Terry Anderson’s purpose in writing this paper, "Getting the Mix Right Again: An Updated and Theoretical Rationale for Interaction," is to create a theoretical rationale as well as a guide for creating distance education courses with the aim of being effective for a variety of students and learning needs. Anderson believes that interaction is the key to mindfulness in learners, awareness of other perspectives, and essential to the creation of learning communities. Not all interactions have educational value. In education, interaction is typically constrained from the student's perspective to the relationships between student-student, student-teacher, student-content. Anderson (2003) states, “high levels of more than one of these three modes will likely provide a more satisfying educational experience, though these experiences may not be as cost or time effective as less interactive learning sequences.” Student-teacher interaction has the highest perceived value among students while teacher-teacher interaction is crucial to the university based research production and evaluation model. ”
Because of the low levels of most interaction types, the lecture format is not the best effective or efficient. Traditional distance education programs using independent studies allow for high student-content interaction and audio-video conferencing encourages mostly mid to low level interaction while web-based coursed using text functions provide high interactions among students. Net-based learning communities utilizing synchronous and asynchronous are rich in interaction. With the goal of creating efficient, educationally effective, and cost effective programs, student-student and student-content interaction can act as a substitute for student-teacher interaction. Recently, student-content interaction may be the most effective and available for many students because, "[t]he cost and restrictions on value of content interaction is falling much faster than interaction involving the other two forms of interaction (Moore’s and Metcalfe’s Laws), and thus is expanding in all areas, putting a premium value and cost on human based interaction: student-student, student-teacher, and teacher-teacher” (Anderson, 2003, pg. 10).
I think that Anderson has suggested a viable theory that I believe has been proven in the real-world. This article predates most of the web 2.0 boom and just missed out on the types of e-learning that allows for quality student-student, student-content, and student-teacher interaction without the timing issues mentioned in the article. Web 2.0 allows for a hybrid of all the methods mentioned in the article, creating a best of both worlds scenario. Distance learning may still not be perfect, but traditional classrooms have never been perfect either. As far as creating an efficient and cost effective distance learning course, I believe this theory acts as a quality foundation for the advancements made after the publication of this article.
Michael, I thought that the quote you pulled out about teacher-student interaction having the highest perceived value was interesting. Certainly, I generally use how good I found a teacher to be as my starting point for deciding how good a class was, but if I'm honest about it, there have definitely been classes where my engagement with the material was the factor that made the course worthwhile. It seems natural that we value teacher-student interaction most highly, because it's personal and engaging and we respect the teacher over the other students as the expert. As the tide turns and project-based learning and other forms of student collaboration are recognized as highly effective learning strategies, the pre-eminence of the teacher may start to wane, but I think it will take a LONG time. It is a very common thing to want one authoritative person guiding you, and giving that up in favor of building your own learning with peers will be tough for a lot of people to become comfortable with.
ReplyDeleteIf we include Anderson's interaction type of student-content, then the traditional "lecture format" could actually contain high levels of interaction. However, most students don't response well to just pure input of content without interaction with a teacher or student, and therefore the lecture format usually isn't successful because it doesn't "influence one another" like Anderson states.
ReplyDeleteThe trick is to include other types of interaction, because most likely a pure student-content lecture is not going to engage a student enough to be considered "high-level". I went to a Jo Gusman ESL seminar a few months ago, and about every 10 mins., she stopped so we could discuss what we just heard with a partner. It definitely increased my engagement to hear what others thought and improved my usual retention rate :)
Nathan, I like your comment on the importance of mixing different types of interaction. Ideally, the three types of interaction should exist in either face-to-face or online classes. It is possible that we can find all types of interaction in a classroom where students do not learn maximally. So, in this case, the most important thing for a teacher is being able to design and mix different types of interaction to provide a more satisfying educational experience for students.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot has to do with how we learn best. I love to listen to a good lecturer. Granted there are fewer and fewer "good "lecturers. But, I think possibly because it isn't a skill we prize much anymore. Nathan, I know lots of people learn well the same way you mentioned; stopping every so many minutes to discuss with a fellow student. For me, I find those situations both distracting and contrived. I never feel either of us is that interested in what the other person is saying in those conference activities, but obviously many do, or so many presenters wouldn't use the method.
ReplyDeleteBut,for me, it isn't really about equal types of instruction, but in equity of experience, and that is what Anderson's theorum presented; an equitable way to get a high quality educational experience in a convenient way.