[LINK] Is 'the Web' increasingly used to mean 'the Internet'?

[Sam Hinton]

Hello Stephen,

Wednesday, October 2, 2002, 10:55:02 PM, Stephen Loosley wrote:

SL> Hi all,
SL> Agreed. Even the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science
SL> and Training would appear to be favouring 'web' strings. For example:
[...]
SL> [...] but that about 54% of the 63,468 undergraduate units and
SL> 30,378 postgraduate units offered at Australian universities are
SL> web-supported."
SL> (http://www.dest.gov.au/highered/he_report/2002_2004/html/1_2.htm)

I think in this case the use of the term "web-supported" is probably
accurate, although it may be by accident :)

In my experience, the online course material is mainly delivered
through the web, usually via some third-party server-side application
such as WebCT (to name one I have played with a bit). Email
communication with lecturers and tutors, discussion forums, etc. are
also often handled through the web interface if it is available.

The web has the advantage of being accessible by most students from
home, can be supported in computer study halls and libraries, and
through one of the educational packages, students can be taught to
"use" the site. More importantly, academics can learn how to maintain
their own things in an online environment (from a trainer's
perspective, it's like teaching someone how to use an application,
instead of trying to teach people "about the Internet")

While I'm sure there are some courses out there (eg: in compsci) that
provide their students with access to some kind of terminal, and
probably plenty (like me) who encourage their students to email them,
I would expect in the context of the DEST report, it's probably
true that the vast majority of courses with an online component use
the web exclusively.

That said, in the interests of accuracy, I do think that they need to
clarify what they mean by "web supported".

_________________________________________________________________________
S.M. Hinton                  Department of Media Studies
Doctoral Candidate           School of Communication and Critical Enquiry
phone:  +61 3 9479 2501      Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
mobile: +61 0401 076484      La Trobe University, Australia

----------
For Link list information see http://sunsite.anu.edu.au/link/