Some documents and websites related to development of the web as a communication and learning tool for classes in Biology at Dalhousie University 1998 to 2008

The Talking Classroom: Class description for Biology 3068.03B AGROECOSYSTEMS, 2000/2001 The link is to a web page that advertised this class for the years 2000 and 2001. The class was delivered in one 2-hour classroom session and one 3-hour Computer Learning Lab session each week. Collaborative and problem-based active learning techniques were applied in the classroom. In the labs, students learned Web Literacy skills and worked on assignments individually and in groups. Web-linked professor-student and student-student interactions and online delivery of class materials occurred outside of classroom sessions. A password protected Class Work Site served to coordinate class activities. A formally published, publicly accessible class site on Agroecosystems was maintained and further developed though class activities. A few more details The students were organized in groups of 4 -6 (total enrolment 20-25 students). Classroom sessions involved Factual Learning in one week and Problem-Solving in the second week, these repeated until the final two classroom sessions in which students reported on their individual class projects. In the classroom, students were organized physically according to their groups; groups were given a list of questions to answer and discuss in the Factual Learning weeks, and a page with a quantitative problem to solve in the problem-solving weeks. The students The Talking Classroom. Click on image to view video worked on these assignment within their groups for 1 hour then had a 15 minute break, followed by a 'plenary' with reports from each group and related discissions. The professor did not lecture, rather he kept a list of topics that he wanted to cover and introduced them opportunistically in the course of class discussions. It was a 'talking classroom' with students initiating and doing most of the talking. Students applied the "Web Literacy" skills that they aquired in the first four labs (mainly some basic HTML and image manipulation techniques and some of the nuances of writing for the web) to (i) make personal web pages to introduce themselves to the whole class and (ii) report on their literature research projects in the form of a web site. Simple, php-based discussion forums had been developed for this class by a computer science student; each group had their own discussion forum which they used to communicate outside of the classroom.