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Communication, between instructors and students and among students, is essential in helping students find meaning in the content and in transferring information into knowledge. For learning to occur, reflection is necessary and interaction can help students reflect on the concepts, principles, and practices being taught. Below are examples of technological approaches to enhance communication and interaction.
Face to Face: Students and instructors prefer face-to-face communications and interaction; after all, that is the way we learned to communicate with others. Non-verbal signals add much to the communication process when interacting with others, which requires face-to-face contact. When students and instructors are separated by both time and distance, face to face is not a possibility.
Synchronous two-way interactive, televised systems and videoconferencing provide solutions to the distance but not the time issues. Two-way video/audio systems allow direct interaction in real time and provide the advantages associated with face-to-face contact.
E-mail: Electronic communication using e-mail
offers instructors a dynamic, asynchronous approach to communicating with
students and promoting interactions with and among students. In teaching at a
distance, it is essential to keep students engaged, and e-mail is a valuable tool in doing so.
Instructors can send private messages to individuals or to the entire class. If
a student has a question, chances are other students have the same question and
e-mail can be used to share freely with all students.
Instructors can use e-mail to:
- Post course announcements.
- Respond to questions (individually or entire class).
- Provide rich, timely feedback.
- Submit students' assignments (attachments).
- Facilitate small group or team work.
Instructors may wish to have a separate e-mail account for their classes to post messages to. This class e-mail account can be easily established through your on-campus information technologies office. Also, most learning management systems provide an e-mail account for instructors for students to post messages to.
Threaded Discussions: This is an excellent asynchronous
tool to promote thoughtful, in-depth discussions among students and contribute
to active learning!
Properly structured, threaded discussions can exceed face-to-face discussions
because they can eliminate barriers to effective discussions, such as
personality styles, preparation and reflective thinking on the issue, group
dynamics, and intimidation. (The graphic on the right is an example of a
threaded discussion in WebCT.)
Instructors can use threaded discussions to introduce, teach, and summarize concepts, principles, and practices. Specifically, threaded discussions can:
- Facilitate interaction among students.
- Provide students "a voice and presence" in the class.
- Promote in-depth study of topics.
- Draw on real-life experiences.
- Serve as a forum for team activities.
It is important to provide structure in using threaded discussions. Instructors may wish to require students to respond to their questions, scenarios, or situations and to require at least one other student's response. Also, students have the flexibility to respond any time but must respond by a set deadline; otherwise, students cannot benefit from each others responses. Students then would be graded on what they have added to the discussion.
Check out this online
document by Susan Edelstein of
On-line Chats: Synchronous on-line chats provide an
opportunity for distance students to communicate with the instructor and each
other in real time. This tool addresses needs of verbal and social learners.
Instructors can use chats to interact directly with students by presenting new
information, clarifying concepts, and summarizing.
Some of the limitations to using on-line chat are:
- Keeping students on-task.
- Scheduling for non-traditional learners.
- Number of students who can effectively participate in a session.
- Keyboarding skills of participants.
Instructors can address these limitations by planning the session as one would plan a regular class session. The session should have an agenda, defining the objectives and ground rules for participation. These points need to be clearly communicated to the students prior to the chat session or during the session.
Instructors can address scheduling problems by providing alternate times for students to participate. Scheduling multiple times also help keep the number of students in sessions to a manageable number. The maximum number of students for effective participation is about 15, with the optimum number between 8-10 students.
Keyboarding skills do cause many students problems in posting timely responses. Instructors can encourage students to develop their questions ahead of time and use the cut and paste options during the sessions. An instructor can also use a "timeout" to allow students who are composing messages to finish and post their messages on the topic at hand. To encourage participation, an instructor can "call on" a specific student to post a message. Learning management systems save logs of chat sessions. These logs of student participation in the chats can be used as an assignment and graded.
Whiteboards: Another tool that enables interaction between the instructor and students and/or among students is the whiteboard. This tool enables graphical interface in real time or synchronously. It functions like most drawing programs and has advantages in developing and composing models, flow charts, and processes. Images, using .jpg and .gif file formats, can be uploaded to start a session, or the session can start from scratch. The work done on the whiteboard can be saved for future reference or submitted for evaluation. The value of the whiteboard greatly depends on whether the course content and learning can be enhanced with graphic representation.
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