Ceiba:Tools for Asynchronous Learning on the Web

Abstract

Ceiba is a set of tools which helps teachers to build their own course-related home pages. On these home pages, both passive and active elements reside. The passive elements refer to those traditional web publications, such as course outlines and introductions, which deliver information only in one direction, and thus, are passive from the students` point of view. In contrast, the active elements consist of student feedback and interactions, such as homework, questions, discussions, and comments. Ceiba has been tested and seems to successfully achieve our three design goals: to provide a more comprehensive way of knowledge acquisition, to provide an efficient means of interactions and feedback outside the classrooms, and to provide a convenient and user-friendly interface to both teachers and students without special computer backgrounds such as CGI programming. In the future we are going to continue the development of Ceiba, expanding its application into many other fields, such as literature, engineering, medical, and scientific courses, while keeping on enhancing its user interface so that teachers and students can feel more comfortable using Ceiba.