Transcript PowerPoint-præsentation

Facilitating student collaboration
through net-mediated technology
Lars Birch Andreasen, [email protected]
The Danish University of Education
Research programme on Media and ICT in Education
Technologies, Publics and Power. 1-5 Feb 2004, Akaroa, New Zealand
Three generations of distance education
First generation: Correspondence teaching
• Technologies: Mail and railway; Perspective: Autonomy
Second generation: Multimedia based distance education
• Technology: Broadcast media; Perspective: Industrialization
Third generation: Computer based distance education
• Technology: Internet; Perspective: Communication and interaction
The case study – online course at a Swedish university
• The course took place entirely online
– One semester, 40 students
– Web pages with resources, descriptions of the course, and
assignments
– Electronic bulletin boards for communication
• Course design
– Study materials: Printed books
– Assignments and essays on the books, individually and in
groups
– Group project
Models of communication
Traditional model of communication
Meaning
Receiver
Sender
Alternative model of communication
Meaning
Utterer
Utterer
Bakhtin’s understanding of communication
”The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘ones
own’ only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his
own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own
semantic and expressive intention.” (Bakhtin 1981: 293-94)
”Every word is directed toward an answer and cannot escape the
profound influence of the answering word that it anticipates.”
(Bakhtin 1981: 279-80, italics in original)
(Mikhail Bakhtin: ”The Dialogic Imagination”, 1981)
Functionally divided collaboration
Interviewer: ”The first group work; can you describe, how you
collaborated in your group?”
Student: ”Quite simple! The assignment was split into questions
about the different chapters, and each person took a chapter. … So
there was actually no discussion, just each wrote about his or her
chapter, and one gathered it all in one document. And then we
delivered it as a group assignment.”
Writing activity in a project group
Period 1
Jennie
Ann
Charlotta
Period 2
Charlotta
Ann
Lena
Lena
Ditte
Period 3
Hanna
Jennie
Hanna
Charlotta
Ditte
Ann
Lena
Martin
Ditte
Martin
Hanna
Discussions on the net: Experiences with
asynchronous, netmediated communication
• Time for reflexivity
• Shared ’memory’
• Several discussions at one time
• Even quiet persons can be ’heard’
• Changes in levels of impatience
• Easy not to communicate
• Difficult to make decisions or appointments
• Difficult to recall decisions