The Students’ Participation in WebCT

2012 ◽  
pp. 932-947
Author(s):  
Urai Salam

This chapter reports on the students’ interaction taking place within the virtual learning environment, WebCT. It is particularly critical of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) analysis regarding the knowledge construction, evidenced by the transcripts of their online discussions. The guiding theory, Activity Theory, provides perspectives that can help instructors and teachers understand emerging learning participation mediated by computers. From this perspective, computers do not simply facilitate learning that could have been done without their presence. Rather, computer mediated communication could alter the entire flow of knowledge construction processes.

Author(s):  
Urai Salam

This chapter reports on the students’ interaction taking place within the virtual learning environment, WebCT. It is particularly critical of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) analysis regarding the knowledge construction, evidenced by the transcripts of their online discussions. The guiding theory, Activity Theory, provides perspectives that can help instructors and teachers understand emerging learning participation mediated by computers. From this perspective, computers do not simply facilitate learning that could have been done without their presence. Rather, computer mediated communication could alter the entire flow of knowledge construction processes.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Murphy

The effectiveness of computer-based learning environments depends on learners’ deployment of metacognitive and self-regulatory processes. Analysis of transmitted messages in a context of Computer Mediated Communication can provide a source of information on metacognitive activity. However, existing models or frameworks (e.g., Henri, 1992) that support the identification and assessment of metacognition have been described as subjective, lacking in clear criteria, and unreliable in contexts of scoring. This paper develops a framework that might be used by researchers analysing transcripts of discussions for evidence of engagement in metacognition, by instructors assessing learners’ participation in online discussions or by designers setting up metacognitive experiences for learners. Résumé : L’efficacité des environnements d’apprentissage assistés par ordinateur repose sur l’utilisation de processus de métacognition et d’autorégulation par les apprenants. L’analyse de messages transmis dans un contexte de communication assistée par ordinateur peut constituer une source d’information sur l’activité métacognitive. Cependant, les modèles et cadres existants (p. ex. Henri, 1992) qui permettent la reconnaissance et l’évaluation de la métacognition ont été décrits comme subjectifs, dépourvus de critères clairs et peu fiables dans des contextes de notation. Cet article décrit un cadre qui pourrait être utilisé par les chercheurs qui analysent les transcriptions de discussions à la recherche de preuves d’engagement métacognitif, par les instructeurs qui procèdent à l’évaluation de la participation des apprenants à des discussions en ligne ou par les concepteurs qui élaborent des expériences métacognitives pour les apprenants.


Author(s):  
Stylianos Hatzipanagos ◽  
Anthony Basiel ◽  
Annette Fillery-Travis

This chapter explores how web-based video conferencing (WVC) can be used to create and support learning environments within a work based learning context. Computer mediated communication interactions through WVC can support collaborative knowledge construction by encouraging dialogical processes in communities of learners and practitioners. We position our field of exploration within the educational landscape defined by socio-economic changes, resulting from the development of the knowledge economy, and the explosive growth of information and communication technologies to serve it.


Author(s):  
Alison Ruth

This chapter proposes that Burke’s (1969) dramatistic analysis using the Pentad (act, scene, agent, agency, purpose) is a valuable methodological tool for investigating how learning theory offers a better understanding of mediated learning environments. It is argued that this framework provides a coherent and comprehensive consideration of learning and communication mediated by electronic means. Research into computer mediated communication needs to acknowledge the intertwining notion of the agents, acts and agency (mediation) within a specific scene, particularly in an online learning environment. Burke’s (1969) work provides a useful framework for discussing and describing a mediated environment and appears to be a valid framework within which to analyze different learning and communicative environments.


2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Brown ◽  
Peter Kiriakidis

Given that online higher education is a competitive marketplace, this paper discusses how to ensure online student success. Within the online learning environment, the following may create the vitality of the online institution: (a) The online learning environment; (b) The role of the instructor; (c) Learning Communities; (d) Computer-mediated Communication Technologies; and (e) Policy and practice. These factors may be managed by the institution of higher education, the faculty member, or the learner; however, a commitment is needed by all stakeholders in the program.


Author(s):  
Xinchun Wang

Although the pedagogical advantages of online interactive learning are well known, much needs to be done in instructional design of applicable collaborative learning tasks that motivate sustained student participation and interaction. This study investigates the factors that encourage student interaction and collaboration in both process and product oriented computer mediated communication (CMC) tasks in a Web-based course that adopts interactive learning tasks as its core learning activities. The analysis of a post course survey questionnaire collected from three online classes suggest that among others, the structure of the online discussion, group size and group cohesion, strictly enforced deadlines, direct link of interactive learning activities to the assessment, and the differences in process and product driven interactive learning tasks are some of the important factors that influence participation and contribute to sustained online interaction and collaboration.


2011 ◽  
pp. 3084-3103
Author(s):  
Xinchun Wang

Although the pedagogical advantages of online interactive learning are well known, much needs to be done in instructional design of applicable collaborative learning tasks that motivate sustained student participation and interaction. This study investigates the factors that encourage student interaction and collaboration in both process and product oriented computer mediated communication (CMC) tasks in a Web-based course that adopts interactive learning tasks as its core learning activities. The analysis of a post course survey questionnaire collected from three online classes suggest that among others, the structure of the online discussion, group size and group cohesion, strictly enforced deadlines, direct link of interactive learning activities to the assessment, and the differences in process and product driven interactive learning tasks are some of the important factors that influence participation and contribute to sustained online interaction and collaboration.


Author(s):  
Gustav Verhulsdonck

Digital rhetoric has been discussed by many theorists as comprising a marked shift from ancient rhetoric's focus on persuasion. For some of the earlier theorists, digital rhetoric defined a novel relationship between literacy and the mechanics of text as computer-mediated communication and changed relationships between consuming, producing and engaging with discourse as information on a screen. Later digital rhetoricians argue different approaches and definitions that are more inclusive of the different types of discourse facilitated by multimodal, interactive, immersive, and computer-mediated communication as semantic discourse at the interface level and encoded through computer programming language, servers, and networks. This chapter focuses on the different modes of digital rhetoric in the context of globalization through a convergence-continuum model approach. The model presented approaches rhetoric and discourse from various levels as loosely based on the models of activity theory, multimodality intercultural theories of globalization and integrates them into a continuum model ranging from global, public modes to individual, personal digital rhetorical modes and practices. Instead of being prescriptive, this model is descriptive in recognizing the fluid natures of digital rhetorical interactions whereby global and local, public and private, group and individual, production and consumption, human and technological, physical and virtual and other discourse contexts merge.


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