Early Experiences in Broadening the Use of Web-Based Learning to Mainstream Faculty

The history of instructional technology is littered with discarded technological innovations that promised to revolutionize the way teaching and learning occurred. This paper will describe the efforts of the staff of the Digital Media Projects Office at Ryerson Polytechnic University in introducing an integrated web-based course delivery package called WebCT to Ryerson faculty and students. The goal was to provide and support a software package that would enable faculty considered to be non-technical to use the web for instruction, extending the reach of this instructional technology beyond that of the typical innovators and early adopters. In this paper we will report on our efforts to ensure that these web-based tools do not ultimately contribute to the list of discarded instructional technologies. Specifically we will reflect on the techniques used to promote and support WebCT, our experiences on the successes to-date and suggestions on how to continue to reach out to faculty not already using web-based tools for instruction