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Science education in the web era.

Article Excerpt
Although education has been in the web era for some years, choosing a direction for educational institutions in this era has been a difficult problem. This article will attempt to give some direction to the institutions and individual faculty members who are uncertain how to proceed. There should be little doubt among educators that the Web offers some exceptional learning possibilities that have not been available before the web era. However the classroom is still an excellent venue for learning. It is our opinion that the ideal direction is one that embraces the best of the old and the best of the new that we will call a hybrid approach. This article will examine some questions concerning education in this web era, attempt to answer the questions, show some web components that are ideal for furthering science learning among students, and take the audience to some of our web sites to demonstrate the application of the web to a hybrid course.

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Education has entered a new era and there is considerable uncertainty among higher education administrators and faculty about how to proceed. Of course, the web era started some years ago, but education does not quickly accept the need for change, and reluctance to quickly adopt possible new methodologies is sometimes wise. Some institutions have tried quickly introducing online courses and many of them have failed to meet expectations. Other institutions appear to be attempting to ignore that we are in a new era and that a new format is available to help students reach a new level of understanding of subject matter. Several new companies have come into existence to offer the expertise to allow universities to quickly develop distance education programs using the Web, and some of them have disappeared. As we proceed along the time line of the web era of education, it appears that perhaps some combination of what has seemed to work in the past, and what new techniques seem to work now is the best approach. This combination approach we will call the hybrid approach. In developing such a hybrid approach, what we need to do first is to establish how, in this new web era, we should proceed to help our students learn to the best of their abilities.

EDUCATION TECHNIQUE

Every educator in every discipline would surely say that they want their students to learn to think creatively as they learn. A method proven to enhance creativity is the learning theory of constructivism (Murphy, 1997; Fosnot, 1996), which is based on the philosophy that learners should actively construct knowledge in their attempts to understand their universe. Educators using this method want the students to have an opportunity to use their prior knowledge and senses in making connections to the new concepts introduced. Educators also want the students to be able to explain a new set of data based upon the new concepts they have understood. Therefore, if one accepts that constructivism is the route to choose for the basis of our educational philosophy, and if we admit that we are in a new web era of education, we must ask "how can educators use technology to guide the constructivist approach to science education?" The discussion here is not the first...

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