Using a Lecturer's Personal Web Site to Enhance the Social Interchange among Students in an Academic Course

Developments in web-based communication technology have opened up new ways for students at a distance to communicate with their teachers and with each other. The literature covers three types of web-based interactions: learner-content interaction, learner-instructor interaction, and learner-learner interaction (Moore 1989, Tribe 1994). However, the purpose of this study was to examine a newer aspect in these relationships. The aim was to investigate the social impact of a lecturer’s personal web site (www.passig.com) on the personal interchange with his students. The participants were 63 students taking the author’s one graduate course at the University. The students were given learning assignments, which required social interaction to complete, using a variety of Peer-to-Peer technologies. The results show that most of the students found the lecturer personal web site as an efficient P2P (Peer-To-Peer) tool that enhances social interchange outside the walls of the class, and 85.7% of the students recommended that it is important to add personal aspects as being delivered only on a personal web site into academic courses.