I have now explained a number of issues, including web-based teaching, and interactivity and its role in constructivist teaching methods. I will in the rest of the chapter provide a description of specific courses within my web-based teaching programme, and how interactivity was achieved in the course design. I begin with the choices available for a course designer.
Web-Based Course Design via WebCT
Web-based teaching on the 'open internet' i.e. without a course tool such as WebCT, Blackboard, etc. can create a number of problems. First, it may be difficult, as course designer, to manipulate access to the material in terms of passwords and accounts for the learners. Second, many other interactive features such as bulletin boards, chat rooms, and secured records for student activities may not be possible. As such, one can hardly design and implement the conceptual notion of conversational learning community that I have referred to above.
In order to solve the above problems, we decided to do course design via WebCT. Further development of WebCT course design has led to the award of a joint Teaching Development Grant (TDG) titled, The Use of Information Technology in the Teaching of Language and Linguistics courses. Further information on the project may be found at the project website at the following address: (http://www.hku.hk/linguist/staff/TDGBodomo.html)
The courses designed under this project include:
LING2016 Syntax II: The Theory of Grammar at
http://ecourse.hku.hk:8900/public/LING2016/, taught by Dr. A. B. Bodomo
LING2006 Syntax I: Describing Grammatical Patterns at http://ecourse.hku.hk:8900/public/LING2006/, taught by Dr. A. B. Bodomo
LING2018 Lexical-Functional Grammar at
http://ecourse.hku.hk:8900/public/LING2018/, taught by Dr. A. B. Bodomo
LING2011 Language and Literacy at
http://ecourse.hku.hk:8900/public/LING2011/, taught by Dr. A. B. Bodomo
In the rest of the chapter, I will concentrate on describing just two of these courses, Language and Literacy and Syntactic Theory