Introducing the Video Web-board as a Technologic Enhancement to Your Honors Course

Most instructors of honors courses strive to engage students in interactive, interdisciplinary and experiential learning. Small class sizes are almost universal, and discussion format is common. While no one learning style is common to all honors students, academically talented students tend to be intuitive learners; that is, they are abstract and insightful thinkers (Clark, 2000). They look for patterns and new relationships. Technology, such as multimedia and Internet resources, has been recommended as a pedagogical tool to enhance honors and non-honors teaching (Cooley & Johnston, 2001; Hagner & Barone, 2002; Lea, Clatyon, Draude, & Barlow, 2001; King, 1997), and here we describe ways to incorporate technology into the intuitive process. There are several ways technology can contribute to learning. In general, incorporating websites and Internet research assignments provides a means to address multiple learning styles through myriad venues of presenting course content (Clark & Crockett, 2000; Grasha & Yangarber-Hicks, 2000; Hung, 2001). Course websites and Internet-based assignments allow students access to information that can be read, seen and heard, printed, and visited more than one time, for any length of time, through the use of text, digitized images, sound clips, digitized audio and or video clips, etc. Although professors may present course material in a variety of formats in class, such as lecture, discussion, overhead transparencies, slides, video and audio tapes and so forth, the benefit of course materials and assignments posted and/or processed online is that students can review the content as many times as they like for any length of time beyond the one-time offering in a classroom setting. For students who take a bit longer to process information, or who process information in unique ways, course materials posted online and Internet-based assignments are indeed an added bonus