Changing the Learning Paradigm through the STC-Link Electronic Archive

Abstract

This paper describes an undergraduate, upper-division, multicultural core course at the University of Colorado at Denver entitled “Science, Technology, and Culture” and its companion electronic archive, “STC-Link.” STC-Link, an Internet web site, contains a syllabus with class assignments, e-mail, chat capability, and student generated materials from several case histories: “The Animas La Plata Project”; “Hohokam Irrigation”; “The San Luis Valley Aquifiers”; “Inka Fountains and Water Works”; and “Culture and the Internet.” The case histories are stored as HTML files and are retrievable through technology to illustrate interrelationships in science, technology, and culture, emphasizing issues related to race, gender, and the individual. A full third of the class is devoted to a design project, where students are web page developers, making them active participants in authoring STC-Link for future students and researchers. As a teaching aid in the classroom and at distance, STC-Link encourages cooperative learning and facilitates a more open and experiential understanding of technology and culture. Through rapid retrieval of images, maps, graphs, formatted text, and remote web sites relevant to the topic at hand, students and the instructor realize a new teaching paradigm. The paper concludes with three observations. First, so far, the best use of STC-Link as a teaching tool is in the design aspect of the course, because of the participatory nature of this use of the archive. Second, the success of STC-Link as an electronic stand-alone archive leads the writers to anticipate further development of the archive as an Intranet and on-line distance education course. Third, after three years of using STC-Link in the classroom, the writers are convinced that new teaching technologies, especially the Internet and the Web, will radically change the nature of classroom and extra-classroom instruction. These changes are itemized in the conclusion. The web site address is: http://www.cudenver.edu/stc-link.