Subject: Re: Transactional Distance Theory
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Sun 31 Oct 1999 - 06:52:53 MET
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 15:52:53 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: Transactional Distance Theory
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In my view learners' reactions to new teaching approaches may sometimes
not be a function of their expectations of what a course should look like,
as it is often perceived to be.
It may be interesting to look closer at the relationship between the
course's goals, its the design and the source of problems which attainment
of the course's goals creates.
At the heart of my concern is the issue of how much do we expect our
learners to be good boys and girls and how much room, and in what sense,
do we give to genuine rebellious explorations?
I think that whichever media we use, paper, face-to-face, computers, TV,
there must somewhere be a reason for their utilisation other than because
it is there. If computer is used when face-to-face teaching does some
things better then maybe using computers for the same things may not be
ideal.
Furthermore, in communication channels which we open up for our learners,
should we expect their presence there? Thus for instance, if we make on
line discussions available, is participation in these exhanges compulsory?
Why? How can we know which forms of interactions will be of help to
learners? Why should they appear at tutorials? I can perfectly imagine a
course when things are done and I had to do an extreme amount of work
without ever having seen my students. it'd be odd but that's only a matter
of our expectation rather the truth.
In essence: I think that the goal of the course should dictate the
exploratory paths whcih people undertake. The trick is that we often take
the goal of the course for granted thinking that we know what we want our
students to know at the end. But maybe, as Leakey puts it, the main
question of science is not why but how. That is, it may be important for
learners to work more on the question of knowledge as a matter of how
things relate and how they allow them to do things. If this perspective is
taken seriously into account, we find out that no single structure of the
course will be suitable for application. We will need to diversify and not
ask learners to participate but watch them selecting between the options.
They will not want to see our faces all the time because as precious as we
are, we can only do as much for them. But I also cannot see why we should
prevent them from access to moments when we do speak.
Thus it may well be that if we structure our teaching in ways which make
utilisation of various communication channels a matter of need rather
than a matter of teacher's decision, things may look different.
Ania Lian
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