UNBC Offers First Web Courses
The University of Northern British Columbia will be offering courses on the World Wide Web for the first time in January. The four offerings from the English program will focus on First Nations Literature, Canadian Literature, Post-Colonial Literature, and Creative Writing.
Students anywhere with access to the World Wide Web will be able to register for the courses, and although registration for all courses will begin next week, interest has been received from students as far away as Kenya, Singapore, New Zealand, and Australia.
Once registered, a student will receive a password to access the web pages, where they will find the course outline, lecture notes, and recommended readings. Writing assignments will be required, but there will be no exams in the Web courses. Students will be able to interact with their classmates and the professor via e-mail.
"Only 40 or 50 universities have offered Web courses so far, and virtually none in English literature, but there are many others, like UNBC, about to launch course offerings on the Internet," says David Dowling, Chair of the UNBC English program. "This is a whole new mode of offering courses that will at the very least have great potential in making courses available to students in our region."
Student performance will be closely monitored throughout the semester with an eye to improving future web courses and making them more student-friendly.
A course demo can be accessed at http://quarles.unbc.ca/english/demo.
