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The nature of knowledge in web-based learning environments.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

A number of pedagogical concerns have arisen as a result of student enabled instructive strategies. As more sources produce more information available in the online environment, the nature of knowledge becomes more relative. Students need to understand how to cope with that relativity by learning how to judge the credibility of online information, and how to participate in their own learning in web-based educational environments ethically and responsibly. A case study of a blended course provides the foundation for examining these issues. Recommendations are made for course design that include a grounding in epistemology.

Learning must be tied to one's own self and be built on real understanding. Understanding occurs when the foreign can be connected with what is already known. Knowledge has to touch oneself and one's own world in some way, without being enclosed and kept there.--Bernt Gustavsson, 2002, p. 18

Introduction

The nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge and understanding are changing with the advent of the Internet. In particular, web-based instructional delivery has allowed educators to experiment with flexible, innovative, and progressive learning techniques. These techniques permit students to contribute to the learning process in new and active ways. But a number of pedagogical concerns has arisen as a result of student enabled instructive strategies; this study focuses on those concerns. A case study of a "blended" university course (campus-based and web-based instruction) provides the basis for assertions about ethical considerations for knowledge and learning in web-based learning environments. Specific claims regarding pedagogy, course design, and for the endeavor of learning and the nature of knowledge are discussed.

With the use of the Internet in general and web based learning in particular, we can take an active role in the creation of our own knowledge. Gatekeepers, whether they be mainstream media conglomerates or individual classroom instructors, play a smaller role in the acquisition of knowledge. For example, we use the Internet to research and diagnose illness (Fox & Ramie, 2002), and students participate in curriculum development in "active learning" ventures online (Pickering, 1995). Because individuals not only have access to online content but also the ability to produce that content, we are no longer strictly consumers of information, but producers of meaning. The ability of anyone with access to online technologies to be an authority, to be a publisher of fact, or to appropriate others' facts, exposes the frailty of knowledge in the information age. Thus, assessing the validity of information from all sources becomes more difficult as the nature of authoritative...

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