Courseware on the WWW: Looking Backwards and Forwards

New developments in communications and knowledge transfer on the Internet will further transform universities instructional delivery methods

While the major universities now use the Internet for pedagogical purposes in varying degrees, the question that should be asked is whether it leans more towards a traditional face-to-face university in essence, or towards an online university.

We should ask this question with regard to the NUS as well. While our university prides itself as a university that uses a lot of information technology, we should ask ourselves whether we are leaning towards a traditional university which will decay (perhaps rapidly) in due course, or are exploiting the online potential of education as much as we can.

The CIT and CDTL have been great instruments of change, but I sometimes wonder if they are like the person who brings the proverbial horse to the water, but can’t make it drink.

If the experience of maintaining my own course website on the Internet is anything to go by, there will be links to various pages of each course website from a number of university course websites across the globe, from online dictionaries and glossaries or lists of online dictionaries and glossaries, from student assignments that are made available online etc.

This is a summary of the article contributed by Assoc Prof Ismail S Talib, Department of English Language & Literature. Click here for the complete article.