Abstract

Teaching in the university has been under pressure to change in recent years. On the one hand, there is financial pressure to decrease resources on the other, there is a need to keep quality and quantity of education offered high and to give due consideration to changes in technology and learning methods.

One response to these pressures has been to study if it is possible to build a learning environment for Control Engineering that is available to students virtually. It could help to distribute materials and facilitate overall communication, from course information through student feedback. It could also make studying more efficient by enabling better follow-up of learning and use of interactive functions.

The development of a Web-based learning environment for Control Engineering started from a simple model of learning theories and course content. This model was applied to that context, and an open learning environment was developed and implemented. The implementation is referred to as Control Web.

Functions were added to Control Web and tuned according to student feedback. The probe method was utilised in the validation. Two courses were subjected to under full validation in order to carry out validation for the whole system. Student feedback, grades, and credits during the years 1993 to 2000 were analysed. According to the results, the system implemented has performed well. However, the explicit influence of using the Web-based learning environment can be seen in only few cases; there are too many variables in the overall learning situation. The results and experiences yield an enhanced model for developing a learning environment and a tool that indicates a need to change course parameters.