Tracing Online Lecturer Orchestration of Multiple Roles and Scaffolds over Time (original) (raw)
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2009
This paper reports on a study aimed to better understand teaching and learning in an online learning environment through the development of a learning community to facilitate successful learning experiences. To achieve this aim, a qualitative interpretive methodology was adopted to case study an online lecturer and his 14 students' experiences in a semester long fully online asynchronous graduate course in a New Zealand tertiary institution. Based on the findings, a model for understanding and developing an online learning community for adult tertiary learners is proposed. In accord with sociocultural views of learning and practices, the model depicts successful online learning as a mediated, situated, distributed, goal-directed and participatory activity within a socially and culturally determined learning community. The model informs our understanding of appropriate conditions for the development of online learning communities and has implications for the design and facilitation of learning in such contexts.
But the learning has already passed: Rethinking the role of time in e-mediated learning settings
E-Learning and Digital Media, 2014
Time takes on a different character when online teachers take advantage of the possibilities for interactions occurring over different scales of time. Online teachers’ pedagogical link making can help students see links between ideas across individual postings so that meaning making becomes cumulative and progressive. This article reports on a qualitative case study of a fully online postgraduate course in Educational Research Methods within a New Zealand tertiary institution where the intention was to develop a learning community. The study was framed within a lecturer-researcher collaborative approach to facilitate online lecturer development. Data collected from the online postings between lecturers and students and among students and lecturer and student interviews revealed how postings that point towards previous group ideas, current developing ideas and forward focused ideas at pivotal points in the course supported student reflection, collaboration, and provided for socio-emotional support albeit in different ways and means. The authors argue that there is value in explicitly considering the mediating role of time when learning is understood as multidimensional and cumulative and provide implications for further research and practice. See http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2014.11.2.176
Breaking Down Online Teaching: Innovation and Resistance
The term "innovation" is associated mainly with change in practice using educational technology. This paper explores the question of why innovations in online teaching and learning in higher education break down or deliver less than they promise: why they are so resource intensive, so prone to breakdown, and why they often fail to live up to their promises? Two cases of innovation were selected from a broad doctoral research project across three Australian universities, involving 24 interviewees. One case was a bottom up, wiki based learning space inspired by a constructivist commitment, the other a top down response to organisational change in a degree program. Despite literature on case studies which offer useful, evidence based approaches and models for online pedagogy, there is a lack of analytical perspectives with which to engage with breakdowns and "thwarted innovation" in online learning. The focus in this paper is online teaching, and breakdowns are scoped beyond the technologies involved and encompass social, material and discursive entities. An actor network perspective (Callon 1986; Latour 1987; Law 2000) is used to explore the relationality between social and technological entities, and the sociotechnical assemblage which constitutes online teaching. It argues that (i) crucial factors are hidden by the normative perspective inherent in the implementation of technology systems, and (ii) recognising the connections between the social, material and discursive entities in online learning offers a strong analytic basis for innovative teaching and learning practice. Outstanding Paper Award recipient, ascilite Melbourne 2008 Conference
Understanding how learning communities are formed and evaluating their efficacy in supporting learning have a bearing on the facilitation of successful online learning experiences. This paper elaborates on the value of adopting a multiple planes of development (Rogoff, 1995) analytical framework to investigate the development and conduct of an online learning community. The analysis is grounded in a case study of a semester long fully online asynchronous graduate course in a New Zealand tertiary institution. Evidence is advanced that while development and change along the personal, interpersonal and community planes of development can be understood as distinct, each plane influences and mediates the other two planes. Such a framework allows for a comprehensive understanding of the active processes involved in shaping a community’s individual and collective knowledge growth. It is a useful tool for responding to the complexity and 'messiness' of real life socialcultural conte...
2011
This paper reports findings of a case study of a semester long fully online graduate course designed to facilitate a learning community at a New Zealand tertiary institution. It adopts a sociocultural view of learning as a basis for examining how online students undertake different roles in conceptualising their learning processes. Analyses of students' online contributions in the course discussions reveal a diverse range of interactions and ways of participation in demonstration of learning and development in intellectual, social and emotional aspects. The case is made for investigating student roles as a means for a more comprehensive understanding of the mutual shaping of individual and collective knowledge growth as a learning community forms. Implications are presented for online practitioners, their students and course designers.
New technologies provide the opportunity for teachers to make learning interactive and collaborative by using a social constructivist approach to teaching and learning. This involves creating a student-centred approach where the teacher takes the role of the facilitator and the students engage in peer learning. This paper reflects on the author's role as a facilitator in a higher education online unit that was designed for science and mathematics teachers who were geographically and socially isolated. The goal in designing the unit was to create a networked community of learners that encouraged peer learning and focused on reflective thinking. Qualitative data from students' and teacher's postings to the Activity Room were analysed to identify the diverse roles of the online instructor in creating an online learning community. The 'four hats' metaphor of pedagogical, social, managerial and technical actions was used as a framework to discuss the activities of the instructor and to examine the extent to which she was able to establish and maintain a community of learners. This framework also served as a tool to analyse the pedagogies used by the instructor to promote peer-learning and reflective thinking.
This article focuses on the special role of students as discussion leaders and their engagement in the facilitation of online discussion in relation to the teacher's role. The methodology combined quantitative data of students' frequency behaviour with qualitative analysis of students' individual online contributions. Each contribution was analysed in relation to one of the six facilitation roles plus the direct instruction category. In the seven that were used to compare the discussion leader's role with the teacher's role, the discussion leaders performed higher than the teacher in the following: summing up and confirming, moving the discussion forward, focusing the discussion and debriefing. The teacher demonstrated more frequent behaviours in the following: direct instruction and encouraging and giving feedback. Scaffolding had a similar frequency for the discussion leader and the teacher with a slightly higher rate. The task given to each member to be a discussion leader enabled new relationships between the teacher and the learners and new relationships among the learners, with everyone being empowered, changing their learning experiences and promoting the learning of others in the community.
Challenges of Interaction in Online Teaching: A Case Study
This paper explores examples of the interaction between academics and students online, in particular the process of questions and answers generated as a result of the learning process. It highlights the type of questions online students are asking their educators and how they expect their questions to be answered. Also what type of questions the educators expect students to ask and how the educators actually respond to them. The extended hours support offered in some online deliveries results in students relying on individual educators to provide them with detailed support in relation to both administrative and academic problems. The feeling of instant access to educators also creates an expectation of immediate response, which creates a variety of different challenges. This paper examines some of these challenges, and the range of perspectives and disparities between those of the online students´ and the perspectives of the academic staff teaching them. The paper will discuss the issues involved with examples from an online tertiary educational offering in Digital Forensics.
This paper reveals the experience part-time e-tutors when a mid-sized regional Australian university first offered online programs. Potholes and laneways are metaphors to highlight the fragility of linkages when institutions rely on those outside their core staff for the success of new enterprises. The study examines the interface between part-time (sessional) e-tutors and the variety of institutional units they must work with through the structure of a learning community. The investigation illustrates how institutional policies and procedures established for the status quo may place these e-tutors in unanticipated and uncomfortable situations. For confidentiality, pseudonyms have been used for the institution's name (Banksia University) and the School involved (MGS).