Return to APA Newsletters IndexThe following appeared in Volume 97, Number 2 (Spring, 1998) of the APA Newsletters
WWW Resources for Teaching Philosophy
Ron Barnette
As more college and university faculty use the Web to facilitate the teaching of philosophy, the wealth of online resources grows by leaps and bounds. Newsletter articles will continue to explore these resources for the philosophy community. The Web encompasses a global community, and the notion of Integrated Learning Communities has become a much-discussed one in the philosophy of education for the electronic era. Teachers and students around the globe can collaborate together in virtual classrooms, and can share and discuss ideas drawn from international resources, often around international themes and conflicts, and can bring to bear a "learning centered" perspective on such. Through hyperlinked web-based information, learners seamlessly cross disciplinary boundaries in pursuit of relevant material for discussion or research, and participate in the interdisciplinary activity of integrated learning. In my online philosophy course, PHICYBER, students from several countries engaged in daily discussion during their shared course time last summer. A spirited discussion and class project involved issues surrounding the transition in Hong Kong last July, and participants from Hong Kong, Beijing, Taiwan, Britain, and Australia added a dimension to the class debate truly unique in the context of the integrated learning community. An excellent website for papers and materials on learning communities, and on a number of topics related to teaching on the Internet, go to Maricopa College's (Arizona) Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI).
Another outstanding teaching resource is the World Lecture Hall, which contains scores of links to sites created by university faculty worldwide who are using the Web to deliver class materials, syllabi, lecture notes, exams, texts, etc. Included is a fine section on the teaching of philosophy, which contains excellent resources for online instruction and assistance.
Several experiments in real-time usage of the Web for instruction are currently being explored, and I will devote a section to this in a future Newsletter article. We have begun a project here at Valdosta State University-Project Millennium-which will integrate asynchronous learning with real-time interaction between students globally, using RealVideo, Netmeeting conferencing video and audio, and Internet chat options. These added elements in the array of web-based instruction will provide even more opportunities for integrated learning in our global community.
Herman T. Tavani, from Rivier College (New Hampshire), has contributed a very helpful article for this volume of the Newsletter, "Internet Resources for Teaching Computer Ethics Courses." In it, Professor Tavani discusses two excellent websites which contain a wealth of information for teachers of ethics who are working with information technology. Over fifty courses in computer ethics are featured at one of the websites , which has links to nine international institutions for ethics instruction world-wide. The comparisons and contrasts, and the interdisciplinary approaches to the instruction, are indeed instructive. Good job, Herman!
NEWSLETTER ON PHILOSOPHY AND COMPUTERS