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Article Excerpt
The use of the Internet to deliver courses at the tertiary level
is growing steadily, with the Internet being seen as the ideal solution to a range of issues facing educators in the 21st century. However, little is known as how best to use synchronous communication to enable higher-order thinking. This article documents a New Zealand tertiary course entitled "Occupational Therapy and the Internet," delivered primarily on the World Wide (WWW or Web) using online chat. Findings from this study show that synchronous communication could facilitate higher-order thinking, with students clearly able to identify the issues that influence their ability to engage in higher-order thinking. Issues in using synchronous communication in course delivery are also identified in this article.
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Jl. of Interactive Learning Research (2003) 14(4),387-404
Many believe that online learning is the "magic" answer to the pressure of growing enrolments, decreasing income, demands by students for more flexibility, along with the explosion in knowledge created in part by the communications revolution (Land, 2002; Race, 1998; Office of Higher Education, 2001). To meet these demands, the number of Internet-based courses offered at the tertiary level in the last few years has increased rapidly (Web-based Education Commission, 2000) and at the same time, the ways in which online courses have been structured has also developed. Increasingly designers of online learning environments have made online learning more interactive through the use of tools for lecturer-student and student-student communication such as "real-time" synchronous communication (chatrooms) and asynchronous communication (bulletin boards).
Asynchronous and synchronous communication tools provide different learning experiences. The use of bulletin boards allows time for students to reflect on their peers and teachers' comments, to carefully research their response, or to seek clarification or help from others, before composing their own response (Brown, 1997; Murphy & Collins, 1997). Given the time delay, Moore (2002) suggested that one of the major benefits of this type of online communication is that it offers students the opportunity to develop higher-order thinking--an important aim of tertiary education.
In contrast, chatrooms allow real-time interaction, with shorter messages (1-3 sentences) (Murphy & Collins, 1997), providing what has been described by Rintel, Mulholland and Pittam (2001) as the conversational feel achieved in face to face (F2F) conversations. Despite a number of known drawbacks such as difficulty following the flow of discussion, benefits noted have included the immediacy of response from teachers and peers, and the "instantaneous transmission and discussion of knowledge, [and] formation of socio-collaboration skills" (Fletcher, Hovell, Johnston, & Nicholson, 1999, p. 15). Lobel, Neubauer and Swedburgh's (2002) study highlighted the effectiveness of synchronous communication to facilitate learning in an eCourse on interpersonal relationships and communication. Others such as Murphy and Collins (1997) suggested that the main purpose of chatrooms is more social than educational.
One of the theories supporting the need to develop communication tools which support and encourage higher-order thinking in students engaged in online learning is that of constructivism. Constructivism is described as knowledge that is "constructed within the cognitive structure of every individual, so that it is fundamentally personal, while being dependent on experiences in the learning environment and on social interactions" (Bostock, 1998, p. 225). This definition suggests that the individual is responsible for their learning, drawing on existing knowledge in order to make sense of the current experience. However, the individual is not alone in this process, as the emphasis is on collaborative learning through dialogue with others, where different viewpoints are presented and discussed, giving rise to synergistic insights (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989). Jones and Mercer (1993) described this as a process where two or more people share their knowledge and understandings, creating a new cultural resource which is "greater than the knowledge and understanding that any of the individual's hitherto possessed" (p. 21). In this school of thought Sherry (2000) maintained that a shift occurs from "learning as acquisition of knowledge and skills to learning as entry, enculturation, and legitimate, valued activities situated within a community of practice." The need to communicate in some way is vital in this process.
In line with student responsibility, Fosnot (1996) stated that it is "the learners (rather than the teacher) who are responsible for defending, proving, justifying, and communicating ideas to the classroom community" (p. 30). In this process, there is a shift in the role of the teacher from "expert deliverer of information" to that of "facilitator, guide, and clarifier" who designs active learning experiences, and maintains the learning environment (Alesandrini, 2002; Lane, 1997; Peters, 2000). The teacher also has a responsibility to develop the students' metacognitive skills, defined by Brown (1997) as "a set of higher-order thinking processes that students use to regulate their own learning" (p. 30). Metacognition is believed to be implicit in constructivism, as students need to understand their own thinking (Brown, 1999; Peters, 2000).
The question then for educators who wish to provide a constructivist learning environment is--will students develop higher-order thinking through chatrooms or bulletin-boards or a combination of both? Although examples of tertiary level online courses using asynchronous communication are well-documented in the literature (e.g., Hodson-Carlton, Ryan, & Siktberg, 1998; Muffoletto, 1997; Prammanee, 2003), fewer researchers have investigated whether content-related, higher-order exchanges can be facilitated in a synchronous learning environment (e.g., online chat). Indeed, Alesandrini (2002) asserted that many distance learning courses still suffer from weak forms of interaction with students. Further research investigating online communication is required.
This article documents a study conducted in 1998 to investigate online text-based interactions of staff and students in an Internet-based course offered by the Department of Occupational Therapy, Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand. In this web-based course, based on constructivist principles, synchronous communication (online chat) was designed and used as the primary mode of communication. A number of questions were addressed in this study. In this article the following research questions are investigated:
1. Is higher-order communication possible to achieve in a synchronous learning environment?
2. What did students perceive as issues that supported or inhibited higher-order thinking in a synchronous learning environment?
Design of the Learning Environment
The web-based course "Occupational Therapy and the Internet" (4 credit-point paper) consisted of approximately 10 hours of student work per week over 12 teaching weeks. Students in this course were expected to access their e-mail account as least once weekly, although more often was desirable, as well as use the WWW and library resources. The website provided all course-related materials (i.e., course outline, assignment guidelines, topic outlines with readings, and suggested learning activities), a web-based chatroom, and a web-based bulletin.
Seven online synchronous classes using the web-based chatroom, which all students were expected to attend were timetabled, each lasting for approximately two hours. Twenty-three students (all Otago Polytechnic graduates) enrolled...
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