Research In Learning Technology - Creating Interaction In Online Learning Case Study - IT Assignment Help

Assignment Task

Discussion 
Figure 1 and Table 1 show the overall pattern of postings between tutor and student over the 17-week period of this study. What is immediately evident is the degree of parallelism between the two lines, with a notable exception around week eight that will be discussed later. This might be explained by the type and timing of the assess ment tasks for this course. Assessment was divided into three components. The first component was participation, which spanned the whole 13-week duration of the course and was worth 20% of the total marks: 10% was awarded for in-class partici pation assessed over the five tutorials and 10% for online discussion board participa tion. Students were also required to make a short presentation on a topic in the tutorial for week nine (40%) and to submit a 2000-word written paper (40%) by week 15. The next most notable feature of the data in Figure 1 is the emergence of three distinct phases in terms of posting activity, also identified in Tables 1 and 2 and the summary graph in Figure 2, which appear to be largely driven by the timing and 

The tutor adopted a nurturing and supportive role during the first three weeks of the course, which can be operationally defined as becoming heavily engaged (in terms of providing an encouraging and non-critical response) with students via the online discussion board and ensuring that most tutor postings contained encouraging and supportive comment. This was intended to create a culture of high trust as an appro priate ‘climate for learning’ (Biggs, 1999). This is evidenced in the tutor postings data in Tables 1 and 2. The intention, then, is for the tutor to gradually withdraw, increas ingly responding by acknowledging good questions and reflecting these back to the online student group to encourage metacognitive activity (Downing & Shin, 2006), further independent discussion and peer learning activity over the remaining 10 weeks of the course. A formative assessment task, due in week three, was designed whereby each student contacted a fellow and posted a short introduction to that indi vidual on the discussion board. The intention of this formative social assignment was to encourage early engagement with the asynchronous use of the discussion board, and to attempt to initiate the beginnings of a sense of a supportive online learning community.

The number and of the course demonstrates that this was an effective way of encouraging early engage ment with both the discussion board environment and each other. In fact, many of the students, who had been in online contact during this exercise, subsequently chose to sit together from tutorial three until the end of the course. Phase one is character ised by interaction that is largely social in nature, with student–student interaction for social reasons accounting for significantly more postings than the other three catego ries.

The next highest categories are student–tutor interaction for social reasons followed by student–tutor interaction for instrumental reasons. Analysis of the content of the latter category shows most postings to be related to practical course arrangements, tutorials and assignments. The final category was student–student interaction for instrumental reasons, suggesting perhaps that students have not yet sufficiently developed the social relationships with their peers necessary for collabo rative learning. A review of student feedback for this semester confirms this assertion, with most student comments identifying the need to build some sort of relationships between each other and the tutor at this early stage.

Almost all students identified the early online exercise of contacting and introducing a fellow as very effective in terms of creating a sense of belonging to a group, and only one student commented that he found it ‘annoying’. This finding confirms that of Brown (2001), who identifies the first stage of her three-stage model as being about making friends online with whom students felt comfortable communicating. This is very similar to what happens in traditional classrooms where the creation of a safe and supportive learning environ ment provides an effective context for subsequent learning activity.

The social role of the tutor is more clearly defined at this stage than the relationships between students, and this accounts for the significantly higher levels of student–tutor interaction in the social category during this socially formative and somewhat exploratory stage. By week three, all students said that they felt more comfortable in the online discussion board environment; this is confirmed by a notable rise in giving support to their colleagues for instrumental reasons. This is perhaps a form of social learning through modelling the tutors’ online social/emotional support behaviours in the manner described by Bandura (1965), and it certainly set the scene for a warm and supportive learning environment both online and in the tutorials. In fact, the importance of developing a sense of trust in the learning environment (McGregor, 1967; Biggs, 1999) is identified as being an even more critical success factor in online learning and working environments by Grundy (2002). 
    

The socially formative assessment task to be posted on the discussion board by week three undoubtedly contributed to student–student social interaction during this phase, and substantially assisted in the early stages of relationship building—almost certainly leading to more student–student instrumental interaction in phase two, and setting the scene for a generally high level of overall discussion board activity. Brown (2001) identifies the second stage as one of community conferment or accep tance, occurring when students are part of a long, thoughtful, threaded discussion ona subject of importance. The interactions between weeks four and nine inclusive demonstrate an increase in student–student interaction for instrumental reasons, but this remains the lowest category overall. However, contrary to phase one where social interactions were paramount, this period shows a well balanced mix of both social and instrumental interaction (see Table 2, weeks four to nine).

The increase in the student–tutor interaction for instrumental reasons is assignment driven again, this time by the requirement to produce a group summative assignment in the form of a presentation on a selected topic in week nine. Surprisingly, in individual follow-up interviews with 10 of the student participants, seven stated that they began to feel a sense of competition with other groups during this phase and therefore felt more ‘comfortable’ asking the tutor for help with instrumental matters than their peers/ competitors. All 10 interviewees said that they used private email, rather than the discussion board, to communicate with their fellow presentation group members during this phase. Most gave the reason that they did not want to give away any ‘secrets’ about their presentation to the other groups.

They also admitted being ‘careful’ about how they phrased discussion board requests to the tutor for instru mental help during this phase so as not to give their ‘presentation plans to other groups’, and frustrated that the tutor refused to answer queries via email. The tutor refused to answer individual email queries, except of a private/personal nature throughout the course, on the basis that this might encourage more sharing and collaborative learning online. The gradual reduction in student–student interaction for instrumental reasons (see Figure 1) between weeks four and nine is largely a result of students experiencing a sense of inter-group competition given that the presentation assignment due in week nine was summative in nature and carried a substantial proportion (40%) of the overall marks for the course.

While the overall number of postings during this period is up very slightly on phase one, the distribu tion of postings according to the four categories is very different and suggests that Brown’s (2001) second stage of community conferment or acceptance is compro mised when students perceive they are in competition. In fact, the highest number of postings during this phase was student–tutor interaction for instrumental reasons (see Figure 2), which is more consistent with Yuselturk and Top’s (2006) ‘task oriented area’ classification where instrumental questions take priority over social interaction. Nonetheless, social interaction remained very slightly above instrumen tal interaction overall, providing evidence that some sense of community prevailed during this phase. 

Question 1 - asked what works in terms of encouraging early engagement with the asynchronous use of the discussion board. There is little doubt from the level of online activity and interaction identified in Figure 1 and Table 1 above that early engagement with an asynchronous discussion board can be greatly facilitated by the design of a simple yet appropriate socially formative assignment. By asking students to contact each other and introduce a fellow student using the discussion board medium, a great deal of early interaction was facilitated. In phase one, there were a total of 681 postings from 32 students (Table 2, weeks zero to three) and these included both student–student and student–tutor interaction, with the emphasis (almost twice as many) being in terms of social interaction. In that sense, and in terms of Brown’s (2001) first stage of ‘making friends online with whom students felt comfortable communicating’, this approach is successful. However, the established

Question two - asked how the sense of a learning community develops, and how this can be encouraged. This is the most problematic question to be answered because, while it might be possible to classify postings as primarily social or instrumental in nature, students will also take into account many other factors before deciding when and what to post. This is evidenced by the data in phase two; and the comments from students in the follow-up interviews, which demonstrate that students are often influ enced by what they perceive, are pragmatic considerations about the competition they are involved in when required to complete summative assignments. Despite the fact that the tutor for this course made it very clear from the outset that assessment was criterion referenced, rather than norm-referenced, and that it was therefore possible for every student to be graded ‘A’, there was nonetheless a clear formation of separate presentation working groups, and a subsequent reluctance to share too much online with non-group members.

In retrospect, this would have been an appropriate time to create separate working groups within the discussion board, rather than to continue with one group to which all students had access. This would have positively influ enced the continuation of a sense of a supportive learning community established in phase one. This finding is broadly in agreement with that of Nicol et al. (2003), who point out that the social context of online learning is qualitatively different from more traditional modes and that both practitioners and researchers need to recognise this complexity. In this case study, the timing and handling of the group summative assessment task clearly interfered with the continued establishment of a sense of a supportive and nurturing online learning community, and that if we are to take full advantage of the power of online technologies, we must develop our understanding of their impact upon the social context for online learning. 

Question three - asked what works in terms of sustaining online interaction, and this is a question that requires some analysis. The results from this study, and others (Brown, 2001; Hwang & Wang, 2004; Yuselturk & Top, 2006) suggest that online discussion activity might go through a series of stages or phases, which on the surface might not be too dissimilar to what happens in classroom-based learning. In other words, there is a socially active phase, an instrumental phase and then a gradual, and perhaps natural, process of disengagement. The current study demonstrates that students take a pragmatic approach to this process, disengaging when they feel they have all the information they need to complete the summative assessment tasks they are set. To that extent it is not effective or worthwhile to attempt to sustain online interaction for the duration of the whole course. Provided students have engaged in reflective online discussion activity early on, and completed the online course mate rials, it might be counter-productive to try to sustain involvement through to the end of the course. 

We should interpret sustaining online interaction in a way that adds the provision ‘as far as there is educational value in so doing’. If the question is interpreted in this way, educators are provided with much more scope in terms of how they decide to use, and how they evaluate, the success or failure of online discussion forums.Creating interaction in online learning 213 Vygotsky (1978) pointed out that conceptual learning was a collaborative effort that required supportive dialogue, so it is reasonable to assume that online discussion has the potential to enhance both collaboration and concept development.

However, some researchers take the view that true social interaction leading to cognitive growth in an online context is rare (Son, 2002; Meyer, 2003; Wickstrom, 2003), whereas others (Poole, 2000; Grady, 2003; Schallert et al., 2003) demonstrate that significant social interaction leading to effective knowledge construction does take place in online discussion forums. As Kay (2006) points out, a resolution to this debate lies in both the user acceptance of the medium and the amount of structure used to guide the online discussion board. The current study suggests that the former task is perhaps more easily achieved than the latter, and that more research is needed into ‘what works’ in terms of engaging and sustaining online learning communities that are truly collaborative and supportive. 

This Management Assignment has been solved by our Management Experts at My Uni Paper. Our Assignment Writing Experts are efficient to provide a fresh solution to this question. We are serving more than 10000+Students in Australia, UK & US by helping them to score HD in their academics. Our Experts are well trained to follow all marking rubrics & referencing style.

Be it a used or new solution, the quality of the work submitted by our assignment Experts remains unhampered. You may continue to expect the same or even better quality with the used and new assignment solution files respectively. There’s one thing to be noticed that you could choose one between the two and acquire an HD either way. You could choose a new assignment solution file to get yourself an exclusive, plagiarism (with free Turnitin file), expert quality assignment or order an old solution file that was considered worthy of the highest distinction.