- What we know about learning indicates that actual knowledge creation takes place during and as a result of interaction. Interaction, whether formal or informal, occurs between learners and peers, learners and materials, and learners and instructors. How students create knowledge, in terms of cognitive process is similar enough that regardless of discipline, the value of student-student and student-instructor interactions is high.
- Interaction plays the same role whether it exists or not. If interaction builds knowledge, lack of interaction leads to the absence of knowledge . The less interaction that occurs, the less knowledge is created. This underscores the difficulty all universities have with the large survey or introductory level courses that involve multiple sections. Creating interactions and active learning exercises in these courses is difficult, so creating knowledge, real, useful, transferable, persistent knowledge, is difficult as well. With so many stake holders involved, making dramatic changes to how these courses are taught is risky, so often happens very slowly or not at all.
- Face to face interactions can be valuable for activities that are difficult to do (though not necessarily impossible) in an online format. Role play, oral presentations, Socratic dialogue, or activities, like the example in the reading where immediate feedback changes the context for the next exercise. I would also classify labs, tutorial sessions, demonstrations, guest lectures as face to face interactions for the purposes of this discussion.
- Online, I would use threaded discussions, reflective writing assignments (blogs) or group collaborative projects based around either text or images and video (wikis). The blended format allows students to discuss readings and other course materials in a DB before the class, so questions, problems, and issues are dealt with more effectively and efficiently in the face-to-face sessions. For example, an assigned reading is given, students are asked to identify the three crucial sections of the reading and analyze them in the light of some current event. Students post this activity to a blog and peers comment before class. As a result of reading student blogs, the instructor might realize there are wise spread misunderstandings about the meaning or value of certain materials so spends more time clarifying a concept or section of the learning materials. Some of the assessment of learner knowledge can occur prior to instruction, use those assessments to tweak the course as it goes forward and creates a kind of continual formative assessment that allows the instructor to shape in-class activities to fit the up to date realities of his students.
- Time, space, money, availability of tools, technical abilities of the learners/faculty, perceived value of the activities, and the pedagogical adventurousness of faculty are all issues that help determine the viability of robust interactions in blended courses. For example, if faculty and students do not have the use of a video conferencing tool either because one is not available or because they do not know how to use one, things like online office hours, remote tutoring, and other forms of synchronous scaffolding cannot occur. A faculty member who is unwilling to stretch the range of their own pedagogy are not going to create courses with robust interactions. Institutional valuation plays a role here too. Research and publication are the means by which faculty achieve tenure. Junior faculty on the tenure track have a huge disincentive to divert time and effort from those activities to teaching and learning. Schools hire research but sell education. Often this means the cutting edge thinkers in a field are available to students; but it also means those same thinkers are not necessarily putting students’ needs first. All of these things can work against the creation of robust interactions in any course; but especially true for course types that faculty are unfamiliar with.
Thank you! This is a wonderful post. I am an e-learning student at UCF; and just picked this up on Twitter.
This premise about lack of interaction is problematic to me. The fact is that in the first bullet point, you correctly say that interaction is in three directions – with other peers, with instructor and with materials. The only way there can be NO interaction is if the learner stops engaging with ALL three parts of the interaction modes. Depending on the caliber of the three modes – it is possible for a learner to get an adequate level of learning from only engaging with the materials (the resources of the designed course are WONDERFUL), there could be a peer who has real world experience with the topic and they share these experiences in a way that allows a learner to develop an insight into the topic, or the instructor could be incredibly charismatic and holds informal learning sessions.
The bottom line – I do not believe there is ever an absence of knowledge unless the learner “drops” the course – or engages in NONE of the modes.
Karen
There is no premise. If there is no interaction, there is no learning. There is no hidden meaning or unwritten add-on. It is a simple statement.
Interacting with materials is interaction. I never indicated otherwise. In fact, I stated explicitly that I did consider interacting with materials to be interaction.
The logic path is:
In order for a learner to create knowledge, interaction must occur. I was deliberately non-specific about mode, quality, or direction; only the existence of the interaction. I am not predicting the likelihood of complete non-interaction, nor am I making an assertion that non-interaction will happen, only that if interaction is where learning happens, a complete lack of interaction will result in a complete lack of learning.
Research into ties between interaction and outcomes show the correlation very clearly. More interaction results in more and better learning, less interaction means less and worse learning. I do not think it is a daring leap of logic to conclude that zero interaction results in zero learning.
Thanks for the comment.
–paul
We are differing on the point of “less interaction” leads to “less knowledge” because I believe that the quality of the interaction must come into this equation.
Absolutely. Quality matters, but given consistent quality, more are better and fewer are worse. More high quality interactions is better than fewer high quality interactions. More low quality interactions is better than fewer low quality interactions. You can get into all manner of permutations from there, but when discussing generalities, it is best to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. When we start guessing about variables, the enterprise collapses.
Are 10 high quality interactions better than thirty low quality interactions? Are ten low quality interactions that last one hour each better than two high quality interactions that last fifteen minutes each? There are no real answers to these scenarios because there are too many variables.
Even defining high quality versus low quality interactions is difficult once you get into learner characteristics and multiple intelligences, etc. A kinesthetic approach to a learning unit might work great for one student and terribly for another, depending on their preferred learning style or the nature of their intelligence. Similarly, a traditional lecture might be the best way to preset a certain type of material to a certain type of student, but the worst way to deal with other material for the same students.
The same instruction that produces medical school students also produces high school drop outs. The difference is not always the material or nature of the interactions within the institution, but learner characteristics, motivation, environment, and other factors beyond the classroom.
My point was intended to be narrow and aimed at instruction which is designed to be of high quality and aimed at fostering the highest quality interactions. That is the goal, right? Design instruction to foster the highest quality interaction possible. Perhaps I could have prefaced my remarks with; Given consistent quality and type of interactions, more are better, fewer are worse. I didn’t think such a detailed set of parameters was necessary. My mistake.
–paul
Thanks Paul, I will take your words as typed and not the tone that I feel like I hear. I was not trying to split hairs or have you qualify your statements. I think when discussing instruction, we must be careful about what we suggest creates impactful learning.