Abstract
Our Chief Executive announced in his 1997 Policy Address to promote the use of information technology (IT) in education. One of his aims was to have 25% of the school curriculum taught through IT in five years' time. The author, a computer lecturer, believes one of the best way is to promote IT in education is to prepare student teachers for this new trend. She practised what she preached by integrating World Wide Web (Web) into her teaching. A tailored-made Web site was implemented and students were able to learn some computer concepts by surfing to the Web. Although there are many successful stories of adopting IT in education and yet there were very few studies to examine if Web-based learning are indeed more effective than paper-based learning. Therefore, the author attempted to investigate such an issue by conducting a case study. The participants were pre-service student teachers studying at the Hong Kong Institute of Education taking Computer Literacy (Information Technology) as one of their electives. Two groups of student teachers, one group consisted of ten participants whilst the other group consisted of eleven participants, participated in this study. Each study consisted of : (1) a pre-test, (2) a learning activity - Group A used the materials posted on the Web whilst Group B used the same materials but which was printed on papers, and (3) a post-test. All the questions asked in the pre-tests were asked again in the post-tests so that students well understood what to learn during the learning session and it was also easier to find out the effect of the learning medium. The average Group A students performed slightly better than Group B students in the pre-tests. However, Group B students performed much better than Group A students in the post-tests. The findings suggested that student teachers were able to learn more effectively using Web-based materials rather than paper-based materials. The limitations and implications of this study will be discussed.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Published - 1999 |