APA Newsletters
Fall 1999
Volume 99, Number 1

In this course I have adopted a variety of different pedagogical and delivery models that may be of interest to other professors. I would be glad to answer any questions and I warmly invite people to visit the sites mentioned or join in on the discussion (see below). I am always looking for persons interested in developing parallel offerings of the course or who would like to discuss their work with my students on line.

Cyberphilosophy examines various philosophical issues surrounding the advent of the Internet including such things as privacy and copyright, on-line democracy, the nature of virtual reality, and community. It is not a "computer ethics" course but sometimes various ethical issues do come up. The course stresses the need for students to become computer literate as well as experienced, critically reflective, users. Accordingly, this is a philosophy class that has a lab component. Students learn basic Web skills including applying critical thinking skills toward evaluating sites. Students must create personal home pages to post their essays and develop an on-line presence. Being able to post essays on the Internet using HTML is seen as important element akin to developing writing skills in order to express oneself. Furthermore, it promotes the exchange of ideas outside the confines of the classroom to a potentially large audience.

Students participate in weekly "learning cells" that allow for the exchange of ideas in a thoughtful manner rather than requiring the instructor to force the conversation one way or another. It also solves the problem of having students who are not prepared or who dominate the class discussions. These questions get the student to think about the issue as well as begin the process of regularly writing, which anecdotal evidence suggests helps them formulate their ideas more clearly as the course progresses. Each week the student must provide two questions and answers based on the readings. The questions can be of the sort "What did the author mean by . . . ?" or "What are the consequences of such and such?" or "Is such and such a good idea?" All of these questions typically reflect the student’s own personal wish to grasp the material better.

By also requiring the students to attempt to answer their own questions, it forces the students to reflect upon the issue at hand. By allowing his or her peers to engage in further discussion of the formulated questions (in small groups of 4 or 5), the student can, in a non-threatening environment, learn and share ideas with others.

These Learning Cells are continued on line as the course progresses on our dedicated e-mail list (you could also use a electronic bulletin board). The list is open for others to join but currently the list has primarily been shared by students at the University of Alberta who are also taking the same course by a different instructor, Dr. Wes Cooper. I say "same course" since we used the same textbook and similar readings and assignments. Furthermore, students used a Moo or Multi-user dungeon, object-oriented. The Moo is a text-based virtual environment that allows for real time interaction regardless of the person’s real location. Thus, theoretically, my students could engage in discussions with students from anywhere in the world.

Related to the use of the discussion list and the virtual environment, my students were assigned the novel The Golden Compass by the award-winning author Philip Pullman. This novel is set at Oxford University but in a universe that is slightly different than ours, namely, the world is populated with professors and students but also witches and angels and talking polar bears. The individuals are very similar to us and are able to "cross over" to our realm (leaving room for book II: The Subtle Knife). Thus, it was not hard to see this work as capturing some elements of "cyberspace." After reading the book, the students were able to directly converse with the author via our discussion list since Mr. Pullman graciously signed on and into the virtual classroom for 3 weeks via his email account in the United Kingdom. Mr. Pullman later visited the Moo (which is based on the Golden Compass theme) to chat with the students in real time.

Needless to say, the students were thrilled by the experience as was I since it meant that the students could bypass my interpretations of the work and go directly to the source.

Near the end of the term, Wes Cooper, who was teaching the same course at the University of Alberta, allowed us to read one of his on-line papers and then we set up an interactive television conference (two-way video and audio) whereby all the students who had been "working together" on line for the past 3 months could see each other’s faces as well as receive a live lecture by Dr. Cooper.

Finally, the other major component of the course was the development of a student-centered on-line journal dedicated to the topic of Cyberphilosophy. Students in the class worked on different elements of the project, including sitting on an editorial board and reviewing submitted student essays (UCC students reviewed U of A students’ essays and vice versa in order to avoid any partiality). Some students wrote reviews of relevant Web sites while others reviewed on-line articles. Other students who were knowledgeable about computers volunteered to do the html coding and design of the site.