Volume 9, Number 8: May 23, 2003
by Michael Ritter,
UW-Stevens Point
Staying up-to-date with current events should be an important goal for students, especially in their chosen field of expertise, but busy schedules may not permit them to do so. This also applies to educators with heavy teaching loads and busy schedules beyond the confines of their offices. Instructors can promote currency of news events in their students by implementing a "Weekly Web Link" assignment in their courses. Submitting a weekly web link can serve several purposes beyond keeping abreast of current events. I assign students in my Geography 353 Physical Climatology and Meteorology course to find and report on a weekly web link. Students are required to visit the Web site of an online magazine, journal, newspaper, or public or private organization, and send an annotated bibliographic entry to me via a Web form. The intent of the assignment is two-fold. First, it helps them stay current with issues related to the subject of the course. I provide a set of suggested web sites for them to use, but they can search out their own as well. Second, the course also requires each student to write a term paper. Visiting a website each week encourages the student to investigate potential topics and build a bibliography for the term paper.
I embedded my email address into the code of the form preventing the student from making a mistake while entering it. It does not prevent the student from making a mistake with their own email address however. The text of the email subject line, i.e. "Weekly Web Link," is coded into the form as well for consistency between student submissions. Doing so permits routing the message into a special folder when received by my Microsoft Outlook email client.
Anecdotal evidence shows that student response has been quite favorable. A majority of students in the course find the activity useful in exploring current issues related to weather and climate. A number of students used the activity to prepare for their term papers as I had intended. The assignment has side benefits for the instructor. The student submissions can be archived to create a course reading list. The list can be shared with students in the class or future ones. Students have also turned up interesting reading that I haven't run across, helping me stay up-to-date as well! The weekly web link is a relatively easy way to integrate critical thinking exercises into your course curriculum. It is a useful way of helping students, and instructors, keep abreast of current events related to the content of their courses. The digital format makes submissions via the Internet simple, cuts down on paper clutter in the office, and the return of graded exercises easy. I encourage you to try it out.
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