Innovation in Web-Enhanced Learning

While virtual universities and remote classrooms have captured the headlines, there has been a quiet revolution in university education. Around the globe, the information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure needed to support Web-enhanced learning (WEL) is well established, and the Internet and the World Wide Web (the Web) are being used by teachers and students in traditional universities in ways that complement and enhance traditional classroom-based learning (Observatory of Borderless Education, 2002). The Web is most frequently used by traditional universities to provide access to resources—as a substitute for, or complement to, notice boards, distribution of handouts, and use of the library (Collis & Van der Wende, 2002). Therefore, most of the change has been incremental rather than transformational. Adoption of WEL has yet to meet its potential—some would say the imperative (Bates, 2000; Rudestam & Schoenholtz- Read, 2002)—to change the nature of learning at university and to transform the university itself.