Week 10: Interactive and Collaborative Learning

For this week's learning on interactive and collaborative learning, one of the articles I read was: Park, Y. J., & Bonk, J. (2007). Is life a Breeze?: A case study for promoting synchronous learning in a blended graduate course. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT), 3(3), 307-323. It offered several helpful strategies for encouraging improved online learning. One of the points that impacted me the most was the discussion on assigning different roles to facilitate online discussion. For example, assigning people to be starters, wrappers, debaters, etc. The article mentions over a dozen different roles. This discussion reminded me of two classes that I took this past summer. Both were online courses, the first two online courses that I've ever taken. Both required a fair amount of online discussion using online forums, but the teachers managed the discussions completely differently. One class was broken up into smaller discussion groups of four students each, while the other assigned starters and wrappers but did not utilize smaller groups. There were about 30+ students in the class, and each week quickly turned in to a free-for-all with countless similar postings followed by very superficial comments. The sheer volume of the postings was not conducive to facilitating in-depth discussion, because everyone seemed more concerned with quanitity over quality. Meanwhile, in the class that was broken up into smaller groups was easier to quickly develop a detailed discussion thread within the small group.

I think this situation highlights the pitfalls that so many teachers encounter as they try to navigate the new world of online learning. There are are so many different strategies that there is no real "right way" that is going to work everytime in every situation. Ultimately, the instructor needs to understand their students and their subject matter and create learning experiences that will be beneficial for everyone.