Internet-Based Learning

           The Internet is increasingly being used for the delivery of educational material and distance education. Internet-based learning allows students to learn at their own pace, access the information at a time that is convenient for them, and provides education to remote students that otherwise would not be able to travel to a classroom.

           Some courses available on the Internet are delivered as a formal course with regular meeting times and places. Other courses follow a self-directed or student centered approach allowing students to learn at a time and pace that is convenient to them. Some institutions offer courses in a wide range of disciplines and topics that can lead to a diplomas or degrees.

         A variety of technologies are currently being used to deliver education on the Internet. These technologies include the use of the World Wide Web (WWW) for online lecture notes, newsgroups for collaborative discussions and class announcements, e-mail correspondence between students and instructors, interactive video over the Internet for remote participation in classes and discussions, and virtual reality for exploring three dimensional scenes. Multimedia is increasingly being used in online education to enhance the learning process.

       The Internet has provided an opportunity to introduce new ways for supporting individual learning styles for students and created new paradigms for instruction . It has been argued  that connecting schools to Internet is not enough to change the quality of education, but rather what is needed is a change from emphasizing accumulation of knowledge, to new ways of communicating and assisting students to learn. Some of the changes occurring to education as a result of new technologies include:

1. A shift from classroom lectures to computer networked access to educational resources (enabled with hypermedia and the WWW).
2. A shift from student as a passive recipient of education to a self-directed student learning.
3. A shift from individual learning to team learning and group discussion.
4. A shift from homogeneous and stable educational content to fast-changing content presented in a wide range of formats.

 Benefits and limitations of Internet-based education

Internet delivery of education provides many benefits and limitations to both the student and the educational institution. 

        Some of the benefits of Internet-based courses to the student include:

• Flexibility to pursue education at personally convenient times.
• Ability to take time to compose thoughts contributed to class discussions on newsgroups or listservs (asynchronous communication).
• Ability to interact with classmates in different locations using real time text, audio, or video (synchronous communication).
• Reduction or elimination of travel cost to attend lectures.
• Wider range of students in a class (regional, national or global participation) resulting in a wider range of opinions and views shared in class discussions.
• Ability to progress in the course material at the student's own pace (self-paced learning) and in order of their own personal needs (non-linear learning).

However, not all students are suited for Internet-based education. Below are some problems, difficulties and limitations of Internet-based courses for the student.

• Lack of motivation can lead students to drop out.
• The Internet methods of communication (email, newsgroups, listservs) may be intimating or awkward to use for some students.
• Students may not be able to express themselves as well using the computer based communication methods as they would in either direct conversation with their professor or in classroom discussions. As a result, not all questions may be asked by the student when using computer mediated communications.
• Cost of computer equipment and communications infrastructure may limit the number of students that can afford an Internet-based course.
• Students will have a lack of technical support in their homes to use the software tools needed in the course. Poor technical support or tutorial help can lead to incorrect usage of software tools needed to do assignments.

There are also benefits and limitations in providing Internet-based courses to the institution and instructor. 

        Below are some of the benefits of Internet-based education to the institution.

• Lower cost in electronic publication of course material compared to printing the same material.
• Faster methods for electronically revising and re-distributing course materials and documentation compared to print materials.
• Using the World Wide Web for delivering courses allows instructors to develop content a single platform, yet the content is accessible by students using a wide range of computing platforms and WWW browsers.
• Ability to re-use lecture materials by simply providing links to previous electronic course modules or externally stored resources materials on the Internet.
• Ability to automatically track student's online behaviour.
• Ability to have automated registration and billing using commerce WWW servers.
• Larger number of students can take courses (not limited by geographical region).
• Potential source of new revenues.
• Automation of the student evaluations with online interactive quizzes.

Despite these benefits, organizations and professors may still resist changing from existing methods of teaching to Internet delivery.

     

  Below are some of the disadvantages of Internet-based courses.

• Relatively high cost of setting up reliable computer equipment and the technical support for that equipment.
• Requires investment of time to learn methods and procedures.
• Lack of incentives for instructors to learn and use new technology.
• Instructors that feel uncomfortable with technology may resist using new instructional methods.
• Lack of support for training instructors with new technology may cause instructors not to learn new technologies and methods.
• Unreliability of equipment being used can cause problems in the delivery of courses over the Internet, which can be reflected in poor student evaluation of such courses.
• The World Wide Web limits the expression of the content to current authoring features. Using extensions to the authoring language poses restrictions on the types of browsers that can be used to properly view the content.
• The bandwidth limitations can make some interactive multimedia applications too slow for effective learning.
• Students typically have a wide range computing power on their personal machines which necessitates the development of lecture content in both high bandwidth and low bandwidth formats. This requires more time to develop and to maintain the content.

 Conclusions

This paper has show the widespread use and availability of Internet-based education. The main advantages to the student are the flexibility to pursue education at personally convenient times and to progress in the course material at the student's own pace. However, the feeling of isolation, lack of motivation, or lack of support and feedback can lead students to drop out. The main advantages of Internet-based education for the institution providing courses is the ability to re-use lecture materials, provide links to externally stored resources materials on the Internet, and a potential source of new revenues. However, the development of Internet-based courses takes an initial investment of time and money, and may not be well suited to all existing instructors.

A review of technologies and student learning styles showed that no one technology is suited for all students and all courses. Technologies should be chosen to support the types of students expected and their learning styles. The chosen technologies should also support the type of content to be shared with students and the expected learning outcomes.

In the future, access to educational resources on the Internet may be seriously affected by the cost of Internet access, and the cost of the computer hardware and software needed to access the Internet. New improvements to hardware and software may create more effective learning environments but the cost of such systems may limit those that can have access to it. In some cases those that need the education the most are those who are least able to afford it. Public libraries could play a key role, if properly funded, to provide no-cost access to Internet-based education in the future

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