Designing an IT-augmented student-centred learning environment

This paper explores the nature of the relationship between IT and a student-centred quality-teaching environment. It argues that given the need to graduate students with knowledge, skills and capabilities for the extent of change required in a knowledge economy, universities must give more attention to the development of student-centred teaching opportunities in which students learn from experiential opportunities that lead to reflection and change. It argues that IT can be used to augment the face-to-face teaching environment rather than to replace it with on-line teaching, and thus result in an improved student-centred teaching environment. Two examples of IT augmented courses at RMIT are used to explore this proposal using the Laurillard (1994) student-centred teaching model. The paper concludes that the quality of teaching can be improved by adopting an IT augmented approach to teaching.