The work in this project has been based on the learning transactions that took place within the OU-H802 [Appx.1] postgraduate distance course in its first year of delivery, as well as on personal experiential observations and literature readings accumulated in the three years of learning at a distance at postgraduate level and from praxis in the fields of Special Education and Educational Technology.
The Internet acts as a type of Rorschach test for educational philosophy. When some people look at the Internet, they see it as a new way to deliver instruction. When other people look at it, they see a huge database for learners to explore. When I look at the Internet, I see a new medium for construction, a new opportunity for learners to discuss, share, and collaborate on constructions.
Learning is a process of active engagement with experience. It is what people do when they want to make sense of the world. It may involve an increase in skills, knowledge, understanding, values and the capacity to reflect. Effective learning leads to change, development and a desire to learn more. [The Campaign for Learning, UK]
Learning occurs in the interplay between expectation and experience
as Kolb (1984) suggests, and
is an intellectual process of constructing knowledge, i.e. acquiring,
processing, assimilating, and integrating information and ideas
through constructive sociocultural interaction. It is sustained
by mental stimulation, and encouraged by the proper environment.
A working definition of such an environment in distance learning
settings can be outlined as being an intellectual, social, cultural,
psychological milieu which facilitates and supports learning by
fostering interaction, collaboration and communality.
Central to this model of a distance learning environment stands
the function of interactivity. Interactivity which, through making
use of the appropriate media and technologies effectuates learning
transactions with material and co-participants.
Notions/concepts get generated in people's minds in response/reaction
to certain stimulus. If the concept generated is to be schematised,
we may need to revisit or seek new relevant stimuli, reflect and
re-examine in order to adjust and readjust ideas.
Thus, interaction takes place with the stimulus, and interactivity
occurs, in the person's mind, between themselves and the contents
of the medium/media through and within which the stimulus is presented.
In this sense, thoughts are triggered, meaning is made and schemata
are created and recreated through interacting with certain piece/s
of information received and revisited. [Piaget, 1967]
[Schallert, 1982]
[Anderson & Pearson, 1984]
Those schemata are the elements of knowledge the individual constructed
in the process and, in healthy minds, are constantly challenged
and subject to change, re-construction and development when new
stimuli are perceived and new thoughts generated. The variety
and suitability of mediating mechanisms scaffolding the
process and the quality of dialectic transactions with content
facilitate the process through which information is turned into
knowledge. [Arbib, 1989][Resnick(2), 1996]
Following this trail of thought one would sustain that in educational
settings, interaction occurs not with the originator of knowledge
but with knowledge itself, represented in media (tutors, peers,
technologies, real or virtual objects and entities) as information.
[Bates, 1995]
It is, therefore, argued that in trying to make meaning we actually
interact with the 'textual' information rather than with its 'creator'.
In accepting this process as the fundamental function of interactivity,
one observes that a second function may occur as part of
the same process, at a second level, when the receiver responds
to the generator/s of the initial stimulus. There, again, if the
content of that response acts as a stimulus, a new phase of the
process occurs, thus establishing dialogue / sociocultural interaction.
The two functions, which may be distinguished as static
and dynamic forms of interaction, are part of the same
process, and they are both generative - i.e. have
the capacity to generate schemata.
As such, they are both essential to the construction and assimilation
of knowledge and they are most effective when they are combined
in generating a transaction between social knowledge and personal
knowledge. [Kolb[2], 1984]
Lev S. Vygotsky, prominent cognitivist, addresses the need for
such combined interaction in his idea of the Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD) in which the learner, tutor, and content interact
with a problem which needs resolution. The ZPD represents the
difference between what a learner can do individually and what
can be done with the help of more experienced people such as other
learners, experts in the field, or the instructor. [Vygotsky, 1962]
It might also be said that it was
Dewey, (1910-1950) who formed
the vision of the current active and collaborative student experience
and that almost a hundred years later, we finally have the tools
to implement and realise his educational ideas.
In Dewey's work, a key idea is that
"interaction and continuity" are two core characteristics
of effective teaching and learning experiences. The interaction
characteristic highlights the importance of the dialogue and communication
underlying learning; the continuity characteristic emphasises
that the individual learner must be viewed as the key design element.
In other words, we must design instruction so that each individual
learner can effectively build on what they know, and have the
resources and assistance to learn - in Vygotsky's words, to navigate
the Zone of Proximal Development.
In Distributed
Constructionism Resnik [3] (1996) suggests
that people develop knowledge when they "are engaged in
constructing personally-meaningful products," and interaction
of people with others and their learning environment is crucial
in the constructing process.
In traditional distance education settings, learners are often
left to go through the process of learning in isolation with very
little contact with tutors and peers, thus are confined to basic,
'static' interaction with material delivered through one-way media
in the form of printed text, audio cassettes and/or video. With
the advent of new media and technologies, the use of affordable
and well integrated two-way communication is now possible in distance
learning, which in turn enables dynamic interactions .
The millennium beckons us toward what Paul Delany calls the 'docuverse,'
that 'large collection of electronically stored and linked documents,
connected to a computer network.[] Linked multimedia elements
(photographs, images, and graphics, animations, and video/sound
clips as well as text) can endow hypermedia projects with immediacy
and 'presence'.
Carefully orchestrated technology tools can bring the learner
closer to the actual act of discovery. Moreover, when directly
engaged in interactive 'discovery trails', links which have already
been carefully preselected with the course's mission, learners
can become purposeful, collaborative explorers.
Networked learning environments are characterised by the use of
networked communication and information technologies in support
of learning activities. Collis (1996)
describes what she calls 'tele-learning' as "making connections
| among persons and resources | through communication technologies
| for learning-related purposes." Paulsen (1995)
says "CMC includes information retrieval, electronic mail,
bulletin boards, and computer conferencing" and views networked
learning as the achievement of teaching objectives through the
interaction between learners and resources, using "one-alone
techniques, one-to-one techniques, one-to-many techniques, and
many-to-many techniques."
Apart from the obvious ease of being able to distribute materials
using email, conferencing etc. the range of networked media is
rich and includes text, graphics, video and sound files. The examples
below not only point to the range of resources in terms of types
of information but also extend to include access to people either
in real-time or asynchronously.
Networked learning interactions can also be classified according
to whether they are performed in asynchronous or synchronous (real-time)
communication settings.
Collis, ibid.(1996) identifies
traditional course components in both face to face and distance
settings, and points to the ways in which networked approaches
alter and improve traditional approaches:
As Wagner (ibid. 1994) suggests, such a description of interaction
that takes place in a learning environment "narrows the focus
of discussion of learning events". There are other elements
that generate interaction, perhaps not of secondary importance,
such as the 'physical' - in our case virtual - design of the learning
environment itself. Special education pedagogy, the art or science
of making up for learning disabilities, has ample evidence to
provide, and so do the ever emerging and evolving Object Oriented Environments.
Nevertheless, Moore's statement points to the three main functions
of interactivity, as seeing from the instructor's point of view,
which pose formal requirements in instructional design.
The selection and use of appropriate media and technologies stand
as an essential factor for establishing and maintaining effective
interaction with course material and contextual information. The
Internet, particularly the World Wide Web, with its capacity
to present rich content through the convergence of interactive
media and technologies can constitute a powerful platform for
the dissemination of distance course material.
The delivery of the H802 course material can serve here as an
indicator to an effective use of Internet properties and their
integration with more conventional forms of distance education
delivery. Two types of dissemination were used for the delivery
of course content. It is claimed that it was their combination
which provided learners with opportunities for rich and purposeful
interaction with content, although their individual presence facilitated
learner choices deriving from diverse learning styles.
Many contributions of context related links were also offered
by the learners, and many of them were followed with comments
that often stimulated interaction. [Appx.2]
Fundamentals of Interactivity for Learning
Knowledge is not a complete product of accumulated information but a constantly changing creation process in terms of social interactions. Learners learn through the activities not just the content matter and the target language community works. They have to be responsible for the tasks as a member of the community. They have to be flexible in their attitude toward the project as a whole, because many other learners collectively take part in it and each member is a unique human being with his or her point of view.
INTERACTIONS IN THE NETWORKED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Attend lecture improved presentation
Personal contact with tutor improved communication
Discussion with peer-group improved discussion
Self Study /Reading Lists improved range of resources available
Individual assignment improving activities
Group Assignment improving collaborative activities
Interaction in the learning environment takes
place in three ways: with content, with other learners and with
instructors. [Moore, 1989]
Interaction with Content
For now, imagine that it is breakfast time in 1994, and
you have just settled down with a cup of coffee-substitute heated
on your solar stove, to read your computer-generated equivalent
of the daily newspaper, including all the news that is fit to
display on your home terminal. (Hiltz 1978, xxxii)
They are doing for their pupils the
work which the pupils themselves ought to do. For the sole true
end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for
themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this, is effort
spent in vain.Interaction with Other Learners
What use is it to pile task on task
and prolong the days of labor, if at the close the chief object
is left unattained? It is not the fault of the teachers--they
work only too hard already. The combined folly of a civilization
that has forgotten its own roots is forcing them to shore up the
tottering weight of an educational structure that is built upon
sand.
The Lost Tools of Learning by
Dorothy Sayers [Appx.3]
CMC distance learning environments
offer a plethora of opportunities for interaction with other learners,
far more likely to be productive and complete than in traditional
HE learning environments as they are independent of time and place
due to their asynchronous nature, and more in line with the learning
to learn process as they can be highly motivated and goal oriented.
Interaction with learners takes place
within collaborative activities, in threads of sociable exchanges,
or philosophical and self-searching discussions. They are generated
as:
Asynchronous, BBS and email interactions seem to offer a more
in depth discourse as responces are spread over time, to the convinience
of the participants.
Real-time, moo and chat interactions
offer a fuller experience and rich content for a later asynchronous
follow-up. [Appx.4]
Mason (1991),
in her follow-up article on an online computer conferencing course
entitled Management of the Absurd, moderated by the co-founder
of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute Dr. Richard Farson,
offers an insight in teaching/learning techniques applied to computer
conferencing.
[ ... ] After analyzing the message flows and distribution of 'Initiation, Reply and Evaluation' patterns in educational electronic networking, Levin et al. turn to the concept of apprenticeship to describe the kind of interaction they see as typical of the medium. The educational paradigm of apprenticeship is one of learning by doing in the presence of good models of the end goal.
Patterns that we've observed in instructional electronic network interactions resemble those described in face-to-face apprenticeships. Thus we may see emerging a new pattern, 'teleapprenticeships,' with some of the properties of face-to-face apprenticeships. (Levin et al, 1990)
They comment that the apprenticeship model is an example of the new ways of thinking about teaching which will be required in order to use the new interactive media effectively. [ ... ]
Considering that tutoring online
involves organising and supporting a virtual learning community,
is it wrong to think that the role of the online tutor changes
in its socio-political context? Power differential in a
f2f class/group is de facto different from the one in an online
community of learners and tutors, because of remoteness and lack
of f2f contact. Online tutors are expected to also be skilful
community initiators/organisers as opposed to class/group/community
leaders which is mostly, if not always, the case in f2f situations.
Individuals working together and
mind weaving for learning in a community setting is what this
medium can support best. But our western learned culture
often weakens our ability to collaborate, and this applies to
both students and tutors alike. The universal learner's need,
in times of constraint, for "a good teacher / tutor / motivator
/ mentor ..." in order to resume learning could be met by
accepting that peer collaborative contributions might, as well,
constitute good sources of motivation or mentoring. On the part
of the tutor this means accepting and implementing the student-in-the-centre
principles.
Which brings us to an additional
basic requirement in tele-tutoring which is the ability to make
use of the medium for learning. I don't mean the technical skills
required in order to handle the medium, but skills which are based
on the acceptance of non-competitiveness. Tele-learning,
i.e. distance online learning, brought us face to face with the
necessity for a non-competitive environment within which learning
could successfully occur. For most of us brought up in a competition
oriented teaching/learning set up, this could even mean re-training.
Non-competitive practices, when used in a f2f setting, have in
fact been utilised to disguise competition rather than create
a non-competitive environment for learning. Hence, non-competitive
skills - such as the ability to collaborate - come to the fore
in tele-learning/tutoring and emerge as the set of skills that
need to be rediscovered, developed and refined.
In his recent work on New Paradigms
For Thinking and Decentralised Mindsets and in defence of the
theory of "constructional design", Mitchel Resnick (1995)
observes that "New computational paradigms (such as object-oriented
programming, constraints, logic, and parallelism) can significantly
influence not only what people do with computers, but also how
they think about and make sense of the world."
Offering evidence from recent research
on systems which work with patterns determined not by some
central authority but by local interactions among decentralised
components [Heppner & Grenander, 1990), he argues that the centralised mindset affects the
thinking of nearly everyone including scientists who remain committed
to centralised explanations, even in the face of discrediting
evidence.
People see the world in centralised ways, so they construct centralised
tools and models, which further encourage a centralised view of
the world. Until recently, there has been little pressure against
this centralisation spiral. Even if someone wanted to experiment
with decentralised approaches there were few tools or opportunities
to do so.
With new technologies comes the challenge
for creating new, interactive learning environments which facilitate
learning and promote open and constructive dissemination of knowledge.
It is perhaps the turning point for new paradigms to emerge.
The audience and authors must learn together to develop both the new textual objects and the new literacy skills. We need to experiment with writing and reading in the more open space provided by mixed company, seeing what happens, and who we become. [From Kolb's recent work presented at KMI. Kolb, September1998]
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APPENDIX
Copyright © 1998 Yannis Karaliotas