Diane Newton, School of Social and Workplace Development, Southern Cross University, dnewton@scu.edu.au
Meg O'Reilly,Teaching and Learning Centre, Southern Cross University, moreilly@scu.edu.au
Allan Ellis, School of Social and Workplace Development, Southern Cross University, PO Box 157, Lismore, NSW 2480, Australia, aellis@scu.edu.au
The development of the World Wide Web (the Web) by Burners-Lee, Cailliau and others at CERN was motivated by the desire to create a tool for communication and collaboration (Burners-Lee and Fischetti (1999); Gillies and Cailliau (2000)). Just over 10 years after its invention the capacity of the Web to provide a fast, efficient, relatively low cost global communications tool has been realised by millions of daily users.
Universities were early adopters of Web technology in the early 90s. By the mid 90s many departments and centres had at least a home page or pages. Five years later the challenge for the managers of these Web sites is to provide a resource that contains comprehensive information that is well laid out and easy to navigate. Increasingly a Web site is becoming the first point of contact or "front door" to an organisation. Increasingly the status of an organisation is being judged by its Web site and what it communicates.
The Teaching and Learning Centre (TLC), Southern Cross University has three main roles within the institution:
1. providing one-to-one and tutorial group support for students in tertiary study within disciplinary contexts
2. supporting curriculum design, staff development and quality assurance processes
3. carrying out educational design for flexible approaches to teaching and learning.
These activities are conducted within an environment of scholarship and research.
O'Reilly, Ellis and Newton (in press), recommend various resources and activities that effectively support online teaching and learning on a staff development web site. The Director of the TLC accepted these recommendations with the suggestion of adding current information on sources of project/grant funding.
In 1997, the first TLC Web site was established as a sub-set of the University's Homepage to provide information about staff and services of the TLC. It contained a brief synopsis of the functions of the TLC and contact details of its three full-time staff members. As the TLC's staff and service base has expanded, the staff have been increasingly replicating their workshops and presentations while the Web site has not been updated to reflect changes or supplement workshop activities.
It is the aim of this poster to show a new impetus for utilising a publicly accessible aspect of the Web site to enable staff to work more efficiently and effectively and to support students in their experience of online education.
The pages in this site as at January 2000 were:
1. index page [HREF1] -welcome, contact information, site index
2.about the centre [HREF2] -brief description of TLC history and staff and their contacts
3. staff profiles [HREF3] -profiles of staff members complied by Centre
4. learning assistance [HREF4] -description and link to Learning Assistance
5. external links [HREF5] -to outside organisations involved with higher education
6. policies & procedures [HREF6] -links to University policies and forms
7. programs [HREF7] -list of workshops offered by Centre staff directory
8. staff directory [HREF8] -Staff Office generated staff list
An increasingly interactive site that encourages collaboration within the different sections of the University and between other relevant external organisations. A site that supports greater public access in the provision of current and relevant online staff development activities and resources. The site will increasingly inform the activities of the TLC.
Gillies,J. and Cailliau,R. (2000). How the Web Was Born : The Story of the World Wide Web. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Burners-Lee,T. & Fischetti, M.(1999). Weaving the Web : The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web. Harper:San Francisco.
O'Reilly, M., Ellis, A. & Newton, D. (In
press). The Role of University Web Pages in Staff Development:
Supporting Teaching and Learning Online. 6th Australian
World Wide Web Conference, AusWeb2K, Cairns, 12-17th June, 2000.
Southern Cross University Press: Lismore.
Diane Newton, Meg O'Reilly and Allan Ellis © 2000. The author assigns to Southern Cross University and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The author also grants a non-exclusive licence to Southern Cross University to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web.