Tapping the potential of the Internet in the classroom : a case study

Abstract

The internet may well change the way lecturers think about teaching, but many of these changes could have happened without the Internet. The real potential seems to lie in the way it changes the relationship between teacher and student, forcing the lecturers, the students and also the institutions to rethink their behaviour and attitudes. In this article, the potential of using the internet in face-to-face teaching will be explored, based on my personal experience with using the internet in teaching an Introduction to Business course at Midrand University in 2000. What emerged from the experience was that something as simple as a website introduces sufficient new elements into the classroom system to change the system of relationships and the awareness of all participants in the system. The change in awareness and relationships, more than the internet change in the methods or tools, seems to explain most of the benefits derived from using the in the classroom.