USING THE INTERNET IN TEACHING AND LEARNING - A UK PERSPECTIVE

A substantial body of courseware has been produced in the U.K., but li ttle is Internet-based. The adoption of this material is being stifled by a lack of suitably specified delivery platforms, the ''closed box' ' nature of the modules which prevents local customization and the abs ence of any obvious career development benefits to staff that develop or exploit it. Courseware consortia have been slow to exploit the Inte rnet, even for marketing and distribution purposes. The use of proprie tary authoring software to produce courseware for standalone machines has polarized thinking away from networked applications. It has seeded the myth that writing courseware requires expensive tools and extensi ve experience. Of 42 U.K. geoscience departments, 33 now have a Web-pr esence. Much of the world-visible information is in the ''marketing'' or ''administration'' category. It is likely that a significant body o f Web-based courseware hides behind Intranets. Locating good-quality t eaching and learning resources on the Web can be time-consuming. A sta rt has been made with a number of virtual libraries. There may be a co -ordinating role for national bodies to oversee the provision of pages of ''recommended'' sites, public domain ''imagebanks'' and ''question banks''. The geosciences would do well to look at what other disciplin es have already achieved in these areas. The future holds many possibi lities for distributed and distance learning via the Internet. The arr ival of low-cost ''fat'' Network Computers may solve the delivery prob lem by seeing a quantum leap in the level of student ownership. Howeve r, the rate-limiting control on future developments will be determined by human and not technical consideration. Currently, the opportunitie s offered by information technology are outstripping the ability of th e higher education sector to assimilate and exploit them. Higher educa tion institutes need to ''surf the wave, not be submerged by it''. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.