UCSC Review Summer 1996

Web technology is changing the nature of UCSC instruction

Henrik Kibak, a Hopkins Marine laboratory researcher working at UCSC this past academic year, describes the World Wide Web in simple terms: The popular Internet technology, he says, is a "poor person's CD writer." Not only does the point-and-click architecture of the Web make it similar to a CD, Kibak says, but the information can be presented at a fraction of the cost--and distributed much more efficiently.

Case in point: Working with biology lecturer Patrick Elvander, Kibak loaded Elvander's slides onto the Web to create a botany tutorial for the spring course Systematic Botany of Flowering Plants. "Instead of one or two students being able to look at these slides at a time when the Media Center is open, students in the class can view the images at their convenience. And if we make a mistake in organizing our presentation, we can easily correct it; we don't have to remake an expensive CD."

Kibak, who has worked as a member of the campus's Instructional Computing team and taught an upper-division developmental biology lab, has been involved in another project that illuminates the Web's potential to augment instruction: For his spring-quarter lab, Kibak uploaded video footage of sea urchin egg fertilization.

Lecture notes and homework solutions for many science courses have been made available on the Web through the Science Library's electronic reserves project. During the month of March alone, students and others viewed more than 39,000 pages from the archive.

While natural sciences instructors have made greater use of the Web than their counterparts in other UCSC divisions, the Web is by no means the exclusive domain of scientists. Richard Wohlfeiler, the instructor for an introductory drawing course, took his course's Web page beyond the basics. In addition to a syllabus, schedule, list of reserve books, list of required supplies, and announcements, Wohlfeiler's page included several sketches for his students' viewing.

"We're getting requests from an increasing number of faculty who see the Web as a means for augmenting instruction," says Beth Riddle, director of Instructional Computing. "For some faculty, the Web is simply an electronic bulletin board, allowing them to save paper by posting material like course notes. Others are taking advantage of the Web's interactive nature, using it to hold on-line discussion groups, give self-tests to determine students' readiness for material that will be presented in class, or post animations that may preview activities like a lab experiment."

Instructional Computing's home page(http://cats.ucsc.edu/) lists some of UCSC's Web-friendly classes.