My reflection on this article stems from my experiences with various distance learning classes I have taken. When I did my second Master’s degree, I did it through Distance Learning through the University of Sheffield (UK) through their office in Hiroshima while I was living and teaching in Japan. It was more of an independent study style with meetings twice a year when my year’s cohort of students (maybe 10 or so people) got together for studying and some testing or practice testing. Because I was busy teaching full-time at a university and also busy with my life, it was a good match for me, and I didn’t feel like I needed much student-teacher interaction. I had different expectations for the role of the instructor as compared to traditional lecturer classes. I had a little more interaction with my dissertation supervisor when I was working on my dissertation, but even then, I felt like she was busy with lots of duties, and I didn’t feel like I got much attention or responses in a timely manner. I knew from the get-go I was more on my own with this, so I wasn’t surprised. The main office was great with other kinds of support, but I did not feel a strong sense of support from the teachers/instructors/professors. There was no resource like Oncourse or Blackboard back then (2002-4) for us.
My next distance learning experience was a class I took a few years ago through the School of Education here at IUB. As I mentioned before in the forum, the posting requirements were vague, so I felt like I was always in a race for number of posts with some quite loquacious people who seemed to post every five minutes. Some of these posts were meaningful, and some were “Me, too” – a post is a post according to the counter. The teacher was reasonably present, but the focus was definitely student-student and student-content. I felt more disconnected or distanced (ß ironically) with this kind of distance learning than I had with my MA in Japan because the expectations were different. I missed the teacher-student interaction as well as live in-person feedback.
For the next couple of years, I took live in-classroom courses and I really enjoyed the interaction that comes from the back-and-forth of the live classroom that (forgive me for being frank) forums just can’t imitate. Before class, I would always thoroughly prepare and research articles looked like they’d been attacked with my highlighter and pens.
Since then, I have taken a couple of online classes through Language Ed. Department, and the posting requirements have been more reasonable, but I still miss the live interaction. I don’t feel the same motivation to super-prepare because I won’t be ‘live’ in the arena of discussion with my classmates. We post things and those things go ‘online’ and there they go. No immediate reaction. I have much less motivation and feel much less personally involved. I do feel an obligation as an internally-motivated student to do what I’m supposed to do when I’m supposed to do it, and I do enjoy the people I’ve met in my online classes, but it lacks the depth and personal face-to-face connection I associate with positive learning experiences.
As Anderson says:
Now, as we progress to delivery directly to individual homes and offices, I notice a drop off of student-student interaction as the side-talk channel is reduced or eliminated, and the distractions of home life or alluring availability of Web surfing and email, increase the challenge of engaging students instudent-student or student-teacher interaction. (p. 14)
I think this is a major factor in the disconnect that I feel or the lack of human-to-human contact with distance learning because I am in my living room with Dr. Oz playing on my DVR in the background instead of in a class with my briefcase and my super-highlighted article in front of me ready for a lively face-to-face discussion.
I hope I wasn’t too honest or too forthcoming here, but interaction in distance learning is the topic, and we all have various experiences.
I’m interested in knowing if any of this rings true for you all or if you’ve had different experiences.
Denise, thanks for sharing your experiences. I haven't had as much experience as yours with distance learning. But, I agree that the situation is different between attending a face-to-face class discussion and that of online.
ReplyDeleteI had a bit different online course experience. I took an online elective course from Instructional System Technology at School of Education last semester. I felt I had the three types of interactions in meaningful ways.
Every week, we had to post one question for each reading. Usually the readings fell into two topics, so basically we had to post two questions weekly due on Wednesdays. This was the most difficult part for me, raising one pointed question. Then, we had to post answers to at least two questions due on Sundays. Sundays was usually "busy" day for forum discussion. Answers and responses popped up almost immediately. Like our 544, the professor also responded to students' questions.
Then, on Thursdays we had an online chat (seminar) with the professor and sometimes with guest speakers who were experts in the topics we discussed. Because the class was big, about 30 students, the class was divided into two chat sessions (Tuesdays and Thursdays night) and students could choose one of the sessions. The seminar in chat session was designed like that of face-to-face. After a short presentation and a review on class logistic the professor lead a discussion based on important quote and our selected questions from Oncourse forum. So, here if we were not well prepared, then we would not be able to jump in the discussion. However, the background setting was still the same like you said, students might be at home with TV or movie at the background :)What I'm trying to say here is that I had high level of interaction with content to be prepared for this discussion session.
In addition, we had both individual and group work. There were 5 deliverables that we had to finish in group and those group work were not easy plus each group member had different opinion about the tasks. I was lucky because most of my group members lived in Bloomington, one group member was in Alaska. So, every time we had group work we combined our face-to-face discussion in campus with online chat through Skype with our friend in Alaska. Well, you can imagine how challenging it was having online group discussion for delivarables like papers, movie scripts, and brochures in which we had to always quote or paraphrase our reading materials. So, this way I had a high level of student-student interaction. But, it was really time consuming. However, we learned a lot from each other and we also developed friendship as the side effect :D Oh, we also had to fill in peer evaluation for each of our group member two times (at mid and end of semester).
The professor really monitored our weekly progress related to question-answer posting and group work. She regularly visited our group work forum (also set up in Oncourse)and asked some questions about our group work progress. She would also joined our group work sometimes to make sure that the group was in the right track. Plus, she and her assistants always replied my email or massages in Oncourse promptly. So, although the interaction with the professor was not as high as those with other students and content, I always felt that she and her assistants were always there, ready to help me (and other students). At the end of the semester, when some of us met offline at the professor's house, we felt like we've been familiar to each other.
Wow, I am sorry Denise, I think my story is too long :)I just wanted to say that in my first online class, the three types of interaction existed in meaningful way. However, again, this course was really really time consuming that I was so stressed in managing my time for other courses. I never had Saturdays and Sundays for my family :(
Again, sorry for writing this long. Hope you're not get bored when reading :)
Retno
Denise,
ReplyDeleteI think you make a good point and i appreciate you being frank. In my experience the situation is reversed. In another graduate program, I experienced many 'loquacious' posters like you mentioned, except it was in-person in traditional classrooms. The conversations were typically irrelevant or geared towards pleasing the professors. I find that distance ed interaction allows for more relevance and honesty. I have had occasional traditional classes that were exceptional, but they tend to be rare. On the other hand, I feel that the quality I gain from distance courses tend to be more a function of my input and less dependent on others. But, like you said it really all comes down to our individual experiences. In both situations though, I feel that a good balance is achieved when there is just the right amount of moderation from the instructor.
Hi Denise: thanks for sharing your experience and don't fret over being up-front with your opinions - that's what makes discussions - online and face-to-face - interesting! I think I have to agree with Michael on this one, although I second his proviso that "individual results may vary" (as they say): online classes have been great for me. The convenience of the format so far outweighs the downside of losing more informal interaction, IMO. Even though you don't have the fun aspect of a group of people in the same room talking something over and joking together or in side conversations, having a lot of the irrelevant chat weeded out is such a plus. The class you described with the "loquacious" posters does sound dreadful - maybe I've just been lucky so far in having classmates who know how to stay on topic.
ReplyDeleteAny road up, you certainly have a tremendous breadth of experience with the format and I'll look forward to reading more of what you have to say.