E-learning and E-quality: Using the Internet
to Advantage at a Rural University

Dr. Richard Cunningham
Department of English
Acadia University
Wolfville, NS 
B4P 2R6

richard.cunningham@acadiau.ca   

Dr. John Eustace
Department of English
Acadia University
Wolfville, NS 
B4P 2R6

john.eustace@acadiau.ca   

Dr. Robert Perrins
Department of History
Acadia University
Wolfville, NS 
B4P 2R6

robert.perrins@acadiau.ca


The Humanities HyperMedia Centre @ Acadia University (HHC) was conceived in 2003 to enable new ways of delivering some courses in Classics, English, History, and Philosophy, as an opportunity for creating other courses, and as a means of initiating program change between these traditional Humanities programs.  The 2006 Meeting of SDH / SEMI, with its conference theme of “The City: A Festival of Knowledge,” is particularly appropriate for the HHC because our program initiative depends upon and celebrates our ability to join McLuhan’s Global Village in a way not otherwise available to those at a rural Canadian university.  The annual meeting of SDH / SEMI will offer an ideal opportunity to provide other computing humanists an account of the successes and failures, the challenges and the opportunities encountered and made manifest by such an initiative.
 
In our paper we will argue that the WWWeb and the internet provide opportunities for Humanities students at small, rural universities to contribute to the generation and dissemination of knowledge in ways unimaginable to previous generations of students.  By thus encouraging their participation in the Global Village, faculty in such institutions are provided with a ready-made argument in favour of the relevance of studies students and society often questioned in the last decades of the twentieth century.  We will advance our argument by demonstrating the HHC’s web presence, including two courses adapted to be delivered as part of the HHC and one or two courses developed specifically for the HHC.  By way of conclusion we will suggest that we now have the technology to extend our teaching not only across disciplinary boundaries but across institutional boundaries, and will invite people to consider developing courses to be taught in collaboration with faculty members at other universities.