Moving Ahead to the Future by Going Back to the Past: Mathematics Education Online

摘要

"People live on the internet because it's like heaven; you can do whatever you want." -Kessler, age 9rnThe culture of the young may, in fact, be a harbinger enticing us to follow a pathway from which will emerge the re-conceptualized educational practices of this new century. The culture of those older will, no doubt, strive to maintain the more golden aspects of their now historical learning experiences. One of the tasks of all educators, but certainly distance educators, is to negotiate the bridge between, so as to meld the best of the collective past, however one defines it, within the pedagogical framework of the future. Athabasca University has undertaken a remedial mathematics project which attempts to do just that. This is an online learning environment which is moving from inter-active to inter-personal, from digital text to digital dialogue, and which is morphing the traditional "student role" into a more engaging "self-organizing instructor" role - all within an "e-classroom" setting founded upon traditional principles, but laid out using modern technologies.