Web Technologies and Tertiary IT Education: A Case Study

The theme of the workshop on Emerging Web Technologies: Facing the Future of Education potentially covers a broad spectrum: schools, universities and other educational institutions; academic disciplines; pedagogy; administration; innovation; and, most importantly, the people involved, viz. students, teachers, administrators and, at a remove, parents and society at large. It is therefore necessary to define at the outset how much of this spectrum one wants to cover. This paper reports on efforts and experience of a group of academics in computing in a university who have used the Web as an emerging technology, from 1996 onwards, specifically in terms of how it affected the delivery of education at tertiary level. The paper describes initiatives that led to changes in curricula, pedagogy including assessment strategies and techniques, and administration of students and courses. In innovation terms, the initiatives started at individual levels and gathered momentum before the developments were adopted at a collective level. On the way, there were several lessons to be learnt. In chronological order, creation of a faculty Web site led to insights in introducing new subjects at undergraduate level and online delivery of educational material undertaken by a few academics, the ‘innovators’. That generated pressure on others to emulate the effort, some of whom became ‘early adopters’, leading to demands from them for easy procedures to meet the demands from both students and administration. The overall experience over a few years forced the recognition that undergraduate students were ill-prepared to analyse and understand the implications of the emerging technologies. The outcome was the introduction of a specially designed postgraduate programme in IT with Web Engineering as a specialisation. Pedagogically, the emphasis shifted from quizzes and examinations to project work over a semester, at times continuing on to another semester. New technologies were introduced as assignments, short projects and group projects. Teaching and learning strategies dealt with practical matters such as creating Web sites and Web applications, performance analysis, security and social and legal issues. Finally, students were encouraged to ‘innovate’ using newer technologies, in a fairly well-directed manner by the academics. The paper reports on these initiatives resulting from the Web technologies and contrasts them with the latest developments where student cohorts have started to create content themselves. In addition to the lessons learnt, a tentative conclusion is that the initiative to use emerging technologies in furthering education may henceforth be led more by students unless specific strategies are devised by the academic world.