Students producing websites -

How 2yO is organised

 

 The 2yO course was introduced in Edinburgh in 1999 as part of a new curriculum. A course with similarities existed in the old curriculum, founded by Dr Allan Cumming, and ran very successfully as a number of relatively large sub-courses, mostly with some formal teaching and some scope for individual study. These were undertaken for several half days per week over two terms. Some parts of this were retained when the new course was created, except that the blocks were 4 weeks long and full time, but the small group components were new. In year 1 there was another SSM project in which groups produced posters. The course organiser Neil Turner also had recent experience of a similar course in Aberdeen, and as there were substantial problem in assessing multiple small group projects in this way, and more and smaller groups were proposed, alternative forms of end-product and assessment were considered. A website could be visible to all and circumvented distribution problems, and gave students some new and potentially useful skills. Steve Yewdall from his IT background thought that it could be done, and developed the practicalities of how students might produce websites.

What is required

A keen and enthusiastic IT person to develop the submission mechanisms and a short training course - preferably with some written information and guidance for introduction, though a large part can be on the web, and much of the learning can be undertaken by students on their own.

Access for all students to a basic web-authoring programme, and of course to computers (PC, Macintosh or other - web pages can be made and viewed on almost any computer).

A few timetabled sessions in a computer lab where problems encountered by individual students can be identified and resolved.

A simple exercise that involves each student producing a simple set of linked pages. (We chose pages describing them and/or their interests, that could be linked to the end-product of the group).

Access to the Internet for supervisors/tutors of individual groups. This was a problem for some at the outset of the course. They do NOT need to be able to make web pages themselves.

What is NOT essential

Large numbers of skilled web authors or people with particular Internet knowledge.

Large financial resources - most educational institutions will already have servers that can be used for these purposes.

What is desirable

Password-limited access of students to their own pages - so they can't alter the wrong ones, even accidentally.

Electronic marking - this may entail considerable work to arrange though, and operating it may test the abilities of less computer-literate staff. However it seems a shame to have the students make websites, then distribute a ton of paper for assessment.

Detailed organisational information for course organisers in Edinburgh and perhaps for those interested in producing anything similar elsewhere is available from this link.

 An account of the course was published in Medical Teacher in 2004.

Email Neil Turner (neil.turner@ed.ac.uk) Email Steve Yewdall (steve.yewdall@ed.ac.uk)

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This page last modified Saturday, March 27, 2004