A Case Study of a Web-based Culture Class by HCRG: "A Study of Culture with Web"

This paper begins with the fundamental dilemmas of the culture class offered by the literature departments such as the obscure boundary of the culture class, the lack of professional qualification of the literature and linguistics major professors, and the inflexible curriculum of the current university system. "A Study of Culture with Web" is a pilot project to figure out a way to solve or alleviate such dilemmas with a new pedagogical paradigm materialized by a new model of an off-line culture class making the best of web-based cyber class environment. The main part of this paper is a detailed explanation of the rationale of the newly developed website containing "A Study of Culture with Web" with captured images of major menus: Webcontents, Exhibition, Database, and Hypertext Lecture Notes. These manual type descriptions however are given as technological expressions of a series of new pedagogical disciplines such as teaching as collaboration rather than unilateral lecturing, active learning, bi-directional interchanges between teacher and student, and the curriculum as a continuum. The next section examines the possible constructive effects the new pedagogy of "A Study of Culture with Web" could bring about. This paper argues that the new pedagogical model materialized by the menus of HCRG website might be not only a possible way-out from the dilemmas of the culture class within the curriculum of literature departments but also a promising model of the liberal education in general that is under increasing pressure from the rapidly changing information society. This paper concludes the argument by offering a few conditions for the success of "A Study of Culture with Web": the continuous update of the database with quality contents, the correct understanding of the new pedagogical disciplines by both teachers and students, the priority of humanistic thinking over the technological maneuverings, and more systematic institutional supports for the pioneering teachers who develop, maintain, and upgrade the forward looking educational device of the information society.

Journal of English Studies Education 9-1(2005):157-184 

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