Teaching internet literacy to a large and diverse audience

Abstract

Very large and diverse audiences pose a variety of problems for lecturers and students alike [l]. This paper presents an approach used in the School of Information Technology at The University of Queensland to teach an Internet literacy course to a diverse student audience. The course provides an introduction to computer networks and teaches students from various university faculties how to effectively use a variety of Internet services. The subject integrates efforts on teaching Internet literacy at the university in order to minimise teaching effort and to maximise quality of teaching. The paper discusses the variety of means deployed in order to provide a flexible, self-directed learning environment for the course. This led to: The inclusion of QUIKF'ro!, a specially developed Computer Based Training package on Internet services and resources; providing easy access to learning materials from campus or from home; and using innovative assessment methods which aim at improving the process and quality of assessment. Assessment was carried out online and used anonymous assessment, peer assessment and criterion-referenced marking.