Despite the growth in the size and acceptance of distance education, there
have been persistent criticisms of this form of education because it often fails
to provide for interaction among students and between students and
instructors. Without this, it is suggested, distance education can only be an
inferior imitation of the best face-to-face education because learners are
unable to clarify and challenge assumptions and to construct meaning
through dialogue.
Some critics believe distance education's inability to reproduce a critical
dialogue among students and between students and instructor can be
addressed through the use of two-way communication technologies such as
text-based, asynchronous (i.e., not in real time) computer conferencing.
Appropriately-designed computer conferencing, it is argued, will facilitate
interaction among students and between the instructor and students thus
making distance education more appropriate for the higher-level cognitive
goals of college and university education. At the same time, using this'
technology will retain the flexibility of time and place-independence that is
characteristic of distance education.
The literature on educational computer conferencing is replete with
references to its potential to create a new paradigm of education characterized
by interactive group knowledge-building and critical thinking, but there are
few empirical studies that have substantiated this view. Little is known about
how and why learners participate and what factors may affect their
participation. Similarly there has been little empirical study of the quality of
computer conferencing interaction.
This case study of a university-level course delivered by computer
conferencing was designed to address these issues. It was guided by two purposes: 1) to determine whether the quantitative and qualitative
dimensions of participation in this online course were consistent with key
aspects of the new paradigm of networked learning as articulated in the
literature, that is, if students were actively participating, building on each
others contributions and thinking critically about the discussion topics; and 2)
to determine what factors affected student participation and critical thinking.
The results of this study suggest that some of the claims about the
potential of this technology to transform conventional and distance
education may be overstated. The emergence of a dynamic and interactive
educational process that facilitates critical thinking was shown to be
contingent on a variety of factors. The results suggest, however, that with the
appropriate course design, instructor interventions, content, and students,
computer conferencing can be used for these purposes and should be given
serious consideration by distance educators as a way of facilitating interaction
and critical thinking in distance education.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/6775 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Bullen, Mark |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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