Effectiveness of a web-enhanced young adult literature class
using online tools and eight-week face-to-face contact with
students
Dianne Koehnecke
During the spring semester of 2007, graduate students took a young adult literature course at
a Midwestern university. This course was unique in two ways: the course, for the first time in the
many years it had been taught, was divided into separate graduate and undergraduate sections; and
second, WebCT was used to enhance course participation and evaluation. The course was based on
the theory of Wilcox and Wojnar (2000),that building an online course needed to focus on content
knowledge, pedagogy, and higher-order thinking dispositions. These authors stressed that
transferring content to an online environment required technological expertise and facilitating
growth in a student’s knowledge base through interaction of literacies that required mindfulness.
Although the class was totally online, it did add many of the online practices Wilcox and Wojnar
emphasized were required in an effective course: it was student-centered, authentic, social,
collaborative, democratic, and challenging. The course reflected the theory that technology in the
classroom is a literacy that is as important as reading, writing, listening, speaking, thinking and
viewing.
This realization increased during the following year, 2008, when the university adapted the
Blackboard Vista system and faculty members were given the opportunity to utilize a much more
streamlined web-enhanced class feature. Additional training provided by a technology development
specialist encouraged faculty participation. Instructors who chose to use the web-enhanced course
varied from those who merely posted assignments on the system to others, who essentially designed
their course to replicate an on-line course, with one
Dianne Koehnecke is an Associate Professor of
major difference: the class also met face-to-face for
Education and chair of the Communication Arts,
four hours per week during an eight-week period.
Aesthetic Education, Reading, and Early
Various theories of best practice were
Childhood graduate program at Webster
reviewed, such as Daniels and Bizar’s (1998)
Methods that Matter: Six Structures for Best
University. She has a Ph.D. from St. Louis
Practice; Zemelman, Daniels and Hyde’s (1998) Best
University (1992) in Curriculum and Instruction
Practice Standards for Teaching and Learning in
with a minor in English. She also has her Reading
America’s Schools; and Fulwiler’s (1998)
Specialist certification. She teaches reading,
Professional Portfolios for Teachers. All of these
writing, and literature classes at Webster. She
texts encouraged basic pedagogical skills, such as
has written six young adult books for striving
integration, small group activities, classroom
readers and continues to write and review
workshops, authentic experience, reflective
assessment, and connecting. Other texts on best
academic journals and books. Her hobbies are
practice pedagogy that incorporated technology
swimming, walking, traveling, and spending as
into best practice included Bolter’s (1998) Hypertext
much time as possible with her grandchildren.
and the Question of Visual Literacy and Wiggins and
McTighe’s (1999) Understanding by Design. Bolter
emphasized that multimedia reading skills are generic literacies in the information age, while Wiggins
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