Quick Search:    advanced search

GSW Home   GeoRef Home   My GSW Alerts   Contact GSW   About GSW   Journals List   Help

This Article Figures Only Full Text Full Text (PDF) Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Butler, J. C. Search for Related Content GeoRef GeoRef Citation

The gap between learners is decreasing

Geosciences, University of Houston, Texas, U.S.

Corresponding author: J. Butler, jbutler@uh.edu

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

During nearly 35 years of university-level teaching at Miami University and the University of Houston, I have had numerous opportunities to be involved in teaching nondegree-seeking professional geoscientists in an off-campus setting. I was generally dissatisfied with the outcome. The learners tended to be passive. Material was presented in large time blocks, and it was up to the learners to pick and choose those topics that they would pursue on their own. There was little if any time to evaluate their understanding of the principles and to make suggestions as to what to do next. Thus, I drew a boundary between teaching in a formal course and teaching in a training program. This boundary is rapidly becoming fuzzy.

Two things have caused me to rethink many of my previous beliefs about learning: (1) the distributed nature of the Internet with its unlimited access to an increasing wealth of information, and (2) interactive multimedia applications which involve the learner in the process.

	The sage on the stage

 
Up until a few years ago I believed that there was only one way to teach: face-to-face in a classroom with the teacher as the focus of the process—that was the way I was taught and the way I taught. I was forgetting, however, that I had the luxury of being a full-time student. Things have changed.

At the University of Houston (UH) we have a part-time/full-time student body. The average undergraduate (out of some 24 000) enrolls in almost 12 hours per semester, which is enough to be considered full time. The average freshman and sophomore work about 25 hours per week off-campus; juniors and seniors work about 30 hours per week. Adding to this work schedule an academic time commitment of about 70 hours/week for our average students is more than 100 hours per week, not counting . . . [Full Text of this Article]