Resource Discovery: Identifying,Evaluating and Integrating Digital Networked Resources Within the Learning Process

Abstract

The phenomenal popularity of the World Wide Web (WWW) is now well documented, and there is a broad acceptance of the range of digital networked educational materials in the field of medicine available through this medium. Such is the popularity of the WWW, that students will increasingly expect an element of course delivery to be supported through it: they will be aware that lecture notes, case studies, MCQs and entire courses even, are available worldwide. The pervasive nature of the medium is convincingly illustrated by the example of UCLA this summer, where the provision of a web page for every undergraduate course in its largest unit, the College of Letters and Science, became mandatory (Young 1997).

According to the Dearing Report (point 13.3), 'for the majority of students, over the next ten years the delivery of some course materials and much of the organisation and communication of course arrangements will be conducted by computer' (NCEHE, 1997). While the WWW offers an excellent medium for course administration, this paper focuses primarily on issues relating to the use of the WWW for course content delivery: examples of evaluation initiatives that have been undertaken to date are reviewed, and models of integrating networked resources in the context of course delivery are considered.

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