This section really needs updating as it only deals with research up to 2004. There’s a bit of my own research that I possibly should mention (see Research), plus a plethora of new forms of media interaction for social learning. Revisiting my thesis has helped to focus what my work entails, what I am – a social learning theorist (definitely NOT a social media guru).
I will intersperse this with some comments from experience and a small bit of recent research.
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A number of previous studies investigating participation in online environments (for example Althaus, 1997, Lund and Volet, 1998, Tarbin and Trevitt, 2001, Carrick-Simpson and Armatas, 2003) have shown low levels of student participation, which undermines simple assertions about engagement and interaction. One of the reasons for this, according to the research by Carrick-Simpson and Armatas (2003), is that designing for interactivity is not sufficient to engage students’ interest. Interestingly, students in Carrick-Simpson and Armatas’ research study chose to forego the marks awarded for the assessable online component. {I have evidence for this from my classes, students often choose to forgo smaller, constructive elements of a learning task.} Therefore, simply establishing an online environment, and determining the rates at which students participate, may not provide sufficient understanding of the educational potential of interactions in an online environment because the variation in the ways that students participate is subsumed by a single measure. {Finnegan, Morris and Lee (2009) found differences based on motivation. Motivation seems to be a key determinant, as I found in this research.} Brown and Johnson-Shull (2000) concur, stating that there is a mismatch between what we know and what we do in online forums. Sheard, Ramakrishnan, and Miller (2003) suggest that there is a major shift required in students’ learning behaviour for them to adopt the collaborative learning style characteristic of an electronic learning community. Similarly, Kreijns, Kirschner and Jochems (2003) warn against taking for granted that participants will interact socially simply because the environment provides an opportunity to do so. These studies suggest that simply providing an opportunity for students to interact is insufficient for the active use of the environment. {I think a key term now is ‘engagement’. How do we engage students in these environments, but more to the point, why are some students not engaged in learning? There may be a mismatch in expectations for what is to be learnt.} Instead, students’ perceptions may be different from their teachers’, particularly as it seems students may choose to forego assessment that is based online. Perhaps not surprisingly, Bagherian and Thorngate (2000) found that offering a grade for postings has a much stronger effect on online participation than does encouragement from teachers. However, as noted by Oliver (2002), there are questions concerning the validity of mandating participation that include the kinds of engagement that occur and their consequences for learning outcomes. {Mandating participation was one of the core reasons I undertook this research. It seems that when students are unable to see the value of participation (specifically, marks), they tend to avoid work.} Nevertheless, computer-mediated discussion forums are becoming common in higher education (Guzdial and Turns, 2000), even though they are still only understood in a relatively limited way, for instance in terms of the motivations for students to engage in ways that lead to rich learning. {At the point, I’m not sure that much has changed. We’re still working out what works, and each time we start to get a handle on something, there’s another new way of doing things, but I don’t think it’s completely innovative, more that it’s incrementally innovative, but the effects of the increment are unknown and potentially depend on the student audience.}
Valuable insights are now being gained into the understandings and perceptions of the participants (Thomas, Clift and Sugimoto, 1996, Soong, Chan, Chua and Loh, 2001) about students (Hammond, 2000, Kear, 2001, Thomas, 2002) and teachers (Mazzolini and Maddison, 2003). {We need many more insights to really understand these things and it’s not enough to simply start using something because it’s cool.} These include finding that status hierarchies exist between the postings of students and teachers, with many students placing more value on postings from teachers (Thomas et al., 1996). Status hierarchies negate the social co-construction of knowledge – the reciprocal process of interaction between people – because co-construction is generally theorised as between peers (Lawrence and Valsiner, 1993). {While we’re on social co-construction, I’m not convinced that this happens a lot in university. Yes, we are able to set up the conditions for it to occur, but a lot depends on the students to see the point of it. I believe social co-construction is the ideal form of learning, but it is not a simple process to implement.} The higher status placed on teacher postings means that there is a danger the learning environment might revert to a novice-expert interaction with little peer interaction, as in didactic face-to-face teaching. Soong, et al. (2001) found the technical competency of teachers and students, and the collaborative potential of the course to be critical factors for the uptake of electronic resources and interactions.
The lack of participants’ technical competencies may also interfere with the aims and purposes of the learning environments. {It’s hard to believe, but there are still students who come into first year without ever having used a computer. There are fewer of them each year, but they still exist.} The knowledge required to participate adds an extra layer of knowledge that needs to be gained before engaging in learning the knowledge offered through interaction. This is highlighted by Hammond’s (2000) findings that for many, particularly students, there is a high threshold of capability to cross, that is, being able to utilise the computer and programs, before entering electronic discussions. In electronic environments, threaded discussions – those which maintain proximity of messages and responses – allow participants to follow conversations, which may facilitate the co-construction of knowledge, through the build-up of a pattern of information that contributes to understanding. For Kear (2001), the presentation of threading of discussion was found to have a significant effect on students’ use of a collaborative environment and on the character of the discussion. However, Thomas (2002) found that the typical non-linear branching structure of online discussion, that is, where individuals may follow different lines of engagement through multiple conversations originating from a single question, may not be sufficient for conversational modes of learning to be realised within an online discussion. Thus, the role of the teacher may be quite important in determining the nature of the discussion. Mazzolini and Maddison (2003) questioned the role of the teachers and whether they should be encouraged to take specific roles such as the prominent ‘sage on the stage’ role, the more socially equal constructivist ‘guide on the side’ role, or the ultra low profile role described as the ‘ghost in the wings’. They found that frequent posting by teachers did not increase student postings and that the lengths of discussions decreased the more teachers posted. However, the roles and outcomes of those roles for participants are not fully understood. {There are some differences to this in my findings (to come). The courses I studied looked specifically at the ways in which teachers/tutors engaged. The framing of the course, that is, what students could expect through involvement, was also a determining factor.}
Other research has focused on students’ participation in online environments. Many studies ( e.g. Cook, Leathwood and Oriogun, 2001, Gorand and Selwyn, 1999, Ho, 2000) have been undertaken to develop an understanding of the role of participation in online learning environments. Many of these studies, however, have resulted in a heuristic that participatory online learning environments should be limited in size and break down with large numbers of participants (greater than 50 according to Turoff, Hiltz, Bieber, Fjermestad and Rana, 1999). However, there is anecdotal evidence that online learning environments facilitate the teaching of large groups where students in diverse geographical locations can be “intellectually linked” (Brahler, Peterson and Johnson, 1999). This is clearly an area open to further research, because the current findings are inconclusive. The ability to facilitate learning of students in large cohorts exemplifies one of the potentials for online learning environments, namely cost saving for institutions and more broadly based access for the student. Thus, the focus of this research is on large enrolment courses (at least 100 students on the books). {Here, we see some of the confusion around the use of technology. Yes, it can be used in a broadcast mode to reach more students, but when does the interaction between students taper off? Is it related to class size or is there some other variable.}
So, current research suggests that providing opportunities to engage in online learning does not guarantee that students will participate or interact. The perceptions of individuals, both teachers and students, impact the likelihood of the environment being used in ways that go beyond what some teachers attempt by mandating participation. This is because the validity of simply mandating participation is questionable (Oliver 2002). This seems to sidestep the issue of understanding the roles participants may take, and how those roles influence learning through interaction.
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I’ve read a few newer papers while going over this, but there doesn’t seem to be any ‘huge’ changes in what we know. There are still many questions, and still lots of variables. I think the biggest variable consists of students – their attitudes, their previous experience, their expectations. The second biggest variable are the teachers – with the same set of criteria – attitude, experience and expectations.
If we consider, for example, twitter, we find that there is a huge variation in the way people use it. Broadcasting, conversing, questioning, updating, dialoguing are just some of the ways it is used. Of course, there is also the vicarious participant (that’s just a fancy way of saying lurker, but it imbues the individual with an active role, rather than a passive soak for information). I find it interesting that we hear people saying ‘I don’t get twitter’ and we hear many teachers saying ‘I don’t get technology’ (okay the latter are probably rarer than the former). But it demonstrates that there isn’t a consistent understanding of the ways in which technology, namely the computer and Internet, are shaping our lives. This definitely speaks to the task of becoming a social learning theorist, because most of our uses of technology have social implications. I’ll be attempting to incorporate some of that into the theoretical chapter, when I get to it.
The next section is the aim of my research. I’ll be attempting to modify that heavily to update to my new approach, although every time I think about modifying my thesis, I back away. It seems like it’s hard to change that work.
References:
Althaus, S. L. (1997) Computer-Mediated Communication in the University Classroom: An Experiment with On-Line Discussions, Communication Education, 46, pp 158?174.
Bagherian, F. and Thorngate, W. (2000) Horses to Water: Why Course Newsgroups Fail, First Monday, 5: 8, http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_8/thorngate/index.html.
Brahler, C. J., Peterson, N. S. and Johnson, E. C. (1999) Developing on-line learning materials for higher education: An overview of current issues, Educational Technology and Society, 2:2, pp 42-60.
Brown, G. and Johnson-Shull, L. (2000) Teaching online: Now We’re Talking, Technology Source, http://horizon.unc.edu/TS/reading/2000-05.asp, Accessed: 2 May 2000.
Carrick-Simpson, B. and Armatas, C. (2003) Students’ interaction with online learning activities: the role of study strategies and goals and computer attitudes, in Interact, integrate, impact: proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, Vol. 1, 20th ASCILITE Conference, University of Adelaide, pp 101-114, http://www.adelaide.edu.au/ascilite2003/docs/pdf/104.pdf.
Cook, J., Leathwood, C. and Oriogun, P. (2001) Monitoring Gender Participation and Promoting Critical Debate in an Online Conference, in Meeting at the Crossroads. Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference of the Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, Kennedy, G., Keppell, M., McNaught, C. and Petrovic, T. (Eds) Melbourne: Biomedical Multimedia Unit, The University of Melbourne, pp 141-150, http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/melbourne01/pdf/papers/cookj.pdf.
Finnegan, C., Morris, L.V. & Lee, K., 2009. Differences by Course Discipline on Student Behavior, Persistence, and Achievement in Online Courses of Undergraduate General Education. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory and Practice, 10(1), 39-54.
Gorand, S. and Selwyn, N. (1999) Researching the role of digital technology in widening participation, in British Educational Research Association Conference, University of Sussex, Brighton.
Guzdial, M. and Turns, J. (2000) Effective discussion through a computer-mediated anchored forum, Journal of the Learning Sciences, 9:4, pp 437-469.
Hammond, M. (2000) Communication within on-line forums: the opportunities, the constraints and the value of a communicative approach, Computers & Education, 35:4, pp 251-262.
Ho, S. (2000) Evaluating Students’ Participation in On-line Discussions, in Ausweb 2000 Southern Cross University, Lismore http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw02/papers/refereed/ho/paper.html.
Kear, K. (2001) Following the thread in computer conferences, Computers & Education, 37:1, pp 81-99.
Kreijns, K., Kirschner, P. A. and Jochems, W. (2003) Identifying the pitfalls for social interaction in computer-supported collaborative learning environments: a review of the research, Computers in Human Behavior, 19:3, pp 335-353.
Lawrence, J. A. and Valsiner, J. (1993) Conceptual roots of internalisation: From transmission to transformation, Human Development, 36, pp 150-167.
Lund, C. and Volet, S. (1998) Barriers to studying online for the first time: Students’ perceptions, in EdTech’98 The Australian Society for Educational Technology, http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/gen/aset/confs/edtech98/pubs/articles/l/lund.html.
Mazzolini, M. and Maddison, S. (2003) Sage, guide or ghost? The effect of instructor intervention on student participation in online discussion forums, Computers & Education, 40:3, pp 237-253.
Oliver, R. (2002) Should we make participation in discussions and bulletin boards in online learners settings compulsory?, In Focusing on the Student. Proceedings of the 11th Annual Teaching Learning Forum, Perth: Edith Cowan University http://lsn.curtin.edu.au/tlf/tlf2002/abstracts/oliverr-abs.html.
Sheard, J., Ramakrishnan, S. and Miller, J. (2003) Modelling learner and educator interactions in an electronic learning community, Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 19:2, pp 211-226, http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet19/res/sheard.html.
Soong, M. H. B., Chan, H. C., Chua, B. C. and Loh, K. F. (2001) Critical success factors for on-line course resources, Computers & Education, 36:2, pp 101-120.
Tarbin, S. and Trevitt, C. (2001) Try, try again!, in Online teaching and learning with technology: case studies, experience and practice, D Murphy, G Webb and R Walker, (Eds), pp 63-72. London, Kegan Paul.
Thomas, L., Clift, R. T. and Sugimoto, T. (1996) Telecommunication, Student Teaching, and Methods Instruction: An Exploratory Investigation, Journal of Teacher Education, 46:3, pp 165-174.
Thomas, M. J. W. (2002) Learning within incoherent structures: the space of online discussion forums, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 18:3, pp 351-366.
Turoff, M., Hiltz, S. R., Bieber, M., Fjermestad, J. and Rana, A. (1999) Collaborative Discourse Structures in Computer Mediated Group Communications, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 4:4, http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue4/turoff.html.