Enriching a Course with Web Resources

Abstract

The web offers a lot of resources that might be useful in higher education. This paper describes the experiences with a course that offers a lot of links to web resources. These resources are meant as enriching existing content and are announced as optional. The context is distance education. Through a survey we gained insight into the actual use of the web resources and in the appreciation of the different types of resources. Findings indicate that students differed greatly in their actual use of resources and also in their preferences. Many students preferred resources that could make them study efficiently, such as videos with summaries of subject matter or explanations of hard topics. Students benefitted from links to web resources that go together with relevant information about the resource, in order to be able to make sensible decisions whether to access a resource or not.