Webct and the classroom

Abstract

About two years ago I got my first-ever job as a university professor, teaching an American history survey to a summer evening class of about fifty in a twice-per-week, three hour marathon with no time allotted for small-group discussion. Ugh! I was very concerned. I’d always believed that tutorials were where the best kind of learning went on. I have serious doubts about the old “sage on the stage” approach to lecturing, preferring, to borrow a phrase from colleague Gary Owens, to think of my role as “the guide on the side.”