Didactic Scenarios For An Effective Use Of Weblectures

In this research project, running from 1st October 2009 till September 2011, seven
institutions of higher education and five university faculties will conduct pilots on how to
use web lectures effectively in order to face the challenges of the on-going innovations in
higher education: the increase in distance education enrollments, flexible learning paths,
diversification of learners, and the implementation of "guided independent learning",
which is the directive educational concept at the University of Leuven and its affiliated
institutions of higher education.
As well as to offer a solution for the quantitative reduction of face to face contact time
between students and lecturers (seat based lessons), the project will promote the use of
web lectures as an innovative teaching method to improve the quality of contact time,
whereby the teaching method evolves towards ' guidance of the individual learning
process of students'.
The paper presents the results from the first phase of the project: the didactic concept
and didactic scenario's for a good educational use of web lectures, derived from literature
review and SWOT analysis of (best) practices. Four application areas are described: the
use of web lectures in support of lab exercises, lectures, remedial teaching/courses and
video streaming of physics experiments or processes.
The paper also illustrates the experimental design of the case studies/ pilot projects that
will be carried out. The results of the case studies are primarily meant to optimize the
didactic scenario's, in providing guidelines on:
- Embedding the web lecture into the total teaching-learning process.
- Instructional design of the web lecture itself
- Technical usability aspects of different production techniques and multi-media.
The project methodology for generating and selecting pilots is problem-based. The
rational is that the 'added didactic value' in improvement of study results as well as in
study behavior will be more obvious when a problematic teaching/learning situation can
be solved. This is intrinsically motivating to the lecturers