Subject: social interaction & expectations
From: brent muirhead (edu@mindspring.com)
Date: Wed 26 Jan 2000 - 04:07:20 MET
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 22:07:20 -0500 From: brent muirhead <edu@mindspring.com> Subject: social interaction & expectations
List address to send message to everyone: ifets-discuss@LISTSERV.READADP.COM
Details of current discussion: http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I did my doctoral dissertation on social interaction or interactivity
(communication, participation, and feedback) between graduate students
and between students and their teachers in a computer-mediated distance
education program. My research studies highlighted the importance of
consistent on-line communication. Study participants complained about
both other students (late posting forum comments for weekly discussions)
and teachers who did not give them consistent feedback.
It is interesting that our forum reflects the challenges of developing a
curriculum for Internet education. Establishing a classroom setting that
promotes relevant academic dialog will require having teachers who are
willing to invest the time and energy into serious interaction
activities. Personally, my best Internet teachers were great at
providing feedback (comments or answers questions) in a timely matter.
Yet, I have spoken to a number of distance educators and they relate how
they struggle with their Internet classes. Often, today's on-line
teachers are working at a full time job besides teaching Internet
classes. It is a curriculum issue because teacher time constraints will
eventually impact the level and quality of social interaction in an
Internet class. I once had a on-line class that the teacher "never"
responded to any of my posted discussion comments for the entire
quarter!
In closing, I had a professor who challenged me to consider the
ultimate goal of an on-line class. He related that the Internet class
should be even better than a face to face encounter in the traditional
classroom! It is a lofty goal but the more I ponder it, I wonder how our
curriculum could be designed to achieve it. Perhaps, it is time for us
in our forum to think even more out of the box to help us transcend our
current thinking on social interaction.
Brent Muirhead D.Min., Ph.D.
Alpharetta, GA
edu@mindspring.com
---------------------------------------------------------
Forum website: http://ifets.ieee.org/
Forum's contact person: kinshuk@massey.ac.nz
Info on Join/Leave List: http://ifets.ieee.org/maillist.html
---------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Wed 26 Jan 2000 - 04:09:46 MET