Why Should We Embrace the Internet in Economic Geography Classes?

(http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/projects/learning_webs2.html)

Economic, organizational and technological changes mandate reconsideration of learning environments. A user-friendly Internet questions educational conventions: Do we still need inflexible semesters, classrooms, class-periods or textbooks? Does the new technology provide discipline-specific opportunities for enhanced learning?

A few broad principles or propositions govern the development and evolving use of the Internet in Economic Geography:

1. The boundary-spanning Internet provides endless opportunities for enhanced learning. We move seamlessly from courses to programs, to community-based and lifelong learning; from textbook to online resources; from single prof to second opinions. Ideas lose their protection and are checked against competing ideas and evidence.
   • CONTEXT: The Internet has the potential of providing the larger context for any given class content: Any 10-week course which claims any degree of depth represents necessarily only a slice of a larger context and discipline. A system of Web sites facilitates such a broader perspective beyond the content constraints of an individual class.

   • ENRICHMENT: The presentation of any given substantive class content can be enriched by a wider range of examples, illustrations, applications, alternative interpretations and source materials.

   • HYPERTEXTUALITY: The incorporation of the Internet into the Economic Geography program provides and opportunity to instructor and students to experiment and gain experience with hypertextual presentations of materials or projects and to learn how to assemble internally and externally generated documents for most effective learning and project webs.

   • CLASS, CAMPUS & COMMUNITY: Facilitate communication and activities between disciplines and, as importantly, between campus and community. In Economic Geography, such outreach activities include accessing resources supplied by such disciplines as economics, business administration and urban planning as well as making community contacts with businesses, non-profit organizations and government agencies for student research, internships and Service Learning / Community Outreach arrangements. It is expected that such contacts with the world beyond the classroom facilitate students' exploration of future job opportunities in rapidly changing labor markets and an understanding of macro-structural changes in the economy caused directly or indirectly by information technology developments.

   • CONTINUITY & LIFE-LONG LEARNING: Provide more continuity beyond the constraints of an individual quarter class or students' entire undergraduate program by permitting early preparation (before start of the quarter or the student's freshman year) and continued Web-based "participation" in the class or program-related happenings after the quarter and the "official" part of the class or a student's undergraduate program are over.

   • JUST-IN-TIME: It is proposed that the new technologies enable students to organize their increasingly complex daily (home-job-campus) logistics more efficiently by having more control over the distribution of personal learning environments in space and time. It is hoped that this experience and an increased awareness of such relationships will also lead to an improved understanding of the impact of information technologies (IT) on the spatial organization of economic activities and such concepts as footlooseness or telework.

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2. CLASS CONTENT: The nature, diversity and depth of appropriate Class Content itself is changing in response to new information technologies on- and off-campus [Findings of the Technology in Education Task Force, (Seattle) September 1998]
   • IT: Information technologies themselves become important class content through their impact on telecommunications, telework and service employment. Students' jobs, remote-learning experiences and daily logistic challenges provide valuable cases for discussion.

   • RESOURCE SKILLS: Various active and passive uses of the Internet greatly facilitate the integration of the learning and practicing of a broader range of computer-, communications-, library- and resource skills into the presentation of subject areas. Such skills are not only useful in students' remaining academic and social lives, but increasingly expected by future employers of our economic geography students.

   • CORE INSTRUCTIONAL FUNCTIONS: The Internet reduces need for dealing with logistic matters in class thereby saving valuable class time and permitting concentration on core instructional functions.

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3. Students' own learning initiatives and self-management closely relate to entrepreneurship and professional creativity. Students start hypothetical, technology-supported businesses or become "consultants" with opportunities to volunteer their diverse backgrounds and computer skills in class.
   • ACTIVE LEARNING: Encourage students to accept partial responsibility for their own education and ownership of their learning processes through active, electronically enhanced learning experiences and creation of a learning infrastructure in their own system of Web sites.

   • MAKING CONTRIBUTIONS: Instill in students the idea that they -- through their work on class projects -- are making contributions not just to themselves, their grades or my office paper collection but to their peers and, possibly, larger segments of society.

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4. Flexible Collaboration, enabled by Internet-based classroom extensions, supersedes hierarchical task organization and allows two-way discussions, constructive feedback and multi-channel learning mechanisms favored by modern activities.
   • ACCESS TO PROFS & PEERS: IT facilitates and improves outside-class communication between all members of the class, including between instructor and students.

   • PARTICIPATION: Combinations of in-class and after-class, digital interaction tends to provide a seminar or small group atmosphere even in larger classes and encourages participation of students who might otherwise not participate. Most specifically, in-class discussions can be digitally continued with less time constraints thereby including students and ideas by-passed in class.

   • FLEXIBLE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: The existence of an integrated "class-web" can accommodate many special needs of a student population with highly diverse backgrounds and skill levels (i.e. create multi-level learning environments).

   • COLLABORATION: It is suggested that Internet capabilities promote and facilitate collaboration and acquisition of teamwork skills increasingly expected both in education and professional activities.

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5. Active-learning "projects" mirror increased project-orientation of businesses. Source materials want to be found, while students acquire research and project management skills. Timeliness, "deliverables" and "billable hours" demand efficient structure, support and communication of projects via the Web.