Summary of International, Online Collaboration
Learning Benefits and Student Response
Lori Beckstead, Ryerson University, Canada
The collaboration starts when students and professors from two countries introduce themselves via an online discussion using a blog. The Bouncing Story is a class on radio production between two different universities in two different countries. By posting brief biographies of themselves, the students are engaged to asynchronously respond to others via a blog. This is how the bouncing starts:
1. Students from one university writes and produces the opening episode of a radio drama or comedy – it is posted online and viwed as a podcast by the specific due date.
2. The production is open-ended, then the other students at the other university has one week to write and produce a follow-up episode, and then they post their information via the podcast.
3. The write ups and production continues and bounces back and forth between the universities.
Not only do the students contribute to the episodes, they also provide extensive feedback to the other group overseas. The professor makes assignments for feedback forcing everyone to critique various episodes. The professor does provide the questions which incorporate the feedback information which needs to be included in the critique. The students also have access to read the post comments about their various productions.
The Bouncing Story has proved that motivation, authenic learning, community of learners, teamwork, and student engagement is possible in the online environment. The students are motivated because they want to do their best work. They know that their episode is being critiqued by the other group and they want to do their best. Authenic learning is taking place because students are producing real life productions. Since broadcasting is their goal, they are getting hands on experience. The community of learners is the fact that various people and cultures are working together, and learning from each other. As a team, the students encourage each other, and work together to do the best production possible. And of course, the students are engaged because they are motivated by the professor, class, and projects. In conclusion, the Bouncing Story proved that students agreed the class assisted them with the following:
Production skills
Teamwork
Critical feedback skills
Understanding of radio drama genre
Working with overseas students
When students feel that they are doing work which will help them in the real world, motivation, engagement, and teamwork tends to make learning much more enjoyable.
Summary of E-Learning: Paradigm Shift In Education
Mayur S. Desai
Jeff Hart
Thomas C. Richards
Since education now extends past the four walls of the classroom, the instructional design of distance education (DE), and/or e-Learing must be able to meet the needs of the students and professors. The Internet has made it possible to teach DE courses at lower costs, and also expand into the global markets. Interaction is paramount in DE and the technology used needs to be able to handle various transactions and software applications.
The four typical types of interacton for DE learners are:
learner-content
learner-instructor
learner-learner
learner-technology
For the instructor:
instructor-learner
instructor-content
instructor-technology
In designing DE there must be a certain amount of conversation and dialogue between the learner and instructor. Personally, I also believe that there should be communciation between and amongst the students. Of course there must be structure in DE so communication between students and instructors are continual. Students must feel that they are valued and are seen as a real person, not just a number. Social presence must be established in DE so the learner has some type of control in his learning process. If the learner is recognized for his contributions to the course, and valued as a person, his motivation to learn and participate will be enormous.
Removing students from the time and space constraints is one of the best benefits of DE. Technology has made drastic changes in how we create, record, store, distriubtue, access, and retrieve information. This has also affected how students communicate with the instructor and their classmates. The article states that in the near future face-to-face learning might become a reminent of the past. Since technology is changing so fast, it is hard for the university’s to keep pace. Due to this fact, the students might become uninterested or possibly alienated from universities which don’t embrace and encourage technology. A few obstacles with DE include a lack of awareness of the appropriate uses of technology. A second obstacle is the absence of new forms of assessment to measure student’s and teacher’s success with emerging technologies. It appears that the problem is that the technology is seen as an add on, and not viewed as the main core of the learning experience. The challenges to e-Learning include dedication and discipline on the part of the student and the instructor.
Instructional design is the most important aspect of DE because the Interent technology and course content are the driving factors of the course. There must be timelines and goals incorporated into DE. As noted in this article:
Research indicated that there was no relevance to the employment status of the instructor (part-time versus full-time) instead focusing on the actual quality of the courses offered. Research also indicated that there is no relevance to age, gender, previous online experience, academic field of studey, or persistence in taking online classes in relation to the creation of an online sense of community. (pg. 333)
In conclusion it appears that the most important aspect in DE is to create a sense of community, and provide constructive feedback by supporting open communiction, and recognizing students for their individual strenghts and experiences.
Summary of Synchronous and Asynchronous Text-Based CMC in Educational Contexts: A Review of Recent Research - Genevieve Marie Johnson
Distance education must incorporate interaction between teachers and students, and amongst the students. The primary technological applications that provide human interaction are asynchronous technology and synchronous technology (Johnson, 2006). The benefit of asynchronous instruction is the fact that learning can occur at any time. There aren’t time or space issues. Per Johnson 2006:
In a survey of educators, asynchronous online discussion was reportedly useful for encouraging in-depth, more thoughtful discussion; communicating with temporally diverse students; holding ongoing discussions where archiving is required; and allowing all students to respond to a topic. (p. 46)
Some problems of asynchronous technology were lack of communication, and the length of time for replies from teachers and students. Students felt isolated because there was not much social interaction in the curriculum. Application of asynchronous technology use in the class includes text-based conferencing and asynchronous voice conferencing. Many students feel that asynchronous instruction is superior to face-to-face instruction because the student has time to prepare and reflect on the conversation. In my opinion, asynchronous courses require the student to make excellent use of time management. Instructors must place deadlines, and mandatory dates on assignments, this will force students from adhere to project deadlines.
Synchronous instructors is when the instruction occurs at the same time for students and instructors. A benefit of synchronous instruction includes synchronous chat which is wonderful for holding virtual office hours, team and group decision-making, and brainstorming sessions. The article states that even though this type of instruction is hard to implement, it provides a greater sense of presence and its generates spontaneity. It appears that there are not many studies on synchronous instruction, at least notated in this article. I was much amused to find that synchronous chat, is often viewed as inferior to asynchronous online communication. One major finding of this article noted that:
Individuals who used both synchronous and asynchronous forms of online disucsiion were the most likely to completed required course activities. Apparently, combined synchronous and asynchronous online discussion maximized personal engagement in learning. (pg. 50)
In conclusion, quite a few of the case studies have pointed to incorporating both synchronous, and asynchronous instruction in online courses.
