In an effort to review my research focus, and to update what I know, I’m blogging my thesis. It’s more a reblogging exercise, if you think of the thesis as a huge blog, which it’s not. But the things I learnt while doing it are very important and in the 5 years since its completion, I’ve barely touched it. In some ways, I think it has become more important because we are much more engaged in many more forms of interaction. I collected my data nearly a decade ago and my concern was that we weren’t really sure what learners were doing while engaged in ‘online learning’. I’m still not convinced that ‘online’ is different from face-to-face but I’m also not convinced that it’s the same. There are different affordances available through each, and how this plays out in learning is still not well understood. There’s an insidious pedagogy (Lane, 2009) implied with their use, but that is also true of face-to-face. I’ll come to that later.
This is the beginning of my thesis – the background, the set-up. I don’t think there is much changed since I wrote this, but there is a broadening of issues.
{begin extract}
Interactions among learners and between learners and teachers are an important part of online learning environments. Given that these interactions occur through computer mediation via text, which mediates both learning and the interaction among and between peers, with lecturers and the artefacts that comprise the online learning environment, they constitute important pedagogic practices. The online learning environment represents a form of learning-related interaction now being widely adopted by educational institutions. Yet its dialogical, and hence pedagogic, properties remain poorly understood and “fail to adequately address the broader learning needs of the university community” (Baskin, Barker and Woods, 2003, p192). This is because its “pedagogical benefits” rely extensively on how well it allows dialogue between participants (Laurillard, 2002, p148).
{Digression}
When I wrote this, the majority of online forms were text based. We now have video starting to replace text, but interactions almost always require text. Presently, ‘interactions’ are less likely via video, mostly due to bandwidth issues and anyone who has tried to video chat should be familiar with the gross pixelation evident. Perhaps with better broadband this will improve, but that is still a development to come.
Dialogue gets more treatment later, but it is central to interactions. Laurillard maintained that learning was a conversation between participants (teachers, learners and others), and this is a central theme of my research – how we engage in dialogue to learn. We rarely learn without it.
{End digression}
The principal argument in this dissertation is that current initiatives in online learning may fall short of the effective pedagogic practices required for learning in an online environment, because they are not organised and enacted effectively. Many initiatives focus on technological solutions to pedagogic problems by providing standard interfaces – Learning Management Systems such as Blackboard, and processes (Kuriloff, 2001). These interfaces are based on inter-networked communities utilising processes, which have been tested in other types of communities and for other purposes. However, changes in communication processes and pedagogic properties brought about by electronic networking may not be fully accounted for, resulting in some mismatches between educational processes and the underlying technologies.
{Digression}
LMSs (Learning Management Systems) are almost ubiquitous. Everywhere you go, there is some form of learning management system. Each of these involves an ‘insidious pedagogy’ (Lane, 2009) – assumptions about learning are embedded in them and recognising them is sometimes difficult. Shifting to better patterns is sometimes nigh on impossible because we do not even see the assumptions built in.
{End digression}
In essence, how online learning environments mediate interactions among agents (students and teachers) remains to be fully explored. As advanced within this dissertation, this exploration is necessary because the mediation of interactions is shaped by the context of the interaction, as well as the person or persons engaged within that context. Underlying this premise are questions of what these people are doing, how they are doing it and their purpose for doing it, that is, their activities, processes and intentions. These aspects are not always considered or fully understood within an online environment. As the uptake of the use of online learning arrangements increases in pace and scope within educational institutions, so too does the urgency for an effective set of pedagogic practices suited to their purposes and processes.
{Digression}
Any set of pedagogic practices will likely be unique to disciplines and very individualised among teachers. But, there needs to be some way of working out what works without disadvantaging students too much. Learning styles are currently a bit under attack (see the article) but their usefulness is more as a reflective process for students and teachers to consider how they learn. Learning is not a simple activity by any stretch of the imagination.
{End digression}
Individuals’ learning is a complex, multi-layered, multiform activity (Watkins, 1996). There exist a number of ways of facilitating that learning, including the traditional didactic lecture or direct face-to-face teaching interaction. There are many critiques of the didactic style of presentation of information, because it positions the learners as being passive recipients of knowledge. However, when defining a learning environment as an interactional forum, which permits and encourages the co-construction of knowledge, the traditional lecture stands apart as being potentially non-interactional. Current understandings of learning, particularly those evolving from Vygotsky (1978), place a greater emphasis on interpersonal interaction, such as those between peers and between novices (e.g. students) and more expert partners (e.g. teachers) in the activities that are generative of extending individuals’ knowledge. It follows that interactional forms of learning environments are becoming popular and are highlighted by moves to the organisation, administration and enactment of assisting learning through electronic technology, particularly electronically mediated distance learning for geographically isolated students. Early forms of distance learning included the ‘correspondence model’ (Taylor and Swannell, 1997) parallel the lecture/tutorial form of campus-based learning interactions with their presentation of information in packages and activities corresponding to various parts of the curriculum. Inventions of various technologies, for instance audio and video recordings and the telephone lead to different kinds of interactions that, in some ways, became distinct from didactic face-to-face teaching. These constituted the first three generations of distance learning (correspondence, multimedia and telelearning). According to Taylor and Swannell (1997: online), the current use of the Internet in supporting and directing learning represents the fourth generation of distance learning – the flexible learning model which is defined as combining the “benefits of high quality interactive multimedia, with access to an increasingly extensive range of teaching-learning resources and enhanced interactivity through computer mediated communication”. Beginning with so-called ‘telelearning’ and following through to the flexible model, interaction between individuals became a central concern of educators when determining how to develop courses and assist learners. Yet the widespread use of the Internet has resulted in changes to the interactions that are now quite remote from the didactic approach to supporting students’ learning face-to-face, and has thereby introduced new pedagogic practices and possibilities.
{End extract}
This introduction, for it is the introduction to my research, brings us to an important point: The Internet has changed things. While teaching and learning is a focus of research, there are other areas of our interactions that have changed. As I argued in ‘Reading in the Hyperconnected Information Era‘ (PDF), interactions within web spaces, where we make sense of information, are still being evaluated with many, many potential harms. But the overwhelming sense I get from what we can do now is that the positive outweighs the negative. As people learn more about interacting via electronic mediated environments, the more confident they become. This is borne out by evidence from many of the people who argue against the proposed Internet filter, because their understanding of what they do is very deep. Those in favour seem to not recognise the similarities, or appreciate the differences, between face-to-face and online interactions. There is a seemingly negative perceptions of what online interactions allow. For instance, if we consider Clive Hamilton’s description of the way a ‘normal’ boy child approaches the web, we come to believe it is a solitary, limited interactive processes. This is hardly the reality of more experienced invididuals.
While thinking about this the other day, I wondered if there was a ‘oh, you’re new to the Internet? Start here!’ type environment. I thought of it as a forum/wiki/blog space where documenting how to deal with different issues becomes a central focus – how does one know when the computer has a virus, what does one do to get rid of it, how does one tell if this site is the right one – a whole swag of learning processes for ‘normal’ boys (and of course girls, but CH seems to be more worried about boys). These are the things that many of us have worked out over the last two decades. As I mentioned in On being more interesting, it’s almost like a roller coaster – some of us love them, some of us don’t. Some of us prefer a quiet corner of the amusement park, we know to avoid certain places. But often that guidance comes from some more knowledgable individual. That’s an interaction. That’s learning.
References
Baskin, C., Barker, M. and Woods, P. (2003) Towards a smart community: Rethinking the strategic use of ICTs in teaching and learning, Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 19:2, pp 192-210, http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet19/baskin.html.
Kuriloff, P. C. (2001) One Size Will Not Fit All, The Technology Source, July/August, 2001, http://horizon.unc.edu/TS/default.asp?show=article&id=899.
Lane, L.M. (2009) Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems affect teaching, First Monday, Volume 14, Number 10 – 5 October 2009, http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2530/2303
Laurillard, D. (2002) Rethinking University Education: A conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies, Routledge Falmer, London.
Ruth, A. (2009). Reading in the Hyperconnected Information Era: Lessons from the Beijing Ticket Scam. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 34(March), 1-14. http://ajte.education.ecu.edu.au/issues/PDF/342/Ruth.pdf
Taylor, J. C. and Swannell, P. (1997) From outback to Internet: Crackling radio to virtual campus, in Invited address presented at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Telecom Interactive 97 Conference, Geneva, Switzerland http://www.usq.edu.au/users/taylorj/readings/lisbon.htm.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in Society – the development of higher psychological processes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Watkins, D. (1996) Learning theories and approaches to research: A cross-cultural perspective, in The Chinese learner: Cultural, psychological and contextual influences, Watkins, D. and Biggs, J. (Eds) Australian Council for Educational Research, Melbourne.
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