Mainly the purposes of Anderson’s study (2003) are, firstly, to point out the distinctions between those types of education that occur in a formal education and the types of interaction which are dealt with any informal context; and secondly, to explain three modes of interactions: student-student, student- teacher, and student-content; as well as to assess the equivalency among those types of interaction. Anderson comes up with the idea of equivalency while there has also been a tendency that along the development of technology, the term student-content form of interaction might be considered as a high priority.
Giving these, I assume that in distance education context, apparently the students would effectively benefit from the student-content interaction rather than the other two modes of interaction because in this case the students are basically more exposed with the contents rather than effective ways of student-teacher, and student-student interactions.
Reflection 3
16 years ago
3 comments:
Hi, Amin. I want to comment on student-content interaction. I recently completed a distance-delivered ESP course through the University of Newcastle in Australia. The course was also self-study. Assignments and instructions were provided via Blackboard and submitted through Turnitin. There was no contact with any of my classmates, just the teacher. And interaction with him was limited to minimal feedback. At times, I wasn't sure how I was doing, although there was an online evaluation for me complete mid-semester. Frankly, the whole learning experience felt impersonal and ambiguous, which I found odd considering my day job is highly autonomous! I believe some sort of student-student interaction would have improved my learning experience, not so much solely for the interaction, but for the exchange of ideas. As someone new to TEFL, I learn a lot from my classmates. This opportunity was lacking with this self-study course and I don't know if I'll take another such class again.
Sio
Hi Amin,
I tried to look back my online distance learning experience. Student-content interaction is really more frequent than other interactions. Reading assignments provide me a lot of knowledge; however, I feel I am really involved with the study while discussing with other students.
Anderson said that qualitative aspects are ignored in the current program design. Therefore, I feel that it is difficult to say student-teacher and student-student interactions are less beneficial, although student-content interaction is the most frequent.
Tomoko
Hello Amin, thanks for indicating the points, this is exactly why we hope to design an online course with more student-to-student and student-to-teacher interactions! Since we do know the disadvantages an online coursemay have, it's important for online educators to improve them. And thanks for modern technology we can do this as logn as we want to!
chien-han
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