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Internet in food engineering education -- breaking the geographical barriers |
R. P. SINGH, Dept. of Biological & Agricultural Engineering, Univ. of California, Davis, 1 Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616 Teaching is undergoing a renaissance. During the last few years, there has been a dramatic increase in the availability of teaching aids to supplement the traditional podium lecture. While the twentieth century began with one-room schools equipped with a chalkboard, the classroom of the twenty-first century is a lecture hall with multimedia projectors and live Internet connections. The walls of this lecture hall extend well beyond the planet earth, with live images and sound received from distant spacecrafts. These extraordinary changes in the emerging tools now becoming available for teaching raise important questions. Are these technologies merely passing fads? Do these technologies improve teaching effectiveness? How can one best incorporate teaching aids as useful supplements to traditional lectures? There is considerable debate on the role of multimedia technologies in improving learning. Arguments supporting either side of the issue abound in the current literature. Instructional modules using Internet-assisted technologies may be used alone or as supplements to lecture materials to enhance learning. With careful preparation, including incorporation of features that have been used for decades in traditional teaching, such as Bloom’s taxonomy, multimedia technologies may contribute significantly to teaching and learning. The use of text, self-quizzes, illustrations, animated figures, and spreadsheet calculations are some of the features that can enhance instructional units for delivery on the Internet.
Session 40, Educating tomorrow's food engineers -- Global perspectives
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