Facilitating Interactive Exchanges in Electronic Forums.

[Delivered at SRHE Conference, University of Sterling
12/13 June 2000]

Dr S D Stein.

University of the West of England.

 

Introduction
Interaction in Higher Education Electronic Forums: Cases Studies

(i) Computer Conferences  

Research Sample: Conferencing 
Findings: Conferencing

Discussion: Conferencing

(ii)  Mailing Lists  

Research Sample: Mailing Lists
Findings: Mailing Lists
Discussion: Mailing Lists

Conclusions

Footnotes

Introduction  

The substantial investments in making computer mediated communications available to all educational sectors in the United Kingdom, backed up with additional resources from the EU1, have been repeatedly justified in terms of the probable realisation of educationally linked objectives2.  Much the same can be said for the extensive programmes implemented and underway in other EU member states3, North America, Australasia, and elsewhere.  In the United States, in addition to substantial investments by federal, state, and municipal sources, considerable funding is available for this purpose from private bodies, the Sloan Foundation being particularly active in this field. Also, unlike Europe, there are some very influential information-technology-in-education advocacy groups that support increased use of such resources in education. They bridge and integrate the interests of the corporate and educational sectors in this field4.    In the EU, integration is mediated to a much greater degree by an array of governmental and European Commission programmes and funding, which has, at the macro level, been justified on grounds of the medium to long-term benefits for employment and economic competitiveness5.  

In many quarters it is taken as a matter of course that networked computer mediated communications will assist in the attainment of educational goals along personal, organisational, cultural, and national dimensions, and in relation to varying sectors levels and types: primary, secondary, K-12, higher, continuing, life-long, adult, employee training, face-to-face, open, and distance.  Such expectations underlie some of the main UK higher education information technology programmes that were introduced during the eighties and nineties under the auspices of the higher education funding councils6.  A similar message is conveyed in various influential assessments exploring current and future educational provision, including the Dearing Report7.  The same themes haves become a mainstay of many scholarly and professional papers delivered at the increasing number of national and international conferences that take place each year which cover issues interfacing information technology and education8. Not surprisingly, such ideas are favourably received and reinforced by information technology corporate interests.9  

Belief in the revitalizing and extending powers of computer mediated communications in education is particularly strong among governmental officials, educational administrators10, many, but not all, researchers into education, and instructional designers. It is widely argued that the increasing incorporation of CMC in educational delivery, in addition to facilitating a broadening of access to educational provision and a reduction in unit educational costs, will also significantly impact on the quality of pedagogy.  In operational terms, this latter contention implies that educational outputs, manifested in terms of grade scores, competency attainments, student and teacher satisfaction, and completion rates, will show significant improvements over those associated with traditional methods of educational delivery.  

This expectation derives in large measure from the perception that CMC in its varied manifestations allows for enhanced interactivity. The term interactive is, however, defined and employed in many different ways in the scholarly and professional literature. In an interesting Keynote address to the 1999 EDMEDIA Conference, Reeves noted that in one sense all learning, both traditional face to face learning, as well as CMC, is interactive, in that “learners interact with content to process, tasks to accomplish, and/or problems to solve.11” Reeves defines interaction in the context of CMC, as “involving some sort of technological mediation between a teacher/designer and a learner.  …The adult school dropout developing basic literacy skills via a multimedia simulation, the high school student surfing the WWW for archival material about indigenous people to prepare a class presentation, and the three-year old practicing color-matching skills with Big Bird with a Sesame Street CD-ROM program are all engaged in interactive learning.12   

According to Reeves, interactive learning, that is, technologically mediated learning, can be divided into two types.  The first, in which the student is largely a “passive” recipient of information, albeit technologically mediated, entails the student learning from materials that are provided.  Such interaction occurs, for example, when the student uses a CD-ROM, accesses information from an html file, or peruses materials delivered with the aid of an authoring system such as WebCT or TopClass.  

A different form of interaction occurs when the students’ “learning” involves the use of “cognitive” electronic applications, and takes place largely in “constructivist learning environments.” The students’ interaction in this instance is with the learning content, rather than from technologically mediated materials.  Examples of cognitive tools and “constructivist” learning environments include: “databases, spreadsheets, semantic networks, expert systems, communications software such as teleconferencing programs, on-line collaborative knowledge construction environments, multimedia/ hypermedia construction software, and computer programming languages.13  

Despite the fact that Reeves, in line with the conclusions of Clark,14  Seigel,15 Schlechter,16 and Joy and Garcia,17 finds that there is no convincing evidence that instruction mediated by information technology of itself can be shown, in operational terms, to be superior to traditional face-to-face instruction, he tends to favour interaction of the second type, that is, instruction that relies on cognitive tools and is embedded in constructivist learning environments.  The inference to be drawn is that the outputs associated with educationally oriented interactions that rely on cognitive tools, particularly when these are integrated with “constructivist” pedagogical frameworks, are in some sense superior.  This is suggested by the very long list of advantages he provides for interactions of the with variety in comparison with the paucity of those associated with from interactions.  In addition, one cannot but help drawing the conclusion that the type of outputs he associates with cognitive tools and constructivist pedagogical frameworks are inherently superior.   

This is probably not very surprising given the positive emotional lading associated with “constructivism” among professional educators.  As Ian Hacking recently noted, “the phrase has become code.18  In educational circles, to ally yourself with the “constructivist” camp is to lay claims to progressivism, experimentation, technological adaptability, pedagogical creativity, democratically negotiated control of the curriculum, etc. Whilst Reeves does not incline to a preference for with interactions for these reasons, it seems to me that he departs somewhat from his stricture that it is “imperative to open up the ‘black boxes’ of instructional alternatives and reveal the relevant pedagogical dimensions they express if evaluations are to be meaningful and have utility. Pedagogical dimensions are the keys to unlocking the black boxes of various forms of CBE19 [computer based education].”

Interaction in Higher Education Electronic Forums: Cases Studies

Computer conferencing and mailing list exchanges both fall within the boundaries of technology mediated communications that are included in the with category of interactions outlined by Reeves.  As both are platforms that allow for the exchange of views, cooperative problem solving, multi-participant imparting of information, the elaboration of meaning, and the appreciation of understanding, they allow movement away from didactic, transmission models of instruction.  According to Oblinger and Maruyama, “Interaction- student-to-faculty, student-to-student, and student-to-information- is directly related to improved learning20.”

According to Sherry and Wilson21, in the transmission model of communication, “the instructor-as-expert delivers instruction to the students.  The student is supposed to process the information mentally, much as a computer follows an algorithm to carry out an information processing sequence.” As can be inferred from the tonality of the discourse, this is perceived by the authors, along with many other educationalists and instructional designers, as a largely negative pedagogical orientation.

Transformative pedagogy, with which it is contrasted, is generative: “Instructors learn along with their students.  As a result, instructors and students alike are transformed as learners by the process of communication.  Through such collaborative discourse within the learning community, a two-way dynamic system comes into being.  The active learning that occurs then begins to push the frontiers of knowledge.”  Among the many benefits to be derived from a transformative pedagogic approach to learning, the following are especially desirable:  

  • The student teaches the instructor something he or she didn’t know before about the technology or the content.
  • The student goes beyond the textbook or the lecture to reveal differences of opinion among the experts. 
  • …the students collaboratively guide much of their own learning.
  • The instructor finds himself or herself saving student work-not merely as examples of student work, but as content resources for future reference22.

Although it is entirely feasible that collaborative electronic forums that are employed in the context of educational delivery - conferencing systems, newsgroups and mailing lists, for instance - can be transformative in the above sense, my own research indicates that this is extremely difficult to realise, at least in certain educational environments and electronic forums.  The minimal precondition is that an interchange should actually occur. If there is no exchange, merely the depositing of information by successive actors in the same electronic space, there can be no transformative pedagogy.  Unfortunately, this is all too often what occurs.

In the course of exploring some of these issues I have examined interactions in two types of collaborative electronic forums, computer conferences and mailing lists.  

(i) Computer Conferences  

My experience in employing computer conferencing extends over a period of six of years teaching on the Social Science degree, and being the First Class Administrator at the University of the West of England.  The conferencing application that has been employed is FirstClass, which is used extensively by the Open University and many other institutions of higher education in the UK, North America, and elsewhere.  

The students who participated in the conferences that I investigated were all undertaking undergraduate programmes, the overwhelming majority of whom were 18 to 19 year-olds who entered university directly after the completion of their secondary education.  All students undertaking these courses had been provided with the opportunity of attending IT induction sessions which includes familiarisation with the use of FirstClass conferencing.  

Research Sample: Conferencing  

The students whose conferencing work forms the basis of the discussion and analysis below were taking the following course modules.  The term assigned work below refers to coursework other than tests or examinations.  

(i) Methods of Analysis.  A 1st year undergraduate module that all students studying Social Science programmes are required to take.  Its aim is to provide students with critical appraisal of qualitative and quantitative research methods.  The analysis and discussion below is based on work undertaken by students during the first trimester of the 1999/2000 academic year. There were 119 conferences. The total number of students taking this course in the first term of 1999/00 =420.   Comparison was made with assigned written, non-conferencing, work carried out by students taking this course in 1998/99, the number of students then  =290  

(ii) Introduction to Social Psychology. This is a compulsory module for those majoring in Sociology but optional for all those taking other Social Science programmes.  It may be taken by either 2nd or 3rd year students.  Analysis is based on assigned work undertaken during the first trimester of 1998/1999, N=61, divided into 19 conferences, membership ranging from 3 to 6, 11 conferences of which had 4 members, and one with 6. Comparison was made with performance on assigned and examination work on other modules taken by the students, excluding (iii) below. 

(iii) The Holocaust and Other Massacres. This is a compulsory module for those majoring in Sociology but optional for all those taking other Social Science programmes.  Both 2nd and 3rd year students may take this module.  Analysis is based on those taking this course in 1998/99, who were divided into 22 conferences of between 2 and 6 members in the first trimester with 66 students, and 22 of between 1 and 5 in the second, also with 66 students.  There was only one conference with 1 member.  Most conferences had a membership of between 3 and 5, relatively evenly distributed in both trimesters. Comparison was made with performance on assigned work and overall results on other modules taken by students, excluding (ii) above. 

Students were posed essay type questions relating to the subject matter of the courses that they were undertaking and were required to discuss this through the medium of the FirstClass conferencing system.  Because of the large numbers of students involved, and student commitments and time constraints, very few of these students met face to face in connection with the fulfilment of conferencing course requirements.  Students were allocated to conferences alphabetically, or on the basis of surname after they had chosen an assignment topic.  They were assessed on the basis of the quality of the contributions that they made to the conferences, and written work that summarised their own conclusions concerning the essay questions.  

Students were given detailed information concerning what was expected from them as far as the volume of contributions they should make, when these should be made, the range of issues that should be covered (e.g., methodological issues, relevant theoretical frameworks, status of empirical data), and, in the case of course (i) above, requirements concerning alternating turn-taking in assuming a lead and reactive/interactive contributing role.  In addition to the induction training, mentioned earlier, all students were given the opportunity of an additional 30 minutes training session using the conferencing system.  

 The overall course grades for (ii) and (iii) above are made on the basis of the assigned work and a final examination, each contributing 50 percent to the total.  The assigned work was a mix of conferencing contributions and written work related to the question posed for conferencing contributions.  All other modules on the degree scheme are also assessed by a combination of written coursework and final examinations, each contributing, with few exceptions, fifty percent of the total.  None of these other courses use conferencing for assessment purposes, although instructors on many courses employ the conferencing system as a broadcast medium.  

Students take a total of six courses per year, with the exception of the very few part-time students.  The performance of the students on the conferencing courses was compared with their performance on the other courses that they took in the same academic year.  The comparison was with the average performance on coursework grades, examination grades, and the overall average of coursework and examination grades on these other courses.  In most cases these were averages of performance on five courses. However, in some instances the comparison was confined to a comparison of performance on the conferencing related module with performance on four other courses, as some students opted to study both courses in the same academic year.  

As far as the methods course was concerned, (i) above, comparison was made between the assessed work on the conferencing system of students in the first term of the 1999/00 academic year, with that of written coursework undertaken by students taking the same course in the first term of the academic year 1998/99. These latter students did not use the conferencing system for assessed work in any courses during that year.  

Although I designed the essay questions, wrote the guidelines relating to conferencing work requirements, and administered the conferencing system, the assessment of conferencing contributions, written, and examination work, was undertaken entirely independently by the course seminar instructors. The methods course had 10 seminar instructors, whereas (ii) and (iii) had one each. None of the conferences were moderated.  None of the instructors made any contributions to the conferencing discussions, with the few exceptions when it was necessary to intervene for administrative purposes, for instance, informing students that they were sending the message to the parent conference rather than to the project group conference.  Consequently, students undertook all conferencing work independently.  

Findings: Conferencing  

With respect to modules, (ii) and (iii) student t-Tests, paired two samples for means, were carried out on a number of data series, the Null Hypothesis being that there was no difference between the means attained on conferencing work modules and the averaged performance of students on all other modules. For module (i) the t-Test two sample assuming unequal variance was employed. This was undertaken separately for the assigned coursework and examination grades.  No significant difference was found at the .01 level in respect of (iii) for the second term. There was, however, a significant difference for (iii) in the first term, the mean for coursework on the conferencing module being 3% higher than for the average for all other modules.  There was a 6.7% difference between the final mark on the conferencing module and the overall final mark, for (iii) in the first term.  Significant differences persisted when the tests were carried out separately for males and females.  However, for (iii), term two, no significant differences were found respecting any of the data series, although the means for performance on all of the data series relating to the conferencing modules were higher than those with which they were compared. The differences between terms (i) and (ii) could conceivably be interpreted as being a product of the wearing off of the novelty effect, but many other explanations are equally plausible. 

For module (ii), the only significant difference was between the means for the overall grade for the module and the average overall grade on other modules, the mean for the former being nearly 6% higher. The means in all other comparison were higher for the conferencing module.  

For the methods course, (i) above, the t-Test between the written assignment work for the 1998/99 and the 1999/00 conferencing work was significantly different at the .01 level, the means differing by 4.2%, being higher for the conferencing work.  The t-Test between the 1998/99 and the 1999/00 written work was not significantly different at the 0.05 level, the mean for the former being higher.  

The analysis, along with mixed effects regression and correlation analysis, not reported upon here, indicate that conferencing undertaken without the benefit of moderation is not reflected in poorer performance, as measured by grades in written and examination work, compared with courses using traditional higher education instructional modes.  In fact, students performed better on average on two of the conferencing modules (ii, iii), than they did on other courses.  

Discussion: Conferencing  

The above findings are in line with other studies that indicate that students whose instruction involves technologically mediated collaborative work do at least as well as students relying on more traditional instructional contexts23.  However, the findings from this and some additional case studies that I conducted, but which are not reported on here,  cannot be taken as indicating that the students were involved in, or underwent, transformative learning experiences, or, indeed, that their learning took into consideration the exchanges that had occurred in these forums.    

The fact of the matter is that although we can contrast the performance of students involved in instructional programmes with differing mixes of computer mediated communications, or, in Reeves’ terms, interactions, we are not in a position to conclude that their demonstration of achievement derives from the process of interaction with others in collaborative forums, rather than with their own non-mediated cognitive processing of learning resources. It is even very difficult in the case of the conferencing work undertaken by the students on these courses to arrive at conclusions as to the extent of the interaction that has occurred, and this for a number of reasons.  

First, it is not possible to develop unproblematic indices of transformative interactive exchanges.  Although most conferencing systems incorporate threading, students on the various courses whose conferencing is reported on here, rarely respond to the messages of others by employing the reply feature, despite being repeatedly instructed to do so.  This need not be taken to indicate that they are not responding to the messages of others as  there were numerous instances in which messages that were not threaded included statements of the form: “as X pointed out”.  Similarly, there were other communications in which the reply feature was employed, but where the content did not indicate that the present communication was a response to, or took into consideration, the communication to which it was a threaded response to.   

Secondly, even when the communication is threaded, and the content indicates that the author is taking note of a prior communication, there is no means that enable us to ascertain whether this has been incorporated in the author’s learned material, especially as student’s have been informed that there is an expectation that they should interact meaningfully with others in their conferencing group. They may include sentences such as “In response to X, I think,” simply because they appreciate that doing so may be rewarded in assessment terms.  There is, as far as I can see, absolutely no way of resolving this problem satisfactorily.  

The data collected from these samples did not indicate any factors that significantly influenced the volume of exchanges that occurred in these conferences.  There was no gender composition or group size effect.  Examination of the number of contributions made by individuals to conferences, and their volume, over successive terms in which they dealt with different subject matters, and, in the case of one sample, were in groups with different individuals, suggests: (i) that these students are generally unlikely to exceed the minimum requirements in terms of the number of exchanges that they are instructed to make, and (ii) that students make a similar number and volume of contributions in successive group collaborative ventures. In other words, the number of messages contributed and the volume is a function of a combination of specified requirements and the students’ sense of what is appropriate or required.  Even though course tutors make it abundantly clear that detailed, considered, analytical and well-referenced conferencing work is what they are looking for, this does not appear to have much impact.  

(ii)  Mailing Lists

Research Sample: Mailing Lists  

The main database that I have used is the Mailbase series of lists.  Mailbase25 is an electronic mail discussion list service, currently based at the University of Newcastle.  It is one of a large number of programmes that has been financed by the University and Higher Education Funding Councils in the UK, all of which are directed at encouraging and facilitating the employment of electronic based facilities and materials in higher and further education.  Its purpose is “to support collaborative work amongst geographically distributed groups of researchers and associated support staff from within the UK higher education and research community.26” Accordingly, many of the exchanges on these lists are contributed by academic staff or allied professionals.  Although students can also subscribe to lists and contribute exchanges, on many of them they do not appear to do so.

Established in 1989, Mailbase has provided the hardware and software facilities for the ongoing management of these lists, archives of past communications, interactive and electronic mail helpline facilities, workshops to inform academic staff of the availability of the service, and support to listowners.  Given certain conditions being met, anyone can apply to Mailbase to set up a list.  Currently, June 11, 2000, 12:40,  there are 2916 lists with a subscriber base of 212,726.   Most of these lists are open, in the sense that anyone can subscribe to them; others are only open to particular constituencies.   

The Mailbase lists are a useful source of information on the scope and patterns of interactivity that occur in these particular electronic forums because statistical information relating to such variables as the numbers of subscribers, numbers of communications per month, period over which lists have been active, and the numbers of messages sent to a list since being established, are all available on line.  In addition, message archives for each list can be accessed by subject, thread, and author.  

Rather than employing random sampling to extract lists for analysis from the complete Mailbase database, all of the lists dealing with a number of main subject/sub-subject areas were examined, to ensure coverage across discipline areas and to exclude some of those directed at higher education policy makers and administrators. The subject/sub-subject lists included are grouped under the headings of Computing (24 lists, 3 sub categories), Education (5, 1), Engineering and Technology (29, 3), Humanities (48, 2), Library (23, 1), Maths and Statistics (31, 1), Physical Sciences (20, 2), Social Studies (94, 4), Teaching and Learning (36, 2).  This gives at total of 310 lists. Although this does not constitute a random sample, comparisons I have made with non-selected lists indicates that the analysis findings can be generalised to the complete database.  Data was collected for the time frame December 1998/December 1999 inclusive.  The bulk of the data was collected between 17 and 21 January, 2000.  Some additional data was collected between 1 and 7 February  

These lists were subdivided into two groupings: the basic list, which includes all the lists, and a high interactivity group. The high interactivity group includes those lists that, at least potentially, are characterised by a degree of interactivity. There were 61 lists that met this criterion. By interactivity is meant communications that take into consideration past exchanges to the list.  Interactivity in relation to a particular message was taken to exist if there were at least two messages included under the same subject heading .   

The dependent variables for high interaction lists were (1) the list interactivity ratio, the ratio of interactive messages to total messages for the three months with maximum communications;  (2) the list communication ratio, the ratio of the number of members to the average number of messages per month sent to the list in the data time frame; (3) the average number of messages sent to the list per month in the data time frame.  For all lists the dependent variable was the average number of messages sent to the list per month in the data time frame.  Independent variables were: for all lists: (1) number of subscribers; for high interactivity lists: (1) number of subscribers; (2) the average number of messages per month; (3) the number of authors contributing to the list; (4) the ratio of ac.uk domain subscribers to all subscribers; (5) list owner input, being the ratio of communications by list owners to total messages to the list for the month with the maximum number of communications in the data time frame.  

Findings: Mailing Lists  

For the 310 lists the mean number of members was 170, the median 93, and the range from 0 to 3244.  

Patterns of communicative exchanges and interactivity were analysed by employing descriptive statistics, correlational analysis and regression modelling.  The Pearson correlation between the number of subscribers and the average volume of communications per month was 0.46 (N=311), for the time frame Dec.98/Dec.99,which was lower than that found by Rojo, 0.7 (N=12). The correlation over the life of the list was only 0.3. The range for main subject categories was from 0.96 (N=5) to 0.21 (N=94).  The correlations for the first and second percentiles were quite weak (0.3, 0.14), as they were for the ninth and tenth (0.01, –0.18). In percentile calculations lists with no messages were excluded from the range.  

The mean number of average messages per month was 11.06, the median 2.3, and the range from 0 to 407.9.  There were 71 lists with 0 messages, and 116 with less than one.  The Communication Ratio is a measure of the number of members on a list required to generate an average of one message per month.  For the 241 lists where CR>0 the mean was 49.78 and the median 26.08.  The range was from 797 for the list cogsci to 0.72 for the radical-psychology network. The Interactivity Ratio measures potential interactivity on high interactivity lists.  This ranged from 1 to 0.11. A ratio of one signifies a total absence of interactivity (N=1), whereas 0 indicates complete interactivity, that is, all messages included in threads of at least three messages.  No list met this criterion for complete interactivity. The mean was 0.48, the median 0.46.  

In regression modelling, as noted above, the main dependent variable was the Interactivity Ratio; the average number of messages per month was also used as a dependent variable.  The variables that were considered to be potentially relevant were the number of subscribers to the list, the relative volume of contributions by list owners relative to the total, and the number of message contributors to a list, and the ratio of ac.uk subscribers to the total.  The regression was run for the high interactivity list as a whole, and for the main Mailbase subject categories (i.e., computing, social studies, humanities, etc.).   

The regression model employing all these variables, with dummy variables for the main subject category lists, indicated no significant relationship at the .01 level, with the exception of that for Library lists where there was significantly more interactivity, with a t coefficient of –2.3, indicating that as far as these lists were concerned there was a relationship between the variables entered and the level of interactivity.  For the high interactivity list, the only variable contributing significantly to the Interactivity Ratio, was the number of members, significant at 0.01 level, with a t test value of 0.29.  When employing the average number of messages per month as the dependent variable, the only significantly related variables at the 0.01 level were the number of authors, with a positive t of 10.07 and the number of members, t= -3.9.  The number of members is not in the expected direction, i.e., an increase in the number of members reduces the number of messages contributed.  

Discussion: Mailing Lists  

Included in the Mailbase database are mission statements relating to the purpose of the lists.  These invariably take the form of “to facilitate discussion on”, “to discuss the use of”, “provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, information and news,” and similar.  The Mailbase system was clearly set up with this in mind.  However, the data relating to the 310 lists included indicate that the level of interactivity is very low, with only 60 lists meeting the criterion for potential interactivity.  

These Mailbase lists, for whatever reasons, are, on the whole, not generating sustained interactivity, there being only a very few exceptions.  The exceptions tend to be task-oriented lists, of which the Library Lists are the most important exemplar in the sample, virtually all of those included being task-oriented, being concerned with developing metadata criteria for the Dublin Core.  There are some lists on which there is a very high level of interactivity and exchange, such as postmodern-christian, radical-psychology-network, medieval-religion and local-history.  However, none of the variables employed in this study differentiated these lists significantly from others.  

Variables indicated by other researchers as being positively related to interactivity, such as the number of subscribers, the number of message authors, the volume of contributions of listowners, or the total volume of communications, were not found in the current sample to have a significant bearing on the extent of interactivity or the volume of communications.  It is clear that a more detailed qualitatively oriented approach needs to be coupled with macro-statistical analyses in order to draw up a more adequate typology of interactive/non-interactive lists.  The current research indicated that there are lists with small numbers of subscribers that are highly interactive, lists with small number s of subscribers in which there is hardly any interactivity, and homologous entries for lists with medium and high levels of subscription.  

Conclusions  

One of the oft-touted affordances of computer mediated communications in the educational field are the opportunities provided for increased collaborative exchanges.  CMC does not need to be synchronous. Anytime/anyplace communications are assumed to provide the context for “reflective” exchanges. Reflective exchanges are contrasted with those that are immediate.  Immediate exchanges are associated with the much-maligned, and now generally undesirable, traditional lectures and seminars.  As Khan, one among many, notes, “Collaborative learning emphasises cooperative efforts among faculty and students.  This learning process stresses active participation and interaction on the part of both instructors and students.  WBI (Web Based Instruction) creates a medium of collaboration, conversation, discussions, exchange and communication of ideas.  The sharing of knowledge and resources engages students in higher level thinking skills, which promote active and interactive learning from multiple perspectives.27   

No one involved directly in educating is likely to deny the desirability of employing resources, technologically mediated or other, that achieve the objectives outlined in the above quotation from Khan.  However, as has been noted on many occasions, providing technologically mediated resources that allow such attainments is no guarantee that they will be secured.  Most of the literature that extols the benefits of CMC and contrasts it with more traditional methods, as has been pointed out, among others, by some of the authors I have referred to, is methodologically deficient. The claims made for it have not been substantiated by adequate empirical analyses.  This, of course, does not mean that the benefits alluded to cannot be realised.  My analysis of conferencing and mailing list exchanges, the former focusing on collaborative communications between students, the latter between academics and professionals,  does, however, suggest that the achievement of these objectives may be difficult to realise.

Footnotes  

1. See, for example: ODL in Motion: Current Actions and the Way Forward. Working Papers. Draft. Nov. 1997. European Commission DGXXII-A4  

2. Their attainment, of course, is frequently interpreted in terms of their potential economic and job-related impact.  

3. See, for example, The learning era-involving all citizens, ESIS Conference  on “The information society developments in the EU: best initiatives and practices for the future.” 18/19 March 1998, http://www.ispo.cec.be/esis/EsisConf.html Accessed 27 April 1998  

4. Two of the most prominent, CAUSE and Educom, “recognising a remarkable convergence of mission and goals” were incorporated as EDUCAUSE in July 1998.    Its mission is “to help shape and enable transformational change in higher education through the introduction, use, and management of information resources and technologies in teaching, learning, scholarship, research, and institutional management.” See its Web site at http://www.educause.edu/about.html for information on the scope of its activities.  

5. Europe and the Global Information Society: Recommendations to the European Council. [Referred to frequently as the Bangemann Report]  1994. http://www.earn.net/EC/bangemann.html Accessed 28 June 1996;  Living and Working in the Information Society: People First. Green Paper. 24 July 1996 http://www.ispo.cec.be/infosoc/legreg/docs/peopl1st.html Accessed 08 May 1997; Towards a Europe of Knowledge. Communication from the Commission. 11 November 1997. http://europa.eu.int/comm/dg22/orient/orie-en.html Accessed 27 April 1998.  

6.  For example, the TLTP, CTI, and Mailbase initiatives.  See Teaching and Learning Technology Programme, May 1993; TLTP Catalogue: Phase 2, Spring 1996; and the periodic issues of Active Learning from the CTI and the TLTP Newsletter.  

7. “13.1 As will be clear from other chapters in this report, we believe that the innovative exploitation of Communications and Information Technology (C&IT) holds out much promise for improving the quality, flexibility and effectiveness of higher education.” http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ncihe/index.htm Accessed 09 June 2000.  

8. See, for instance, Online Educa Berlin: Book of Abstracts. International Conference on Technology Supported Learning. October 29-31, 1997; Universities in a Digital Era: Transformation, Innovation and Tradition. Proceedings of the 1998 EDEN Conference. Two. Vols. Budapest: EDEN, 1998; Proceedings. ED-MEDIA 1999. World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications. Seattle, June 19-24, 1999; Book of Essays. The First Research Workshop of EDEN: Research and Innovation in Open and Distance Learning. European Distance Education Network. Prague, 16-17 March 2000. Budapest: EDEN, 1999.  There are hundreds of other conference papers dealing with similar themes deposited on publicly accessible Internet servers.

9. Reeves, T. Evaluating What Really Matters in Computer-Based Education. (1996) http://www.nib.unicamp.br/recursos/distance_education/evaluating-cbe.html Accessed 09 June 2000

10. See, for example, Information Technology Assisted Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. HEFCE Research Series, July 1997  

11. Reeves, T C. A Research Agenda for Interactive Learning in the New Millennium.  ED-MEDIA 99 Key Note Address. http://itech1.coe.uga.edu/EM99Key.html Accessed 09 June 1942  

12. ibid  

13. ibid  

14. Clark, R. E. (1983). Reconsidering research on learning with media. Review of Educational Research, 53(4), 445-45  

15. Siegel, J. (1994). No computer know how. Electronic Learning, 13(5), 58.  

16.  Shlechter, T. M. (Ed.). (1991). Problems and promises of computer-based training. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.  

17.  Joy E H, Garcia F E (2000). Measuring Learning Effectiveness: A New Look at No-Significant-Difference Findings. JALN, Vol.4, Issue 1 http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/Vol4_issue1/joygarcia.htm

Accessed 09 June 2000

 

18, Hacking, I. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999

 

19.  Reeves, T. Evaluating What Really Matters in Computer-Based Education. (1996) http://www.nib.unicamp.br/recursos/distance_education/evaluating-cbe.html Accessed 09 June 2000

 

20.  Cited in Khan, B D (1997), p.5  “Web-Based Instruction (WBI): What it is and Why Is It?”  In B D Khan (ed.) Web-Based Instruction.  Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Educational Technology Publications.

 

 

21.  Obligner D, Maruyama M K.  Distributed Learning. Cause Professional Paper Series, #14. n.d  

 

22.  L Sherry and B Wilson (1997). “Transformative Communication as a Stimulus to Web Innovations”. In B D Khan (ed.) Web-Based Instruction.  Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Educational Technology Publications, p.67

 

23. ibid, p.69  

 

24. Benbunan-Fich R, Hiltz S R. (1999) “Educational Applications of CMCS: Solving Case Studies through Asynchronous Learning Networks.” JCMC 4 (3) March 1999

 

25. http://www.mailbase.ac.uk  

26.  KPMG (1997) The Higher Education Funding Councils Review of Network Infrastructure Services.  

27. Khan B D (1997)  “Web-Based Instruction (WBI): What it is and Why Is It?”  In B D Khan (ed.) Web-Based Instruction.  Educational Technology Publications. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

Document compiled by Dr S D Stein
Last update 14/07/2000
Stuart.Stein@uwe.ac.uk
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