Preface Acknowledgements Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 URLs References
THE NATURE OF WEB-BASED DISCUSSION *
Asynchronous versus Synchronous Discussions *
Examples of Web Discussion *
STRATEGIES FOR WEB-BASED DISCUSSION *
Cooperative Learning *
Shared Tasks and Projects *
Peer Review and Comment *
Student Led Discussions *
Using a Taxonomy of Questioning *
Problem-Based Learning *
SUPPORTING WEB DISCUSSION *
E-mail: Simple and Effective *
Messaging *
Listservs *
Web-Based E-Mail Groups *
UserNet; News Groups *
Managing Mail *
Discussion Group Software *
Synchronous Discussion (Chatting) *
Videoconferencing *
Telephony; Shared Whiteboards *
GLOSSARY *
REFERENCES *
URLs *
An important decision for you to make when designing a course is, "What role will discussion play, if any?" This chapter deals with issues related to Web-based discussions. First, we address the nature of online discussion and the research support currently available related to it. Next, we address strategies that a teacher may use to encourage Web-based discussion. Finally, we discuss the types of software that may be required to support Web-based discussion.
Student discussion in any course, regardless of the delivery format, is essential in allowing students to question and process the new knowledge they are acquiring. Discussion also allows students to exchange ideas and perspectives about the meaning and future application of the course information.
We divide the instructional design tasks with respect to student interaction into two major areas: discussion (this chapter), and responding to questions (addressed in Chapters 7, 14, 15, & 16).
Teachers of subjects that involve extensive classroom discussion often imagine Web teaching to be mainly a one-way dissemination of content. But in practice, most of the early uses of the Internet for teaching have emphasized electronic discussions: teacher-student discussion, student-student discussion and/or student-expert (outside resource person) discussion. In the final evaluation of a seminar course that employed online discussion features, students reported working 40-50 percent longer outside of class than the average college course, and 31 of the 32 students reported learning more from courses that included online discussion formats [Greenlaw, 1999]. Karayan & Crowe [1997] report that students are more likely to "exhibit desired behaviors" as a result of participating in electronic discussions. Powers & Mitchell [1997] report a qualitative study of an Internet-delivered graduate course in which four themes emerged: student peer support, student-to-student interaction, faculty-to-student interaction, and time demands of the course.
Because of very positive learning outcomes, we perceive important face validity in trying to support Web discussion. In traditional classrooms, discussion is mostly talk; on the Web, it's mostly text. Spending some time thinking explicitly about discussion is an important design issue for prospective Web teachers.
The first edition of Web-Teaching indicated that some issues might be too laden with values and emotions to deliver via Web instruction. That initial impression may have been too conservative. Dr. Christine Marvin taught a course {U05.01} dealing with family centered services for children with disabilities over the Web, and the results were very promising. The boundaries of what does and does not work in terms of Web-based discussions remain to be established.
In a Web-based environment, discussion takes one of two general forms. The Web is very useful for asynchronous discussion, however, new software is quickly evolving to reduce the complexity of several different synchronous discussion (chat) formats. Asynchronous discussions on the Internet have been used for a number of years through bulletin board systems (BBS) and listservs. With the explosion of the Web, bulletin board systems have evolved into what are called discussion forums. Discussion forum software creates an online environment where users post and read text messages on their own schedule.
Figure 5.01. Example of a Web discussion forum (Calculus reform).
Forum systems often allow for HTML coding to be used in addition to text. This, in turn, empowers the user to post URLs and images as part of the active discussion. Users log on at their convenience to participate, without a scheduled "class meeting" time. This format allows the user the most flexibility. If you adopt a Web-course management software package (CourseInfo, WebCT, etc.), usually you'll find support for both types of discussion incorporated.
You should decide whether an asynchronous or a synchronous discussion format best meets your instructional needs. Synchronous discussion requires scheduling for all members of the class to participate online at the same time. Synchronous strategies can be used by requiring small groups to be online at the same time, or for online office hours when the instructor is available for discussions. You may require simultaneous participation from your students. Most modern courseware packages have the ability to include chats. When choosing synchronous versus asynchronous discussions, consider these implications:
Understanding the differences and implications of using each format will help you to choose the better format for your course discussions. If all students are required to respond to each question posted by the instructor, is it really a "discussion" or is it more of a question and answer format?
Prior to setting student participation requirements, estimate the time necessary for supervision and assessment of that participation. The topic posted by the instructor is considered the "root" level of a thread or topic. If every student in a class with 25 students had to reply at the root level and at least one other level, the instructor would be required to read at least 50 postings or messages for each posted question. Experience tells us that it is always more than that. In order to keep some control over the workload of reading class discussions, it is essential that you plan ahead regarding the requirements for participation given to your students. Some of our colleagues have incorporated every available interactive Web discussion component into a course. Their success has varied. Even the slickest discussion features have turned out to be worthless as a course activity, or a "monster" in terms of instructor workload if not well thought out in advance.
Be sure that the features you choose match the design and function of your course. Students often tend to do what is required, but not much more. Therefore, to promote class discussion in an online course, you'll have to do more than suggest that students log into the discussion forum. You'll need to require it.
In a face-to-face educational setting, discussion is used to assess student understanding of the content, or to answer student questions. In cases where the content is factual, the first correct student response ends the discussion. Therefore, Web questions that require analysis, synthesis, evaluation, or application are more likely to produce extended discussion.
Technically speaking, when considering digital strategies, discussion is easier to accomplish than is interactive content dissemination. For discussion, what matters most to the teacher is not what is done with the Web server, but how one designs learning activities. Two examples of recent discussions held in classes on our campus are shown. The first came in response to a mathematics question posed in an upper-division/graduate course, and the second as a response in a lower-division history course:
Figure 5.02. Question posed in John Orr's graduate mathematics course in analysis. To avoid formatting problems, early versions of this discussion system involved creating gif images of the questions.
Student Response:
"To prove that the unit disk is path-connected just draw a segment of radius joining the origin with both points. Then the path consisting of these two segments connects these two points and of course lies inside the unit circle. A path-connected set is connected, since otherwise preimages of open sets disconnecting A also would be disconnected open subsets of 0,1 and since the interval 0,1 is connected there must be a point belonging to the interval 0,1 which is also in neither of preimages. That contradicts to the fact that the path lies entirely inside the set."
Teacher Question:
"In class, I'd like us to take a close look at John Eliot's constructed dialogue between a converted Indian and his unconverted relatives (2:1). How much does this document reflect Eliot’s perceptions, and how much does it reflect Indians' perceptions?"
One of several student responses:
"I also believe that Eliot's account is mostly of his own creation. He portrays the unconverted Indians as almost comical in their ignorance. In Eliot's account, they are concerned with nothing but eating, drinking, and being merry, when in fact, most Indians had a very meaningful spiritual life. The converted Indian in this account is also less than realistic. He visits relatives living in his former village, yet he seems completely withdrawn and detached from their way of life."
Course management software for the Web nearly always includes schemes for supporting asynchronous discussion. Figure 5.03 illustrates a section taken from a planned discussion in a course on Family Centered Services.
Figure 5.03. Sample discussion from course on Family Centered Services taken from CourseInfo software by Blackboard.com.
Student collaboration does not happen automatically. It must be purposefully designed into activities and assignments in the course [Palloff & Pratt, 1999].
Rossman [1999, {U05.02}] concludes that learners value and learn from the responses of other students. Keeping current in the discussion is important for the good of the group; requiring regular participation is essential. As with traditional face-to-face instruction, students benefit from formative as well as summative feedback in online courses. Discussions allow teachers to post information and responses for the entire group to read rather than requiring an individual response to each student in the course. Designing strategies that provide feedback and interactions with other students will help prevent the course from becoming overwhelming in terms of the workload for the instructor.
There is evidence of some learners feeling isolated and non-connected during online courses [Garson, 1999]. While online learning may not be the format of choice for everyone, a good course design that insures a high level of interaction will alleviate some of these issues [McVay, 1998 {U05.03}].
Many innovations in education are discarded as fads. Cooperative learning {U05.04} is a strategy with strong research support [Ellis & Fouts, 1993]. It is likely to stick. A recent meta-analysis of the use of small groups in undergraduate science, mathematics, engineering and technology education [Springer et al., 1999] suggested a favorable average effect size of 0.5 standard deviations. There is a great deal of effort in developing cooperative learning strategies for use in higher education [Millis & Cottell, 1998]. Specific suggestions for using cooperative learning strategies have been compiled for several disciplines, as exemplified by the work of Nurrenbern [1995] in chemistry. In cooperative learning, several features recur among descriptions of best practice:
Just by using e-mail and group e-mailing addresses where three or four students easily can e-mail to one another, teachers can create very successful groups.
While revising this book, we "chatted" with many researchers named herein via e-mail. That's an example of cooperative learning! Students can use e-mail in the same way. We predict digital videoconferencing will be useful for support of cooperative learning.
The nature of the design of a cooperative learning assignment in an online course requires the instructor to think about the issue of synchronous versus asynchronous participation in the course. A variety of strategies are available for establishing structure for cooperative learning [Klein & Pridemore, 1994]. Deadlines for the completion of tasks and discussions in the small group need to be well-defined and enforced. Learners become frustrated quickly if they feel another member of their cooperative learning group isn't participating on the same timetable as everyone else.
In a qualitative study of an online course for high school chemistry teachers, cooperative learning was identified as one of the most powerful features [Liu,1996 {U05.05}]. The instructor facilitated this by creating a listserv at the outset, and made the first assignment be introducing yourself on the listserv. All the participants were chemistry teachers, and most K-12 teachers know about cooperative learning.
Effective cooperative learning demands considerable teacher planning. There is no assurance that a strategy that works face-to-face will work over the Web. If you are new to cooperative learning, find someone who uses cooperative learning to teach the same content and level that you teach, and discuss your plans. In other words, seek an experienced mentor for developing cooperative learning strategies, preferably one who has been successful in your discipline and with students similar to your own. Plan your Web-based approaches after those conversations. A very good place to find collaborators is on the Web itself. There are ongoing teacher discussion groups for nearly all disciplines.
Attention to instructional design is one of the most critical factors in successful learning networks, whether course activity is delivered totally or partially online or in adjunct mode. All education, on a network or in a face-to-face environment,involves intervention by an expert (the instructor) to organize the content, sequence the instructional activities, structure task and group interaction, and evaluate the process.
Harasim et al., 1995, p. 125
Videoconferencing between students may yet become a major means for accomplishing cooperative learning. Students already have discovered that e-mail is an effective alternative to telephone conversations.
Creating shared tasks or projects as a course requirement fosters student to student discussion. Collaboration can be easily supported by designing activities for students that involve researching and communicating over the Web. A course taught at the University of Missouri–Columbia recently paired students with students from another university to work collaboratively on the same task as a "virtual team" [Ludwig, 1999]. The students had access to a variety of Web-based communication tools, but used e-mail almost exclusively to complete the task. A course listserv was utilized for student discussion. Another variation on the theme is to assign a task to a team of students, and pair them with student teams from another location who have worked on the same task. They can compare perspectives and the differences in issues as they complete their projects [Hurley, Proctor, & Ford, 1999]. Both of these strategies are designed to foster exchanges of information between students rather than between the instructor and the students. In the case of geography, this is a valuable strategy in comparing the same issue from the perspective of different locations. The same case might also be made for a number of additional areas of study including the sciences and social sciences.
In teaching writing, one former colleague had his students publish all of their writing on the Web. They signed releases at the beginning of the course, and then again at the end to permit maintaining their contributions on the Web. They published anonymously. A system enabled students to send and receive e-mail anonymously. The Web publishing and anonymous electronic commenting seem to enhance student learning. Many courses in a variety of disciplines require that student papers be posted, and that students review at least a few of their colleagues' postings. A strategy aimed specifically at improving writing skills, Calibrated Peer Review®, {U05.06} is described in Chapter 16.
Students usually respond to the instructor with what they feel is the "correct" or "desired" response. They are not likely to question or contradict a posting to the discussion by the instructor. This can sometimes stifle discussion where it might be most valuable to the students. While monitoring online discussion, take advantage of students who might have differing opinions to encourage student discussion on a course topic. Assigning discussion topics to the students, therefore, is another strategy that can be used to encourage Web-based discussions. Students often are good at relating their own understanding of a topic, and other students in the course are much more likely to question or argue another point of view among their peers than with the instructor.
Student led discussions often generate "this is what it means to me" responses. These are valuable in helping learners process the new information.
Bloom's Taxonomy [Bloom et al.,1956] creates a hierarchical structure for cognitive tasks. It has been used as a basis for hierarchical levels of classroom questioning. Questioning at several levels can be useful. Web discussion questions should require learners to apply, analyze, synthesize, or evaluate the course content; questions should require the student to process information and to explain meaning. Carefully designed questions intended to elicit on-topic discussion will be more effective for Web discussions and will keep the discussion from rambling off-topic and out of control [Beaudin, 1999 {U05.07}].
Problem-Based Learning {U05.08} "is a process by which the content and methods of a discipline are learned in an environment in which they are to be used to address a problem." Most implementations of problem-based learning incorporate cooperative learning strategies. Web-supported problem-based learning is used by Judith Poë in a large general chemistry course at the University of Toronto. Recently she assigned students to one of two problems, "Aluminum" {U05.09} or "Titanium" {U05.10}. She maintained an asynchronous discussion for each problem (under the heading "chat"). Not all students visited the site to contribute, and fewer contributed more than once to the three-week-long, ongoing discussion. The average number of visits per student was over ten, however, providing strong evidence that students used the site. A visit to published discussions suggests that, as students found information addressing "the problem," they shared this with others electronically.
Engaging students in solving real, open-ended problems is a very powerful strategy for learning. Making this into a reality for large courses such as introductory general chemistry is an enormous challenge for teachers. The importance of Poë's work lies not just in the attempt to incorporate cooperative learning activities systematically within an intellectually demanding, large enrollment lecture course, but also in the care with which she has documented student learning in this environment.
If you intend to have discussion at a distance or over time, you'll need some ideas about managing the related technology.
Teachers probably should be using e-mail in all courses whether or not they have a presence on the Web. E-mail can become the principal tool for maintaining interactions between students and teachers in many settings. Barbara Sawrey [1996] has used e-mail for years. She told her students that she would log on daily at least once between 10 P.M. and midnight to respond to questions. When she stayed at meetings on the East Coast, this entailed some late night hours for her. Her students usually sent mail to her between 5 P.M. and 4 A.M., a timing schedule she attributed to their e-mailing at the time of studying the material. Software programs she was instrumental in developing included "buttons" that permitted students to e-mail quickly and easily to instructors.
The most compelling point she made was in a comparison between e-mail traffic and live traffic at her office during office hours. Few students visited her office; many contacted her through e-mail. Most of us who teach at research universities find little traffic during office hours unless we introduce some strategy such as insisting that students pick up graded exams during office hours.
We use e-mail to maintain frequent contact with student teachers. A minimum of two weekly communications is expected, including the creation of a daily journal with entries for 2 or 3 days transmitted in each e-mail. In other courses, we insist upon e-mailed assignments.
Subsequent to the pioneering work of Sawrey and others, at least two caveats related to instructor use of e-mail have emerged. First, teachers who promise a prompt response are much more satisfied than are those promising a same day response. Those teachers promising a same day response to all queries received by 11:00 p.m. report becoming slaves to their system and students. Second, teachers of large classes report being flooded with questions. In response to this, Judith Poë [1999] suggests using a frequently asked questions file [FAQ]. A FAQ file presents a list of commonly asked questions together with answers. Not only has this reduced her e-mail traffic, but it has caused her to refocus many aspects of her instruction in an attempt to respond to the common questions in advance.
Messaging is a relatively new Internet phenomenon. Through messaging, it is possible for one person to communicate quickly with one or a small number of other persons. The software to accomplish messaging has become common-place, and many large organizations with substantial Web presence offer messaging services. Microsoft, Yahoo!, and America Online offer messaging services, for example.
What Is Instant Messaging?
Instant messages are an online conversation between two or more people who have AOL Instant Messenger or America Online software. Instant messages are private and free. It's a whole new way of communicating that's fast, simple and totally addictive.
{U05.11}
Figure 5.04. Window of ICQ {U05.12} messaging software. This screen suggests that two persons are available to exchange messages with dbrooks, kcrippen, and 48142211. Double-clicking on a name or number brings up a screen for entering a message. Messaging services largely are free to users. Messaging is commonly included in courseware packages.
Sometimes we use messaging software to communicate with one another in our offices. This prevents us from interrupting one another during times when we are deeply involved in computer work.
Instant messaging is moving from the hard-wired Web to the emerging wireless Web with small devices such as telephones, pagers, or Palm Pilots receiving those Web messages.
Figure 5.05. The Visor {U05.13} from HandSpring is a personal digital assistant with the ability to add on complementary devices such as the communication package from Zilog {U05.14}. Together, these constitute a wireless telephone.
Listservs are automated mailing lists. Mailing something to a listserv causes that message to be mailed to all e-mail addressees subscribing to that listserv. Readers of this book probably subscribe to several listservs. An Internet course taught during the spring of 1995 concerned the use of small-scale laboratory activities in teaching high school chemistry. It used two channels of communication: e-mail directly to individual students, and a listserv. A listserv was easy to set up. In fact, you've probably unsubscribed from one or more listservs to reduce the volume of material coming your way. The following student comment from the 1995 chemistry course listserv was in response to an experiment description and data posted by another student. The flavor of this comment is reflected in comments received when we present that material in workshops with face-to-face discussion and hands-on laboratory contact.
MaryHelen's information on the Charles Law experiment looks very good. Could you please tell us whether this data was collected by you (MaryHelen) or your students? If it was your students, could you give us an idea of the time it took for them to get set-up properly? How about comments from them as to how easily they were able to get the pipette set-up with the colored water drop, etc.
Student Comment, from Liu, 1995
Institutions usually run software for listservs on large computers, but software for desktop computer servers is available.
Every teacher probably should set up some kind of listserv or discussion group for nearly every course taught. One way to handle group discussions is to create a "group" e-mail such that using this group name in an e-mail "To:" list causes each individual address in the group to be sent the message. Students may not know how to set up groups for their mailing software, however, forcing the teacher to relay messages from individual students to the class. A listserv is a better way to handle discussions, simple for both the students and the teacher.
Each author subscribes to several different listservs. Most of these are for professional development. A few provide us with personal information. Students at many levels should be encouraged to participate in listservs.
Some Web sites specialize in listing available listservs. During the interval between the publication of our first edition and the writing of the second, the nature of these sites has changed. We find many of our favorite listservs at the CataList {U05.15} reference site.
Figure 5.06. Campuses typically set up listservs for faculty. The process on the UNL campus is Web-based and nearly automatic.
Figure 5.07. Web site specializing in listing listservs.
Figure 5.08. Screen capture of information about the ChemCom listserv at the site noted in Figure 5.07.
Figure 5.09. Text of a message from the ChemEd-L listserv. This message is a response from a frequent contributor to an earlier question regarding scientific writing.
If your campus does not provide a listserv system, one is available from eGroups. A Web-based listserv system, it uses exposure to a small amount of advertising to support operations.
What is eGroups?
eGroups is a free email group service that allows you to easily create and join email groups. Email groups offer a convenient way to connect with others who share the same interests and ideas Just a few ideas for using eGroups:
- Get in touch with friends
- Plan a family reunion
- Send your business newsletter
- Coordinate meetings, events and more!
eGroups {U05.16}
If a listserv develops a great deal of traffic, you might want to consider changing to a user group or news group. A listserv offers automatic e-mailing so that all of the traffic comes to each member. Each must choose what to read and what to discard from his or her computer. In a news group, messages are posted on a server that is accessed by a news reading program. The user ultimately chooses which of the posted messages to open and read. News groups are inherently cleaner than listservs; the user takes what is desired, rather than discard what is not desired. Listservs are usually sufficient for most teaching situations.
Figure 5.10. Listing of articles available for reading from the clari.news .education.higher newsgroup.
Nearly all contemporary e-mail software programs offer both mailboxes and filtering. "Mailboxes" hold messages according to themes set by the user.
Filters sort incoming e-mails into appropriate folders (mailboxes). Many e-mail programs offer the opportunity to set up "rules" that are applied when filtering or sorting the mail into folders. Any message that is not filtered into some other folder ends up in the "Inbox" folder. We subscribe to many listservs. Mail from each listserv is sorted into a folder named for that listserv. Each of these folders is placed in one folder named "Listservs." In this way, the large amount of mail from a very high-traffic listserv such as ChemEd-L is sorted into a single place. A listserv can be temporarily "turned off" during out of town trips to avoid a backlog of unread messages. Using folders facilitates the quick review of important items upon returning from an absence.
Between e-mail and listservs, much more time is spent these days reading incoming information than a decade ago. Since responses can be immediate and composed casually, they take less time to create. In the absence of confirming data, we sense that the total time we spend communicating today is greater than it was a decade ago even though the individual communications may be more efficient.
Figure 5.11. Composite screen capture from Outlook Express e-mail program. Five mailboxes come with the program: Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, Drafts, and Deleted Items. This user has added about 25 other mailboxes. These include Book_WWW (this book), Papers, Personal, Projects, Proposal, and Recommendations. Other features include Address Book (a collection of addresses, that include e-mail addresses), a connection to the University News Server, and a system for looking up e-mail addresses.
While the total amount of time we spend engaged in electronic communications may not be spent efficiently, we are certain that our e-mails with our students are effective.
Much of the work we did in preparing this book depended upon sharing e-mails. We would attach current versions of the HTML documents and images, and pass these back and forth. We created a Web site first, and then created the print version (camera ready copy) from text derived from the Web site. While it might be argued that other production schemes would have served equally well, it was clear that we could ask third parties to comment upon small portions of the early drafts very efficiently in this way.
As experienced Web users might suspect, there are Web sites that specialize in disseminating information about discussion forums and related software. Numerous Web conferencing software packages are available.
Figure 5.12. Web Conferencing {U05.17} software site. Web conferencing usually means asynchronous conferences—where contributions are made successively at different moments in time. With permission.
Web course management software packages nearly always include some sort of conferencing feature. Your teaching goal usually will be to make contributed information Web-accessible to your students in some fashion that is systematic enough to enhance their learning.
Discussions in real time have been available on the Internet for many years. Chatting is like messaging, except that messages posted to a "chat session" may read by many people. Software {U05.18} supporting synchronous discussions is included in most course management packages (CourseInfo {U05.19}, WebCT {U05.20}). Features of "chat" software often include:
Because typing still is a hassle for many people, voice-to-text software such as IBM ViaVoice {U05.21} may enhance contributions to chat rooms substantially.
Our first edition included the sentence, "Soon to come on the Web as an everyday technology are telephony and shared whiteboards." Though not quite everyday, these are becoming a reality. The biggest problem still is bandwidth. Even with the fastest processors and Internet connections at your school, the transmission speed for digital video and audio is still at the mercy of the daily traffic out on the Internet itself.
Inexpensive videocameras that will sit atop your computer's monitor and record continuously (Figure 5.13) are commonplace. Software such as CU-SeeMe {U05.22} can be used to post that video to the Internet. If you know the internet address of a video source, and you have appropriate software (CU-SeeMe), you can bring real-time video images up on your screen.
Both sender and receiver must be able to put lots of bits through their machines; video and sound take a great deal of memory. Also, the data streams move over the Internet, and each requires a big chunk of bandwidth, a demand that continues in real time for the duration of the connection.
Figure 5.13. Logitech QuickCam Pro {U05.23} 640 x 480 color camera.
Low-quality, Internet-based audiovisual communication, while far from perfect, is going to have a big impact on instruction. It is a very reasonable way to conduct many student/teacher conferences now held face–to–face. Faculty office hours can be arranged in advance by e-mail, and conducted from faculty home or office to student home or workplace.
In our opinion, completely unsupervised courses with little teacher/student interaction have little prospect for success. Staring at a screen and clicking on the "blue" lines is little different than flipping through the pages of a book with photons being reflected from the page and presumably arriving at the eye but with no important neural processing whatsoever. The learner gains little.
While Web teleconferencing may not be as good as presence in a classroom or office, it is likely to afford enough of a personal interaction such that the teacher can provide adequate motivation and direction for the students. It may equal or surpass what can happen in a lecture setting. We suspect it won't match what is possible when in a teaching laboratory. Web teleconferencing may do even more. With just a bit more sophisticated camera and some higher resolution software, the quality of the transmitted images might enable supervision of lab work or collegial assistance with interpretation of real phenomena. The hardware and software commonly in use today usually are not quite up to the task, however. Nevertheless, most such tasks are a lot less technically challenging than, say, transmitting quality X-rays for physician review.
Figure 5.14. Susan Gallagher's desktop camera acquires her image and transmits it over the Internet.
It has proven possible for small groups (three or four students) to work at a terminal while being encouraged and led by a faculty member at a distant site. The small-group work that we have required has often been a problem. Students may travel from far away, and find scheduling time with one another difficult. Electronic conferencing within student groups is a strategy for enabling student collaboration.
It is not yet clear the range of supervision that teachers can conduct successfully using Web video. For example, how much laboratory work can be safely and successfully supervised using the Web? We suspect that this area will receive substantial investigation due to potential savings in travel costs, however.
Several tutorial centers on our campus hold late evening hours. Scheduling these always is a challenge. There is a substantial perceived safety risk involved for late evening walks on campus. One can envision such tutoring being conducted between a teaching assistant’s apartment or home and a student’s dormitory or home via Web-conferencing.
Software is available to use the Internet as a telephone. The software and strategies available as of this writing are very dynamic. As noted earlier, the Internet is likely to replace the telephone, or at least change drastically typical telephone use.
Whiteboards that support concurrent users are available (Figure 5.15). White– boards are sometimes available within course management software. One user might mark with red, and the other green. GroupBoard {U05.24} offers whiteboarding software.
Figure 5.15. Modified screen capture from GroupBoard. All users can draw. A chat feature allows communication related to the shared board.
asynchronous discussion: discussion occurring at different times (such as messages posted to a discussion board).
frequently asked questions (FAQ): some questions seem to arise over and over in asynchronous conversations, listservs, and newsgroups. To address this problem, create a file of frequently asked questions together with answers, and make that file readily accessible.
listserv: an automatic mailing system such that, when someone sends mail to the listserv, a copy is transmitted to all subscribers to that listserv.
synchronous discussion: simultaneous discussion. Occurring at the same time (such as chat or videophone).
Beaudin, B.P. (1999). Keeping online asynchronous discussions on topic. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 3, 2.{U05.07}.
Bloom, B.S., Englehart, N.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H., & Krathwohl, D.R. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook I. Cognitive Domain. New York: McKay.
Ellis, A., & Fouts, J. (1993). Research on Education Innovations. New York: Eye on Education.
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Greenlaw, S. A., (1999). Using groupware to enhance teaching and learning in undergraduate economics. The Journal of Economic Education, 30(1), 33.
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Hurley, J. M., Proctor, J. D., & Ford, R. E. (1999). Collaborative inquiry at a distance: Using the Internet in geography education. Journal of Geography, 98(3) 128-140.
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Liu, D. (1996). Teaching Chemistry on the Internet. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. (http://dwb.unl.edu/Diss/DLiu/liuDiss.html) {U05.05}
Ludwig, G. (1999). Virtual geographic research teams: A case study. Journal of Geography, 98(3), 149-154.
McVay, M. (1998). Facilitating knowledge construction and communication on the Internet. The Technology Source, December. [online journal] {U05.03}.
Millis, B. J. & Cottell, P. G. Jr.,(1998). Cooperative Learning for Higher Education Faculty, Phoenix: The Oryx Press.
Poë, J. (1999). Virtual office hours. Paper 572 presented at 82nd Canadian Society for Chemistry Conference and Exhibition, Toronto, June 1.
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