Saturday, March 13, 2004

Computers and Communications Courses

Photo: Students in my COMM 0003 Computer Lab - March 2004

I have taken students into computer labs since the days when PC's had just 640K of RAM. I still schedule an hour of lab time every week. I tend to encourage students to use computers as more of a research and work tool than for computer-assisted instruction.

Doing useful things in the lab is easy because of the Internet and a tool offered at BCIT. I frequently make use of myBCIT, a web portal for the Institute. As soon as a student registers in class, he / she is provided with access to the portal and an accompanying email address. Most school paperwork and documentation can be provided though an electronic pipeline. When logging on, students are presented with their class lists and an accompanying work area for each class.

I have easy means to add links, supervise a class message board, initiate an online chat, add to our course calendar, or email the entire group in one step. That is a whole lot easier than when I needed to collect email addresses during the first scheduled class! Computers greatly impact our private lives, so it should not be considered unusual that they affect how we teach and learn.