Students Guiding Students Through the Web
A Collaborative Web-based Project Developing Students'
Autonomy and Life-long Learning Skills
by Natalie Cigankova
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This plan can be used with students of different levels of language and computer literacy skills. The teacher can further tailor it to accommodate the particular students' needs in the particular situations. Students' comments are collected and published in a self-published book to guide the next generation of students through the Web, so that they, in their turn, could contribute to the project and update the information in the Internet Guide for Writing Students.

Outcomes

All of the students evaluated the website review writing as a useful learning activity in their reflective essays and post-class interviews. The results of the formal assessment at the end of the term demonstrated a growth in the quality of students' writing in the target group, participating in the project, in comparison with the control group. However, the results of formal testing cannot reflect much more valuable outcomes, such as growing students' interest, confidence, and independence in learning. The analysis of students' reflective essays and post-class interviews generally support the results of yearly students' opinion surveys, showing an amazing change in the attitude toward the subject (from 70% negative and very negative towards 67% positive and very positive) and growth in students' confidence in writing, although such a change in students' attitudes could be explained by the excitement from the novelty of the Internet. Nevertheless, the experience of almost four years of using the activity allows me to conclude that in this case the difference between students' wants and their needs is very small.

Working over the project, students practice the following valuable skills:

• language and writing skills
Students read authentic texts, take notes, and rewrite their reviews several times to achieve the publishable quality.

• Information management skills
Students learn to cope with too much information on the website, to choose the relevant and to skip irrelevant information.

• Critical thinking skills
Students learn to evaluate relevant information, to compare and synthesise the information from different sources.

• Time management skills
Students learn to use the Internet to complete a concrete task in a limited period of time.

• Interpersonal communication skills
Students learn to work in collaboration to achieve the best results.

• Life-long learning skills
Students learn to understand their learning needs and preferences and how to satisfy them; they learn how to find on-line resources for further independent learning.
The skills that students obtain participating in the project can be transferred to other subjects, improving the overall quality of students' learning.

As possible drawbacks of the web-based project should be mentioned the anxiety of teachers and learners caused by the use of technology, the necessity of teaching computer literacy skills at the lesson, and a slow Internet connection or computer failure during the class. The teacher can reduce the negative effect by filling the website loading time with useful activities, e.g. giving the instruction on paper or organising short discussions on the students' experience of the Internet.

The highly positive results of the project allow the author to recommend this form of instruction as one that is useful, comparatively easy to organise, and highly stimulating.

References:
1. Dudeney, G. (2000). The Internet and the Language Classroom Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. Jones, C. (1986). "It's not so much the program, more what you do with it: the importance of methodology in CALL" System 14/2
3. Sercu, L and E. Peters (2002). "Learning e-learning - a comprehensive investigation of course developers' and language teacher trainees' views regarding the usefulness and effectiveness of a multimedia self-tuition course" In: ReCALL Vol.14, Part 1 (pp.32-46). UK: Cambridge University Press
4. Sperling, D. (1999). Sperling's Internet Activity Workbook. Prentice Hall Regents
5. Teeler, D. and P. Gray (2000). How to use the Internet in ELT
6. Wenden, A. (1991). Learner Strategies for Learner Autonomy: Planning and implementing learner training for language learners Prentice Hall International

The following websites provide the information on website evaluation:
http://www.lib.umd.edu/UES/webcheck.html
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/
Evaluate.html
http://www.namss.org.uk/evaluate.htm

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