This page has been prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, University of California- San Diego, 16 April 1999, for a session entitled "Cy/iberian Frontiers: Digital Initiatives in Peninsular History." It is intended to serve as a guide to issues in computer-mediated teaching and learning for Iberian historians who are seeking teaching positions or who are considering this type of instruction. Because of its purpose, I have not appended the usual scholarly apparatus. Currently, I am coordinator of the COM-IDEAL computer- mediated distance learning grant project funded by the Idaho State Board of Education. In the other paper for this session, James Brodman of the University of Central Arkansas introduced LIBRO: The Library of Iberian Resources Online.
As is often the case when someone is enthusiastic about a particular style of teaching, I was first exposed to many of the techniques discussed in this paper when I was a student in a computer-mediated distance learning course in 1994. I have described what I felt I learned from that experience in a 1995 paper "History On-line: Teaching on the Internet." To those who wish to interest colleagues in computer-mediated teaching and learning, I suggest that they set up some sort of mini-course that would first expose them to the environment as students so that they can sense the tremendous educational potential from that perspective.
For me, the main benefit of web resources is the way they can be used to promote ACTIVE, NONLINEAR, EXTENDED THOUGHT with which our students have little or no experience. Increasingly, students can use the web to pursue a topic to the limits of their interest and time. The easy-to-learn use of hypertext, encoding with HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), permits a writer to turn any text into a multi-portaled invitation to the reader's participatory exploration. A properly-designed curriculum will provide a student with the an experience of the sort of thought characteristic of serious intellectual work, and in the sense of "one must do science to learn science," will greatly enhance student learning. Many web sites are currently providing opportunities for this sort of thought. As examples, examine the medieval studies site Labyrinth and the Library of Congress's now famous American Memory site. Although I have not yet found the time, I want eventually to integrate resource links, especially to maps and photographs, more closely with the discovery questions on my course assignment pages, like those for my Spanish Empire course. Geographic Information Systems now provide us with an outstanding means for presenting maps and other resources for visual analysis.
The crucial element must be a stress on INFORMATION SEARCH DESIGN. With such heightened means of obtaining information, we must concentrate more on teaching students to ask questions with sufficient precision to reveal what information they need to obtain answers on which to found judgments. Perhaps even more than in the case of print materials, it is an instructional imperative that students be taught how to evaluate the quality of the information they obtain. I try to develop student projects that will give me opportunities to provide such guidance. As examples of how I organize such projects, I offer those from my upper-division undergraduate and graduate-level courses Renaissance Creativity and The Spanish Empire.
One type is ASYNCHRONOUS INTERACTION through the use of e-mail. Idaho State University's student body has a high percentage of commuters and a significant percentage of those who attend part-time. It used to upset me that my office hours were never convenient for all students, and that many of those with after- class questions had to rush to jobs or childcare responsibilities. Now more timely interactions are possible, interaction becomes more convenient for students with complex schedules, student questions need not be lost, and through the use of networked discussion lists, there is greater equity because all students benefit from instructor responses to out-of-class queries from students. Many institutions now make it easy to set up such lists (see ISU Electronic Mailing Lists). Contrary to expectations, e-mail communications are usually experienced as highly personal despite their computer-mediated nature. The great problem is that there is as yet no clear understanding of the impact of asynchronous interaction on the instructor's time nor how best to limit and organize the potentially increased student demands on their instructors.
Even more exciting for me is computer-mediated REAL-TIME ("LIVE") INTERACTION. On-line, real-time interactions are of much higher quality than those in the traditional classroom. Collaboration is greater, and participation in more equitable. Because of its design flexibility and its easy access and use, the MOO is a particularly valuable environment for such interactions. The MOO is a good example of an instructional opportunity that is relatively underutilized because so much computer-mediated instruction is being driven by those fascinated with ever-more-sophisticated hardware and software rather than by the genuine educational needs of teachers and students. I have never been able to explain the MOO environment to anyone who has not seen it, but I discuss some of its advantages in my paper "Non-bovine MOOs."
If it can be organized, the broadened collaboration possible through computer- mediated distance learning could greatly enhance the educational experiences of all involved. Moreover, the MOO environment easily provides a venue for real- time collaboration among students and teachers spread throughout the globe for courses, grant writing, meetings to discuss papers, and more informal social interaction.
All contents copyright © 1999. J. B. Owens All rights reserved.Revised: 17 June 1999
URL: http://www.isu.edu/~owenjack/bookmarks/iberhist.html