissection Kit has been developed at the LBL. It is available at the URL http://george.lbl.gov/ITG.hm.pg.docs/Whole.Frog/Whole.Frog.html


Figure 12-3 Frog Dissection.

CD ROM Facilities

Providing teaching and learning services on WWW does not necessarily deny access to those who do not have a network connection. Teaching and learning services developed on WWW can be transferred to a CD ROM and used on a standalone system. Such systems are typically developed so that there is a closed set of links. The files (which could include HTML documents, image, sound and video files) and the WWW browser software can then be transferred onto a CD ROM. This approach provides an updateable service for users with network connectivity together with a fixed service for users with access to a PC or Macintosh with a CD ROM player.

National Resources

A number of TLTP (Teaching and Learning Technology Programme), CTI (Computers in Teaching Initiative) and ITTI (Information Technology Training Initiative) projects are using WWW to disseminate information about their projects or, in some cases, to deliver their courseware.

CTISS is available at the URL http://www.ox.ac.uk/cti/

CTI Centre For Biology is available at the URL http://www.liv.ac.uk/ctibiol.html

CTI Centre For Chemistry is available at the URL http://www.liv.ac.uk/ctichem.html

CTI Centre For Law is available at the URL http://crocus.csv.warwick.ac.uk/WWW/law/default.html

CTI Centre For Psychology is available at the URL http://ctipsych.york.ac.uk/

CTI Centre For Sociology is available at the URL http://lorne.stir.ac.uk/departments/cti_centre/

CTI Centre For Textual Studies is available at the URL http://www.ox.ac.uk/depts/humanities/

BioNet Project is available at the URL http://www.leeds.ac.uk/bionet.html

CLIVE Project is available at the URL http://www.vet.ed.ac.uk/

Insurrect Project is available at the URL http://av.avc.ucl.ac.uk/

Institute Of Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt is available at the URL http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/

INTERACT Project is available at the URL http://medusa.eng.cam.ac.uk/~interact/

Interactive Learning Centre, University of Southampton is available at the URL http://ilc.ecs.soton.ac.uk/welcome.html

ITTI is available at the URL http://www.hull.ac.uk/Hull/ITTI/homepage.html

PsyCLE Project is available at the URL http://ctipsych.york.ac.uk/Psycle/PsyCLEinfo.html

STILE Project is available at the URL http://indigo.stile.le.ac.uk/

TLTP is available at the URL http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/tltp/

TLTP Archaeology Consorteum is available at the URL http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/archsci/homepage.html

TLTP Mathematical Project is available at the URL http://othello.ma.ic.ac.uk/

Further Information

Further information about a mailing list for teaching and learning is available at the URL http://tecfa.unige.ch/edu-ws94/ws.html

Pointers to global uses of WWW for teaching are available at the URL http://wwwhost.cc.utexas.edu/world/instruction/index.html

Harry Kriz's paper "Teaching and Publishing in the World Wide Web" is available at the URL http://learning.lib.vt.edu/webserv/webserv.html

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