Creating A Distributed Learning Environment Using Web Ct

The “distributed learning environment” as contrasted to the teacher centered classroom, is growing at all levels of education. Today, the existing lecture model is changing. Emphasis is on skills needed in today’s workplace, such as collaboration, sharing and group activity. The WWW Course Tools (WebCT) was used in the Fall of 1997, to provide supplementary material to a second year electrical engineering course called “Electric Circuits”. The objective of this paper is to show that providing supplementary material using the WWW greatly enhances the students’ learning. The class average grade for the students who received supplementary material using the web was higher than for those who received traditional classroom instruction. The use of WebCT facilitated and increased teamwork between the students because it provided them with a common forum where they could easily exchange information with each other. The use of web based instruction allows the students to come to class prepared. This allows the instructor to use classroom time for more advanced and detailed instruction. Finally, WebCT allows the instructor to closely monitor student performance and track their progress.