An Introduction to Using the World Wide Web in Ethics Teaching and Research |
Internet resources on philosophy in general |
Some helpful search tools on the world wide web |
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Links to other sites which, while not dealing directly with ethics, may be very useful to those working in this area |
Catholic resources on the net |
A Little Bit of History
The world wide web took us all by surprise. The internet had been around for a few years, but its use--except for e-mail--was largely confined to a comparatively small group of academics and researchers who were willing to master the intricacies of Unix servers and such things as ftp. Simple operations, such as transferring a file from one computer to another or attaching a document to an e-mail, were incredibly complex operations for most of us.
The world wide web changed all that, because it brought to the internet a graphical interface. One obvious benefit of that was that it then became possible to integrate pictures (and color) into text, but there was an even more important and more pervasive benefit. It became possible to navigate the web merely by pointing and clicking. No longer did a user need to know complex commands--in fact, it was largely unnecessary that one even know how to type well. Transferring files could be done simply with a few clicks of the mouse. Navagating from one site to another could largely be accomplished by clicking a mouse as well, and when a good site was found, another click added it to one's folder of bookmarks.
With the coming of the web, what users saw on the screen changed dramatically. No longer did people see lists of files, often with cryptic names. Now the names are more expressive, and often accompanied by helpful graphics. But there is a deeper change that occurred at the same time. Because it was now so easy to enter links from a particular spot in one file to another file (or even a specific location within that file), hypertext links--that is, spots in the text where you click and it takes you to another location--became increasingly popular. This had a profound impact on the availablility of information, far beyond that of the xerox machine. Now a document could "exist" in one place (i.e., reside on a computer's hard drive as an electronic file), but could be accessible from any location around the world, as long as it was connected to the internet. With this simple step, sharing information on the web became vastly easier.
None of these developments would have had nearly as profound an impact as they have had if they had been difficult to implement. However, for once in the history of computing, the new technology was easy. Web sites could be constructed with a simple language called HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). Even without HTML editors, the language was simple to use, hardly more difficult than the early word processing programs. Thus two key factors converged: easy authorship (thanks to HTML) and easy links (thanks to hypertext). The result was that anyone could set up a web site, and they could all easily provide links to inofrmation on other sites.
One final element has combined with the preceding developments: colleges and universities have gradually come to see that providing internet access and support is as basic as providing libraries to students.
We are far from the ideal state in terms of the level of availability of such technology. Students who do not have their own computer and their own internet connection can still make good use of these facilities, provided that their college or university provides computer labs with internet access. Typically, students will simply save anything good that they find to disk, and then read the files on a school computer or on a home computer if they have one. Alternatively, some students send themselves e-mail with the pages they have found attached to the e-mail. Many students even keep a copy of their bookmark file on a floppy disk, and access that when using one of the school's computers.
Using the Web in Teaching
There are several ways in which the Web can help in teaching. Here are several possibilities that I have explored with various degrees of success.
Supplemental Resources
One way of looking at the Web is that it provides an incredibly powerful and sophisticated set of resources that can be placed, in effect, on Room Reserve. I often want my students to consult a number of things that I don't necessarily want them to buy. To the extent that these are available on the web, they can simply be assigned as supplemental reading. Ethics Updates is an example of this, and I have used a similar metaphor in my article, "The Virtual Seminar Room: Using the World Wide Web in Teaching Ethics," Teaching Philosophy, December, 1996.
An Interactive Syllabus
If one is providing recommended readings for a particular class meeting, and if these are available on the Web, then it makes sense to post a course syllabus on the Web as well. Instead of just listing the recommended readings for a particular assignment, one can simply include the hyperlink to the text itself. Click on our link to ethics syllabi to see some interesting examples of this.
E-Mail and List Servers
International Cooperation
Web Projects as Term Papers
Although I haven't tried this out myself, some instructors are allowing students to submit world wide web sites that they have created as term papers.
One of the principal difficulties with the Web is that it contains so much information, and that information exists in so many different sites, and the web itself is fundamentally decentralized. As a result, it is often difficult to know if the information you want is actually available on the Web. There are two basic approaches to finding out if the Web has what you need.
Finding Existing Resource Guides
The first approach is to find someone who has done the work for you. In other words, look for a site that has assembled the relevant set of web resources for you already. This relieves you of the need to reinvent the wheel.
Providing such resources, grouped by topic, is precisely what Ethics Updates seeks to do. For example, as many valuable resources as possible are gathered together on the Euthanasia page. Readers do not have to search for these sources themselves; instead, they simply have to click on the lnks that have been supplied.
There are plenty of other such resource guides available on the Web as well. Most good sites will also contain links to other, related guides. Use them!
Search Engines
There are a number of powerful search tools available on the World Wide Web. There is also a meta-index of search engines available, which allow you to conduct a search through multicple search engines at once and have the results correlated.. Among the most helpful search tools are:
American Philosophical Association Web Site Philosophy in
Cyberspace - Home Page
Hippias. Philosophical Research On-Line
Philosophy on the Web
BearsEnvironmental Ethics
Journal of Buddhist Ethics
Zeitschrift fuer Evangelische Ethik
Philosophy Department Home Pages
The Ethics Pages of the Johns
Hopkins Philosophy DepartmentValdosta State University
Philosophy Department
Centers, Institutes, Societies, Etc.
Center for Applied EthicsThe Center for Environmental PhilosophyInternational Society for Environmental EthicsStephen Darwall's Not Yet Cool Home Page Center for Professional and Applied Ethics (CPAE)
Business Ethics Teaching SocietyUB Center for
Clinical Ethics and Humanities in Health CareInstitute for Business and Professional Ethics Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics
and American InstitutionsConsortium Ethics Program Home PageSean's Philosophy PageCenter for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at the
Illinois Institute of TechnologyAssociation for Practical and
Professional Ethics
Supreme Court Decisions by Topic
Federal Courts Locator
Library of Congress
Thomas
Time
National Review
The Atlantic Monthly
Tikkun
The New York Times
The Los Angeles Times
There are a number of interesting and helpful sites containing resources that relate specifically to Catholicism. Among the best are:
Society of Christian
Philosophers
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