Interactive task design: Metachat and the whole learner

In this chapter the focus is on conversations about language between adult learners online, in synchronous and asynchronous postings. Socio-affective and social-semiotic perspectives are used, thus distancing the work somewhat from cognitive ways of looking at tasks. Because adults come to the task with diverse knowledge of both L2 and L1, the expectation is that metalinguistic interaction will enable them to swap expert and novice roles with each other within the constantly changing dynamics of the classroom. This if shown to be the case would advance an educational agenda favouring learner-directedness. Secondly, as metalinguistic conversations develop in directions that the learners feel like following, a greater degree of contingency can arise. This is considered in this paper as motivational for adults, and also as progressive, following van Lier (1996: 180) for whom in a contingent conversation "the agenda is shared by all participants and educational reality may be transformed". However, in seeking to satisfy his condition of contingency, the problem of designing tasks for greater spontaneity proves difficult. Therefore this study provide an ethnographic account of metalinguistic conversations by learners engaged in an online task, Simuligne, designed to address this difficulty. After studying data from the project forums, chat rooms and emails, we introduce a new perspective on the function of these conversations, which holds pointers for task design

Assessing Online Collaborative Discourse

This qualitative study using transcript analysis was undertaken to clarify the value of Harasim’s Online Collaborative Learning Theory as a way to assess the collaborative process within nursing education. The theory incorporated three phases: (1) idea generating; (2) idea organizing; and (3) intellectual convergence. The transcripts of asynchronous discussions from a two-week module about disaster nursing using a virtual community were analyzed and formed the data for this study. This study supports the use of Online Collaborative Learning Theory as a framework for assessing online collaborative discourse. Individual or group outcomes were required for the students to move through all three phases of the theory. The phases of the Online Collaborative Learning Theory could be used to evaluate the student’s ability to collaborate. It is recommended that group process skills, which have more to do with interpersonal skills, be evaluated separately from collaborative learning, which has more to do with cognitive skills. Both are required for practicing nurses. When evaluated separately, the student learning needs are more clearly delineated

Promoting reflection in asynchronous virtual learning spaces: tertiary distance tutors' conceptions

Increasingly, universities are embedding reflective activities into the curriculum. With the growth in online tertiary education, how effectively is reflection being promoted or used in online learning spaces? Based on the notion that teachers’ beliefs will influence their approaches to teaching, this research sought to understand how a group of distance tutors at the UK Open University conceptualised reflection. It was hoped that these findings would illuminate their approaches to promoting reflection as part of their online pedagogies. Phenomenographic analysis indicated that these tutors conceptualised reflection in four qualitatively different ways. Furthermore, the data suggested that these educators held a combination of two conceptions: one that understood the origin of being reflective and one that understood the purpose of reflection. Analysis of structural aspects of these conceptions offered insight into tutors’ own perspectives for what is needed to make online learning environments fertile territory for reflective learning

Asynchronous Video and the Development of Instructor Social Presence and Student Engagement

Enrollment in online learning continues to grow in the higher education sector, along with persistent goals dedicated to achieving better student outcomes and lowering attrition rates. Improved student engagement has been shown to possibly reduce attrition rates through a greater sense of connectedness and decreased feelings of isolation among online learners. Through the development of a classroom community, the online learner may feel supported and engage more often in the learning process. The instructor plays a major role in the development of the classroom community. Instructor social presence may be the most important factor in building the relationships that foster learning and retention. Through communication, the instructor conveys the necessary immediacy behaviors required to cultivate these interpersonal relationships. Discovering methodology that can facilitate the development of instructor social presence and foster student engagement is necessary for improving online learning outcomes and retention. With improved technology that allows for enhanced communication in online classrooms, the use of asynchronous video may be an effective way to improve instructor social presence and student engagement. This quasi-experimental design aimed to determine whether asynchronous video or text-based communication increased students’ perceptions of instructor social presence and student engagement in an online graduate classroom. After analyzing the data, significance was found for student engagement based on the number of discussion posts, p=.003, and length of discussion posts, p=.012. Students in the group who received text-based communication demonstrated increased student engagement in voluntary discussion boards as opposed to students in the group who received asynchronous video. There was no significant difference found for instructor social presence between the two groups, p=.136. The participants of the study were students enrolled in two sections of an online Masters of Occupational Therapy foundation course during the spring of 2017. All participants attended the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences

ESL/EFL Student Anxiety: How Can the Implementation of MMORPGs Help Anxious Students?

Language anxiety is a serious issue for many students wishing to acquire a second or foreign language (L2); it can take many forms and affect many L2 learners in several different ways. The construct of language anxiety is composed of test anxiety, social anxiety, and computer anxiety; past researchers have tried to address the problem of language anxiety through traditional teaching methods employed in ESL/EFL classrooms, however these methods have limitations that can be addressed through the implementation of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) and Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). Given the limitations of the traditional, or non-technical, teaching methods in addressing language anxiety, the present study examines the unique contributions of MMROPGs and CMC by synthesizing the results of previous studies to show how the implementation of MMORPGs and CMC can help alleviate anxiety in language learners. To this end, this paper specifically examines the electronic environment created in MMORPGs and its effect on anxious language learners, as well as what effect synchronous and asynchronous CMC communication strategies have on anxious language learners. The synthesized results show that online communication tools do have positive effects in lowering learner anxiety through several aspects including anonymity, slower conversation pace, and added control. Finally, the study offers a caveat, the online communication tools are not a panacea; there are limitations through competitive anxiety, power distances between cultures, miscommunication, public nature of discussion forums, and lack of intercultural knowledge

Examining the Effects of Discussion Strategies and Learner Interactions on Performance in Online Introductory Mathematics Courses: An Application of Learning Analytics

This dissertation study explored: 1) instructors’ use of discussion strategies that enhance meaningful learner interactions in online discussions and student performance, and 2) learners’ interaction patterns in online discussions that lead to better student performance in online introductory mathematics courses. In particular, the study applied a set of data mining techniques to a large-scale dataset automatically collected by the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) for five consecutive years at a public university in the U.S., which included 2,869 students enrolled in 72 courses. First, the study found that the courses that posted more open-ended prompts, evaluated students’ discussion messages posted by students, used focused discussion settings (i.e., allowing a single response and replies to that response), and provided more elaborated feedback had higher students final grades than those which did not. Second, the results showed the instructors’ use of discussion strategies (discussion structures) influenced the quantity (volume of discussion), the breadth (distribution of participation throughout the discussion), and the quality of learner interactions (levels of knowledge construction) in online discussions. Lastly, the results also revealed that the students’ messages related to allocentric elaboration (i.e., taking other peers’ contributions in argumentive or evaluative ways) and application (i.e., application of new knowledge) showed the highest predictive value for their course performance. The findings from this study suggest that it is important to provide opportunities for learners to freely discuss course content, rather than creating a discussion task related to producing a correct answer, in introductory mathematics courses. Other findings reported in the study can also serve as guidance for instructors or instructional designers on how to design better online mathematics courses

Development of A Framework for an Asynchronous Discussion Forum through an E-Learning Platform

Throughout the last several decades, the digital era has expanded the process of information sharing in classroom instruction in novel and surprising ways with reference to a wide variety of complex challenges. As a result, effective interactive e-learning management is critical for removing barriers to "knowledge acquisition, exchange, and construction" in this global learning community. According to a review of the pertinent literature, digital and social learning platforms, such as learning management systems (LMS), are effective guides for accomplishing comprehensive online learning. Using a quantitative approach, this paper illustrates the authors’ efforts to develop a social constructivist framework to facilitate formative assessment of an asynchronous discussion forum on various socio-scientific issues (SSI) among teenagers during the initial phase of the project. A learning management system (LMS) was utilised to collect data on project-based activities that encourage inquiry-based and problem-based learning (PBL) following the "Analyze, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation" (ADDIE) model. Different methods of evaluation were implemented to determine the effectiveness of this approach in facilitating the discussions as well as to observe how students' participation in an asynchronous discussion forum improves their overall level of knowledge construction, interaction, and social network analysis (SNA). The important benefits of sharing information are looked at, and future research, innovative projects, and recommendations are shown and predicted

A Mixed Methods Approach To Investigating Cognitive Load And Cognitive Presence In An Online And Face-To-Face College Algebra Course

Most research on Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, 1988) has uncovered many instructional design considerations for learning complex tasks. Additionally, the Community of Inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) framework describes many of the learning experiences in online education. A gap existed in the literature for investigating cognitive load over the duration of a college algebra course and for investigating the relationship between cognitive load and cognitive presence. This research study has addressed this gap by investigating cognitive load and cognitive presence in an online and face-to-face college algebra course. The results of this study revealed that face-to-face students earned statistically significant higher final course grades and homework grades than the online students. The face-to-face math course was slightly more efficient because it produced learners who exerted similar cognitive load as learners in the online course but the learners in the face-to-face earned higher performance score. Online discussion prompts that ask student to apply their solution or defend their solution engaged students in cognitive presence differently. When students were prompted to apply their solution to a real world scenario, most students reached resolution in their initial posts, but they were often not cognitively present in their follow-up posts. When students were prompted to provide a defense of their solution, most of the posts demonstrated cognitive presence, but not as many individual students reached resolution. Additionally, students progressed through the stages of cognitive presence when an instructor asked them a specific question about their math problem or real life scenario in a timely manner. When instructors post questions to their students that directly ask for an application of their hypothesis or an explanation how they arrived at their hypothesis, students can reach the highest stage of cognitive presence. When instructors post messages that reach the highest stage of cognitive presence, students do not post messages that reach the highest stage of cognitive presence. Lastly, this study did not find a strong linear relationship between cognitive presence and cognitive load

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning in STEM Domains: Towards a Meta-synthesis

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) research has become pervasive in STEM education over the last several decades. The research presented here is part of an ongoing project to construct a meta-synthesis of CSCL findings in STEM domains. After a systematic search of the literature and article coding, cluster analysis results provided a frame for sampling from this literature in order to examine effects of CSCL. This preliminary meta-synthesis addresses the three key pillars of CSCL: the nature of collaboration, the technologies that are employed, and the pedagogical designs. CSCL tools and pedagogies typically improve collaborative learning processes along with achieving other learning and motivational goals