How to achieve interaction from all students? This is a factor in distance education (DE)
and in the face to face classroom. Each
student has their comfort level with public speaking and interaction and a
teacher needs to find the ways to allow students to interact as needed. As a middle school teacher, there are many
times when I feel that I am able to assess what my students know through our
classroom discussions more than on a written test. It is easier to have a student expand on an
answer or comment when we are speaking than on a test, when they just want to
be done with the test and move on to something else. With distance education, when there is no
face to face communication, it is important that there be some type of
interaction. This can be complete with
blogs or discussion boards, but again, how do you get an introverted student to
interact appropriately? The easiest
requirement is to have a minimum requirement of interactions, but how do I, as
the instructor, get to know the student?
One way that Karen Swan states in her article “Relationships between
interactions and learning in online environments” is to have rubric that encourages
the desired cognitive behaviors and interactions (2004). Another strategy is to have both public and
private responses between the student and the instructor (Swan, 2004). An introverted student, even in the privacy
that online can provide, may still not be willing to respond to a large number
of students or even to the instructor when others may be able to see their
responses. The privacy and the one on
one time is needed for many students who are taking the course because they do
not have the time to attend a face to face class or have such a class near enough
to be able to. It is important that the student
realizes what type of learning environment works best for them so that they
will succeed in the classwork learn to the best of their ability (Moller,
Foshay and Huett, 2008).
When a student does not like to interact with fellow
students on a collaborative assignment, how can fellow students and the
instructor handle this situation? This
happens in a face to face classroom also, and can be a struggle to adequately
assess the students. The type of
personalities of the students make a big difference on how much each student
interacts. When one student takes over
as leader and does not necessarily listen to their fellow students on idea and
has a fixed idea of what the project should look like, it can be prevent other
students from feeling like they can participate. In my middle school classroom, I have
students grade each other on their participation, always with the caveat that
I, as the teacher, can overrule their scores.
I may have different expectations for students based on their ability
and other difficulties. This works well
in a classroom setting, but what about an online setting? Communication between partners is the
paramount need. If one of the partners
is struggling, they need to let their partners know and their partners may be
able to help them through a rough area and will request help when needed. For this to be successful in an online
community, it is important that at the beginning of the class, the students and
the instructor need to create that feeling of community (Palloff & Pratt,
2007).
References
Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008). The
evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the
potential of the web. Tech Trends, 52(4), 66-70.
Palloff, R. M., Pratt, K., & Palloff, R. M. (2007).
Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual
classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Swan, K. (2004). Relationships between interactions and
learning in online environments. The Sloan Consortium.
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