Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Harnessing the Internet for Authentic Learning: Towards a
new Higher Education Paradigm for the 21st Century
Abel Nyamapfene
College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of
Exeter, UK
a.nyamapfene@ex.ac.uk
Abstract: This paper discusses the use of authentic assessments in a second year undergraduate course in
communication systems and networking to help students acquire relevant and up-to-date networking skills. In the
authentic assessments presented in this paper, students solve real-life networking issues commonly faced by
practising network specialists. The Internet is used as the primary source of information, and students are
encouraged to form ad hoc teams to collaborate in gathering and analysing the available information. However,
each student is required to separately submit an independently compiled individual report documenting the
student’s solution to the problem. Turnitin, an anti-plagiarism software tool, is used to ensure that the report is the
student’s own individual effort. A rubric based on a guide developed at the Washington State University is used to
assess the student’s acquisition of critical thinking skills. Preliminary findings suggest that students generally feel
that these authentic assessments enable them to master skills that they cannot otherwise acquire in typical
lecture-based studies. However, a minority of students in the cohort under study appear to be disenchanted by
the Internet-enabled authentic assessment introduced in the course module. Whilst acknowledging that the
emerging Internet-enabled student-led learning, of which the authentic assessment approach described in this
paper belongs to, may well be the way higher education learning and teaching may proceed in the future, the
paper concludes by suggesting three pertinent questions that need to be investigated further. These questions
relate to the nature of the pedagogy for this emerging form of learning and teaching as well as the nature of the
changing roles and relationships between students, lecturers and their primary higher education institutions.
Keywords: the internet, authentic assessment, critical thinking, Turnitin, autonomous learning, higher education
learning and teaching
1. Introduction
The Internet is threatening well established norms in higher education teaching and learning in
fundamental and far reaching ways. The information transmission method of learning, as typified by
the traditional lecture method, where information habitually flows from the lecturer to the students, is
rapidly becoming outmoded. With the advent of the Internet, the course content provided by the
lecturer is no longer unique, but now stands in competition with other sources of information on the
Internet. For instance, rather than looking up a lecture’s course notes, a quick glance at Wikipedia will
quickly provide a student with the information he/she needs. Not only that, it is now possible, thanks
to the Open Educational Resources movement (Hylén, 2007), to freely access learning and teaching
content from other educational institutions as well. Notable examples of institutions that have provided
open access to their learning and teaching content include the MIT, through the MIT
OpenCourseWare website, and the Open University, through OpenLearn website.
Therefore, as a consequence of the Internet, the transmission of subject content is no longer an issue
in most higher education courses. Now, for students a more pertinent issue is how to make sense of
available information and how to choose between competing information sources in a limited amount
of time. To manage in this environment, students now need to master the techniques of decision
making, communicating effectively and solving real-life problems in real-time. These techniques
constitute the elements of critical thinking. There are several competing definitions for critical thinking,
but a generally accepted definition is the one by Scriven and Paul (2008):
Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully
conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information
gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or
communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on
universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy,
precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and
fairness.
Critical thinking is now widely accepted as a key skill that students should acquire during their
undergraduate studies (Mulnix, 2011; Phillips and Bond, 2004). Hence for the lecturer, the advent of
the Internet means that in addition to successfully imparting mastery of discipline-specific concepts to
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