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. 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 on the personal interchange with his students. The participants were sixty-three students undertaking one of the author's graduate courses at Bar-Ilan University. They 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's personal web site an efficient P2P (Peer-to-Peer) tool that enhanced social interchange outside the walls of the class. Over 85% of the students strongly recommended that personal aspects delivered only on a personal web site should be added into academic courses.