Making the Internet a Workable Environment

(See A New Direction.)

One of the reasons I chose an Internet/Web platform for a distance ed writing course was the promise of a standardized technology, namely the availability of a common computer network maintained outside the campus with fairly consistent software tools for interfacing with it. The university's experience with maintaining its own communication facilities for DE students, largely through dial-in modems, was not a happy one; toll-free phone lines for student access were expensive, and technical difficulties resulting in access limitation at both the students' and university's ends were abundant. So the standardization of the Internet became very attractive, and I didn't need much additional encouragement to design a course on a WWW base.

Considerations growing out of subsequent experience on the Web have led me to several conclusions:

• The "Web" is indeed more standardized than any previous wide-area computing network, but consistency in html formats and Web browsers is not necessarily enough to support a fully interactive course on-line.

• Transferring files via e-mail is problematical, since "e-mail" represents a whole galaxy of systems interacting with each other and causing numerous unexpected results in the transferability and readability of texts.

• The World Wide Web (that is, the browser systems that control our access) is strongest as a central distribution and gathering point for common information within a course, and as a multimedia platform for presentations.

• The WWW is weakest at integrating transactions common to literacy education, such as managing personal messages, coordinating group discussions, managing participation within course groups, and providing for "open" texts that can be copied and written to among a set group of users.
• Using the Internet for on-line teaching, then, may require more than relying on WWW browsers for all course functions.