1. BENEFIT OF AN OPTIONAL WEB- BASED SEMINAR: COMPARING WAYS OF LEARNING ON THE WEB Pekka Makkonen University of Jyväskylä FINLAND

2. 2 Course An undergraduate course for the first-year majors: Information management and information systems development Themes (1) administrative view to information resources management, (2) technological view to information resources management, (3) building information systems, and (4) organizational applications

3. 3 Why web-based seminar? Combining learning based both cognitive and social constructivism In the first phase students gathered information and presented that stuff in well-organized way In the second phase students familiarized themselves with presentations produced by other students

4. 4 How? Working in small groups (1 to 3 students) Composing coursework reports in which they reported What they learnt by reading lecture handout What they learnt by searching for information on the web about the course themes We utilized the Optima e-learning platform and its shared workspace feature Presentations were put in the Optima workspace on the web Other groups commented on the outcomes

5. 5 Screenshot

6. 6 Our research goals How the students’ experienced coursework in general, How the students’ experienced authoring coursework report How the students’ experienced commenting on coursework reports How the students’ experienced our e-learning tool (Optima) How did we evaluate these goals? As a part of the coursework the students evaluated the coursework and they gave their ratings

7. 7 What we got The general attitude was positive (mean 4.02 in the scale 1 to 5) The students benefited more from authoring coursework reports than commenting on coursework reports This reflects the meaning cognitive constructivism while thinking about learning of conceptual stuff The use of the Optima tool and the shared workspace features was beneficial (mean 3.58 in the scale 1 to 5) However, the general attitude concerning our coursework was more positive than attitude concerning the Optima. This reflects the meaning of didactics more than technology

8. 8 Next step Improving this teaching setting Problem-based coursework focusing on the problematic concepts of the learning area. In this way students can teach each other better by providing more varied collection of web presentations from different perspectives

9. 9 Video You can find this presentation as a pre-recorded Windows Media Player –video at http://www.cs.jyu.fi/~pmakkone/e-learning/EDMEDIA Slides are there as well. I tried to upload them on Wednesday, but the server did not work.