What is KEWL?

This manual will help you access and make use of the online learning system known as KEWL. The acronym stands for Knowledge Environment for Web-based Learning. This software was developed at the University of the Western Cape, initially by the Online Services Unit of the International Ocean Institute – South Africa (IOI-SA) as a product of four years of research into online educational practice by Prof Derek Keats and a team of staff and students. Subsequently KEWL development has been taken on by the Teaching and Learning Technologies Unit (TLTU) within Information and Communication Services (ICS) in conjunction with the ICS business unit and IOI-SA. This tutorial manual will introduce you to some principles of online learning, and help you learn the basics of working with online courses that use the features of KEWL. We hope that you enjoy it and find it useful. Please feel free to send us your comments, suggestions, complaints, whatever. More importantly, please consider contributing to the development of KEWL and its documentation by providing documented examples of how you used KEWL, improving on documentation where you found it inadequate, contributing any content of general interest under the Open Content Licence, and identifying any deficiencies or bugs that you find. Please send your comments regarding this manual to Dr. Matthew Mitchell at matthew_mitchell@wsu.edu.