Crafting the New Learning Enterprise:
Tales From the Log
Project Number 10 – 1994
Associate Director of Computing and Information Systems
Mount Holyoke College
Dwight Hall
South Hadley, MA 01075
(413) 538-2598
Fax: (413) 538-2246vkumar@mhc.mtholyoke.edu
Other Individuals And Organizations Associated With The Project
German Language Department Mount Holyoke CollegeKevin Prime Chemistry Department Mount Holyoke College
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Library Mount Holyoke CollegeJeannie Jones Library Mount Holyoke College |
Jurgen Botz
Systems Consultant
Mount Holyoke College
Abstract
[Hallo! Ich heisse Christina, und ich bin in das erste Jahr an Mt. Holyoke. ……. Ich finde Fernsehen langweilig, und ich schaue nur ein Paar Programme zu–Star Trek, Cheers, und manchmal Sport Programme. Ich mag Programme die Natur und Kultur, aber meistens gibt es nichts interessant, und es gibt zu viele Werbungen, manchmal mehr Werbungen als Programme! Tschau! Christina [Mount Holyoke student]Christina! Findest du “Star Trek” auch sehr gut?! Toll! Ich bin ein “Trekker!” – Benjamin, student at Ohio State”
“Hallo! Ich habe einen interessanten Artikel in die Deutschland “News Groups” gelesen. Rafael Kobylinski aus der Technische Universitaet Muenchen hat ueber der Somalia-Aktion der USA geschrieben und hat diese Situation mit die Situation der Bosnien vergleicht.” ]
Students at Mount Holyoke College are using the Internet to communicate with their peers at Ohio State, North Carolina State University and in Germany and using resources available on the Internet such as de.*newsgroups, Germnews, etc. to improve their oral and written communications in German. According to Donna Van Handle who teaches German the Internet has not only provided rich opportunities for contextualised writing but for new relationships (and even new vocabulary) to be created.
In Chemistry 150 Kevin Prime, a Chemistry instructor provides access through gopher and a WWW server to class notes, images of molecules as well as an experimental electronic museum that include archival images from different periods of the evolution of the Science programs at the college.
Deut 210 , History and Chemistry 150 are examples of courses at Mount Holyoke that are using the Internet to augment and amplify the educational experience of students.
These instructional projects are part of a growing collection of collaborative initiatives being developed by members from Computing, the library and faculty from Mount Holyoke and the five-college community. Included in this collection are Mount Holyoke’s academic infosystem, the automated library catalog and the course catalog for the five colleges, as well as specialized databases. These projects are the building blocks of the evolving instructional and scholarly infosphere at Mount Holyoke. They are also helping us examine and articulate the educational potential of emerging national and global networks in a small liberal arts college..
Project Criteria
The projects described here present simple, adaptable and scalable illustrations of using tools and resources available through the Internet to add value to the instructional process – be it through creating a highly accessible, resource-rich and unified learning environment as in the case of the Chemistry course, through enabling collaboration and conversation between communities of learners as in the case of the German Language course or extending the notion of experts as in the case of a Computer Programming course.
Taken separately, the individual examples are indicative of different benefits (and dynamics) of a networked teaching and learning environment such as: efficient course administration through use of resources such as gopher, ftp and Newsgroups to facilitate class communication and information sharing ; effective utilization of traditionally disparate and difficult to access resources – video clips, images and library reference materials (Chemistry); utilizing widely available , current and relevant information in Newsgroups rather than expensive alternatives to create engaging and active learning environments (German, History).
Viewed together,and in the overall context of the network based services being developed at Mount Holyoke and the 5 Colleges, these projects represent the evolving transformations in the curriculum and culture of the college as well as a redefinition of how information services are developed and delivered.
Audio-visual requirements
A suitably configured Macintosh
w/ connection to the Internet and a Mosaic Client projection
More 3.1 software