Teaching acoustics courses on the Internet

Abstract

This paper describes a general education course in acoustics taught over the internet. This makes the course available to colleges and universities not currently teaching courses in acoustics. The paper discusses challenges faced in offering on-line courses, such as homework, labs, and exams. This course uses a software package called webct, which provides an administrative backbone for the course. The backbone includes: web navigation, exam base, threaded discussions, and tools to track students. Exam questions include formula-based questions for which each student receives a different input variable which is automatically calculated and compared to the student’s answer. One difficulty in creating a web-based course is providing a hands-on lab experience. Traditional labs were converted into web activities and home activities. Web activities use the internet to supplement information found in the text. Home activities allow students to perform experiments at home which are later submitted through the web. All submissions and grading is done on the web, including homework, exams, web and home activities. The course works well for handling the large number of students commonly found in general education courses while providing access to nonconventional students taking the course through distance education.