home Links critique site site proposal courses database
T525 Project and Project Schedule

1. Project Title:
Maximizing the Potential Benefits of Web-Assisted Instruction: A Harvard Core Program and Its Course Web Design.
Abstract:
The project aims to create and study the design of a course web site for a general education course at Harvard University. There are two complementary elements: design and research. The design aims to maximize the potential benefits of the course Web site to promote teaching and learning while the research evaluates students' perception of web-assisted instruction and hence better informs the design.

2. Student party of one

3. Roles:
Web author and designer, researcher, classroom observer, interviewer, questionnaire-setter, workshop organizer, technical writer, and Web consultant for a professor and his 15 TFs in a Harvard Core Program, MR40. I have already taken 50 hours to develop a prototypeof the course web site based on the ICG model and tested the prototype with reasonable success. I plan to work more on it and to make it more dynamic. The course web site address is:
http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~morreas40

My challenge is how to combine the best course content provided by the course leader with a platform I can build and shape in the best possible ways to promote the teaching and the learning with Web connection and Web opportunities.

4. External collaborators:
Mr. Brian Hoffert, Head TF of the course, MR40, Confucian Humanism: Self-Cultivation and Moral Community, and Mr. Cheng Man-lung, RA and personal secretary of the course leader, Prof. Tu Weiming.

5. Audience or learners:
About 500 Harvard students from different academic disciplines who have registered for the course, Confucian Humanism. They are learning Chinese moral reasoning and Chinese philosophy. (Section list URL: http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~morreas40/section/)

6. Learning goals or understanding performances in brief

Major learning goal: understanding Confucian ethics.

According to the syllabus, "the course will focus on the perception of the self as a center of relationships and the nature of society as a community of trust and as a form of contractual relationships. While our main concern is to understand Confucian ethics--its moral ideals, core values, sense of the good life, and project for human flourishing, we will also explore issues of authority, status, and hierarchy that arise in imagined and actual "Confucian societies" and discuss Confucian views on nature, gender, and human rights."

The aim of this project is to help design a learning experience with Web connection and Web opportunities. Web-based activities for students and staff are being planned. The ultimate goal is to promote learning and teaching for about 500 students and for the professor with a team of 15 TFs.

Understanding Performances:

To demonstrate deeper understanding of key issues of Confucian humanism and moral community by 7. Setting for learning

Where and when learners use project materials

Students meet in two lectures and one section per week. There is no formal class time set for student to use the computing lab and write at the same time. But they are required to sumbit written assignment, and then they will receive feedback from the TFs. Many use word-processing to write their papers.

Other people or materials present in that environment

On the average, TFs read the regular writing assignments or their posting in the Course Discussion List and give feedback. Web access is not absolutely compulsory in the course. Very often communication can be done asynchronously through a web browser and email. Usually, web access occurs outside lecture and section time.

8. Project materials
What the project will develop to help the learners reach the learning goals in the setting where they will learn. There are altogether 25 lectures as shown below. So far I have managed to upload only 10 of them as of 3 March, 1998. This is an ongoing project and the course web site, like many dynamic web sites, is evolving with time and it keeps changing almost every day.

My challenge is how to combine the best course content provided by the course leader with a platform I can build and shape in the best possible ways to promote the teaching and the learning.

The project will provide mentors and students with web access to a digital archive for part of the course materials including:

9. Rationale How the project materials will work with other learning resources to enhance learning, and why this is a good use of networks and webs.

The Project website allows TFs and even outside scholars to interact with students about ideas of moral reasoning in a moral community, and increases the feedback available to students and facilitate communication between students and staff and among students themselves. Interacting with over 500 students would not be feasible without small groups and the help of web use. It were would be much more efficient. But it remains to be seen whether it is effective enough to be worth the effort. What works and what doesn't and why? How do students feel about use of the network and the web? To what extent does it support teaching; and to what extent, learning? That is exactly what the research is intended to find out.

A questionnaire has been designed for TFs and has already been administered to 10 of them and another questionnaire is being designed for students near the end of the course.

10. Conclusion
Harvard University is extremely well-equipped with networks and computers. According to the ICG of FAS, there are over 7000 terminals on the Harvard Campus Network. The ICG has already given technical support to over 200 courses to develop course web sites of their own. It is entirely feasible, appropriate and timely to conduct some preliminary research on the impact of the web on teaching and learning in an academic context.

I have already done a lot of work on it, but I am amenable to your advice and wisdom. Please email CKJor at the address: jor@fas.harvard.edu.

Thank you for your input.

Name:
My contact e-mail:
My input:

Proposal drafted by CK Jor on 26 February and revised on 4 March, and March 12, 1998 and to be submitted on March 17, 1998.

Date Last Modified: 3/9/1998.
George Jor
Contact e-mail address: jor@fas.harvard.edu
URL: http://hgseclass.harvard.edu/t525/students/jor/