How to Improve Interaction between Online Instructors and Students

This post explains the interactions between online students and online instructors and expounds various strategies that can be used to support this. It goes into detail about various online activities and strategies implemented to fully support students.

The key to developing these strategies, is to ensure that correct amount of interaction which is conducive to learning. Some people misunderstand interaction as people interacting more, however I believe interaction in learning is about enabling learners to interact in a way which will improve their learning experience coupled with developing within them new ways of thinking about and drawing in new knowledge elements.

One of the most common interaction theory is Moore’s  “Three Types of Interactions” which includes learner-learner, learner-instructor, and learner-content interactions”.

 

Interpersonal interaction refers to learner-learner and learner-instructor interaction. The main purpose of this is to measure social interaction within a learning environment. This is measured by how learners in an online environment feel directly connected to each other.

 

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Course Environment,

In order to develop an interactive environment, you need to use ice-breakers, profiles, recommendations liking posts and commenting on others, messages and a social space.

It is important students know the objectives and modes and methods of interaction. When designing the interaction it should be as seamless as possible, ideally using recognised standards when designing online resources (SCORM, WEB 2.0, 3.0 and ISO). Where unconventional methods are used students should be given training.

Course Structure,

 Shea et al. “Determined that student’s feel more connected when the instructor shows an active teaching presence in the course.” This should be implemented at every level:

1.       Send welcome letters

2.       Show learners their objectives and ask learners to take ownership of them.

3.       Ensure effective time-management, allowing students to properly reflect over learning and create relevant and useful posts for discussions.

4.       Lead discussion forums

5.       Provide effective feedback to leaner on assignment

6.       Include grading or prizes for discussion entries

7.       Set clear participation rules and demands

8.       Implement periodically activities that promote interaction (demos, debates, discussions, group work, e.t.c)

9.       Encourage peer feedback, with set deadlines

10.   Using challenging questions, assignments and group activities, this creates further interactions as students support each other in tackling difficult scenarios.

Community Discussion

A good use of discussion forums is to develop non-conventional names, in addition use names that will provide greater meaning and develop more constructive patterns of thinking. Within an online environment, you could have compulsory posting on board or have optional posting. I feel in order to promote learner-learner interaction, having a compulsory posting element will promote interaction. Another useful ideas would be to promote students joining small groups and developing their own group discussion boards as well as overall discussion board for the whole online learning community. Where possible develop groups of individuals of different skills levels that balance out the strength of each group.

Structured discussion are also important, it enables students to find their required discussion and post information easily, online whiteboards such as Padlet, this improves the graphical side of discussions and allow you to visually see posts at a snapshot.

An instructor should provide feedback on discussions boards, in addition where there are misunderstandings the instructor should provide clarifying information, there should be the ability to involve the instructor within the discussion and where possible the instructor should lead discussion to relevant topics.

  Feedback type and Medium,

Feedback types:

1.       Interactive learning content,

2.       Peer

3.       Instructor

Mediums:

1.       Video,

2.       Audio,

3.       Written (real-time)

Feedback should be timely, relevant and adequate

There are many methods of providing feedback to students, dependent on the student they will find different methods to be more familiar. Researchers: Ice et al have found audio feedback to be more personal, to written feedback I can understand this because it demonstrated tone of voice as oppose to written feedback, which is read via the observation of the reader. I feel web conferencing would be even better method for distance communication, however require more data. My personal experiences when providing feedback have also followed these methods

Other feedback methods include surveys and questionnaires which allow the instructor to create reports and view learners’ satisfactions and learner views within a report format.

Implementing ARCS model: http://e-learning-technical.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/key-elements-of-online-learning.html  in the course structure ensuring leaners are kept well motivated throughout the course.

Immediacy behaviours,

 

Within an online learning environment students need to feel close to each other, learning material and instructor. For this to occur effective communication needs to take place.

With regards to communication between students, there are certain strategies that enable this. If the tutor develop controversial/interesting discussion points, this will prompt students to defend and support their opinions as well as to a certain extent side with some and disagree with others. The key is not to develop a haranguing situation but to foster meaningful communication leading to a learning objective.

Allowing students to use I agree, or like buttons on responses to posts, in my opinion is an excellent idea, this replicates the agreement nod or clap gestures within a classroom/lecture based environment.

Another method used by myself is to enforce discussion entries as part of a grading criteria, this will enable definitely improve peer to peer communication. Furthermore enabling peer to peer assignments and dividing students into smaller groups will make them feel closer within online environment. I have observed this and found a lot more activity on both discussion boards and other group based learning activities. This concept is drawn from “A big society just being a group of small societies” (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/21/big-society-localism-churches)

The instructor plays a big role in supporting immediacy of behaviours. (Ice) states that 15% of community discussion should be from the instructor. This is to help guide, encourage and coach the student discussion in the right direction. It is possible for students to start discussing the topic and due to lack of experience, start discussing elements within the wrong context, hence the aid of tutor supports them to achieve the course outcomes and objectives.

Other elements include, types of text, important words in bold or using capital letters as a form of shouting or announcing. You can also include audio/video resources to further emphasize a learning element.

The instructor should post regular announcement coupled with both group and individual feedback on assignment work. This is to develop a community environment as well as provide the individual support for learners. This can be done via weekly journaling with students.

Tu and McIsaac [2002] utilized

Surveys, interviews, observations, and document analysis to determine that the following factors contributed positively to interaction: (a) timely response, (b) casual communication style, and (c) informal discussion board. All three of these factors can be considered components of the overarching factor